The future of the internet will be determined in one building in Washington, DC — and for six weeks, I watched it unfold.
For much of this spring, the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in downtown Washington, DC, was buzzing with lawyers, reporters, and interested onlookers jostling between dimly lit courtrooms that hosted everyone from the richest men in Silicon Valley to fired federal workers and the DOGE-aligned officials who terminated them. The sprawling courthouse, with an airy atrium in the middle and long, dark halls that spring from it, is where cases involving government agencies often land, and that meant it was hosting two of the most consequential tech cases in the country, all while fielding a flurry of unprecedented lawsuits against President Donald Trump’s administration.
Between mid-April and late May, Judges James Boasberg and Amit Mehta respectively oversaw FTC v. Meta and US v. Google, a pair of long-running antitrust lawsuits that seek to split up two titans of Silicon Valley. Over the same period, several DC judges — including Boasberg — had a full docket of cases related to Trump’s first 100 days in office, covering the administration’s attempt to mass-deport immigrants, strip security clearance from law firms, and fire thousands of federal workers. On the first day of the Google trial, a sign with a comically contorted arrow directed visitors toward their chosen antitrust case. It was soon joined by directions to the high-profile hearing over Trump’s order against law firm Jenner & Block. While the FTC’s lawyers were calling witnesses against Meta in one courtroom, a nearby room was hosting arguments about whether Trump could fire two of the agency’s own commissioners.
My colleagues gathered around the feed waiting for a Google witness, only to see a prison-jumpsuited defendant step into the box
For reporters, the weeks were an exercise in constant case-juggling. During the overlap of Google and Meta, I’d arrive to long security lines that would sometimes jut into the small park that adjoins the courthouse, waiting to hunt down a media room that streamed video for reporters and avoid the electronics-free courtrooms. I’d occasionally show up to find out no such room existed, and in a small stampede of reporters, I’d rush up a few flights of spiral stairs to the courtroom, scribbling handwritten notes from the back rows. One day, my colleagues gathered around the feed waiting for a Google witness, only to see a prison-jumpsuited defendant step into the box — in the brief moment before reporters realized Mehta was taking a quick break for a criminal hearing, they wondered which high-profile tech executive it was.
For the judges, the gauntlet seemed nothing short of exhausting. Boasberg, chief judge of the US District Court in DC, had been assigned to the Meta case long before Trump took office, but after the inauguration, he became one of the busiest judges in America — overseeing a challenge of the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants, and a lawsuit over Trump’s cabinet’s use of encrypted messaging app Signal to communicate about attack plans. As I concluded a day of the Meta trial at 5PM, a fresh crop of reporters arrived to cover Boasberg’s consideration of the Alien Enemies Act, which Trump was using to deport Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador. Outside the courtroom, Boasberg fielded attacks from Trump — who labeled him a “Radical Left Lunatic” and a “troublemaker and agitator” and called for his impeachment.
At the Meta trial, Boasberg appeared even-keeled — sometimes to the point of boredom. He rarely mentioned the rest of his docket beyond subtle references to his overflowing schedule; his interventions were astute, signaling a deep understanding of the case. But he’d often sit with his head in his hand, only occasionally gently encouraging attorneys to move on from a particularly tedious line of questioning. He used a lunch break in the Meta trial to file one of the most scathing legal rulings of the early Trump administration, accusing the administration of “willful disregard” for his temporary restraining order on deportation flights to El Salvador, with “probable cause” to find it in criminal contempt.
By the Meta trial’s end in late May, Boasberg sounded relieved as the final day wrapped. “I will take a welcome respite from thinking about this between now and when the first brief is due,” he told the attorneys.
In 1998, the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse played host to another tech giant fighting for its life: Microsoft. US v. Microsoft was a landmark monopoly case that determined the company had illegally wielded its dominance over Intel-compatible PC operating systems to tamp down threats to its monopoly, including up-and-coming web browsers like Netscape. But in the wake of that case and subsequent settlement, regulators took a hands-off approach to the next generation of tech companies. It would take two decades for the government to return to the battleground — until 2020, when the cases against Meta and Google were filed.
The search and social networking landscape has changed dramatically in the last five years, with the rise of TikTok and generative AI. But so too has the zeitgeist around tech. As Silicon Valley remains politically embattled, the goal of more aggressive antitrust enforcement has won bipartisan support.
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