The Trump administration's first year in office kicked off a variety of legal challenges and policy changes spanning federal spending practices to sweeping tariffs, prompting Americans to scramble to understand the size and scope of these reforms.
The chaotic environment has led news outlets covering the American legal and judicial system to pivot, pursuing different coverage strategies to break down complicated industry topics for readers. As a result, readership and engagement has spiked at several publications.
"As the regulatory and policy landscape changes, and the pace of change accelerated, we had to be in more places, and we had to be more nimble," said Cesca Antonelli, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg Industry Group.
Publication leaders and experts have observed a wider breadth of readers interested in the legal processes and decisions, a phenomenon they say has been sparked by the uncertain regulatory environment after President Trump returned to office.
"Things are different," Lucy Dalglish, a professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism and former executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said. "People want to know why."
'A huge surge' in reader interest
Since returning to Washington, Trump has instated dozens of policies and executive orders challenging existing legal precedent. These changes have resulted in hundreds of lawsuits against the administration over executive orders related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and new immigration policies.
According to Antonelli, this environment has provided an opportunity for Bloomberg Industry Group to explain the latest developments in laws and regulations.
Bloomberg Industry Group runs several publications and products, including Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government. The products are geared toward professionals across government, law, accounting and more, who are able to subscribe and receive in-depth analysis articles as well as breaking news related to their industries.
Though the company declined to provide readership or subscription numbers, Antonelli noted that there has been a "huge surge in interest in the law and in regulations of all kinds from both consumers and companies."
"That's because the federal government and states have been operating at a much faster pace than in the past," she added in a statement to The Hill.
"If you can speak with depth and thoughtfulness on these issues, you win readers," Antonelli continued. "It's not just litigation that is driving reader interest, but more so the idea that government itself has a crucial impact on lives and jobs and work."
To provide fast and accurate coverage in the changing legal environment, Bloomberg Industry Group has expanded its team.
"We added more reporters in courthouses across the country and in key state capitals," Antonelli said. "We've been lucky to have the resources to invest more in our journalism at a time when so many places...have been shrinking."
Other publications have invested in creating more resources for readers to understand legal decisions and institutions.
The Supreme Court received increased scrutiny last year for its role in challenging or affirming the administration's policies, particularly since it has a conservative supermajority.
The court's ruling that curtailed the ability of federal courts to issue nationwide injunctions for federal policies and its decision allowing the administration to claw back funding for DEI-linked National Institutes of Health grants are among several decisions that have been with public controversy -- and sparked questions about the court's neutrality.
SCOTUSblog, a publication that covers the Supreme Court, introduced a new blog to cover the Supreme Court's off-season decisions in December. The decision to introduce "Interim Docket Blog" was based on the court's increased activity this year in litigating cases related to administration policies.
"SCOTUSblog has always been providing people with kind of procedural information and briefs in every single case," Katie Barlow, SCOTUSblog's media editor, said. "So I think our goal, in part, is to continue to provide that value with the interim docket, since it just has grown exponentially."
This year has coincided with The Dispatch's acquisition of SCOTUSblog, which Barlow said helped their publication pursue other coverage strategies -- such as live podcasts and a partnership with C-SPAN to provide live coverage for readers -- as well.
A growing audience
Both professionals and laymen have developed an interest in tracking litigation due to the broad range of industries and people affected by the administration's changes, experts and media professionals said.
Several of the administration's policies -- such as its proposed H-1B visa fee and its tariffs on other countries' goods and services -- have international consequences, even leading to a global audience following developments in these areas.
"There is not only an increased interest, but an increased interest among non-lawyers and people who wouldn't otherwise necessarily be engaged or this closely following the court because [of] the breadth of what this administration is attempting to do," Barlow said. "It covers a lot of people's interests."
She said this interest was evident in SCOTUSblog’s social media content, which she said was reaching a broader audience of readers in 2025 than previously.
Antonelli identified three key coverage areas for Bloomberg Industry Group that she believes will continue into the new year: health care, technology and manufacturing.
"[W]e expect those three industries to be big drivers of growth," she said. "These are industries with a big impact on the economy and on the supply chain, so having a good understanding of what moves the needle for them allows us to drive the conversation not just on those big industries,but on all the spaces that they touch."
The health care industry has seen research cuts as a result of federal funding recissions last year while the tech industry has been embroiled in conflict over H-1B workers with the administration. The domestic manufacturing industry, meanwhile, saw a decrease in jobs last year, which experts, per CNN, have attributed in part to the president’s tariffs.
Dalglish said she also believed a general interest in the Constitution was developing as a result of the administration.
"There are a fair number of people who believe that some of the things that are going on are wrong, and they are looking to our laws, whether they're laws passed by Congress or state legislatures, or if they are orders from governors and the president, they're trying to figure [it] out," Dalglish said. "A lot of them are trying to figure out what their rights are."
Dalglish noted that journalists covering particular beats or industries were often the people best-positioned to research and find credible sources to discuss the impacts of different changes -- a role she characterized as essential in a changing media environment.
"[Readers] need to find people who have a really solid reputation for covering these issues and not just read any old crackpot thing you see on the Internet," she said.
A flourishing independent ecosystem
Amid a distrust in traditional media coverage, readers have also turned to independent reporters and experts, boosting their subscriber and readership numbers by the tens of thousands in some cases.
One First, a newsletter covering the Supreme Court run by Georgetown University Law Center professor Stephen Vladeck, hit 100,000 subscribers in December -- more than double the number of subscribers it had at the beginning of 2025.
Former BuzzFeed legal journalist Chris Geidner's Law Dork newsletter has also almost doubled its number of subscribers to more than 78,000. Both Geidner and Vladeck cited readers' interest in independent journalism as driving up interest in their publications.
"The reality is that most legal coverage is targeted toward lawyers and generally more expensive," Geidner said. "The availability of legal journalism like I provide at Law Dork that works fastidiously for all readers interested in legal developments...is probably why I've seen more people come to Law Dork this year."
He also added that people have been getting "generally more frustrated" with major publications, with the American public's general trust in media hitting an all-time low of 28 percent in October.
Geidner said working independently has allowed him to cover stories that major publications may not see as important or find amid other legal news. Both he and Vladeck referenced the Supreme Court’s "shadow docket," a phrase used to refer to unsigned orders issued by the Supreme Court on unusually fast turnaround times.
Vladeck said he viewed his newsletter as a crucial way to provide informed context to readers looking for the perspective of an expert rather than a journalist, particularly on recent developments that may require more context or precedent that breaking news articles tend to not provide.
"I see my job as more in terms of helping folks see the full picture and helping folks put what the real journalists are doing into a broader historical and analytical context," Vladeck said.