After a routine Supreme Court argument on Wednesday, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked the lawyer who had represented the government to return to the lectern.
“You have just presented your 160th argument before this court, and I understand it is intended to be your last,” the chief justice told the lawyer, Edwin S. Kneedler, who is retiring as a deputy solicitor general. “That is the record for modern times.”
Chief Justice Roberts talked a little more, with affection and high praise, thanking Mr. Kneedler for his “extraordinary care and professionalism.”
Then something remarkable happened. Applause burst out in the courtroom, and that led to a standing ovation for Mr. Kneedler, with the justices joining, too.
“It was a rare moment of unanimity and spontaneous joy from all nine justices on the bench,” said Richard Lazarus, a law professor at Harvard. “They were all beaming.”
Kannon Shanmugam, a veteran Supreme Court lawyer, said it was “one of the most electric moments I’ve ever seen in the courtroom.”
The tribute to Mr. Kneedler’s candor and integrity came against the backdrop of a different kind of courtroom behavior. In the early months of the second Trump administration, its lawyers have been accused of gamesmanship, dishonesty and defiance, and have been fired for providing frank answers to judges.
Mr. Kneedler presented a different model, former colleagues said.
“Ed is the embodiment of the government lawyer ideal — one whose duty of candor to the court and interest in doing justice, not just winning a case, always carried the day,” said Gregory G. Garre, who served as solicitor general under President George W. Bush.
Mr. Shanmugam said Mr. Kneedler’s loyalty was to the rule of law. “He would much rather get the law right at the risk of losing,” Mr. Shanmugam said, “than win at the cost of misrepresenting the law.”
Seth P. Waxman, who was solicitor general in the Clinton administration, said Mr. Kneedler was the opposite of a partisan.
“In all the years that I worked with Ed in the Justice Department, I did not know his politics,” Mr. Waxman said.
Mr. Kneedler joined the Office of the Solicitor General, the elite unit of the Justice Department that represents the federal government in the Supreme Court, in 1979, served in many administrations and helped tutor the solicitors general who came and went.
“I was incredibly lucky to have Ed as a deputy when I was S.G.,” Justice Elena Kagan, who served as solicitor general in the Obama administration, said in a statement. “There’s pretty much no legal question he can’t answer. And he has a bone-deep understanding of the traditions and ethos of the S.G.’s office.”
She added: “I learned from him every day, and I did my job far better because he was there. In all the time I’ve spent in government, I’ve never known a finer public servant.”
That was something like a consensus view among former solicitors general. Mr. Waxman, for instance, called Mr. Kneedler “a national treasure.”
Noel J. Francisco, the solicitor general in the first Trump administration, said that Mr. Kneedler was “not just a font of knowledge, but of wisdom.”
Elizabeth B. Prelogar, the solicitor general in the Biden administration, said that “Ed Kneedler represents the very best of what it means to be a lawyer for the United States.”
Mr. Kneedler’s retirement is part of a wave of departures from the solicitor general’s office, which is quite small. After the solicitor general and a handful of deputies, there are just 16 line lawyers. About half of them are leaving, The Washington Post reported this month.
Mr. Kneedler, 79, did not respond to requests for an interview. When he received an award this month from the University of Virginia’s law school, his alma mater, he said he was “a career civil servant, not in the press if I can avoid it.”
At the ceremony, Mr. Kneedler gave extended remarks, making points that in another era might have seemed unremarkable. These days, they verged on provocative.
Calling himself a “citizen lawyer,” he praised the many federal employees he had worked with, saying he had been impressed by their “compassion and understanding for our country, and dedication to our country.”
He said his office analyzed legal issues with rigor and care, at least in cases on the court’s regular docket. Since Mr. Trump took office in January, the government has filed a torrent of emergency applications on what critics call the court’s shadow docket.
“When we don’t have emergencies like we have a number of now,” Mr. Kneedler said, “we have a very structured decision-making process.”
Leslie Kendrick, the Virginia law school’s dean, asked Mr. Kneedler a few questions, one of which was premised on his office’s “commitment to providing nonpartisan representation for the United States, regardless of cause, regardless of the political leadership of the other two branches.”
Mr. Kneedler did not quite adopt the premise. “We are lawyers for the United States,” he said, “and the administration in office is the ultimate determiner of what the interests of the United States are.”
But he ended his remarks on a hopeful note. “We’re all part of a process that is leading us to a more perfect union,” he said, “which means a union in which we are coming together, not apart.”
Before the standing ovation at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Chief Justice Roberts, himself a veteran of the solicitor general’s office, added what he called a personal note as he spoke to Mr. Kneedler.
“I recall that on two occasions you and I argued on the same side here, me representing a private client and you the United States,” the chief justice said. “We lost each of those cases. I’m sure it was my fault. Mr. Kneedler, thank you for your outstanding service to court and country.”
Chancellor Rachel Reeves will today unveil her spending review in Parliament.
The review, which will set out day-to-day spending plans for the next three years and capital spending plans for the next four, is expected to see boosts for the NHS, defence and schools.
But it is also likely to involve squeezes for other departments as the Chancellor seeks to keep within the fiscal rules she has set for herself.
Her room for manoeuvre has also been further constrained by the Government’s U-turn on winter fuel payments, which will see the benefit paid to pensioners receiving up to £35,000 per year at a cost of around £1.25 billion to the Treasury.
Live updates below
Reeves to argue her priorities are for ‘working people’
Reeves and Keir Starmer preparing for the Budget last year
Rachel Reeves will tell the Commons this afternoon her priorities are ‘the priorities of working people’.
The Chancellor is expected to focus on ‘Britain’s renewal’ as she sets out her spending plans for the coming years, with big increases for the NHS, defence and schools.
Arguing that the Government is ‘renewing Britain’, she will acknowledge that ‘too many people in too many parts of the country are yet to feel it’.
This Government’s task – my task – and the purpose of this spending review is to change that, to ensure that renewal is felt in people’s everyday lives, their jobs, their communities.
Among the main announcements is expected to be a £30 billion increase in NHS funding, a rise of around 2.8% in real terms, along with an extra £4.5 billion for schools and a rise in defence spending to 2.5% of GDP.
But Wednesday could present a tough prospect for other government as the Chancellor seeks to balance Labour’s commitments on spending with her fiscal rules.
Who will be the winners and losers?
On Monday, the Government confirmed it had reached settlements with all departments after Yvette Cooper became the last Cabinet minister to fix a deal.
Some ministers will be celebrating the agreements, while others will rue not securing a more generous sum.
Let’s take a look at the potential winners and losing from the spending review:
According to reports, the NHS will be in line to receive a £30 billion cash boost at the expense of other public services with the Department for Health and Social Care set to be given the largest settlement of the spending review. But despite the incoming windfall, health chiefs have warned Labour’s promise to ‘turbocharge delivery’ could lead to difficult compromises elsewhere.
Day-to-day funding for schools is expected increase by an extra £4.5 billion by 2028-9 compared with the 2025-6 core budget, while free school meals will be expanded to 500,000 children whose parents are receiving Universal Credit, regardless of their income.
The Government has committed to spend 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product on defence from April 2027, with a goal of increasing that to 3 per cent over the next parliament – a timetable which could stretch to 2034.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was believed to be the last Cabinet minister to agree a deal with the Treasury amid reports she desperately tried to get more money for the police and borders funding. Police chiefs including Sir Mark Rowley, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, had lobbied the government for more money with suggestions the department had a settlement ‘imposed’ on it by No 11.
Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan’s office is concerned that Wednesday’s announcement will include no new funding or projects for London.The mayor had been looking to secure extensions to the Docklands Light Railway and Bakerloo line on the Underground, along with the power to introduce a tourist levy and a substantial increase in funding for the Metropolitan Police.
What we know will be in the spending review
Some announcements of what will be included in the spending review were made ahead of Reeves’ statement in Parliament later.
Reeves will deliver her review at 12:30pm after Prime Minister’s Questions.
Here’s what we can expect:
Payments will be made to three quarters of pensioners this year after Reeves confirmed a U-turn on the government’s controversial decision to limit the payments to those receiving means-tested benefits. The government said the change will cost around £1.25bn in England and Wales.
Will rise from 2.3% of gross domestic product (GDP) to 2.5% by 2027 – an increase of around an extra £5bn a year. This will be paid by cutting the overseas aid budget. Ministers want to increase defence spending to 3% by 2034. There are suggestions that the NHS will get an extra £30bn over three years
Will be expanded to 500,000 children whose parents are receiving Universal Credit, regardless of their income. Across education, day-to-day spending will rise by £4.5bn a year by 2028-29, according to The Observer
Investment worth £15.6bn will fund extensions to trams, trains and buses in Greater Manchester, the Midlands and Tyne-and-Wear, after criticism that too much infrastructure spending targeted London and the South East
The government will spend £86bn on the science and technology sector by the end of the parliament, including funding research into areas such as drug treatments and longer-lasting batteries
Reeves has signed off on £14.2 billion of investment to build the new Sizewell C nuclear plant which the Treasury said would go towards creating 10,000 jobs, including 1,500 apprenticeships. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said new nuclear power capacity was needed to deliver a ‘golden age of clean energy abundance’.
Analysis: Tough choices await Reeves amid economic and political pressure
The generous fiscal envelope set at the Budget last Autumn has been put under massive pressure by the economic slowdown, calls for more defence cash, and Labour revolts on benefits.
While the political backdrop to the proposals this week is the continual surge of Reform, with Labour increasingly panicking about the challenge posed by Nigel Farage and co.
Ms Reeves will have some £113billion to distribute that has been freed up by looser borrowing rules on capital investment.
But she has acknowledged that she has been forced to turn down requests for funding for projects she would have wanted to back in a sign of the behind-the-scenes wrangling over her spending review.
Economists have warned the Chancellor faces unavoidably tough choices in allocating funding for the next three years.
She will need to balance manifesto commitments with more recent pledges, such as a hike in defence spending, as well as her strict fiscal rules which include a promise to match day-to-day spending with revenues.
Rachel Reeves to unveil spending review
Hello and welcome to MailOnline’s live coverage as Rachel Reeves unveils the government’s spending review.
The Chancellor is due to lay out departmental allocations running up to 2029 – the likely timetable for the next general election – later today in the Commons. Among the main announcements is expected to be a £30 billion increase in NHS funding, a rise of around 2.8% in real terms, along with an extra £4.5 billion for schools and a rise in defence spending to 2.5% of GDP.
Reeves has been busy haggling with ministers with some desperately trying to get more cash before all settlements were finally reached on Monday.
Inevitably today there will be winners and losers.
Stick with us for the latest news and analysis throughout the day with reporting from MailOnline’s political team plus expert financial insight from our This Is Money team.
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Spending review live updates: Rachel Reeves to reveal how Britain will splash the cash with NHS, defence and schools in line for windfalls
