I must admit that despite my pessimism about the potential extent of Trump’s authoritarian impulses, I was still surprised by his issuing of executive orders that targeted specific law firms by name, including the international firm Paul Weiss Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, whose former partner Mark Pomerantz had been the point person in building a criminal case against Trump in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.
I was similarly taken aback by the administration’s detention of recent Columbia grad student and pro-Palestinian organizer Mahmoud Khalil on grounds that centered exclusively on his political efforts and speech — using tools that were granted by an expansive national security state — and then holding hundreds of millions in federal funds hostage in exchange for concessions from the storied university.
Still, this was along the lines of what I have eventually expected from a Trump emboldened by a second term with a much more matured MAGA movement and fewer institutional constraints. What I was not expecting was how quickly and obsequiously these institutions would cave to Trump. Columbia quickly accepted terms including putting its Middle East studies program into receivership and forming a campus police force. Paul Weiss flew its chairman, longtime Democratic fundraiser Brad Karp, to D.C. to personally grovel before Trump and accept terms including throwing Pomerantz under the bus, getting rid of DEI initiatives, and committing to $40 million in pro bono work to further administration priorities.
Unsurprisingly, folding like a cheap suit has not been a winning strategy, something one would think a university with a history department could have foreseen. Asked on CNN if Columbia would have its funding cuts restored, Education Secretary (and former WWE executive) Linda McMahon said simply that it was “on the right track.” Presumably, the demands aren’t over, especially now that the university has signaled it will accede to them without much struggle.
Perhaps the most concerning part of this debacle is precisely that these are such big and ostensibly powerful institutions. Columbia’s founding predates the United States’; its name alone has weight, not just among academics and not just in the United States but among the loci of power around the world. Paul Weiss is a white-shoe firm founded in 1875 with over 1,000 attorneys globally, and with ties to generations of high-profile political figures.
If these institutions are laying down arms — and let’s be clear that that’s what they’re doing, this isn’t a fight that’s been fought and lost — to try to protect themselves, what hope is there for anyone else, for the many much smaller universities, law firms, nonprofits, civic entities, even state and local governments that don’t have as much heft?
There’s a quote that’s been going around social media lately, from the 1976 year movie “All the President’s Men,” which depicts Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation into the Watergate incident that would go on to topple Richard Nixon. Deep Throat, the confidential White House source that would many years later be revealed to be FBI agent Mark Felt, meets the two young reporters inside a dimly-lit parking structure and says “forget the myths the media’s created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.”
It’s mostly been used in reference to the stunning scandal now known as Signalgate, where National Security Adviser Mike Waltz seems to have inadvertently added Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a group chat of high level officials hashing out military strikes in Yemen (I have much more to say on this particular fiasco but will leave it for another forum). The notion applies more broadly though: take away the Trumpian bravado and blitzkrieg nature of the power grab and these are simply not particularly bright people essentially freelancing a takeover of the federal government.
Behind the façade they’re incompetent and craven, a lot of them hate each other, and they’re often each pursuing their own agendas on the fly. One of the takeaways from the Signal debacle — with Goldberg releasing the full screenshots after participants spent the intervening day lying about the chat not having war planning or potentially classified information — was that Trump himself seemed to only tangentially be a part of the decision-making. Officials including Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller debated whether to conduct the strikes against the Houthis in Yemen now or later, each making an argument for what the president did or did not mean or want. Trump, for his part, was probably watching TV or golfing.
If Trump’s administration is going to go to war with this country’s constitutional order, this is a war that civil society and democratic institutions inside and outside government could well win, if they avoid letting themselves be convinced that Trump’s already won.
While Columbia and Paul Weiss (not to mention Congress) have rolled over, other institutions have demonstrated what it means to assert rights in a polity. Among the other firms Trump targeted was the Democratic-aligned firm Perkins Coie. Instead of begging for forgiveness, Perkins Coie sued, calling the order “an affront to the Constitution,” a line of thinking with which the judge seemed to agree. Officials at the Institute of Peace — a nonprofit established by Congress to promote peace and diplomacy around the world, created as an independent, non-governmental body — went a step further in physically blocking an attempted takeover by Musk’s DOGE personnel. This attempt, ultimately, was unsuccessful; DOGE threatened the institute’s former security provider and then returned with access keys and armed U.S. Marshals, who along with D.C. Police helped them enter the institute’s private building and toss out its officers.
That sequence of events is now being probed by a federal judge, who though she declined to issue a temporary restraining order against DOGE’s takeover, was disturbed by and criticized the government’s tactics. The resistance that the IoP and its staff demonstrated is important; it’s a reminder that institutions don’t have to give in just because Trump tries to steamroll them. Here in New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul and other state officials have flatly refused to terminate the successful congestion pricing program despite the administration’s attempt to pull federal authorization. Not all-powerful, after all.
As someone whose job is to some extent to be a professional cynic, I can tell you that some dosage can be healthy but it is also often corrosive. Trump and his cavalcade of conmen and grifters want you to think that it’s done, the fight’s over. For some people, sadly, it probably is; I’m doubtful that, whatever happens in U.S. courts, the Venezuelans shipped to the Salvadoran CECOT mega-prison without process or evidence under an absurd invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act will be able to return to the United States. But that’s part of the strategy, to make it seem like it’s all a done deal and to oppose it is to fight against the coming tide of history. That’s not true, and a refusal to accept it is a self-reinforcing cycle.
