Capitulate or resist? Trump threats spur different responses, and alarm for democracy
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- Under threat from the Trump administration, some are cutting deals. Others are staying quiet. And many, including in California, are resisting and calling for others to do the same.
Alarmed by President Trump’s unprecedented effort to punish law firms he doesn’t like, UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky emailed nearly 200 fellow law school deans across the country last month, asking them to join him in condemning the attacks.
“The government should not use its enormous power to exact retribution,” Chemerinsky wrote. “As legal educators we have a special responsibility to speak out against such reprisals against lawyers.”
In response, nearly 80 fellow deans signed onto what Chemerinsky viewed as a “straightforward and non-controversial” statement of protest, including those from UCLA Law and other UC law schools. However, more than 100 others — including from prestigious law schools such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford — declined.
“A lot of people didn’t respond, but certainly some responded and said that they didn’t feel comfortable,” Chemerinsky said.
The response showed that many in academia and the legal field “are being chilled from speaking out” for fear of becoming the president’s next target, Chemerinsky said.
“If the Trump administration does something that is unconstitutional, who is going to be there to challenge them?” he asked. “It often won’t be anyone without law firms.”
In recent weeks, such concerns about Trump’s intimidation tactics have exploded alongside his growing list of perceived enemies and political targets, said Chemerinsky and other critics. The more he goes after those targets, the more Americans who oppose his policies or tactics find themselves falling into separate camps — fiercely divided on how best to respond.
Major law firms and universities have negotiated with Trump under duress and acquiesced to his demands, despite those demands representing clear — and arguably illegal — retribution, according to legal experts, leading civil rights organizations, free speech advocates, Democrats in Congress and some judges. The dealmakers have defended their agreements as mutually beneficial, if not necessary to avert financial ruin from Trump’s focus on them.
There are those who appear to be falling in line, or keeping quiet, and hoping they won’t be next to draw the president’s ire. Chemerinsky and other leaders in academia and the legal field said they have heard such fear firsthand from colleagues.
And then there are the resisters — some who have been targeted and others who just want to stand up for others or their own democratic principles before it is too late.
Some of those targeted are suing the administration over its attacks. Others are simply lambasting the administration for assaulting democracy and the rule of law. Still others are taking to the streets in protest, eager to show that communities all across the country are displeased with the Trump administration — and with those institutions they see as capitulating.
“I feel like one of the things that’s really going to have an impact is protests — and big protests,” said Aimee Arost, a 55-year-old real estate agent and self-described “unhappy Democrat” who recently joined hundreds of others outside a Tesla showroom in San Francisco to protest Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, who is a Trump advisor and Tesla’s chief executive.
In recent days, Arost said she has taken to posting on Facebook whenever she sees an individual or company respond to a threat from Trump, labeling each a “fighter” or a “folder.” She said she hoped protests would encourage the folders “to be braver.”
‘A climate of fear’
When late-night host Jimmy Kimmel recently asked Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) whether anything surprises him anymore, Schiff said he was “surprised just how quickly” the Trump administration had “created a climate of fear.”
“I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but by going after universities, they’re intimidating other universities. By going after certain press organizations, they’re causing others to self-censor. By going after certain law firms, they’re causing other lawyers to not want to take cases if they think it will be retaliated against by the administration. Companies [are] towing a Trumpian line because they’re worried about losing government contracts,” said Schiff, who managed Trump’s first impeachment trial and helped investigate Trump’s incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Republicans in Congress have shown huge deference to Trump in recent months, and been blasted by their Democratic colleagues for ceding their power over federal purse strings. Rep. Eric Swalwell, an East Bay Democrat and prominent Trump critic, recently told The Times that Republican colleagues have told him they fear physical violence against their families if they speak out against the president.
But Chemerinsky said fear of the president is clearly spreading, beyond his own party and those seeking reelection. And with that fear have come stunning deals with the administration, Chemerinsky said.
Last month, the Trump administration said it was cutting $400 million in federal funds to Columbia for its “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students,” including by pro-Palestinian protesters on the school’s New York campus.
Many outside experts and liberal activists balked at the claims, suggesting they were wildly off base and accusing the Trump administration of violating the rights of pro-Palestinian activists instead — including prominent student activist Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder recently detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Columbia, however, responded with a letter saying that it would comply with many of the administration’s demands, including overhauling its protest and security practices and its Middle Eastern studies department. The university refuted claims it was capitulating, and defended the changes as part of a comprehensive strategy already underway to provide a safe campus environment for everyone “while preserving our commitment to academic freedom and institutional integrity.”
The university did not respond to a request for comment.
Concern also arose after the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison responded to a Trump executive order barring it from government work and threatening the federal contracts of its clients by agreeing to contribute $40 million in legal services to causes Trump has championed and to represent a more politically diverse range of clients.
Managing partner Brad Karp, a Democratic donor who backed Trump’s opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris, reportedly defended the deal in an email to the firm’s lawyers as necessary for the firm’s financial survival, based on a determination that fighting Trump’s order in court “would not solve the fundamental problem, which was that clients perceived our firm as being persona non grata with the administration.”
At least three other major firms — Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Willkie Farr & Gallagher; and Milbank — have each agreed since to provide $100 million in free services for groups and issues that Trump and the firms said they both support, such as veterans and combating antisemitism; to abandon “illegal DEI” initiatives internally; and to represent politically diverse clients.
Firm leaders also have defended the deals as pragmatic and in the best interests of themselves and their clients. The firms did not respond to requests for comment.
The firm that employs former Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband is the latest legal powerhouse to agree to terms with President Trump — moves that worry some attorneys and constitutional scholars.
Trump — a convicted felon who has likened himself to a king and suggested he will stay in office beyond the constitutional two-term limit — has defended his attacks on law firms as restoring fairness in the legal field and fighting back against liberal activist firms intent on undermining the conservative will of voters. He has defended his threats against Columbia and other universities as checking liberal bias in academia and defending the rights of Jewish students.
Others have denounced his claims and the deals he’s struck as deeply dangerous.
Democrats in Congress have demanded answers from the White House and the private firms it has struck deals with about the nature of their arrangements, and invited former federal prosecutors in to discuss moves by Trump to protect his allies from prosecution.
In a letter to Karp, more than 140 Paul Weiss alumni accused the firm of being “at the very forefront of capitulation to the Trump administration’s bullying tactics.” In a letter to Skadden executive partner Jeremy London, more than 80 Skadden alumni said the firm’s deal with Trump “emboldened him to further undermine our democracy.”
‘We can’t worry about the consequences’
After Trump targeted the law firm Jenner & Block with an executive order to shut them out of government business and deny their attorneys security clearances, the firm promptly filed a lawsuit — with the help of California-based firm Cooley, calling the order unconstitutional.
“To do otherwise would mean compromising our ability to zealously advocate for all of our clients and capitulating to unconstitutional government coercion, which is simply not in our DNA,” the firm said in a statement.
The Associated Press recently sued the administration, too, over its decision to bar it from White House press events for its refusal to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, as Trump would have it.
“It’s really about whether the government can control what you say,” AP executive editor Julie Pace wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
After Trump issued an executive order purporting to require all prospective voters to show proof of citizenship — a threat to the voting rights of many American citizens who lack documents — the UCLA Voting Rights Project announced it was “doubling down” on its commitment to defending voting rights by bringing two prominent California Democrats on board: former Health and Human Services Secretary and California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, who just announced a run for governor, and former Speaker of the California Assembly Anthony Rendon, both of whom have been part of California efforts to fight Trump in the past.
Chad Dunn, the project’s legal director, said it is “at times breathtaking the extent to which the White House runs roughshod over enactments of Congress and plain language in the Constitution,” and that “this is a unique moment” where everyone with power to resist such actions has to do so, despite the risks.
“In the cause of doing what is just and right, we can’t worry about the consequences,” he said.
‘The resistance is on’
At the grassroots level, resistance has been lively, particularly from less powerful groups that have long faced discrimination or fought government overreach and conservative dictates.
California is home to many.
A behind-the-scenes look at the months-long effort to resist President Trump’s agenda inside California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office.
Jose Gonzalez, interim program director at the progressive radio station KPFA out of Berkeley, has been writing resistance messages that air on the station frequently.
“The political machine wants you tired, it wants you hopeless, it wants you silent. But we’ve seen this game before, we know how it plays out, and we know how to win,” one recent message said.
“So what do we do? We fight harder. We dig deeper. We speak louder. KPFA isn’t backing down, and neither should you,” it continued. “Tune in, get informed, and get ready. The resistance is on.”
Gonzalez said such messaging felt vital at a time when many listeners are worried and need to be reminded they aren’t alone, and like a natural fit for the progressive station. “It’s kind of our place to hold this position and this platform.”
Suzanne Ford, president of San Francisco Pride, said her organization has lost several major sponsors this year amid growing antagonism toward the LGBTQ+ community from the Trump administration, but is not backing down from its mission, selecting the theme “Queer Joy Is Resistance” for this summer’s events.
Ford, who is transgender, said watching powerful institutions, law firms and corporations capitulate to the Trump administration and abandon the LGBTQ+ community right when they need allies the most has been a “gut punch” — but also fresh motivation for the queer community and its true allies to show up for each other all the more.
“Showing up at Pride this year,” she said, “is an act of resistance.”
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