The Big Chill

Trump’s attacks on the four pillars of civil society will succeed unless the pillars demonstrate courage and take collective action against the attacks.

Friends,

I was talking recently to a friend who’s a professor at Columbia University about what’s been happening there. He had a lot to say. When he needed to run off to an appointment, I asked him if he’d text or email me the rest of his thoughts. His response floored me. “No,” he said. “I better not. They may be reviewing it.”

“Who’s ‘they’?” I asked, suddenly worried.

“They! The university! The government! Gotta go!” He was off.

My friend has never before shown signs of paranoia.

I relate this to you because the Trump regime is starting to have a chilling effect on what and how Americans communicate with each other. It is beginning to deter open dissent — which is exactly what Trump intends.

The chill affects the five major pillars of civil society — universities, science, the media, the law and the arts.

Start with America’s major universities. Columbia’s capitulation to Trump’s demands that the university identify demonstrators and put its department of Middle Eastern studies under “receivership” — or else lose $400 million in government funding — is chilling dissent there.

The Trump regime also “detained” a Columbia University graduate student and green card holder without criminal charges merely for participating in protests at the school. The regime’s agents have also entered dorms with search warrants and announced the “removal” of two other students who participated in such protests.

Scores of other major universities are on Trump’s target list.

Trump’s attack on science has involved direct threats to three of the biggest funders of American science — the Centers for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health, and National Science Foundation.

Tens of thousands of researchers are now worried about how to continue their research. Many have decided to hunker down and not criticize the Trump administration for fear of losing their funding.

Meanwhile, Philippe Baptiste, the French minister for higher education, has charged that a French scientist traveling to a conference near Houston earlier this month was denied entry into the United States because his phone contained message exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he gave a negative “personal opinion” about Trump’s scientific and research policies. (The U.S. Department of Homeland Security denies this was the reason the scientist wasn’t admitted into the country.)

At the same time, major media fear more lawsuits from Trump and his political allies in the wake of ABC’s surrender in December, agreeing to pay Trump $15 million to settle a defamation case he filed against the network.

Journalists who cover the White House are reeling from Trump’s decision to bar those he deems unfriendly from major events where space is limited.

The chill on the media is palpable. Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post, has openly restricted the kinds of op-eds appearing in its editorial pages.

The latest example of Trump’s use of executive orders to target powerful law firms that have challenged him came Tuesday against Jenner & Block, which employed attorney Andrew Weissmann after he worked as a prosecutor in Robert S. Mueller III’s special counsel investigation of Trump in his first term.

The firm “has participated in the weaponization of the legal system against American principles and values. And we believe that the measures in this executive order will help correct that,” White House staff secretary Will Scharf said as he handed Trump the order to sign, calling out Weissmann by name.

The first White House action against lawyers came late last month, when Trump stripped the security clearances of lawyers at Covington & Burling, who represented former special counsel Jack Smith after he investigated the president’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The following week, Trump took even harsher action against Perkins Coie, a law firm that had ties to a dossier of opposition research against Trump that circulated during the 2016 campaign. The executive order barred the firm’s lawyers from federal buildings and directed the federal government to halt any financial relationship with the firm and its clients.

Even after a federal judge enjoined Trump, he issued a nearly identical executive order targeting Paul Weiss, a law firm that employed lawyer Mark Pomerantz for two decades before he joined the Manhattan district attorney’s office to help prosecute Trump for hush money payments to a porn star.

Paul Weiss surrendered to Trump, agreeing to devote $40 million worth of pro bono work “to support the administration’s initiatives,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

This past Thursday, Trump withdrew the executive order against Paul Weiss because, he said, the firm had “acknowledged the wrongdoing” of Pomerantz and pledged $40 million in free legal work to support the Trump administration.

Then on Friday, Trump broadened his campaign of retaliation against the legal community with a memorandum directing the heads of the Justice and Homeland Security Departments to “seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation against the United States” (for “the United States,” read “Trump”).

Trump is even seeking to intimidate the arts by taking over the Kennedy Center, firing board members, ousting its president, and making himself chairman.

Comedian Nikki Glaser, one of the few celebrities to walk the red carpet at this year’s Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prizes, told reporters she now thinks twice before doing political jokes directed at Trump. “Like, you just are scared that you’re gonna get doxxed and death threats or who knows where this leads, like, detained. Honestly that’s not even like a joke. It’s like a real fear.”

Every tyrant in history has sought to stifle criticism of himself and his regime.

But America was founded on criticism. American democracy was built on dissent. We conducted a revolution against tyranny.

This moment calls for courage and collective action — not capitulation — by universities, scientists, journalists, the legal community, and the arts.

Courage in that the heads of these organizations must not back down. To the contrary, they should stand up to his intimidation and sound the alarm about what Trump is trying to do.

Collective action in that these organizations must join forces to condemn Trump’s attempts to stifle dissent and criticism.

Every institution, group, firm, or individual that surrenders to Trump’s wanton tyranny invites more of it.