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Sound Familiar?

“Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

“He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

“He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

“He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

“He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

“He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness of his invasions on the rights of the people.

“He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

“He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

“He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

“He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

“He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

“He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

“For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

“For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

“For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

“For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

“For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

“For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

“For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

“For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

“For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

“He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging Waragainst us.

“He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

“He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

“He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

“In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

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My Bad: It’s $40 Million in Pro Bono Legal Services Over Four Years, Not One Year

There is an error in the immediately preceding post. Contrary to my previous understanding, Paul Weiss did not promise $40 million in Trump-approved pro bono work over one year. Instead, it promised $10 million each over four years.

Even less chicken feed. 

The Financial Times apparently got its hands on the supposedly confidential email to Paul Weiss employees spelling out the alleged rationale for the Trump deal. Based on that, the paper reports as follows:

The head of Paul Weiss defended his decision to strike a deal to end a dispute with US President Donald Trump on Sunday, arguing that the survival of the elite law firm was at risk.

Brad Karp, the chair of Paul Weiss, wrote in a note to colleagues that Trump’s executive order targeting the firm posed an existential threat and left him no choice but to negotiate.

“Only several days ago, our firm faced an existential crisis,” Karp wrote in the email on Sunday, which was circulated on social media. “The executive order could easily have destroyed our firm. It brought the full weight of the government down on our firm, our people and our clients.”

Paul Weiss is one of the most high-profile law firms to come under attack from the White House in recent weeks as Trump punishes perceived enemies. Other law firms including Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling have also been targeted through executive orders, with the former still fighting the administration in court. 

About a dozen more are likely to be the subject of new executive orders, according to a White House official.

Without the deal, Karp said it was “very likely” the firm would not have been “able to survive” a drawn-out dispute with the White House. He also criticised rival law firms’ behaviour since the executive order, arguing that some of them had seen the fight as an opportunity to target Paul Weiss clients.

Paul Weiss initially prepared a lawsuit to fight the executive order in court, but decided to negotiate with Trump after it became clear the directive threatened to unravel the firm by scaring off existing clients and new business, Karp said.

The deal struck between the White House and Paul Weiss last week commits the law firm to providing $10mn worth of legal services on a pro bono basis annually over the next four years. That legal counsel will focus on issues important to the administration, including supporting veterans and fighting antisemitism.

In the email to colleagues, Karp denied that the administration was controlling which matters the law firm took on, insisting they were areas of “shared interest”.

In the initial executive order this month, Trump took issue with former Paul Weiss partner Mark Pomerantz, who in 2021 joined the Manhattan district attorney’s office where he investigated Trump and his businesses.

On Friday, Trump issued another statement outlining the agreement with Paul Weiss, writing that the law firm had “indicated that it will engage in a remarkable change of course”.

Karp, who was a prominent supporter of and fundraiser for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, added that his decision to negotiate with the White House was driven in part by a fiduciary duty to the firm’s employees.

“There was no right answer to the predicament in which we found ourselves,” he wrote. 

“All of us have opinions about what is going on right now in America . . . But no one in the wider world can appreciate how stressful it is to confront an executive order like this until one is directed at you.”

A Brief Comment on the Article—and on Mr. Karp’s “Existential Threat”

The nature and extent of the “existential threat” would depend on which Paul Weiss clients threatened to bale, and how much of its billings were coming from the faint-hearted clients. 

Barring further leaks—and there may well be further leaks—there’s no way to know for sure. But among the law firm’s biggest clients are ExxonMobil, Amazon, and Google. 

Just saying. 

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L’Affaire Paul Weiss: Pollyanna Speaks

My daughter Pollyanna called this morning to cheer me up. She made some good points. Here are five of them. 

First, collective action by Paul Weiss and other large corporate law firms is not necessary to save the rule of law, nor is it sufficient to save the rule of law in the United States.

It isn’t necessary because the issues are clear as day, and the deficiencies in Trump’s position are well known to the federal judiciary. (For further information see the opinions and other filings in Perkins Coie v. Dep’t of Justice as well as a variety of background materials available on the Perkins Coie website.

Nor is it sufficient. Survival of the rule of law requires, first of all, resolute action by the federal judiciary generally and by at least five Supreme Court justices in particular, and then, secondly, widespread support on the public’s part for resistance to tyranny. That alone will suffice.

Second, to the extent that specialized legal learning about the constitutional case law is needed to defend the rule of law, the big law firms largely do not have that expertise. They know a lot about securities law, environmental law, tax law, antitrust law, and intellectual property law.

Constitutional law, not so much. 

Third, while it’s regrettable that Paul Weiss temporized, that’s not at all surprising. That’s what generally happens when someone is faced with a new and unexpected situation, with strong incentives pulling in wildly different directions. 

But, fourth, the situation remains fluid. 

Paul Weiss and its peers are in the business of hiring junior lawyers with sterling credentials—Harvard Law Review and the like—paying them very large salaries, and parceling out their time, hour by hour, at $1,000 or more, for services rendered to gigantic corporations. 

Apparently, a good portion of corporate America is still sleep walking, looking to the Trump administration for those sweet, sweet tax cuts and deregulatory policies, and still imagining that his talk about tariffs and invading Canada, etc., is all bullshit. 

Paul Weiss as we know it cannot exist without a lot of corporate clients paying it $2.6 billion a year.

On the other hand, Paul Weiss as we know it cannot exist without a continuing supply of very able young lawyers. A lot of them are very upset indeed. And, I would bet good money, a fair number of the partners are not happy, either. 

Fifth and finally, if you look closely at what Paul Weiss actually “agreed” to do, it looks like Trump did not get very much apart from headlines along the lines of “Big Law Firm Capitulates.”

The firm “agreed” to supply $40 million in legal services—not money, but the “value” of the legal services—to pro bono clients as mutually agreed between Trump and the firm. $40 million is 1/65 of the firm’s annual earnings. And the firm is “paying,” not in cash, but in services. 

Back of the envelope calculation: If the contributed pro bono services are “worth” on average, say, $1300 per hour, then the $40 million figure works out to 30,769 hours per year. If Paul Weiss’s 1200 lawyers bill on average 2,000 hours/year to their paying clients—and that may be low—then, collectively, they’re billing 2.4 million hours. The promised Trump pro bono 30,769 hours represent 1/78 of the estimated total current billable hours.

Chicken feed. 

The firm also “agreed” not to turn away business based on the prospective client’s political affiliation. Fine. They probably shouldn’t do that anyway.

And the firm seems to have discussed with Trump having some sort of a look-see about its employment practices. 

I just looked. The firm’s “inclusion page” is still up.

In short, the firm’s “obligations” seem trivial, ambiguous, and, to a significant degree, illusory. I’ll bet Mr. Karp of Paul Weiss walked out of his meeting last week with Trump thinking that he had just yanked the wool over Orange Mussolini’s eyes, good and proper.

This week, though, things probably look more complicated. 

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L’Affaire Paul Weiss: The Lay of the Land, as of Sunday Evening

The Wall Street Journal sums it up:

President Trump took a broad swing at the [legal] industry Friday night after three earlier orders punishing Paul Weiss and two other firms. In a presidential memorandum, he broadly accused law firms of abusing the legal system to challenge his policies, stymie immigration enforcement and pursue partisan causes. He instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek sanctions in court against lawyers and firms who engage in “frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation.”

Trump also directed Bondi to launch a broad review of conduct by lawyers in litigation against the government over the last eight years to determine whether additional firms should face the same type of punishments he has issued already, most notably the termination of government contracts held by firm clients.

Administration officials already have built a list of more than a dozen law firms they might target with executive orders, and Trump has expressed eagerness in signing more of them, according to people familiar with the planning.

Trump’s latest pronouncement landed particularly hard in an industry that was still processing Paul Weiss’s decision to cut a deal with the White House rather than challenge the administration in court. Trump on Thursday rescinded his order against the firm after it agreed to provide $40 million in pro bono legal services to support the administration’s initiatives, such as assisting veterans and fighting antisemitism.

Several law-firm chairs and senior partners said they were working to calm clients and employees, with younger associates increasingly calling for lawyers to take a stand against Trump. Some firm leaders said their clients—and their fellow partners—were split on whether they would rather their firms take a deal if targeted or fight it out in court. A number of firms were trying to draw distinctions to clients between their work and the activities of the firms that Trump has punished already. Corporate lawyers with a connection to the Trump administration have been tapped to open communication lines with the White House, and several firms were seeking to engage lobbyists, people familiar with the discussions said.

Paul Weiss chairman Brad Karp spoke with other firms’ leaders in recent days and told them he found the deal with the White House distasteful but said he had little choice but to take it, according to people familiar with those conversations.

“Clients had told us that they were not going to be able to stay with us, even though they wanted to,” Karp told firm lawyers and employees in an internal email Sunday viewed by the Journal. “It was very likely that our firm would not be able to survive a protracted dispute with the Administration.”

One firm, Perkins Coie, which was hit with a Trump executive order on March 6, continued to lead the fight against the administration over the weekend.

“Now more than ever law firms and lawyers across the political spectrum have to stand up for our timeless values,” David Perez, a Perkins Coie partner said on LinkedIn. The Paul Weiss agreement, he said, emboldened Trump “to ratchet up his attack on one of the strongest checks on his power: lawyers and the rule of law.” 

Perkins Coie sued the administration on March 11 and won a restraining order against the administration, with a judge saying the executive order was likely unconstitutional. But while the firm is winning in court, it is struggling to manage the fallout behind the scenes.

Perkins is losing clients who fear Trump’s wrath, and a number of top companies that work with the firm have called other firms about representation, people familiar with the matter said. One of the people said some competing lawyers have made sympathetic calls to Perkins to say they aren’t trying to steal the firm’s clients and would step aside if those clients wanted to return to Perkins after the situation calmed down. 

An effort across a number of firms to file a court brief in support of Perkins continues to flounder because not enough firms are willing to sign it, for fear of antagonizing the administration, people familiar with those negotiations said.   

While many industry leaders have been reluctant to speak publicly against the administration, that began to shift after Trump’s Friday memorandum.

San Francisco-based Keker, Van Nest & Peters urged law firm leaders “to resist the administration’s erosion of the rule of law.” 

“Our liberties depend on lawyers’ willingness to represent unpopular people and causes, including in matters adverse to the federal government,” the firm said. “An attack on lawyers who perform this work is inexcusable and despicable.” 

Trump’s campaign in part has been focused on paying back opponents. Perkins, for example, worked with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and an opposition-research firm that compiled a discredited dossier against Trump. Covington & Burling, another firm hit with an executive order, provided legal counsel to former special counsel Jack Smith. And Trump cited Paul Weiss’s previous ties to Mark Pomerantz, who also worked on the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into Trump and his business.

But the president’s Friday memorandum also signaled Trump’s broader frustrations with lawyers challenging his initiatives in court—and winning. His administration is currently locked in a showdown with a Washington federal judge over Trump’s invocation of wartime powers to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members. A number of the president’s other initiatives have been put on hold by the courts, including the termination of thousands of government employees and limits on birthright citizenship and transgender rights. 

Public-interest legal organizations and smaller firms have been leading many of those cases.

Sid Davidoff, a New York lawyer who was famously on President Richard Nixon’s “enemies list,” said industry leaders were caving to pressure.

“You have some top notch firms, significant legal minds, and they’re just being whipped,” Davidoff said. “I guess they are trying to protect their bottom line, but it’s really upsetting.”

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Paul Weiss Redux—Questions to Ponder

My Answers Will Come in later Posts. Meanwhile, Please Ponder The Questions. 

Washington Post, Law firm Paul Weiss agrees to deal with Trump, prompting criticism: The firm will provide $40 million in pro bono legal services to support Trump’s agenda after the president threatened to rescind some government contracts with the firm and its clients.

N.Y. Times, How a Major Democratic Law Firm Ended Up Bowing to Trump: Paul Weiss was targeted by an executive order from President Trump. Its chairman, who had worked against Mr. Trump during his first term, then went to the Oval Office and cut a deal.

A deeply researched article on the goings on at Paul Weiss, based on lots of things, including the thoughts of the firm’s managing partner, who tries to tell his side of the story.

N.Y. Times, Paul Weiss Deal With Trump Faces Backlash From Legal Profession: Paul Weiss, a law firm targeted by President Trump, reached a deal to settle a conflict. Many in the legal field are condemning the agreement. 

Wall Street Journal, Why Law Firm Paul Weiss Pleaded Its Case With Trump, and Not With a Court: Firm’s decision to cut deal with Trump shocked legal industry bracing for more executive orders.

Open Letter on the Rule of Law from Big Law Firm Associates

Washington Post, New Trump memo seen as threat to lawyers, attempt to scare off lawsuits

Questions

Here are some questions. (As I said, I’ll give my personal answers in later posts; others may have different answers than mine.)

Is the “agreement” between Trump and Paul Weiss legally enforceable—and does it even purport to be legally enforceable?

What did Paul Weiss actually “agree” to do?

What lies did Trump tell about the “agreement”?

In addition to the points in the agreement, what points are missing? In other words, what hound dogs are not barking in the night?

When the managing partner of Paul Weiss walked out of his meeting with Mango Mussolini, did the said managing partner think, “Man o man, did I just snooker Trump”?

What did Trump actually want from the “agreement,” and did he actually get the thing that he actually wanted?

Did Mr. Karp, Paul Weiss’s managing partner, overlook the forest for the trees?

Big law firms like Paul Weiss compete in three important dimensions. (1) They compete for the business of rich clients with legal issues. (2) They compete for associates (salaried junior lawyers); central to their business model is hiring able associates, paying them a lot of money—i.e., buying their time at wholesale—and then marking up their time to sell at retail, at exorbitant hourly rates. (3) They compete to steal partners with good “books of business” from other firms, and they strive to keep the partners they have from walking out the door. How will the Trump “agreement” impact Paul Weiss’s ability to engage effectively in these three modes of competition?

Paul Weiss probably expects to hire several dozen new associates from the graduating law class of 2025. How will the Trump “agreement” affect the thinking of those potential new hires? How will it affect their incentives to join—or not to join—Paul Weiss? How many of the 2025 law grads who have Paul Weiss offers are actually going to show up at the firm this summer? How many will decide to look for work elsewhere?

Would it be in the collective self-interest of the big firms to take the “Trump factor” out of their competition for corporate business, their competition for able associates, and their competition for partners?

In the next two weeks or so, is Paul Weiss likely to turn around and modify its position?

If a lot of the big firms decide, on reflection, that they would collectively be better off to stand together against Trump, what steps might they take to implement that decision?

In the next two weeks or so, is it likely that many of the big law firms will come to the epiphany that they need—in their own stone cold self-interest—to take collective action to support the rule of law?

Is Perkins Coie likely to win or lose in its lawsuit against Trump—and would one or more amicus briefs likely affect the outcome substantially?

President Lizard Brain seems to think he can head off the lawsuits against him—there are now well over a hundred, and he’s losing most of them—by punishing the lawyers who represent plaintiffs with legal positions adverse to him. But is there in fact there a constitutional right to sue? And does a litigant have a legal right to counsel of their choice? And is it lawful for the government to punish someone for exercising a constitutional right?

Is collective action against Trump by the major law firms a matter of life and death for democracy and the rule of law, or is it more like Kabuki theater?

If rule of law is ultimately to be preserved, what three factors will achieve the preservation?

And apart from that, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

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Trump Versus Big Law, Headlines Versus Reality

Michael S. Schmidt (N.Y. Times), Law Firm Bends in Face of Trump Demands: Paul, Weiss—one of three law firms targeted by President Trump as part of his retribution campaign—said it resolved the conflict by agreeing to a range of commitments.

With the United States Congress having debased and shamed itself in the face of Trump’s bullying, it’s especially important for other institutions to stand up to the nonsense. Especially the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary. Especially the colleges and universities, and particularly the elite universities. Especially the legal profession, and particularly the American Bar Association and the elite law firms. 

In recent days, Trump has targeted three of the elite law firms: Perkins Coie, Covington & Burling, and Paul Weiss.

In the initial round of the Perkins Coie imbroglio, Judge Howell handed Trump his (Trump’s) ass on a silver platter. 

As to Covington, as far as I can tell, the matter is hanging fire.

In the case of Paul Weiss, the firm retained as its counsel a Trump-linked law firm and then, shortly thereafter, Paul Weiss’s head had a face-to-face meeting with Mango Mussolini—a meeting that is said to have resulted in a settlement agreement. The latter has been represented, at least by headline writers, as a capitulation by the targeted law firm. 

I really don’t think so.

Trump-Approved Pro Bono Work

The purported agreement is described in Mr. Schmidt’s article, cited above. One component is said to entail the firm’s contributing “$40 million in legal services to causes Mr. Trump has championed, including ‘the President’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, and other mutually agreed projects,” according to Schmidt’s reporting. 

Paul Weiss’s annual revenue is about $2.6 billion, and its profit per partner stands at just over $7.5 million. Even if the agreement implied that the firm would forego $40 million in revenues, that would only be a microscopic part of the firm’s annual earnings. 

Paul Weiss is currently charging $1,000 per hour for second-year associates, $1,560 per hour for senior associates, and up to $2,400 per hour for partner time. Depending on which lawyers at Paul Weiss are going to provide the Trump-approved pro bono legal services, it’s not going to take all that long to eat up $40 million. 

DEI

Schmidt also reports, “The firm, Mr. Trump said, also agreed to conduct an audit to ensure its hiring practices are merit based ‘and will not adopt, use, or pursue any DEI policies.’”

As of mid-day today, the Paul Weiss website continues to promote its “culture of inclusion” at considerable length and depth.

The Bottom Line

Interpret all of this as you will. My bottom line is that this was a face-saving retreat by Trump. 

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Goody, Goody!

The Guardian, Tesla stock falls after Trump official urges Americans to ‘invest in Elon Musk’: Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick’s efforts to promote the tech CEO on Fox News backfired amid national protests:

Donald Trump’s commerce secretary told Americans to buy stock in Elon Musk’s electric car company, only for shares in Tesla to keep falling.

“I think, if you want to learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla,” Howard Lutnick told Fox News on Wednesday. “It’s unbelievable that this guy’s stock is this cheap. It’ll never be this cheap again.”

He added: “I mean, who wouldn’t invest in Elon Musk? You gotta be kidding me.”

Regarding Tesla at least, the answer appears to be: lots of people. In the last month, shares have lost a third of their value. After Lutnick spoke, Tesla was down again in pre-market trading on Thursday.

Musk donated hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump’s re-election campaign and is now slashing government staffing and budgets under the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) – work proving increasingly unpopular and damaging to his businesses. Amid protests that have included vandalism of Teslas and dealerships, Musk has claimed to have done nothing wrong.

On Tuesday, he told Fox: “It turns out when you take away the money people get fraudulently, they get very upset. They basically want to kill me because I’m stopping their fraud, and they want to hurt Tesla because we are stopping this terrible waste and corruption in the government. I guess they are bad people. Bad people do bad things.”

Republicans have attacked Democrats for speaking out against Tesla. Observers have pointed out how the same Republicans have attacked companies for promoting values they do not share, celebrating financial reverses.

Tesla’s problems continue to grow. Last week, JP Morgan said: “We struggle to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry, in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly.”

This week, Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush and a major Tesla backer, said brand damage caused by Musk’s work for Trump “has spread globally over the last few weeks into what we would characterize as a brand tornado crisis moment”.

Lutnick spoke to Jesse Watters, a Fox primetime host and Trump cheerleader.

“It’s just so outrageous,” the former Cantor Fitzgerald CEO said. “You have probably the best entrepreneur, the best technologist, the best leader of any set of companies in America working for America, and you have this sort of weird side of the Democratic party attacking him.”

Lutnick repeated the claim that Musk “rescued” astronauts from the International Space Station via his SpaceX company on Wednesday – yet in fact, Nasa chose to wait for SpaceX to be ready for the mission.

Lutnick urged viewers to “buy Tesla” and expressed disbelief about the shares’ performance.

He continued: “When people understand the things he’s building, the robots he’s building, the technology he’s building, people are going to be dreaming of today and Jesse Watters, thinking, ‘Gosh, I should have bought Elon Musk’s stock’ … Whether today’s the bottom or not, I tell you what, Elon Musk is probably the best person to bet on I’ve ever met. And I think we all know that.”

Lutnick and Watters then engaged in cheerful promotion of $30,000 robots for domestic chores that the commerce secretary said Musk would soon bring to market.

Concern is growing about conflicts of interest involving Musk and whether he is profiting from his government work. This week, as Musk’s Starlink internet service was installed at the White House, senior Democrats called for investigations.

Lutnick told Fox: “Elon Musk is the best entrepreneur and technologist in America, and I bet on him. I wish I was allowed [to buy Tesla stock]. I’m not allowed to buy any stock.”

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Trump’s Authoritarian Playbook: Sadism Toward Your Own Base

Amanda Taub (N.Y. Times), Trump’s Judicial Defiance Is New to the Autocrat Playbook, Experts Say: The president’s escalating conflict with federal courts goes beyond what has happened in countries like Hungary and Turkey, where leaders spent years remaking the judiciary.

Stephen I. Vladeck (N.Y. Times), The Courts Alone Can’t Save Us

Plus: Did someone say “tariffs”?

My strong sense is that Trump’s mental illness has advanced to the stage where his situational awareness is severely, severely diminished. As so many have noted, he does indeed have an authoritarian playbook. But it’s not the playbook of a rational wannabe authoritarian. 

Perhaps through confirmation bias, this afternoon I call your attention to Amanda Taub’s essay, which draws a sharp contrast between Trump’s approach and that of the dictators presiding over Hungary and Turkey. 

Trump—and his MiniMes like Rep. Hageman of Wyoming—seem to think that their own base are a bunch of masochists.

Trump’s Right About One Thing: Only Trump Can Fix It

An authoritarian playbook based on madness and sadism toward your own supporters is a dog that won’t hunt.

Trump is right. The one person who can defeat Donald Trump—the one person who is going to defeat Donald Trump—is none other than Mango Mussolini himself. 

All Hail Mango Mussolini, savior of the Republic.

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Princeton’s President Dares to Speak Up for Columbia

Christopher L. Eisgruber (The Atlantic), The Cost of the Government’s Attack on Columbia: American universities have given the country prosperity and security. The Trump administration’s attack on academic freedom endangers all of that.

 Please excuse a brief point of personal privilege: my undergraduate degree is from Princeton, and, between us, my wife and I have a bunch of degrees from Columbia. (To be more precise, I have one degree from Columbia, and she has so many that I can’t remember them all.)

Yesterday, Ed Luce of the Financial Times warned that The US establishment is scared of its own shadow: Fear and muddied thinking are stopping Trump’s opponents from acting in defense of a democracy in peril. 

Well, that’s as may be. But, I am very happy to say, Princeton’s president did not get the memo. I salute him and I honor him. 

President Eisengruber of Princeton writes,

The United States is home to the best collection of research universities in the world. Those universities have contributed tremendously to America’s prosperity, health, and security. They are magnets for outstanding talent from throughout the country and around the world.

The Trump administration’s recent attack on Columbia University puts all of that at risk, presenting the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s. Every American should be concerned.

The rise of the American research university in the 20th century depended on many factors, including two crucial turning points. The first, at the start of the century, was the development of strong principles of academic freedom that allowed people and ideas to be judged by scholarly standards, not according to the whims or interests of powerful trustees, donors, or political officials. Stanford’s dismissal in 1900 of Edward Ross—an economics professor who had incited controversy with his remarks about, among other topics, Asian immigrants and the labor practices of a railroad run by the university’s founders—catalyzeda movement to protect the rights of faculty members to pursue, publish, and teach controversial ideas. Significant governance reforms took place in the same period, shifting control of professorial appointments from boards of trustees to presidents and faculties.

The second turning point came during World War II, when Vannevar Bush, the director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, created the modern partnership between the federal government and the country’s research universities. Bush recognized that by sponsoring research at universities, the United States could lead the world in discoveries and innovations. Over time, American universities became responsible for a large portion of the government’s scientific programs, accepting tens of billions of dollars a year to perform research that would make the country stronger and improve the lives of its citizens.

These two developments had an important connection. The government’s successful collaboration with American universities depended on its respect for academic freedom, which, for decades, presidents and legislators from both political parties largely observed. That freedom attracted the world’s finest scholars and facilitated the unfettered pursuit of knowledge.

Robust federal funding helped make American universities the world’s best, but it also created a huge risk. Universities had acquired a public patron more powerful than any private donor; their budgets became heavily dependent on that single source. If the United States government ever repudiated the principle of academic freedom, it could bully universities by threatening to withdraw funding unless they changed their curricula, research programs, and personnel decisions.

That’s what the Trump administration did this month when it canceled $400 million in funding to Columbia without the legally required due process. The government toldColumbia that the money would be restored only if the university met various conditions, which included placing its Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department “under academic receivership” and making unspecified but “comprehensive” reforms to its student admissions and international-recruiting practices.

Recent events have raised legitimate concerns about anti-Semitism at Columbia. The government can respond to those concerns without infringing on academic freedom. The principles of that freedom do not give faculty or students the right to disrupt university operations or violate campus rules. Nor does this freedom allow faculty to violate the scholarly standards of their discipline or compel students into political activity. To the extent that the government has grounds to investigate, it should use the processes required by law to do so, and it should allow Columbia to defend itself. Instead, the government is using grants that apply to Columbia science departments as a cudgel to force changes to a completely unrelated department that the government apparently regards as objectionable.

Nobody should suppose that this will stop at Columbia or with the specific academic programs targeted by the government’s letter. Precisely because great research universities are centers of independent, creative thought, they generate arguments and ideas that challenge political power across fields as varied as international relations, biology, economics, and history. If government officials think that stifling such criticism is politically acceptable and legally permissible, some people in authority will inevitably yield to the temptation to do so.

Nor should those who might revile the views expressed by some Columbia faculty members, or who dislike the university’s admission policies, take any comfort from this assault on academic freedom. Universities are now under attack from the right; in the future, left-leaning politicians may demand that universities do their bidding. Under such circumstances, the safest appointments may be the blandest ones—and brilliant scholars, those whom the world most needs, are rarely bland.

The attack on Columbia is a radical threat to scholarly excellence and to America’s leadership in research. Universities and their leaders should speak up and litigate forcefully to protect their rights.

The universities cannot, however, prevail alone. Strong, independent academic institutions produce new technologies and insights that catalyze economic growth, save lives, improve well-being, and overcome injustices. Every citizen and officeholder who cares about the strength of our country must also care about free speech, self-governing thought, and the untrammeled quest for knowledge. They, too, should demand a stop to the government’s unwarranted intrusion on academic freedom at Columbia.