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Too many of the president’s alleged adversaries are keeping their head down and trying to stay out of the line of fire. That has to change, and change soon, or they—and we—will all hang separately.
The appalling spectacle of some of the nation’s most prestigious law firms, media companies, and universities surrendering to bully pulpiteer Donald Trump’s extortion brings to mind that quip Benjamin Franklin made at the signing of the Declaration of Independence: “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
Trump’s revenge campaign is just one aspect of his all-out war on democracy—and it’s easy to get distracted by his latest daily outrage—so there’s no blame for not following it closely. The gist of it is, since taking office, Trump has relentlessly attacked his perceived enemies and has brought a significant number of them to heel.
Trump’s crusade should not come as a total surprise. After all, he told his supporters at a March 2023 rally: “For those who have been wronged and betrayed… I am your retribution.” What is shocking is the capitulation rate. One by one, Trump has been picking off his alleged adversaries. To be sure, some are fighting back, but too many are keeping their head down and trying to stay out of the line of fire. That has to change, and change soon, or they—and we—will all hang separately.
people hold signs as they protest outside of the offices of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, & Garrison LLP on March 25, 2025 in New York City. (Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Nine prominent law firms, including Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps, and Latham & Watkins, have struck deals to avoid punitive executive orders Trump issued because they represented clients or took legal positions at odds with his administration. The orders would have revoked the firms’ security clearances, blocked their access to government buildings, and canceled their federal contracts. To get Trump to back down, they agreed to provide a total of $940 million in pro bono legal services to support Trump’s pet causes and eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) considerations in hiring and promotion.
At least four other major law firms, including Perkins Cole and WilmerHale, are resisting. They filed lawsuits arguing that Trump’s executive orders are unconstitutional retaliations that threaten the rule of law and violate First Amendment protections. Judges have issued temporary injunctions to block the executive orders.
Trump has not issued any executive orders against law firms since April, but the threat has had a chilling effect. “Some of the country’s largest law firms have declined to represent clients challenging the Trump administration…,” a recent ProPublica investigation found, “while others have sought to avoid any clients that Trump might perceive as his enemies.”
Dozens of anti-Trump demonstrators gathered outside the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City to protest the cancelation of CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert on July 21, 2025. (Photo by Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Both ABC News and Paramount, owner of CBS News, crumpled in the face of a meritless Trump lawsuit.
Trump’s case against Disney’s ABC News, which settled last December for $15 million for Trump’s presidential library, largely turned on semantics. Anchor George Stephanopoulos incorrectly stated on air that Trump was found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. In fact, he was found guilty of sexually assaulting (and defaming) Carroll. That said, the judge handling the case said the claim that Trump raped Carroll was “substantially true,” but the term “rape” is narrowly defined by New York state law. At any rate, to win the case, Trump would have had to clearly prove that Stephanopoulos’ comment was false and that he said it with “actual malice”—that he knew it was false or acted with reckless disregard of the truth. Trump would have lost.
Will news organizations now think twice before criticizing Trump? Most likely, yes.
Paramount’s July 2 settlement of $16 million for Trump’s library was tantamount to bribery. Trump sued Paramount for $10 billion last October, alleging that “60 Minutes” deceptively edited an interview with presidential candidate Kamala Harris to make her look good. No matter that editing interviews for time and clarity is what broadcast news organizations do.
Trump did not have a case, but Paramount had a $8.4 billion merger with Skydance, a Hollywood studio, pending before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)—now chaired by Project 2025 coauthor Brendan Carr—and it didn’t want to antagonize Trump. On July 14, CBS “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert called Paramount’s settlement a “big fat bribe.” The network cancelled his show three days later. On July 24, the FCC approved the merger.
Critics characterized the two settlements as acts of cowardice that threaten press freedom by emboldening frivolous lawsuits. Will news organizations now think twice before criticizing Trump? Most likely, yes.
A man walks out of Associated Press (AP) headquarters January 9, 2003 in New York City. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
At least a handful of news organizations, including the Associated Press and NPR, have pushed back against Trump’s bullying, but the results were hardly a victory for the First Amendment.
The Associated Press (AP) sued the White House in February for blocking its reporters from Oval Office briefings and Air Force One press pools because the news service didn’t adopt Trump’s new name for the Gulf of Mexico. AP argued banning its reporters violates its First Amendment rights. The case is still tied up in court.
In late April, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) sued Trump for firing three of its five board members. In late May, NPR and PBS sued the Trump administration over the executive order to revoke federal funding for public broadcasting. Late last month, Trump signed a bill canceling $1.1 billion in public broadcast funding—which Congress had originally approved—in a “rescission” package, and on August 1, CPB announced it was shutting down.
More recently, Trump filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit after the Wall Street Journal published a story on a sexually suggestive letter Trump sent to Jeffery Epstein for his 50th birthday. Denying that he had written the letter, Trump sued Rupert Murdoch; News Corp and its CEO, Robert Thomson; Dow Jones & Company; and the reporters who wrote the piece, calling the article “false, malicious, defamatory, FAKE NEWS” on Truth Social. The Journal stands by the story and is prepared to defend it in court.
“There’s nothing inherently wrong with a president bringing a libel suit,” the renowned constitutional lawyer Floyd Abrams told the AP. “But this claim [against the Wall Street Journal] certainly seems like nothing more or less than an effort to suppress speech that our president finds discomforting. That’s not why we have libel law. It’s why we have a First Amendment.”
A protester holds a sign reading "Educate, Don't Capitulate!!" featuring Harvard University shields during a rally at Cambridge Common. (Photo by Erin Clark/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Under the pretext of rooting out antisemitism and DEI programs on campus, Trump has been bludgeoning the most prominent American universities, threatening to cancel their federal research funding unless they change their policies.
On July 23, my alma mater Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania were the first to capitulate. Columbia did not admit to any wrongdoing, but agreed to pay a $200 million fine; stop considering race in admissions and hiring; share with the federal government applicants’ standardized test scores, grade point averages, and race; and pay an additional $21 million to settle US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigations. In return, the school regains access to nearly $1.3 billion in annual federal funding that was placed on hold. Penn settled the same day but did not agree to pay anything. Among other things, it promised to align its athletic department’s policies with the Trump administration’s position banning transgender athletes.
Less than a week later, my other alma mater, Brown University, settled with the administration, agreeing to dismantle DEI programs and spend $50 million over 10 years on Rhode Island workforce development organizations. In return, the administration will reinstate $510 million in federal contracts and grants it threatened to block. Like Columbia, Brown also agreed to share details about its applicants with the federal government. Trump celebrated the agreement with a post on Truth Social proclaiming: “Woke is officially DEAD at Brown.”
In a March interview with the AP, former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb said giving in to a bully makes things worse by creating a snowball effect. “
Harvard University, which initially stood up for academic freedom and sued the administration, is reportedly moving toward a settlement requiring the university to pay $500 million to vocational or work force training programs instead of directly to the federal government or Trump’s presidential library. If finalized, the Trump administration would then restore billions of withheld federal dollars to the school for research and other programs.
The administration’s professed rationale for punishing universities because of antisemitism on campus doesn’t pass the smell test. It’s a ruse. It’s all about trying to stamp out perceived leftist ideology and snuff out speech it opposes, according to Trump’s education secretary, Linda McMahon.
In a July 24 interview with Fox Business, McMahon applauded the Columbia settlement as “a monumental victory for conservatives who wanted to do things on these elite campuses for a long time because we had such far left-leaning professors…” “We’re really hopeful,” she added, “this particular settlement agreement is going be a template for other universities to follow.”
Likewise, Vice President JD Vance has made it clear that, in his opinion, “professors are the enemy.” In November 2021, he delivered the keynote address at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando. He spent 30 minutes railing about corrupt American universities and then closed by quoting Richard Nixon, who he called a “great prophet and statesman.”
“I think in this movement of national conservatism what we need more than inspiration is we need wisdom,” Vance said, “and there is a wisdom in what Richard Nixon said approximately 40 or 50 years ago. He said, and I quote: ‘The professors are the enemy.’” (During that same taped conversation, ironically with former professor Henry Kissinger, Nixon also said “the press is the enemy.”)
WASHINGTON - APRIL 20: New York Times columnist David Brooks (L) speaks as moderator Tim Russert (R) looks on during a taping of "Meet the Press" at the NBC studios April 20, 2008 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images for Meet the Press)
In a March interview with the AP, former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb said giving in to a bully makes things worse by creating a snowball effect. “The more of them that cave, the more extortion that that invites,” he said. “You’ll see other universities and other law firms and other ‘enemies’ of Trump assaulted and attacked into submission because of that.”
So, what is to be done?
New York Times columnist David Brooks addressed this question on the “PBS News Hour” during his weekly discussion with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart on July 25.
“Well, there are two possible responses,” he said. “One, the one that’s being chosen by most organizational leaders right now, is lay low. It’s so, well, maybe they won’t pick on me, or maybe we will make a concession and they won’t pick on me...”
“The other option, which I thought we were going to have, is a broad coalition, not only of all universities, but all law firms, businesses, nonprofits, foundations, anybody in any sector that could be part of the extortion attempt,” he continued. “And they would say, we will band together. There’s strength of numbers. If they come for one of us, they come for all of us, sort of a domestic NATO Article 5.”
I would take Franklin’s proposition a bit further: It is the first responsibility of every citizen to defy authority when that authority is illegitimate.
I made the exact same argument in my graduation speech at Brown in 1976. I wasn’t talking about how to buck an authoritarian government, I was talking about how to challenge a top-down, undemocratic workplace, but it’s analogous.
The nation’s bicentennial year wasn’t a great time for a recent grad to be looking for a job. Industrial output had rebounded from a slump and corporate profits were up, but the recovery was jobless, and states and municipalities—and colleges—were facing major deficits. Given the scarcity of jobs in academia and the difficulty of earning a living as a solo practitioner, I warned my classmates: “More often than not we will find ourselves in basically undemocratic, hierarchical institutions that are resistant to change. These institutions are characterized by authoritarian control from above, and those who are not in the upper reaches of the hierarchy are excluded from the decision-making process.”
How did Brown prepare us for that future? By providing a taste of it. I cited examples of how, during my time there, Brown acted like any other corporation to protect its interests at the expense of its students, faculty, and workers. And then, like David Brooks, I spelled out the two ways to respond to authoritarians.
The first, I explained that June morning, is the “individual survival” response. One person alone has little chance against an institution, so it makes sense to keep your head down and accept the status quo. (By the same token, one university, one law firm, or one news organization alone has little chance against an authoritarian government.)
The second, more effective way is with a collective, community response. The civil rights, women’s, anti-war, gay, and environmental movements my generation grew up with demonstrated firsthand that united action can lead to positive change. It’s clear that strength comes in numbers, be it in school, the workplace, the voting booth, or the streets.
As mentioned above, 200 years before I gave that speech, Benjamin Franklin said: “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” He also pointed out: “It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”
I would take Franklin’s proposition a bit further: It is the first responsibility of every citizen to defy authority when that authority is illegitimate.
Certainly, there are significant risks to sticking your neck out, but the risks of doing nothing are even greater. If I learned anything during my four years at Brown—and my 40 years in Washington, DC—it’s that democracy is not a spectator sport, and we are all being tested by the worst political crisis of our lifetime.
This article first appeared at the Money Trail blog and is reposted here at Common Dreams with permission."There has never been a more urgent time for the ABA to defend its members, our profession and the rule of law itself," said the group's president.
The American Bar Association sued U.S. President Donald Trump's administration in a Washington, D.C. federal court on Monday over what the ABA called his "law firm intimidation policy."
"Since taking office earlier this year, President Trump has used the vast powers of the executive branch to coerce lawyers and law firms to abandon clients, causes, and policy positions the president does not like," states the ABA complaint, which names various entities and leaders in the administration as defendants.
The document lays out how the administration has carried out this policy using "executive orders designed to severely damage particular law firms and intimidate other firms and lawyers," as well as "'deals' or 'settlements' between the administration and certain law firms in order to avoid such orders or have them rescinded."
Trump's administration has also relied on "other related executive orders, letters, and memoranda," and "public statements by the president and his administration publicizing the objectives of the law firm intimidation policy," the complaint details. "The president's attacks on law firms through the faw firm orders are thus not isolated events, but one component of a broader, deliberate policy designed to intimidate and coerce law firms and lawyers to refrain from challenging the president or his administration in court, or from even speaking publicly in support of policies or causes that the president does not like."
The filing stresses that "without skilled lawyers to bring and argue cases—and to do so by advancing the interests of their clients without fear of reprisal from the government—the judiciary cannot function as a meaningful check on executive overreach."
Some firms are already fighting back against Trump's attacks, which the ABA called "unprecedented and uniquely dangerous to the rule of law." As Bloomberg detailed Monday:
Three firms hit with executive orders—Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale—later obtained permanent injunctions against the executive orders, with judges striking them down as unconstitutional. Susman has obtained a temporary injunction and is awaiting a ruling on a request for a final decision.
Nine other firms have pledged a total of nearly $1 billion in free legal services as part of deals to avoid similar orders. They committed to working on causes championed by Trump, including combating antisemitism, assisting veterans, and ensuring fairness" in the justice system.
After powerhouse firm Paul Weiss struck a deal with Trump, eight others—A&O Shearman, Cadwalader, Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Milbank, Simpson Thacher, Skadden Arps, and Wilkie Farr—followed suit. The firms have faced intense criticism for the agreements.
Meanwhile, as the ABA filing points out, "public reporting demonstrates that the chill on the legal profession—and particularly on 'Big Law' firms—has not been relieved by these favorable rulings. 504 law firms filed an amicus brief in support of Perkins' motion for summary judgment. As was widely reported, though, none of the top 25 U.S. law firms by revenue signed the brief, and fewer than 10 of the top 100 firms (the AmLaw 100) signed."
"By the time Susman filed its motion for summary judgment, four different judges had enjoined executive orders targeting law firms as likely unconstitutional," the complaint adds. "Yet still, fewer than 10 of the AmLaw 100 firms signed the brief in support of Susman, and none of the top 25 firms did."
The complaint also highlights other impacts, including that "many attorneys are no longer willing to take on representations that would require suing the federal government," and "others have dropped ongoing representations; ended their participation in
contemplated cases; or declined representations—even of clients with whom they had longstanding prior attorney-client relationships—not because the merits of the case were weak or the attorney had some substantive objection to taking the case, but because the representation was deemed too likely to result in severe retaliation from the president."
"Public interest attorneys who rely on their partnership with and representation by law firms—particularly in time- and resource-intensive pro bono cases—have not brought cases that they otherwise would have because their choice of counsel has been compromised," the filing says. "Still others have abstained from expression related to their prior representations that they would otherwise have engaged in, or even removed existing writings related to past representations from the public sphere."
"And those attorneys who do intend to proceed with work disfavored by the president now do so under the objective threat of potentially devastating retaliation pursuant to the policy, with all the severe harm, expense, and distraction that accompany such threat," the document warns. "All such harms are already happening; are ongoing; and will continue in the absence of relief from the court."
While the White House hasn't yet commented on ABA v. Executive Office of the President et al., William R. Bay, president of the association, said in a Monday statement that "this is the time to stand up, speak out and seek relief from our courts... There has never been a more urgent time for the ABA to defend its members, our profession, and the rule of law itself."
This is not the legal group's only case against the administration. Bloomberg noted that "the ABA earlier this year laid off one-third of its workforce after the Trump administration cut $69 million of its grant funding. The organization is waging another suit against the Justice Department as it tries to cut another $3.2 million in federal grants."
The president's bullying was always about intimidation and deterrence. Here's the sound it makes when not one, but many, other shoes begin to drop.
The Big Law firms that capitulated to President Donald Trump’s unconstitutional demands thought they were buying peace with his administration, preserving their client relationships, and protecting their bottom lines.
Recent developments illustrate the growing magnitude of their mistake.
Fighters Are Winning
On May 2, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell became the first court to issue a final ruling that Trump’s executive orders targeting Big Law firms violated the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. In a 102-page opinion, the court shredded Trump’s edict with a straightforward analysis that other courts are likely to follow:
“In a cringe-worthy twist on the theatrical phrase ‘Let’s kill all the lawyers,’ [Trump’s Executive Order] takes the approach of “Let’s kill the lawyers I don’t like,” sending the clear message: lawyers must stick to the party line, or else.
“Using the powers of the federal government to target lawyers for their representation of clients and avowed progressive employment policies in an overt attempt to suppress and punish certain viewpoints, however, is contrary to the Constitution,…. Simply put, government officials ‘cannot . . . use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.’
“That, however, is exactly what is happening here.”
For those keeping score, Trump’s Justice Department has now lost every courtroom fight on the subject. Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey obtained immediate temporary relief from his executive orders, as did Perkins Coie, which has now won a permanent injunction from Judge Howell.
Meanwhile, how are the firms that caved to Trump doing?
The Other Shoe Drops: #1
After providing Trump with a war chest totaling almost $1 billion in free legal services, the settling firms are now learning how he plans to use it. Previously, Trump had mused about using Big Law attorneys on coal leasing and tariff deals, but on April 28 things got real.
Trump issued an executive order titled, “STRENGTHENING AND UNLEASHING AMERICA’S LAW ENFORCEMENT TO PURSUE CRIMINALS AND PROTECT INNOCENT CITIZENS.”
The order emphasized the need to “protect and defend law enforcement officers wrongly accused and abused by State or local officials.” It directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to provide the legal resources necessary to defend those officers, including “private-sector pro bono assistance.” [emphasis supplied]
Stated simply, police officers accused of brutality and other misconduct will get Big Law attorneys to defend them – free of charge.
Meanwhile, traditional pro bono causes, including defending immigrants’ rights, are suffering from the deterrent effect of Trump’s attack. Fearing his wrath, they are declining work that challenges his policies.
Settling firms were already getting blowback from their partners and associates as many have left their firms. Trump’s newly-added page to their pro bono catalog won’t help recruiting or retention. And as with all things Trump, there’s no limiting principle. Appeasement never produces finality.
The Other Shoe Drops: #2
The firms’ stated reason for capitulating to Trump was concern that clients would leave any firm that was not in Trump’s good graces. That premise is not aging well either.
On April 11, Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett agreed to provide $125 million in pro bono work “and other free legal services” to Trump-designated causes.
On April 22, the firm informed the Delaware Chancery Court that it would no longer be representing Microsoft in a case related to its 2023 acquisition of Activision. The same day, Jenner & Block replaced Simpson Thacher as Microsoft’s counsel.
Losing a client to another firm is not uncommon, and none of the players has commented on Microsoft’s switch. But capitulation to Trump has not been a panacea for preserving client relationships. A firm that challenges an unconstitutional order threatening its existence is a firm that many clients want fighting for them.
The Other Shoe Drops: #3
On April 24, 16 House members sent letters to nine firms that settled with Trump. Asking about their motivations and urging them to disavow the deals, lawmakers suggested that the agreements may violate federal and state criminal and civil laws while creating “potentially irresolvable violations of applicable Rules of Professional Conduct.” Previously, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) sent requests for information from several firms and White House counsel on April 6 and April 18.
The Other Show Drops: #4
Firms assumed that capitulation would occupy a single news cycle and then disappear. But their public relations nightmares aren’t going away. Apart from the widespread and ongoing condemnation of the legal community, the story continues to have legs as a fateful moment for the rule of law in the United States.
The May 4 edition of CBS’s 60 Minutes ran a damning segment on Big Law firms that settled with Trump. None was willing to appear and defend itself or its deal. The legal term for such continuing cowardice is res ipsa loquitur – the thing speaks for itself. In this case, the firms didn’t speak at all.
On May 9, an article that later appeared in the New York Times Sunday print edition ran with this headline and subhead:
Can Elite Lawyers Be Persuaded to ‘Wake Up and Stand Up’?
When the law firm Paul Weiss cut a deal with the Trump administration, a new kind of activist emerged.
Some of the settling firms, including Kirkland & Ellis and at least one other, have an escape hatch: Their “handshake deals” with Trump are not in writing. They can do what Trump does when he no longer likes his own prior agreement: Walk away.
In fact, even firms with a written agreement can walk away too. Whatever their form, the deals are probably not enforceable. But that was never Trump’s main objective. It was always about intimidation and deterrence. When firms bent the knee to him, he won and scored an invaluable public relations victory.
And his accompanying billion-dollar windfall didn’t hurt.