Trump’s Attacks on Big Law, Universities, and the Media Have a Common Goal: Silence Dissent Against Authoritarian Rule

The New York Times’ Sunday, March 23 newspaper featured a lead story on how the 1,000-lawyer

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By Pam Martens and Russ Martens, wallstreetonparade.com

The New York Times’ Sunday, March 23 newspaper featured a lead story on how the 1,000-lawyer Big Law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a Wall Street favorite, had caved to threats in a Presidential Action from Donald Trump, which would have banned lawyers at the firm from entering federal buildings; from reviewing classified documents for their clients by stripping them of security clearance; and effectively blacklisting the firm as a member of Donald Trump’s enemy list.

The Chair of Paul Weiss, Brad Karp, negotiated with Trump and got the order rescinded by agreeing to spend $40 million in pro bono work on projects amenable to Trump — along with other subservient concessions.

Trump’s move against Paul Weiss followed his similar actions against Big Law firms Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling. Unlike Paul Weiss, Perkins Coie hired another Big Law firm, Williams & Connolly to represent it, and filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration. As a bold symbol that it would not be intimidated by Trump’s revenge tour, Williams & Connolly listed 14 of its lawyers by name on the court filing as counsel to Perkins Coie.

Pertinent sections of the lawsuit read as follows:

“This case concerns an Executive Order issued on March 6, 2025, entitled, ‘Addressing Risks From Perkins Coie LLP’ (‘the Order’). The Order is an affront to the Constitution and our adversarial system of justice. Its plain purpose is to bully those who advocate points of view that the President perceives as adverse to the views of his Administration, whether those views are presented on behalf of paying or pro bono clients. Perkins Coie brings this case reluctantly. The firm is comprised of lawyers who advocate for clients; its attorneys and employees are not activists or partisans. But Perkins Coie’s ability to represent the interests of its clients—and its ability to operate as a legal-services business at all—are under direct and imminent threat. Perkins Coie cannot allow its clients to be bullied. The firm is committed to a resolute defense of the rule of law, without regard to party or ideology, and therefore brings this lawsuit to declare the Order unlawful and to enjoin its implementation…

“The Order imposes these punishments as retaliation for the firm’s association with, and representation of, clients that the President perceives as his political opponents. Many law firms represented candidates, parties, and related political committees and organizations in the 2016 and 2020 campaigns. But the Order targets only one firm—Perkins Coie—because the President views it, more than any other firm, as aligned with the Democratic Party by reason of its representation of the 2016 Clinton presidential campaign and its successful handling of challenges brought by the Trump campaign seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as well as victories the firm won for its clients in a significant number of voting rights cases, including cases where Perkins Coie succeeded in upholding existing laws, in connection with the 2020 election.”

That Trump’s lawyers lost repeatedly to Perkins Coie lawyers in his court attempts to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election, would appear to be one of the prime motivators of his unprecedented attack on the firm using the imprimatur of the Oval Office.

Perkins Coie with Williams & Connolly as its counsel decided to fight Donald Trump’s intimidation tactics to crush all perceived roadblocks to enforcing his authoritarian agenda. Paul Weiss, on the other hand, caved quickly.

Paul Weiss has likely done far more damage to its reputation by licking Trump’s jack boots than Trump could have inflicted on the law firm over the long-term. The firm was widely ridiculed for its capitulation by conservatives, progressives and even a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Walter Olson, a senior fellow at Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, wrote this on a Cato blog:

“What is clear is that Trump himself believes that his threats have caused a prominent law firm to back down on vital principles of independence and that he has used the powers of the presidency to gratify his wish for revenge against a particular lawyer for having fought him in court. This is calculated to chill and deter vigorous courtroom advocacy against Trump and his allies. It is an abuse of presidential power that imperils the constitutional rights of all Americans. We can only hope that other litigants, if not this one, will press federal courts for rulings speedily vindicating those constitutional rights.”

The conservative lawyer, George Conway, posted on X (Twitter):

“This Paul Weiss capitulation is the most disgraceful action by a major law firm in my lifetime, so appalling that I couldn’t believe it at first. Any lawyers at that firm—partners or associates—who don’t promptly resign will defile their moral and professional reputations beyond repair.”

On Friday, Erwin Chemerinsky, a Los Angeles Times contributing writer, penned this:

“We all learned long ago, perhaps on the playground, that giving in to a bully only makes things worse. That is why it is shocking to see capitulation on the part of those being illegally bullied by President Trump. This will only embolden him.”

Indeed, Trump was emboldened. After Paul Weiss was shamed widely in the media on Saturday for its capitulation, Trump doubled down on Sunday, issuing a breathtaking authoritarian memorandum to his U.S. Attorney General, Pam Bondi, who has been elevated by Trump from representing him personally as one of his defense counsel in his first impeachment proceeding, to the highest law enforcement officer in the U.S., who is now tasked with carrying out Trump’s revenge against his perceived enemies. The memorandum also went to Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, who proved she was cruel enough to serve in the Trump cabinet by admitting in her 2024 book to shooting to death the family puppy as an expedient means of dealing with an unruly pet.

Trump’s Sunday memorandum threatens retaliatory measures against lawyers and/or law firms that engage in lawsuits against the Trump administration as it shreds the U.S. Constitution.

As of March 15, the website JustSecurity.org listed 135 lawsuits that have been filed against the Trump administration for overstepping its legal and/or constitutional authority. Trump has lost the vast majority of the preliminary rulings by judges in these matters, thus his need to attempt to scare Big Law away from taking these cases or dropping existing cases.

Trump is using similar tactics against universities by threatening them with losing federal grants, which can reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars for research. Trump’s actual fear is that campus protests could accelerate exponentially from coast to coast and lead the evening news cycle, tanking his quest for authoritarian rule with little pushback. Columbia University has capitulated to Trump’s demands after being threatened with the loss of $400 million in federal funding.

Trump is also upping his threats against the media in an effort to further silence his critics. He has banned the 59-Pulitzer Prize winning Associated Press from attending press conferences in the Oval Office and elsewhere, in retaliation for its failure to follow his directive about his renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Associated Press has not caved and has filed a lawsuit to challenge the restraint on its freedom of speech and freedom to choose its own words.

On March 6, while taking questions from the press in the Oval Office, the President called out by name two MSNBC news program hosts that he said “should be forced to resign.” The journalists are Nicolle Wallace and Rachel Maddow, both of whom have doggedly connected the dots on Trump’s grifting and unsavory alignment with his largest campaign donors and with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump’s attack on these two specific journalists followed a more general attack on the MSNBC cable network on February 18 during a Sean Hannity interview. Five days later, Joy Reid, another MSNBC program host – and one of Trump’s key critics – learned that her program had been abruptly cancelled. (See our report: News Host Joy Reid Raises Threat of Trump Selling U.S. to Putin; Ten Days Later Her Show Is Cancelled.)

We have been monitoring the evening news reporting at MSNBC since our report on the cancellation of the Joy Reid program. If Trump expected his attacks to silence his on-air critics at the network, he must be furious. The program hosts have, instead, doubled down. They are now showing the thousands of Americans that are turning out for protests and anti-Trump rallies across the United States, despite it not being a national election year.

A reported 34,000 people turned out Friday night in Denver as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders spoke at their “Fight Oligarchy” nationwide tour. Sanders said it was the largest rally he had ever had, notwithstanding the massive crowds he attracted during his 2016 campaign bid for President.

The threats to their livelihoods and personal sacrifices being made by those standing up to Trump’s tyranny, makes what Paul Weiss and Columbia University did this past week all the more unconscionable. History will not be kind to the cowards. It never is.

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