A Celtic poet, Cedric the Wise, once laid out a construct of values that should be followed in the 21st Century. Cedric advised “Any person, to love country and people, must have a love of justice. For love of justice, there need be a love for learning. And to love learning, one needs a love of poetry and song.”
Alas, Donald Trump despises a justice system which sought to hold him to account. He is a convicted felon putting his tiny thumbs to these scales of justice. The Donald is seeking to bring universities and schools to heel, banishing diversity, and tampering with fields of study. And he has taken personal charge of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Prominent law firms, notably Seattle-based Perkins Coie, are being denied government contracts, stripped of security clearances and even banned from federal buildings. They’ve committed the sin of working for justice, be it fighting efforts to restrict voting or Trump’s try at stealing the 2020 presidential election.
We tell lawyer jokes and complain of court delays. But deliberation is a necessity of the rule of law. Suppression is a tactic of authoritarian rulers who consider themselves above the law. Trump has deployed lawsuits to intimidate and shake down critics. He recently wrung a $15 million settlement out of ABC News and is now going after CBS.
The Perkins firm responded to Trump’s executive order with four words: “See you in court.” It has also retained the bare-knuckled Williams & Connolly law firm in suing to block the vengeful presidential action.
It’s a gutsy move. The Boeing Co. is Perkins’ signature client of longstanding. Boeing does tons of business with the federal government, and faces litigation over the 737-MSX crashes and over the door that blew off a California-bound flight. Perkins is already facing off against Trump as longtime (and successful) legal counsel to Democratic presidential and congressional campaigns.
Trump is also working his will on the nation’s great universities, using the withdrawal of federal money to force adoption of a MAGA agenda’s key component — junking diversity programs designed to make students populations mirror wider society.
Already, two premier institutions — Columbia University and the University of Michigan — have caved. The 47th President yanked $400 million from Columbia for alleged failure to address antisemitism on campus. The university has hastily created a new senior administrative position in acquiescence to Trump.
Columbia, whose president has just resigned abruptly, also said “it would have 36 campus safety officers with arrest powers, a shift with enormous resonance at a university that has a long history of campus activism and fraught ties with law enforcement. The university also said it would adopt a formal definition of antisemitism, review its admissions policies and, in a turn that was especially alarming to professors who cherish academic freedom, impose new oversight of the university’s Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department,” according to The New York Times.
Trump is also laying out conditions for expelling students from universities and from the country. ICE has detained a grad student from Turkey, legally in America, who wrote an article decrying Israel’s assault on Gaza. Network news programs have shown masked men, bearing no identification, apprending and cuffing her.
It is chilling. Student protest has served the Republic, witness campus protests and lunch counter sit-ins that launched the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Earth Day was likewise a product of the nation’s campuses. But, of course, Trump has proclaimed climate change “a hoax” and decreed that reference to it be stricken from federal web sites.
Such is chilling, dictatorial behavior in a democratic society. The autonomy of universities is no longer recognized. ICE agents are now allowed to barge into places of worship. The nation’s boss man fires the management of a cherished cultural institution.
All this is being done by culture warriors who proclaim their love of “freedom.” It’s in the DNA of dictators to move on the legal system, put parameters on curriculum, police language, and assume the role of culture czars. Donald Trump has put it all together, to the longterm detriment of America.
It’s time to heed Walt Whitman’s admonition: “Resist much, obey little.”
This article also appears in Cascadia Advocate.
Discover more from Post Alley
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The Right Wing Reactionaries of the Heritage Foundation — in other words, the planning and propaganda department of the Trumpofascist regime— have a grudge against government, and want us all to hate government the same way they do. Trump’s battle with universities is supposedly about anti semitism, but that’s just the cover story, an excuse for smearing the academic establishment, something else that they hate.
These revolutionaries want the total destruction of America and American values— and to what end?
When a crime is committed, investigators have for millennia been taught to ask, “Cui bono?” — Who benefits?
I m not a member of the cabal so I can only hazard a guess: they are serving the interests of America’s “right- Libertarian “ billionaires— people like JD Vance’s mentor, German-born billionaire Peter Thiel— who are themselves doing the insidious work of America’s adversaries.
Unwittingly or on purpose, the effect will be the same: tearing America into shreds, destroying our faith in government, in democracy, and ourselves.
Thanks, Joel, for referencing the quote from Cedric the Wise, “For love of justice, there need be a love for learning.” That has never been so true in our time of massive disinformation assaulting our justice system’s basic principle of Equal Justice Under Law, a phrase engraved above the front entrance of the United States Supreme Court building.
To help citizens better understand their rights and protect them, the Washington State Bar Association is launching the Rule of Law Ambassador Program to ground volunteer ambassadors in constitutional law, so they are prepared to educate community members, secure its continuing authority as the foundation of our democracy.
.
Their message is that the same laws apply to everyone, and everyone is treated equally under the law; government power is bound by law, and human rights are guaranteed to all.
The kick-off for the program is on Law Day, May 1st. Email ambassadors@wsba.org to join the information list and keep you updated about launch events.
I hope WSBA starts with high schools.
And a great steaming pile of Drumpfheteers are elated because they get to “own the libs.”
This is about 75% of the Orange Menace’s support. No facts or issues. Immune to logical thought.
QED.
Joel,
Thank you for articulating so well what I have been thinking. Keep up the good work
Thanks Joel for your helpful insights on these chilling developments as the new regime attacks basic freedoms guaranteed by the ConstItution. Disappointing that stellar universities are caving to the regime’s threats rather than following the first rule of facing tyranny: do not capitulate. Kudos to the Perkins firm’s resistance to Trump’s threats.
And, as Congressional Republicans now daily bow without question to an unhinged, rogue chief executive, they also violate their oaths to defend the Constitution.
As Nick notes, public education on the rule of law is critical now as the current regime dismantles our government and attacks our basic rights. I applaud the Bar Association’s public education efforts and hope we soon emerge from what Republicans call a Post Constitution Era. It’s a time now to resist our authoritarian administration and demand a return to the basic tenets of our democracy.
May we avert a descent to a society where free expression and dissent are criminalized and critics of the regime face imprisonment in re-education camps on the Mao or Pol Pot models.
Please continue sharing your thoughtful words Joel as you inspire your readers. Thanks for highlighting the need now for a movement to assure a return to Constitutional principles.
Walt Whitman’s admonition: “Resist much, obey little.”
My mantra from now on.
Off topic, but I’m surprised, Joel, that you didn’t do a tribute for former state speaker Frank Chopp.