Go along or stand against?

There’s a tendency among Americans to seek compromise, to have a win-win solution for both sides in any controversy, but you cannot compromise with someone like Donald Trump. You either give in or resist. Since Jan. 20, Trump has issued an executive order violating the 14th Amendment, refused to spend funds appropriated by Congress, called for the impeachment of a judge ruling against him, threatened to invade the sovereign territory of a NATO ally and suggested a run for a third presidential term despite the 22nd Amendment. His appointees have overseen the roundup and deportation of legal residents by masked personnel.

How to react to this second coming of Donald Trump?

Take the prominent law partnership of Paul Weiss in New York City. Trump issued an order attacking the firm for its “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies and for employing a lawyer who represented clients suing Jan. 6 rioters. He ordered federal agencies to break any contracts with Paul Weiss “to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law.” Paul Karp, the firm’s chairman, said that even if the firm won a lawsuit against the Trump administration, “clients had told us that they were not going to be able to stay with us.” He agreed in a meeting with Trump to “a comprehensive audit” of the firm’s employment practices by an outsider and to offer $40 million in free legal services to causes supporting Trumpian views. Trump rescinded the order, and Karp told employees the firm was saved.

Trump also issued an order sanctioning another law firm, WilmerHale, for “obvious partisan representations to achieve political ends.” WilmerHale chose a different path than Paul Weiss. They sued the executive office of the president. Pending trial, a federal judge stayed the Trump order, quoting the Supreme Court: “The First Amendment prohibits government officials from subjecting individuals to ‘retaliatory actions’… for having engaged in protected speech.”

Not only law firms have been targeted by Trump.

He canceled $400 million in federal funding for Columbia University allegedly because of the university’s failure to combat campus antisemitism. Columbia has tried to appease him by promising to improve its disciplinary process, to expand intellectual diversity among its faculty and, most notably, to appoint a new administrator to review all university programs focused on global regions “starting immediately with the Middle East.”

On March 31, the nation’s oldest institution of higher learning received a letter from the Trump administration stating its intention to review $8.7 billion in “multi-year grant commitments to Harvard University and its affiliates” in response to “Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from anti-Semitic discrimination.” How the administration came up with the $8.7 billion figure is unclear, as is who the Harvard “affiliates” are. If they include Harvard hospitals, is the administration threatening to stop Medicare and Medicaid payments reimbursing patients? Harvard President Alan Garber stated, “If this funding is stopped, it will halt life-saving research and imperil important scientific research and innovation.” Harvard, where I am a resident scholar, has already taken numerous steps to combat campus antisemitism. Unlike the Columbia case, no funds have yet been cut off.

I fear Harvard will eventually be placed in a position where it, too, will have to make a wrenching decision between saving lives, preserving jobs, teaching students and extending knowledge versus yielding to governmental bullying and inroads on academic freedom. To avoid the latter, I wonder if the university would dip into its $50 billion-plus endowment.

I wrote my graduate thesis on the end of British appeasement of Nazi Germany before World War II. In it, I focused on the moment in March 1939 when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain realized appeasement no longer worked against Hitler and he needed to draw a line in the sand.

I don’t want to overstate the case, but I believe we are at such a point now. The decision to accede or resist is not just for law firms and universities. It will need to be made by media outlets reporting the facts, by epidemiologists fighting pandemics, by protesters threatened with violence, by Republican officeholders criticizing the administration and by Americans deciding how to vote.

Commit to being loyal to Trump, and we Americans can go about our business without interference from the feds. We can ignore what’s going on in Washington and tend to our jobs, children, friends and schoolwork, while enjoying life as best we can.

That choice is defensible. And yet, so is paying attention to the actions of the Trump administration and committing to stand for liberty and justice for all and refusing to abandon the American dream.

The White House has circulated a message from Trump where he refers to himself as a “king” along with an illustration of himself adorned with a golden crown.

On July 4, 1776, the United States declared its independence from a king whose objective was “the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” Those who signed the Declaration of Independence did so to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Above their signatures, they stated: “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

I want to stand with those Founders. I want to stand with Lincoln who promised “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” I want to stand with Ronald Reagan who said, “As long as we remember those first principles and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours.” I want to stand with my dad who fought for freedom in World War II.

It’s time to choose sides.

A renaissance man, Keith Raffel has served as the senior counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, started an successful internet software company and written five novels, which you can check out at keithraffel.com. He currently spends the academic year as a resident scholar at Harvard. To find out more about Keith and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at creators.com.