One expected but still occasionally startling aspect of the second Donald Trump presidency is the degree to which he and his sycophants will use the powers of the state to chase down any private individual or organization that has done anything ever in the history of time to upset, oppose, mock, belittle, ridicule, gibe, jeer, taunt, disparage, razz, skewer, scorn, put down, bad-mouth, or otherwise take the piss out of our tiny-handed Emperor of All Time and Space.
And still we find ourselves impressed by the new levels of petty that Trump’s administration keeps finding. He’s like if you took a gang of spoiled ten-year-old girls and stuffed them all into a fat suit slicked with bile and zested orange peel.
Take the Executive Order that Trump signed on Thursday. This EO is titled “Address Risks from Perkins Coie LLP.” It is aimed straight at this one specific law firm, an international consortium with a couple of dozen offices and over 1,000 lawyers around the world, for committing the sin of upholding the Sixth Amendment right to competent counsel of people who have had the temerity to oppose Donald Trump.
Here, have some flavor:
Notably, in 2016 while representing failed Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS, which then manufactured a false “dossier” designed to steal an election. This egregious activity is part of a pattern. Perkins Coie has worked with activist donors including George Soros to judicially overturn popular, necessary, and democratically enacted election laws, including those requiring voter identification.
Hillary Clinton! George Soros! The fake dossier! The stolen election! It’s eight years later and Trump still wants to punish his political opponents for doing opposition research.
Just accuse Perkins Coie of reverse racism, and you’ll have hit all the MAGA Stations of the Cross. Oh, what’s that? They did that too?
Perkins Coie publicly announced percentage quotas in 2019 for hiring and promotion on the basis of race and other categories prohibited by civil rights laws. It proudly excluded applicants on the basis of race for its fellowships,
Yeah, we all know what quotas the Trump administration finds objectionable.
The Executive Order goes on to suspend any security clearance held by any Perkins Coie attorney, a serious restriction since the firm represents lots of government employees and whistleblowers. It also halts any ongoing work the government has contracted the firm to do.
Furthermore, it orders federal agencies to review any contracts with businesses that also do business with Perkins Coie, with the clear implication that those businesses can say goodbye to further federal work if they don’t cut ties with the firm.
Then there is this bit about “limiting official access from Federal Government buildings to employees of Perkins Coie when such access would threaten the national security of or otherwise be inconsistent with the interests of the United States.” There is a lot of room for interpretation there! Is it inconsistent with US interests for a Perkins Coie lawyer to enter a federal court building to represent a client who is suing or being sued or charged with a crime by the federal government? One would think so, yes.
Yr Wonkette is not a lawyer, but we were under the impression that bills of attainder were a) only proposed by the legislative branch, and b) mostly considered unconstitutional. Yet here is Trump slapping what is more or less a bill of attainder on a political opponent. As if Trump’s DOJ was not already buried in lawsuits from all the other illegal firings and funding cutoffs and whatnot that his government has been doing.
It is not just one law firm, or even a whole bunch of law firms. The Trump administration is finding ways to try and find ways to use the powers of the government to bring to heel private universities that don’t do what he wants. He is running the government like Don Corleone, where his grudges become his friends’ grudges. Which is why Charlie Kirk, the human impacted stool for some reason palling around with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, was bragging on his show on Friday about the government’s cancellation of $400 million in grants to Columbia University:
“That is just the start. For all these campuses that don’t treat us well at Turning Point USA, and you guys restrict freedom of speech, your funding might be cut soon.”
No one restricts your right to free speech on campus, Charlie. You’re free to show up, and students are free to remind you in the most impolite terms that you are a reactionary bigot and a Trump lickspittle whose only skill is looking at all times like someone used the Photoshop pinch tool on your face.
Actually, the government cut the $400 million in contracts because in its opinion, Columbia has not done enough to combat the alleged rise of antisemitism on its campus since the October 7 attack on Israel almost a year and a half ago. To which the only possible response is that if Trump is so opposed to antisemites, why the hell has he stocked his administration with them?
Around 22 percent of Columbia’s student population is Jewish, so slashing $400 million in funding will arguably hurt them much more than it will help.
As a Jew, we would just like to say, Please, please, please stop trying to help.
Or take Georgetown Law School, which this week received a letter from the (acting) US Attorney for Washington DC, Superdouche Ed Martin, warning that the school better not be teaching any DEI. (Yet another reminder: “DEI” is the Right’s new term for “someone was Black.”) What would Ed Martin consider to be DEI? Who knows! It’s like pornography, he knows it when he sees it. (It’s Black.)
And just in case Georgetown Law gets any funny ideas about it being a private school with a First Amendment right to not have its curricula dictated to it by small, doughy-soft wingnuts who appear to have the approximate IQ of clam chowder, there was this:
“At this time, you should know that no applicant for our fellows program, our summer internship, or employment in our office who is a student or affiliated with a law school or university that continues to teach and utilize DEI will be considered,” Martin wrote in the two-page letter.
Well, so long as Martin is running the place, we’re guessing this will hurt conservative Georgetown students much more, since they are the only ones who will want to be associated with this nonsense.
Unlike at Columbia, however — which preemptively rolled over on its pro-Palestine students already last year, for the precisely zero good it did Columbia — Georgetown Law’s dean, Bill Treanor, sent back a letter telling Martin very politely to take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut:
The Supreme Court has continually affirmed that among the freedoms central to a university’s First Amendment rights are its abilities to determine, on academic grounds, who may teach, what to teach, and how to teach it. […]
Given the First Amendment’s protection of a university’s freedom to determine its own curriculum and how to deliver it, the constitutional violation behind this threat is clear, as is the attack on the University’s mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution.
Ah, but Dean Treanor, have you considered the fact that whatever rancid swill is whirling around in that howling void that passes for Trump’s brain is a higher authority than the First Amendment? We don’t think you have!
No word yet on how, or even if, Martin will respond to the dean. We’re guessing nothing. Guys like him turn into quivering bowls of Jell-o when you stand up to them. Someone please inform the Democrats.
[Trump EO / NBC News / WaPo / BlueSky]
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