Five more high profile #BigLaw legal firms have capitulated to Downmarket Mussolini's fascist threats in order to keep raking in federal contracts; even as 500 of their contemporaries in US law are actively proving that fighting the Trump regime is an option:

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/a…

Trump says five more law firms agree to pro bono work to avoid punitive executive orders

"Donald Trump said on Friday that five major law firms reached agreements to together provide his administration $600m in pro bono legal work, among other terms, to avoid executive orders punishing them, a significant capitulation to the president as he attacks the legal profession.

The five firms – Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Allen Overy Shearman Sterling, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft – are among the most prestigious and recognized firms in the US.

Trump’s announcement on Friday on Truth Social means he has secured a total of $940m in pro bono work from some of the most powerful law firms in the US.

The orders come as Trump’s attack on the legal profession has divided the most prestigious firms in the US. More than 500 firms signed an amicus brief last week in support of a legal challenge to executive orders punishing the firm Perkins Coie. But many of the country’s biggest firms – including those that reached agreements announced on Friday – were conspicuously absent."

Frankly, I'm tired of repeating myself so I'll keep this brief. These firms are all kissing the fascist toad in the White House's ring because standing up to him, even when the law is on their side, risks too much of their ability to make money and that's more important to them than the law, or any sort of moral obligation to oppose fascism from those in a position to do so. Like every other Big Law firm before them, these folks have traded away their independence and integrity without any guarantee whatsoever that this represents the end of Downmarket Mussolini's demands; which means, even if they don't realize it, all of these law firms work for Trump now. Maybe these bigshot lawyers honestly believe, as former Skadden lawyer Rachel Cohen reported in the interview I shared above, that they can outsmart the regime, but that presupposes the Trump administration is playing by a set of rules - which is an idea that is wholly discredited by the blatantly unconstitutional executive orders and threats from the White House that brought us to this moment in the first place.

Finally I would encourage folks not to dismiss the almost 1 billion dollars in promises for pro bono services to the regime and causes Trump himself supports, that Der Leader has extracted here. Downmarket Mussolini is forcibly recruiting massive law firms to help him conduct an assault on our civil rights and the American legal system itself, and when he says the firms have agreed they “will not deny representation to clients, such as members of politically disenfranchised groups and Government Officials, employees, and advisors” he's making that explicitly clear. I mean let's cut the bullshit here, this is a regime that has argued that white people, and fundamentalist Christians are "politically disenfranchised groups" in fucking writing, so I don't think it's hard to imagine what kind of cases Trump is going to deploy his new minions to argue on behalf of his fascist, white nationalist regime. Trump just bought himself an army of lawyers to do fascism with, and it didn't cost him anything more than the paper his unconstitutional executive orders were printed on.

#Fascism #Trump #Courts #VichyEstablishment #CivilRights #KirklandEllis #LathamWatkins #AOShearman #Cadwalader #SimpsonThacherBartlett #Collaboration #Cowardice

Whelp, given the news that Columbia University has also surrendered to Trump's fascist demands to avoid retaliatory (and likely illegal) funding cuts, I guess this Vichy establishment thing is a whole ass beat now. Hiding behind the laughably dishonest idea of fighting a grossly distorted definition of "antisemitism" the regime is moving towards the standard authoritarian goal of controlling higher education institutes; it's first target, Columbia, has surrendered without offering even token resistance and as you can imagine, the decision was not popular with people who aren't sniveling collaborators:

commondreams.org/news/trump-co…

'Columbia Has Lost Something It May Never Regain': Outrage as the University Yields to Trump's Demands

"Columbia University received a wave of criticism on Friday after it agreed to a number of demands from the Trump administration as part of negotiations over $400 million in federal grants and contracts that the Trump administration had pulled due to the school's alleged "inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students."

The school agreed to a ban on masks and to appoint a senior vice provost with broad power to oversee both the department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studied and the school's Center for Palestine Studies, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news. Also, Columbia has hired over 30 "special officers" who will have the ability to remove individuals from campus and arrest them, per the memo from the school announcing the update."

Although this article is short, and mostly focuses on (wholly deserved) criticism of Columbia University for caving completely to fascist intimidation, there's actually a lot to unpack about the larger situation here:

- as in the case of the Paul Weiss capitulation story, the greater evil here remains a fascist Trump regime engaging in what amounts to extortion, to further its attacks on protesters, civil rights activists, and higher education in America.

- while on the surface Columbia's concessions to the regime may appear small, they foundationally attack free speech rights on campus, and the academic freedom of the institute, to the point that I'm not even sure you can still call Columbia a university now. Allowing a Trump regime that defines opposing genocide as antisemitism, protest as terrorism, and criticizing the US government as a threat to national security, to influence a department's curriculum, helping it to identify students engaged in constitutionally-protected protests, and literally embedding a small police department's worth of goon squad murderpigs inside the facilities to more expediently violate the rights of protestors, are each in and of themselves damning examples of fascist collaboration that fundamentally invalidate everything Columbia claims it stands for.

- as I've mentioned elsewhere, it's important to understand that "Trump is not threatening to jail or deport anyone running these big law firms and prestigious universities. He's threatening them with funding cuts, lack of access to federal contracts, and harassment investigations." This in turn means that by collaborating with the Trump regime (based on fascist word games and lies that, by capitulating, Columbia itself is helping to transform into enforced reality) the administrators running Columbia, just like the law firm Paul Weiss above, are effectively declaring that there is a monetary cost above which they will happily collaborate with fascism to actively harm their own students and our larger society.

- I realize that $400M in government funding is a lot of money, but we're talking about a university with a $14.8B (with a b) endowment, and one of the wealthiest alumni and donor bases in America. I don't find the senior administrator quoted in this story's excuse that "the federal government had too many ways to take back money from the university" credible, and even if I did you're still saying there's a price point where you'll normalize authoritarianism and support the activates of a fascist regime against your own students. If the price of keeping grand ole Columbia in a "recognizable form" is helping a fascist government install a fascist dictatorship that *will* end in mass graves, then that price is too damn high.

- they literally didn't even *try* to take the Trump regime to court over this.

- since there was no court case, and no legal settlement, the Trump regime is not bound by anyone to cease its attacks on Columbia, or barred from issuing further demands. If tomorrow, Trump decides that the University has to open up a phrenology department, devote its resources to investigating "anti-white racism" on campus, and let one of Elon Musk's DOGE minions run all of its scientific research, he can simply threaten Columbia's funding again to get what he wants. The university now works for Trump; even if they don't realize it yet.

#Trump #Fascism #Columbia #Education #CivilRights