Call it by its name: A coup (redux)

April 15, 2025

On a day that saw Trump and his senior cabinet members desecrate the Oval Office by mocking the Supreme Court and claiming the power to deport American citizens as punishment for crimes, Harvard University stood up for democracy and academic freedom. Harvard's strong showing should embolden other universities to resist the hostile takeover of education by cultural warriors who correctly view education as the antidote to tyranny. Harvard's resistance is an important watershed in the effort to stop Trump's reign of lawlessness.

Trump's meeting in the Oval Office with El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele was so shocking that many commentators described the meeting as “crossing the Rubicon,” i.e., Trump's point of no return toward dictatorship. Commentators are correct that Trump and his advisors openly defied and ridiculed the Supreme Court as never before. But Trump “crossed the Rubicon” long ago—but the media has somehow forgotten or minimized prior actions by Trump that qualify as a “constitutional crises.” See Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, The Constitutional Crisis Is Here.

I do not mean to minimize what happened in the Oval Office on Monday and I address it below. But what happened on Monday is merely the next logical step in an ongoing coup—and our failure to call it such at every opportunity allows it to fester and spread, even as tens of millions of Americans look away or are frightened by the chaos inflicted by Trump's wholesale assault on the federal government.

A week after Trump's inauguration, I titled my January 31 newsletter, Call it by its name: A coup. Only a week into his administration, Trump unilaterally “canceled” all federal loans and grants—a gross breach of the constitutional grant of authority in Article I to Congress to appropriate funds. The withholding of lawfully appropriated funds also violated the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

From and after January 31, virtually every action by DOGE to cut and withhold funds or to shutter agencies created by Congress has been a facial violation of the separation of powers embedded by the Framers in Articles I and II of the Constitution.

Defying Congress and subverting the Constitution’s separation of powers was “crossing the Rubicon” and should have resulted in Trump's impeachment and removal from office. But somehow, the press defaulted to reporting merely about the size and number of cuts imposed by DOGE while skipping over the part where they violate the Constitution.

Defying Congress is no less a transgression of the Constitution than defying the courts. And although Monday was the first time that Trump and his advisers suggested that they would flout the Supreme Court’s order to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the administration has violated multiple court orders on dozens of previous occasions. See my newsletter dated March 17, 2025, The moment of crisis: Trump intentionally violates multiple court orders.

So, I will skip to the end and make my point: Question: What should we do about the fact that Trump has said he will defy the Supreme Court’s order in the Abrego Garcia case? Answer: Exactly what we have been doing, only more of it, with greater urgency and volume.

The one thing that will stop Trump is the American people taking to the streets to revoke “the consent of the governed” and take back our control of the government.

Massive, sustained protests are the key to bringing Congress to heel and reinforcing the legitimacy of court rulings. Trump is currently defying Congress and the courts because he believes he can get away with it! If his advisers and Republican members of Congress were begging him to relent (as they did on January 6, 2021), he would do so. Reluctantly, sullenly, and with a thumb in the eye to the American people, but he would relent.

While we have made incredible progress in taking to the streets in the last two months, we must redouble our efforts and then redouble them again. The protests must be so large and sustained that the NYTimes and Fox News cannot ignore them.

Yes, something shifted in the firmament on Monday when the president laughed about deporting American citizens to El Salvadoran prisons. But the defiance of Congress and the courts is not new. Trump continues to defy the co-equal branches of government because he does not yet fear the political repercussions of mass protests.

Let’s do all we can to hasten the day when Trump no longer believes he can act with impunity and once again fears impeachment, conviction, and removal from office.

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Trump plays “rope-a-dope” with Supreme Court in Oval Office meeting

Last Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a tepid invitation to Trump to “facilitate” the return of wrongly deported El Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia. In the intervening four days, the administration has refused to comply with the Court’s order. Despite its overly deferential language, the import of the order was to return Abrego Garcia to the US.

In an Oval Office meeting with El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, Trump could have easily asked Bukele to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. The leaders of both nations were sitting face to face and had the mutual authority to agree to Abrego Garcia’s return.

Instead, Trump and Bukele played a ghoulish game of “Who’s on First?” Trump said he couldn’t ask Bukele to return Abrego Garcia because El Salvador was a sovereign nation, and Bukele said he couldn’t “smuggle” Abrego Garcia into the US.

Trump and Bukele assume we are fools.

Trump carefully stage-managed the fantasy that both El Salvador and the US are under overlapping and insoluble disabilities that prevent the return of Abrego Garcia. No sentient being with an IQ higher than a potato believes the badly acted grade-school play performed by Trump and Bukele.

As explained by Adam Serwer in The Atlantic article cited above,

This rhetorical game the administration is playing, where it pretends it lacks the power to ask for Abrego Garcia to be returned while Bukele pretends he doesn’t have the power to return him, is an expression of obvious contempt for the Supreme Court—and for the rule of law.

But the meaning of the telenovela in the Oval Office was clear: Trump and Bukele were tag teaming the Supreme Court to let the justices know that Abrego Garcia would not be returned to the US. See NYTimes, U.S. and El Salvador Won’t Return Wrongly Deported Man. (This article is accessible to all.)

Per the NYTimes,

“Of course I’m not going to do it,” Mr. Bukele said when reporters asked if he was willing to help return the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three who was deported last month.

The Trump administration has acknowledged that his deportation was the result of an “administrative error.”

The message from the meeting was clear: Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Bukele had any intention of returning Mr. Abrego Garcia, even though the Supreme Court has ruled that he should come back to the United States.

The case has come to symbolize Mr. Trump’s defiance of the courts and his willingness to deport people without due process.

Trump's comments were framed by blatantly false descriptions of the Supreme Court’s ruling by Stephen Miller.

Miller said,

Yes, it was a 9-0, in our favor against the district court ruling, saying that no district court has the power to compel the foreign policy function of the United States.

The Supreme Court said exactly the opposite, telling the administration that it must “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia to the US.

And then things got really weird in the Oval Office.

Trump and Bukele held a stage-whispered conversation in which Trump proposed sending American citizens convicted for crimes to El Salvadoran maximum security prisons. Trump then repeated those comments in response to a reporter’s questions, adding that Attorney General Pam Bondi was “looking at the law” and “researching it.”

Per the NYTimes article, above,

Mr. Trump also mused about the possibility of sending American citizens convicted of violent crimes to prison in El Salvador, although he said Attorney General Pam Bondi was still studying the legality of the proposal.

“If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem, no,” Mr. Trump said. “I’m talking about violent people. I’m talking about really bad people.”

Before the full group of reporters was allowed into the Oval Office for the meeting, television cameras captured Mr. Trump telling Mr. Bukele to build more prisons.

Let’s pause here for a moment. The president cannot deport American citizens—“homegrown criminals”—to a foreign nation as part of a criminal punishment. Such a “musing” is worse than “lawless” and “unconstitutional”—because we know that the Trump administration claims that after it has relinquished a detainee to a foreign nation, it has no ability to obtain the citizen’s return if, for example, the conviction is overturned on appeal or in a habeas corpus proceeding.

Trump cannot lawfully implement such a plan. But the fact that he is even musing about it suggests that he is a danger to democracy and should be impeached, convicted, and removed from office immediately.

I have twice suggested in this newsletter that Trump be impeached, convicted, and removed. Is that possible? Let me turn the question around. Is it possible for 50 million Americans to engage in a work stoppage, general strike, and tax strike? What would Trump's corporate overlords and congressional vassals do in the face of such an overwhelming demand that Congress perform its constitutional duty?

Trump has plainly committed multiple impeachable offenses in his first three months in office. Asking Congress to do its job of enforcing the Constitution is the duty of every law abiding citizen. Even the Trump-boosting WSJ is publishing op-eds suggesting that Trump is begging to be impeached. See Holman W. Jenkins op-ed in WSJ, Trump Wants to Be Impeached Again.

Other less drastic remedies are being floated, such as four Republicans in the House and Senate switching sides to give Democrats control of the House and Senate. What would take for that sea-change to occur? At this rate, we may find out sooner rather than later.

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Harvard University refuses to capitulate to Trump's culture-war demands; Trump cancels $2.2 billion in grants.

Last week, the Trump administration sent an extraordinary, fascistic letter to Harvard University demanding it cede control over admissions, curriculum, faculty, and research at the university. The Trump administration letter is here: Trump Adminisration Demands to 2025-04-11. I encourage you to read the letter to fully appreciate the dystopian, authoritarian demands the administration sought to impose on Harvard.

Harvard University refused to capitulate to the Trump administration’s demands. The University’s lawyers—Quinn Emanuel and King & Spalding—rejected the demands in this letter: Harvard-Response-2025-04-14. (In a curious twist of fate, the special counsel who did a hatchet-job on President Biden—Robert Hur—signed the letter for King & Spalding. Hur may have helped ensure Trump's election. And Quinn Emanuel represented Paul Weiss in its capitulation to Trump. Go figure.)

Separately, the President of Harvard sent an email to alumni (which doesn’t include me) that reads in part:

I encourage you to read the letter to gain a fuller understanding of the unprecedented demands being made by the federal government to control the Harvard community. They include requirements to “audit” the viewpoints of our student body, faculty, staff, and to “reduc[e] the power” of certain students, faculty, and administrators targeted because of their ideological views. We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.

The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge. No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.

Our motto—Veritas, or truth—guides us as we navigate the challenging path ahead.

Shortly after Harvard rejected the administration’s proposal, the Trump administration canceled over $2 billion in grants to Harvard. See NPR, Trump administration freezes funds for Harvard.

As a reminder, the grants to Harvard were appropriated by Congress under Article I of the Constitution. Even if the administration has some discretion in awarding research grants, doing so in a manner that seeks to deny the free speech rights and academic freedom of a leading research university is a violation of the Constitution and federal law. Withholding funds from Harvard should be an added ground in the articles of impeachment eventually charged against Trump.

Kudos to Harvard for standing firm and to Quinn Emanuel and King & Spalding for representing Harvard against the administration’s fascist demands. Let’s hope that they will urge Harvard to go the distance rather than agree to a humiliating capitulation like Paul Weiss.

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Opportunities for Reader Engagement

I subscribe to Indivisible’s newsletter and received this plea for help (below) to ensure that the SAVE Act does not pass in the Senate. The SAVE Act is subject to the filibuster and would need support from seven Democratic Senators to pass. Senator Chuck Schumer has already declared that the Save Act is “dead on arrival,” but we can leave nothing to chance. Here is Indivisible’s recommendation:

Everyone is welcome to call and email your Senators in opposition to this bill. But we need to drive the most calls to these* senators:

• AZ: Mark Kelly

• GA: Rafael Warnock

• NH: Maggie Hassan

• NH: Jeanne Shaheen

• NV: Catherine Cortez Masto

• NV: Jacky Rosen

• MI: Gary Peters

If you have a Senator on that list, please call them (during business hours) and email them. And if you have friends in those states, urge them to do the same!

Here’s the link to our call tool.
Here’s the link to our email tool.

*We’ve included senators on this list due to recent votes and/or because they haven’t announced a position on this bill.

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Concluding Thoughts

I did not mean to be stinting in my praise of Harvard’s response based on its choice of counsel. Harvard did the right thing and is blazing a trail for other universities. Just as in the legal profession, the intimidation tactics by the administration are illegal and should be reversed.

More importantly, Harvard cannot cede its governance, curriculum, and faculty research to Trump. Doing so would effectively surrender Harvard’s identity as an academic institution by ceding its values and mission to the control of Donald Trump. That would be an ignominious end to one of the nation’s finest academic institutions.

A partner at the law firm of Jenner & Block-- Adam Unikowsky—wrote an article in The Atlantic explaining why his firm refused to capitulate to the Trump administration. See Why My Firm Is Standing Up for the Constitution. (Accessible to all.) Mr. Unikowsky’s article is a comprehensive discussion of all aspects of Jenner & Block’s decision not to capitulate. I highly recommend the article.

An important part of Mr. Unikowsky’s argument is this:

To zealously represent their clients, law firms must remain genuinely independent from government. A law firm that settles with the government is no longer independent from government—particularly where, as here, the settlements give the government de facto veto power over which cases the law firm chooses to take on. . . .

When a law firm agrees to dedicate many millions of dollars to “support the Administration’s initiatives” via “mutually agreed projects,” it cedes control over a piece of the law firm to the government.

Any client who hires Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps, Latham & Watkins, Willkie Farr, and Kirkland & Ellis to litigate or negotiate against the federal government must reasonably ask, “Is my firm recommending this course of action because they are afraid the administration will punish the firm under the capitulation agreement they signed?”

Although I have not researched this question, my gut reaction is that any client hiring one of the capitulating firms must sign a written waiver acknowledging that the firm has a conflict of interest in representing the client against the government. I certainly hope that the firms’ internal general counsels, business intake committees, and insurers are considering that question.

More importantly, the firms have effectively admitted the Trump administration as a “silent partner” at the table in every firm decision henceforth. I cannot imagine a more distasteful, intolerable situation. Harvard made the right choice to preserve its independence, academic integrity, and values. Let’s hope that Harvard’s leadership will convince other universities (and law firms) to maintain their independence.

Talk to you tomorrow!

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Daily Dose of Perspective.

On Monday evening, I planned to image the Sombrero Galaxy, which rose above the horizon at about 9:30 pm PDT. I started to take an image a little too early and captured a portion of a tree (shown in the photo below). The leaves in the tree scattered the city lights to create the blue “aura” at the bottom of the image. Incredibly, a few stars managed to peek through the leaves of the tree. Even more incredibly, the image exposure was only 60 seconds.

The photo below is a 90-minute exposure of the Sombrero Galaxy, showing more detail and definition. I like both images, so I am sharing them with you. Enjoy!