From Robert Reich’s substack of this morning:

“Friends,

I was talking yesterday to a friend who’s a professor at Columbia University about what’s been happening there. He had a lot to say. When he needed to run off to an appointment, I asked him if he’d text or email me the rest of his thoughts. His response floored me. “No,” he said. “I better not. They may be reviewing it.” 

“Who’s ‘they’?” I asked, suddenly worried. 

“They! The university! The government! Gotta go!” He was off. 

My friend has never before shown signs of paranoia. 

I relate this to you because the Trump regime is starting to have a chilling effect on what and how Americans communicate with each another. It is beginning to create mass paranoia, which is exactly what Trump intends. 

The chill affects the four pillars of civil society — universities, science, the media, and the law. 

Start with America’s major universities. Columbia’s capitulation to Trump’s demands that the university identify every demonstrator and put its department of Middle Eastern studies under “receivership” — or else lose $400 million in government funding — is chilling communications there. 

The Trump regime also “detained” a Columbia University graduate student and green card holder without criminal charges merely for participating in protests at the school. The regime’s agents have also entered dorms with search warrants and announced the “removal” of two other students who participated in such protests.

Other major universities are on Trump’s target list. 

Now, consider science. Trump has mounted a direct attack on the three biggest funders of American science — the Centers for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health, and National Science Foundation. 

Tens of thousands of researchers are now worried about how to continue their research. Many have decided to hunker down and not criticize the Trump regime. 

Meanwhile, Philippe Baptiste, the French minister for higher education, has charged that a French scientist traveling to a conference near Houston earlier this month was denied entry into the United States because his phone contained message exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he gave a negative “personal opinion” about Trump’s scientific and research policies. (The U.S. Department of Homeland Security denies this was the reason the scientist wasn’t admitted into the country.)

Next, the media. Major media fear more lawsuits from Trump and his political allies in the wake of ABC’s surrender in December, paying Trump $15 million to settle a defamation case Trump filed against the network. 

Journalists who cover the White House are still reeling from Trump’s decision to bar those deemed unfriendly from major events where space is limited.

Finally, the legal community. Trump’s attack began a week and a half ago with an executive order penalizing one of America’s premier law firms, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison — stripping security clearances for the firm’s lawyers, limiting them from entering government buildings (which could include federal courthouses) or getting government jobs, and terminating the firm’s federal government contracts. Trump also implied he would penalize Paul Weiss’ clients. 

The order followed on Trump targeting two other big law firms, Covington and Burling and Perkins Coie.

What had Paul Weiss and the other firms targeted by Trump done? All three are filled with prominent, establishment Democrats who have engaged in partisan activity against Trump and the Republicans.

Brad Karp himself was a major Democratic donor who worked last year to elect Kamala Harris, even helping her in debate prep. Mark Pomerantz, a former attorney with the firm, participated in a criminal case against Trump in the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Soon thereafter, Trump gave a grievance-filled speech at the Justice Department, charging that “a corrupt group of hacks and radicals” wrongly prosecuted him during the Biden administration and he was preparing new executive actions to personally target the “violent vicious lawyers” who had opposed him. 

This past Thursday, Trump withdrew the executive order against Paul Weiss because, he said, the firm had “acknowledged the wrongdoing” of Pomerantz and pledged $40 million in free legal work to support the Trump administration. 

Then on Friday, Trump broadened his campaign of retaliation against the legal community with a memorandum directing the heads of the Justice and Homeland Security Departments to “seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation against the United States” (for “the United States,” read “Trump”). 

The resulting chill is widespread. Sunday’s Politicoreported that “virtually no one with any long-term standing in the private legal community is willing to speak publicly about [the memorandum], partly out of fear that they or their firms could wind up in Trump’s crosshairs.”

Friends, the chill is the point. 

Trump wants university students to be so intimidated they won’t demonstrate against him; professors, so intimidated they won’t criticize his policies in the classroom; scientists, so intimidated they won’t denounce him even privately; the media, so intimidated they’ll refrain from reporting unfavorably about him; and lawyers, so intimidated they won’t support political rivals or litigate against him. 

Trump is even seeking to intimidate the arts — another pillar of civil society — by taking over the Kennedy Center, firing board members, ousting its president, and making himself chairman. 

Comedian Nikki Glaser, one of the few celebrities to walk the red carpet at this year’s Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize event, told reporters she now thinks twice before doing political jokes directed at Trump. “Like, you just are scared that you’re gonna get doxxed and death threats or who knows where this leads, like, detained. Honestly that’s not even like a joke. It’s like a real fear.” 

Every tyrant in history has sought to stifle criticism of himself and his regime. 

But America was founded on criticism. American democracy was built on dissent. We conducted a revolution against tyranny. 

This moment calls for courage and collective action — not capitulation — by universities, scientists, journalists, the legal community, and the arts. 

Courage in that university presidents, prestigious scientists, media enterprises, the managing partners of law firms, and artists must not back down. To the contrary, they should stand up to his intimidation and sound the alarm about what Trump is trying to do. 

Collective action in that universities, scientists, the media, the legal community, and the arts must join forces to condemn Trump’s attempts to stifle dissent and criticism. 

Every institution, group, firm, or individual that surrenders to Trump’s wanton tyranny invites more of it.“