To be clear, some of his legal — or plausibly legal — policies also deserve opposition from liberals, moderates and conservatives alike. He has damaged America’s standing in the world, especially through his chaotic tariffs. He has made it easier for China and Russia to spy on the United States. He has sowed doubt about the dollar and the Federal Reserve’s independence. He has set back critical research on medical treatments. In each of these areas, he has acted in defiance of public opinion.
The leaders of Harvard University have offered a model of principled opposition that maximizes the chances of success. When Mr. Trump began threatening the university with canceled funds this spring, many Harvard professors and students urged administrators to head straight to the ramparts and denounce him. Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, took a wiser approach. He acknowledged that some of Mr. Trump’s criticisms had merit. Harvard, like much of elite higher education, has, in fact, been blasé about antisemitism, and it has too often prioritized progressive ideology over an independent search for truth.
By admitting as much, Mr. Garber strengthened Harvard’s political position. He said what many Americans believed. But when the administration issued a list of ludicrous demands, Harvard fought back hard. It filed a lawsuit, with help from a legal team that included conservative litigators, and became a national symbol of resistance to his lawlessness. Mr. Garber made Harvard look reasonable and Mr. Trump unreasonable.
Many federal judges, including most Supreme Court justices, have also responded sensibly. They have not picked fights with him or overreached. They have issued narrow, firm rulings directing him to obey the law. Only after he has ignored those rulings have they escalated. The one-paragraph emergency order that seven Supreme Court justices (all but Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas) issued in the middle of the night two weeks ago was particularly important. It blocked the Trump administration from deporting a group of detained men under the Alien Enemies Act. The order’s speed and breadth were signs that Chief Justice John Roberts and most of his colleagues seem to recognize the threat that Mr. Trump’s bad faith poses.
The order put Mr. Trump in a bind. It left him without any evident ways to violate the ruling’s spirit while adhering to its text. If he is going to defy the judiciary now, he will need to do so in an obvious way that will probably further damage his standing with the American public. Every attempt to defend American democracy should be similarly thoughtful.
The past 100 days have wounded this country, and there is no guarantee that we will fully recover. But nobody should give up. American democracy retreated before, during the post-Reconstruction era, Jim Crow, the Red Scare, Watergate and other times. It recovered from those periods not because its survival was inevitable but because Americans — including many who disagreed with one another on other subjects — fought bravely and smartly for this country’s ideals. That is our duty today.
Source photograph by Wirestock, via Getty Images.
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