Trump forced to concede defeat

Maine's governor promised she'd see Trump in court. She just declared victory.

In late February, Maine Governor Janet Mills made national headlines for standing up to Trump during a verbal altercation in the White House, during which the president threatened to withhold federal funding from the state if Mills didn’t comply with his February 5 executive order barring trans athletes from competing in sports that don’t comport with their gender at birth. But Mills wasn’t interested in bending to Trump’s will because she was following state law, which bars discrimination based on gender identity, and as she said, she’d be happy to let a judge decide in court.

But after the dust had settled on Trump’s chest beating and grandstanding, on Friday, the Trump administration opted to quietly settle with the state of Maine, dropping its funding freeze and asking Maine to drop its lawsuit against the federal government. This was a vindicated Janet Mills:

It’s worth highlighting this development because Trump wielded the full force of his position against Mills. He verbally accosted her from the White House, singling her out and threatening her among her colleagues. He tried to illegally freeze federal funding to her state as political retribution. Whatever he could do to Mills, he did. But still she fought back.

And she won.

This is the issue of our time. At some point or another, every company, institution, CEO, media outlet, law firm, and university is going to have to choose: when threatened by Donald Trump, will you capitulate or will you fight?

I understand the desire to capitulate. No one wants to sign up for a fight against the most powerful person in the world. But keep in mind, first of all, the immense damage inherent in capitulating. Think about the damage wrought by ABC News when the network settled a frivolous lawsuit with Trump for $15 million and by Paramount for meddling in 60 Minutes’ editorial independence. Think about the damage wrought by law firm Paul, Weiss agreeing to pro bono legal work. Think about the damage wrought by Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post pulling punches against Trump and Zuckerberg’s Meta making Facebook more Republican-friendly. Think about the damage wrought by Columbia University changing its policies to shore up federal funding. These might seem like small steps intended to protect their own positions, but in effect, by rolling over, each one of these players broadcast to Trump how easy it is to win. Meaning he feels that much more emboldened to go after the next law firm, the next media outlet, the next university. Those who capitulate are not simply protecting themselves, they’re making the environment that much easier for Trump to thrive and ultimately weaponize the federal government against them. Their cowardice puts everyone else in danger.

But it doesn’t need to happen that way considering, to my second point, Trump keeps losing! He lost against Maine governor Janet Mills. He lost against Perkins Coie, the law firm that - unlike Paul, Weiss - did opt to fight back. He’s lost something like 80% of the cases his administration has fought in court. Which makes those who’ve capitulated look that much more foolish and that much more cowardly, because the reality is that if they’d just stood up and fought back, they would likely have retained everything they thought they would lose and their dignity would still be intact. Perhaps naively, I’m of the mind that that should still count for something.

Trump will always attack. It’s his nature. It’s his brand. It’s all he knows. But every law firm, every media outlet, every CEO, every governor, every university, every American should recognize that when we stand together and fight back, we will not only win, but send a message that Trump desperately needs to hear, which is that he isn’t the king of this country, no matter how hard he tries to manifest that into reality.