The UK government is planning to ban public bodies from paying ransoms to computer hackers, and private companies will be required to inform authorities if they plan to cave into cash demands.

The stance, announced on Tuesday by the Home Office security minister, Dan Jarvis, is intended to send a message to international cybercriminals “that the UK is united in the fight against ransomware”. It follows crippling ransomware attacks on the British Library in 2023 and NHS hospitals in London last summer.

The government said almost three-quarters of responses to a consultation backed the proposal and that “public sector bodies and operators of critical national infrastructure, including the NHS, local councils and schools, would be banned from paying ransom demands to criminals”.

Industry estimates suggest ransomware criminals received more than $1bn (£741m) from their victims globally in 2023. But Alan Woodward, a leading computer security expert at the Surrey Centre for Cyber Security, said UK public authorities are not known to pay ransoms.

He said the latest measures appeared aimed at signalling the refusal to pay more clearly to hackers around the world, which include regular offender networks like LockBit and Evil Corp.

“Some of the criminals may not know this and so communicating this could be valuable in that hackers will read that there is no point in attacking,” Woodward said. “I am not sure it will change anything in practice, but it puts everyone on notice so there can be no confusion.”

Businesses not covered by the ban on public sector ransoms would be required to notify the government of any intent to meet hackers’ demands for cash.

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The Home Office said: “The government could then provide those businesses with advice and support, including notifying them if any such payment would risk breaking the law by sending money to sanctioned cybercriminal groups, many of whom are based in Russia.”

Jarvis said he wanted to “smash the cybercriminal business model”. “By working in partnership with industry to advance these measures, we are sending a clear signal that the UK is united in the fight against ransomware,” he said.

The consultation documents said: “This type of crime only works if the potential victims are willing to pay the ransom that the gangs demand. Academic research suggests that criminals operating in this area will assess the level of ransom they can set, and the profit they will expect to make, against the probability that the victim will pay.”

Jonathon Ellison, director of national resilience at the National Cyber Security Centre, said ransomware “remains a serious and evolving threat, and organisations must not become complacent”.

“These new measures help undermine the criminal ecosystem that is causing harm across our economy,” he said. “All businesses should strengthen their defences using proven frameworks such as Cyber Essentials and our free Early Warning service, and be prepared to respond to incidents, recover quickly, and maintain continuity if the worst happens.”

In an unprecedented deal, Columbia University agreed to pay the Trump administration $221 million to restore research funds the administration dropped due to the school’s failure to protect Jewish students and faculty during the pro-Hamas protests that rocked the campus in 2023-24.

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The Trump administration also uncovered some egregious violations of civil rights laws in its admissions and hiring practices. The settlement — the first in what promises to be many such payouts by schools under investigation by the Education Department — could serve as a template for settling other federal enforcement actions being taken against several elite institutions.

Acting President Claire Shipman said the deal “marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty” and that it “safeguards our independence, a critical condition for academic excellence and scholarly exploration.” The statement added that Columbia “will retain control of faculty hiring, admissions, and curricular decisions,” according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

In March 2024, the government announced the cancellation of $400 million in grants and other research funds in light of the school’s inaction in the face of attacks and harassment of Jewish students and faculty. The government provided Colombia with a list of actions that it would need to take before talks to restore the funding could begin. One of those preconditions was placing the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies department under academic receivership. That’s where the most egregious antisemitic faculty members were situated.

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One outside expert thought the agreement was as good as Columbia could expect. “Columbia couldn’t tolerate the administration holding up billions of dollars in current and future grants, so they paid what is essentially ransom,” said Michael C. Dorf, a professor of law at Cornell University. “The ransom that they ended up paying strikes me as a pretty good value if you decide you’re going to pay ransom. But the problem with paying ransom is that it incentivizes the taking of more hostages.” Columbia community members had mixed reactions to the deal. Brian Cohen, the executive director of the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life, praised the deal as “an important recognition” that “antisemitism at Columbia is real, and it has had a tangible impact on Jewish students’ sense of safety and belonging and, in turn, their civil rights.”

The agreement will be overseen by a third-party monitor, Bart M. Schwartz, co-founder and chairman of the investigations firm Guidepost Solutions . For civil rights violations, the school will pay $100 million annually for three years, with $21 million allocated to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The university had previously agreed to work to “diversify” its faculty by recruiting more conservative professors. What progress, if any, has been made toward that promise is unknown.

Marcel Agüeros, a professor of astronomy and secretary of Columbia’s AAUP [American Association of University Professors] chapter, noted that though he understands the university is trying to protect itself against an “existential threat,” paying the federal government is “also absurd, because what Columbia is pledging to do is to follow the law. And at no point has anyone demonstrated that Columbia has not followed the law.”

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Elite schools have been hiding behind that excuse for decades. Sticking to the letter of the law while sneering at its intent by minimally enforcing rules against antisemitism and in favor of intellectual diversity cannot be tolerated. Claiming “Well, we followed the rules” while doing the bare minimum to protect students and faculty is no longer acceptable.

The university recently expelled nearly 80 students involved in a takeover of the library earlier this year. The school also announced it would be working with Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, to teach courses on antisemitism.

It’s a start.

Editor’s Note: Radical leftist judges are doing everything they can to hamstring President Trump’s agenda to make America great again.

Help us hold these corrupt judges accountable for their unconstitutional rulings. Join PJ Media VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has announced a joint commission with Haiti to examine the countries’ shared past as Haitian campaigners demand a reimbursement of billions of dollars worth of “ransom” paid to France.

Macron announced his intention to create the commission as campaigners renewed calls for reparations on the bicentenary of an agreement to pay 150m francs to France in 1825 to compensate slave-owning colonists after the Haitian Revolution.

“That decision put a price on the liberty of a young nation, which from its birth thereby confronted the unjust force of history,” Macron said.

Though the figure was later reduced to 90m, Fritz Deshommes, president of the Haitian National Committee on Restitution and Reparations (HNCRR), estimates the converted value of the payment today could be between $38bn and $135bn, depending on how the sum is calculated and whether it reflects lost customs revenue and economic stagnation.

Macron said the commission would be tasked with the “necessary and indispensable” work of examining all aspects of Haiti’s and France’s shared history and “propose recommendations to both governments to draw lessons from it and build a more peaceful future”.

“Today, on this bicentenary, we must look history in the face,” he said. “For France, it also means assuming its share of truth in the construction of memory, so painful for Haiti.”

Deshommes described the establishment of a joint commission as a “very small step” in the right direction and “a delaying move that buys time and allows for a wait-and-see approach”.

He said: “In reality, France has shown no intention of addressing the issue of restitution in a direct and determined way. Granted, there is acknowledgment of the original injustice and the need to build a better relationship between our two people – but nothing more.

“In the same way, France has recognised slavery as a crime against humanity, yet refuses to make reparations for that crime. The struggle for the restitution of the triple ransom of independence must therefore continue and intensify.”

Once France’s most important colony in the Caribbean, Haiti received hundreds of thousands of Africans who had been kidnapped, forcibly transported across the Atlantic and sold into slavery.

After a bloody struggle between self-liberated slaves and French, Spanish and British forces, it became the first Caribbean nation to gain its independence from colonial rule in 1804.

But, under threat of military action, France later demanded what the HNCRR member Jean Mozart Feron described as an unjust and exorbitant ransom, supposedly to provide compensation for former enslavers.

The enormous payments, Feron said, crippled the fledgling nation. “This ransom plunged Haiti into a spiral of economic dependency from which it has never fully recovered and … strangled the young nation, stifling its development and diverting precious resources that could have been invested in education and infrastructure,” he said.

The debt not only created deep structural poverty, social inequality and weak institutions, but also affected “the way Haiti is perceived and treated on the international stage without due consideration for this history of economic exploitation”, he said.

Monique Clesca, spokesperson for the Kolektif Ayisyen Afwodesandan, a civil society organisation that has been campaigning for reparations for Haiti, said the “monstrous debt” created by the ransom prevented the country from “moving forward at the rhythm that we should have been moving forward”.

“Politically this meant that we almost became a neocolony, totally indebted to France, not only in terms of economics, but symbolically and politically, we were tied. So there are serious repercussions and consequences to this continuous debt that you can’t undo,” she said.

The campaigners are calling for France to repay the ransom and offer restitution for the harm caused by slavery and colonisation.

The HNCRR is working in alignment with the Caribbean Community (Caricom), which has a 10-point plan for reparatory justice.

Speaking at the opening of the UN’s Permanent Forum on People of African Descent on Monday, the Caricom secretary general, Dr Carla Barnett, joined the calls for reparations for Haiti.

“The negative economic and social effects of this historical injustice are painfully clear, with arguable links to the situation in Haiti today. This anniversary presents an opportunity to bring global attention and a deeper understanding of the situation in Haiti and serves as a call to action to address the ongoing security, humanitarian and governance crises in the country,” she said.

Macron said France was ready to confront its past and accept “its share of truth in the creation of memory, a painful one, for Haiti, which began in 1825”. He added: “Today, on this bicentennial, we must, here as elsewhere, face this history squarely … Haiti was born of a revolution, faithful to the spirit of 1789, which brilliantly affirmed the universal principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.

“This struggle in Haiti, in harmony with the ideals of the French Revolution, should have offered France and Haiti the opportunity to walk a common path. But the forces of the counterrevolution since 1814, the restoration of the Bourbons and the monarchy, decided otherwise regarding the writing of history,” he said.

Appealing for global support for Haiti’s reparations claim, Feron said: “Haitian citizens do not hold French people responsible for the decision made in 1825 by the French state. However, we believe that the French people have a moral responsibility and a duty to stand in solidarity with the Haitian people in this initiative.”

The HNCRR, he said, was of the view that France and Haiti could reach an agreement about the “types of expertise and technical assistance valued within the framework of restitution”. But Haiti, he added, must ultimately decide how to use the reparations.

Haiti has been gripped by crisis since the 2021 assassination of then president Jovenel Moïse, and a subsequent gang insurgency which forced Ariel Henry, who led the country as an unelected prime minister after Moïse’s death, out of office in March 2024. Since then, support from the international community has failed to restore stable, democratic governance and curb the spiralling violence, which has killed thousands and displaced tens of thousands.

Feron dismissed arguments that the current crisis could prevent the country from effectively managing any reparation payments, arguing that the state of the country was a consequence of its history.

He added: “Our committee intends to work closely with the civil society to clearly advise the Haitian state on how this money should be used or could be used and how it should be managed with total transparency in a responsible manner.”

President Trump has signed several Executive Orders targeting law firms who have challenged his agenda or hired his political enemies. Many in the legal community worry about the impact this could have on the overall legal system.

Guests

Ankush Khardori, senior writer for Politico Magazine and legal affairs columnist. Author of “I Worked at a Big Law Firm. Here’s What to Know About the Surrender to Trump.”

Stephen Gillers, professor of legal ethics emeritus at NYU School of Law.

Also Featured

Thomas Sipp, former associate at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. He resigned on Monday.

Transcript

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: Thomas Sipp was 10 years old when he moved from Japan to America.

THOMAS SIPP: And so I learned English in middle school. My parents separated soon after we moved. And so I was raised by a single mom who doesn’t speak a lot of English. And it was difficult, like learning a language in middle school is tough.

And I had an accent that I worked really hard to get rid of.

CHAKRABARTI: Thomas went on to college and earned his undergraduate degree in his home state at the University of Texas. After that, law school.

SIPP: For an immigrant kid like me, who learned English in middle school, went to a great institution, University of Texas, it’s a public school. And suddenly, Columbia Law School is asking me to come and that they’ll help fund my time there, is a hard offer to turn down.

CHAKRABARTI: Funding though didn’t mean free. So Thomas took on large student loans, but once he graduated major law firms, which offer big salaries, they were very attractive to him. Places like Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

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SIPP: They’re prestigious and they pay you a lot of money.

And I was raised by a single mom who I promised when I was a kid, that I’d be able to take care of her when I’m older. And so those were just the sort of reasons that attracted me to Skadden, too. And then on top of that, the firm is holding itself out as being principled, that it has values beyond just making a profit.

It has certain commitments to pro bono work and diversity initiatives that distinguish itself from its peer firms.

CHAKRABARTI: Skadden, though, is a huge U.S.-based multinational law firm. They have more than 20 offices and more than 1,700 attorneys work for the firm. In 2023, Skadden grossed more than $3.2 billion, which makes it the fifth highest grossing law firm in the world. Now, Thomas started in September of 2023 on Skadden’s litigation team.

He felt so proud, he says, and privileged to work at one of the premier law firms in the country. But last Friday, all that changed.

NEWS BRIEF: We begin with some breaking news. The Trump administration reached a settlement with the Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom firms. The law firm was just one of the targets in executive orders aimed at firms with prior associations to Trump’s political enemies.

CHAKRABARTI: President Trump is indeed going after his personal and political enemies, and he’s using the power of the presidency to do. Last month, he signed several executive orders against some of the country’s biggest law firms. The reason? They dared to take cases that challenged Trump’s agenda or hired people he does not like, or they have diversity initiatives in their own firms hiring.

To be clear, firms of this size also take cases that Trump most certainly supports, because that’s what big law firms do. But the president doesn’t seem to recognize that. The executive orders threatened to revoke these firm’s security clearances, ban access to government buildings, and restrict government clients, and we’ll talk about all of the firms in just a minute.

Interestingly, there was no executive orders specifically targeting Skadden. But according to Skadden’s executive partner, Jeremy London, he knew one was coming. So the firm decided to cut a deal instead.

SIPP: And we’re all very shocked. I guess we saw it coming, but to see it on the news first, I thought it was pretty humiliating

CHAKRABARTI: Under the deal, Skadden agrees to provide at least $100 million in pro bono work to causes supported by the Trump administration. It also agreed to commit, quote, to merit-based hiring, promotion and retention, end quote. And fund at least five fellows as part of a scholarship fund.

In a firm wide email, Jeremy London stated quote, “We entered into the agreement the president announced today because when faced with the alternatives, it became clear that it was the best path to protect our clients, our people, and our firm.” End quote.

Now, we reached out to Skadden for comment but received no response.

SIPP: Sort of victory lap from the administration.

I remember the article I read was quoting the president saying, something along the lines of, these firms are just begging to sign the deal. They’re just saying they’re just asking where to sign, so it doesn’t really even seem like much of a negotiation. I thought it made the firm look weak.

CHAKRABARTI: That was Thomas again, the deal was struck last Friday, and he says he did not eat or sleep all weekend.

SIPP: I finally start just writing my thoughts down, and a lot of them were questions at the beginning, and I realized that those questions were becoming statements. And on Sunday night I realized this is what I was writing was starting to look like a resignation.

CHAKRABARTI: Thomas wondered how the firm could comply with the agreement. What would stop the president from going after Skadden again and again, asking more. And he also asked himself more personal questions like, why did he become a lawyer in the first place?

SIPP: Even though the ideas about race in Japan is different from our conceptions of race in the United States, I really felt so inspired by at least the potential of what America could be, as a sort of place where people are valued for who they are and like what they do, as opposed to what they look like.

And this system exists because of the laws that people have fought so hard for in the United States. And that continue to build upon itself. And obviously, it’s not a straightforward trajectory, but I really wanted to be a part of that system, that process.

CHAKRABARTI: On Monday of this week, Thomas met with his managers.

SIPP: I talked about my background and why I believe these things so strongly. And that because I know that Skadden’s agreement with the Trump administration is helping destroy something that I’ve come to love so much, that if I stayed, I would be betraying myself, as much as my country.

So I thanked them. I told them I’ll miss them, and I resigned.

CHAKRABARTI: Thomas sent out his resignation letter to his team and in the letter, he addressed the elephant in the room, that he would be seen as a quote, young attorney, too eager to throw his career away. End quote. Thomas knows his decision comes across as potentially naive, but to him, there’s no other option.

Here he is again, sharing a little more of what was in his resignation letter.

SIPP: The consequences of Skadden’s agreement with the Trump administration doesn’t just impact the firm. It impacts the profession. It impacts the independence of the judiciary, which is crucial for our constitutional system and how that impacts our democracy.

CHAKRABARTI: Thomas is 27 years old. He just graduated from law school two years ago. He still has his student loans and his mother that he financially helps. And his career that just began.

SIPP: I’m still nervous about the future. I know what I did, what I’m doing, even what I’m doing right now and speaking to you is probably closing some doors.

And I realized, as I thought more and more about this over the weekend, that there’s someone else like me in America right now, some middle schooler maybe, maybe even came from another country, who’s in a history class, thinking, like, what would I do? Would I do the right thing?

And I really believe that as a lawyer, I have a responsibility to that person, to that kid. And to everyone else, too, in this country, who depend on lawyers to uphold the role of law so that everyone can make a life here and enjoy their liberties.

CHAKRABARTI: Thomas Sipp, he resigned from the law firm Skadden just four days ago.

Okay, so here’s how this is being talked about. It’s President Trump’s war against big law. Let’s take a look at that. And joining us now is Ankush Khardori. He’s a senior writer and for Politico and a Legal affairs columnist. He’s author of the recent article “I worked at a big law firm and here’s what to know about the surrender to Trump.”

And that law firm that Ankush used to work at is Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He worked there for nearly a decade and is a former federal prosecutor. Ankush Khardori, welcome to On Point.

ANKUSH KHARDORI: Thanks for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: So in your article you write that you are not surprised at all that so many of these firms once hit with the executive orders, or actually even before they’re hit with the EOs, are folding to President Trump.

Why are you not surprised?

KHARDORI: These are large companies. They’re for-profit enterprises and they exist to make money, ideally, a lot of it. And the vast majority of their work is skewed toward wealthy, entrenched interests, large corporations, wealthy individuals. I think the right sort of easily accessible way to think about this is to think about these law firms as somewhat similar to large banks in the financial services industry.

If something like this had happened at Citibank or J.P. Morgan, I don’t think we would have people scratching their heads and wondering why they let us down.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. So I have to be honest, I want to put everything very bluntly in this hour, and you are free to correct me if I’m wrong.

What you’re saying is that what people presumed about big law firms is true. That they’re essentially morally bankrupt and that once threatened by the president of the United States, they’re willing to put firm over country, or even firm over constitution.

KHARDORI: Yeah. No, that’s correct. I don’t know if I would go so far as to call it morally bankrupt.

I have some skin in the game, since I worked there. But they do serve a real purpose in our economy and society. Maybe in a different sort of social or economic architecture, we wouldn’t have these large law firms, but no, they exist. They’re for-profit enterprises.

They exist to make money. The partners wanna make money. They ideally wanna make a ton of money. I don’t regard any of this as particularly surprising. These places are not paragons of virtue or sacrifice or civility or anything like that. I wasn’t under any illusions about it when I experienced it.

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And you’re making a bargain. As a young lawyer, you’re paid a lot of money to set any of those concerns you might have to the side. And the bargain is very transparent. And I respect people like Thomas Sipp, who have reconsidered their choices and are speaking about them.

But I don’t think he should have been surprised.

CHAKRABARTI: I’m presuming that the partners, at least in these firms, are pretty smart legal people, and do they not know that they are helping pave the way to a total authoritarian state?

KHARDORI: I’m sure they know the consequences, but they know their bank accounts even better.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: Knowing what you know from working inside of Paul, Weiss. The head of that firm specifically said, and you mentioned this in your article, that this giant firm was going to potentially go out of business if they did not strike a deal with Trump. Are they really that dependent on the federal government for clients that their mere existence was threatened by one executive order?

I do not believe that claim. The claim came from Brad Karp, the head of the firm, in a firm wide email that was given to a legal writer initially who just did not examine it with any sort of skepticism. Look, what was actually gonna happen at Paul, Weiss and some of this has been reported.

Is that a group of corporate partners who manage transactional work, some of whom are relatively recent arrivals at the firm, were thinking about leaving. They wanted to cave in response to executive order pretty quickly, is my understanding. They’re thinking about leaving, taking a lot of business with them, probably most of the firm’s business at this point, because it’s heavily skewed toward corporate rather than litigation work, which is not, it was just not the way it used to be like 10, 15 years ago.

What would’ve happened in that scenario is that then you would’ve had the litigation partners and whoever’s left from the corporate side just working at a smaller and less profitable firm. The notion that the firm would’ve collapsed or gone out of business is absurd.

It assumes that the partners can’t live on less than $6.5 million a year, which is their average profit per equity partner. Brad Karp makes tens of millions of dollars a year, so nobody should take him seriously.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Yet they cut this deal. You know what, I respect the top minds in the legal profession.

I do not personally shed a tear for them in this decision. My deeper concern is the rule of law in this country in general, and the protection of what the words of the constitution are meant to imply for how this country works. So Ankush, hang on for just a second.

I want to bring Stephen Gillers into the conversation. He’s a professor of legal ethics, a professor emeritus of legal ethics at the New York University School of Law. Professor Gillers, welcome to you.

STEPHEN GILLERS: Thank you.

CHAKRABARTI: So what I’d like to do with both of you right now is actually just dissect some of these executive orders in detail.

And understand not only what they’re saying on the page, but what the implications are for, as I said earlier, the rule of law. In honor of former firm Paul, Weiss, I have the EO here. March 14th, 2025. And these are the first lines. By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America.

It is hereby ordered. Section 1. Background. Global law firms have for years played an outsized role in undermining the judicial process and in the destruction of bedrock American principles. Professor Gillers. How do you analyze that?

GILLERS: That’s absolutely false, and everything in that executive order is false.

The authority to issue it doesn’t exist. So I would not look to the language of what Trump said as reflecting the views of the targets of the executive orders.

CHAKRABARTI: But professor, if everything is false and the executive orders are essentially then illegal, but the firms are capitulating to something that, I don’t know, arguably they could actually resist in court.

They’re choosing not to do that.

GILLERS: Maybe they could and maybe they couldn’t. We’re gonna find out about that, because some firms have gone to court. But there is more than just the court. There are some things that cannot be brought to court. There are some ways of punishing a law firm that never have the fingerprints of the president on them.

So no, I don’t think the availability of the courts is a panacea for what these firms faced.

CHAKRABARTI: Ankush, do you wanna respond to that?

KHARDORI: Oh, no I think that’s quite right. And I share that Professor Gillers’s assessment of the text of the executive order. It’s quite disingenuous, we should not take it as a true reflection of their intentions.

I think so far as I can tell, from the pattern, they’re going after firms that had mostly hired or currently have, among the partners, people who investigated and potentially prosecuted Trump or attempted to prosecute Trump. I share the view that the language is beside the point.

And also, Professor Gillers is right. There are many other ways that the administration could hurt these firms that don’t rise to level of public visibility, including, for instance, law firms that represent corporate clients, frequently, in high profile cases will try to arrange meetings with regulators or prosecutors, the Justice Department, kind of present their case, introduce some facts.

Those meetings can just be turned down by the government, they’re under no obligation to take them to begin with. But they can be very important to advocating for clients.

CHAKRABARTI: Respectfully to both of you, I disagree that the language doesn’t matter. Because I think the language matters a lot to people who listen to the Trump administration, who watch Fox News, et cetera.

There’s a vision of what law means in this country that is being trumpeted in these executive orders. For example, again, in the Paul, Weiss EO, the president says, essentially, that pro bono work. As he says, quote, ostensibly for the public good deprives those who cannot otherwise afford the benefit of top legal talent, and my administration will no longer support taxpayer funds sponsoring them.

He’s, yes, I get that. It’s disingenuous because he’s extracted now a hundred million dollars of pro bono work from each of these several funds. But on the other hand, the whole idea of this arm of what these big law firms are doing, simply because some of that pro bono work is for causes the president doesn’t agree with.

That’s being normalized now, through this executive order and through the voices that advance that into the homes and the ears and eyes of the American people, Professor Gillers.

GILLERS: I think you’re wrong if you think that the firms had an affirmative obligation to join the issue over the words that Trump chose to use in his executive order. To get up there and say, oh no, we are not like that at all. What they wanted to do and what they had a legitimate interest in doing is extricating themselves from the evil purposes of the Trump administration, and protect their business and protect their clients.

That does not include standing up and litigating the actual language of the executive order. What it does include is negotiating whatever obligations that the administration wanted them to take on, and to ensure that those are soft enough to do, consistent with their public position and their respect for the rule of law. These executive orders do not undermine the rule of law.

I think that the idea that the firms had a larger obligation to go to battle for the public, for the rest of us, has an overly romantic view of what they are. As Ankush said at the beginning, these are money institutions. They’re not justice institutions. They do just things, but their primary obligation is to the clients and to the law firm, the courts that license them.

And to their lawyers and their staff, and that’s what they honored in doing what they did.

CHAKRABARTI: Tell me how it does not undermine the rule of law. You have to convince me here, professor.

GILLERS: In whose mind? If it’s in your mind, maybe I can’t, because maybe you don’t see it.

CHAKRABARTI: Well, then help me, but then help me see it.

I’m asking you to explain.

GILLERS: No. You have to tell me why you think it undermines the rule of law. The law is still there, the courts are still there. The judges are still there. There are 1.3 million American lawyers who are still there. Some of them are prepared to take on cases for indigent people, for people who have suffered discrimination, all of that is still there.

There are lawyers and legal institutions and nonprofit law firms that are right now fighting for immigrants, despite the Trump administration, that is in defense of the rule of law, they’re doing that. These five firms that have settled, and there are five. These five firms that have settled on vague terms, subject to pretty expansive definitions, they have, by their settlement, not erased everything I just described, which constitutes the rule of law. And that’s why the rule of law is still standing, and indeed, I think will get even stronger as a result of what Trump is trying to do.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, I’m gonna come back to that. But let me clarify. Do I think that the American legal system is so fragile that four or five executive orders can completely undermine it? No, but I definitely see a pattern. I consider this a step towards, again, the calcifying of an authoritarian presidency.

Okay what does that mean? That means that a president who operates above or beyond the rule of law, a president who is not touched by the rule of law. And let me turn to a historian for support in my argument here. In August of 2023, we had NYU Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat on the show.

She’s written a lot about authoritarianism in many countries over time. And she discussed with us how she sees President Trump as applying what she calls the authoritarian playbook here in the United States. And during that hour, she described how within the legal system, she sees Trump as actively challenging some of the American legal system checks and balances.

RUTH BEN-GHIAT: So the reason they do this is that the purpose of authoritarianism is to allow the leader to commit crime with impunity. So that they feel safe. And so all of this, Trump 2025, the whole plan, which has been laid out with the help of the Heritage Foundation, when Trump’s former head of the Office of Management and Budget says, quote, we’re looking for pockets of independence in the government to seize them.

That is what’s called autocratic capture. That’s what Tol described that Erdogan already did. So you must purge the civil service and institutions of any non-loyalists. And once you’ve done that, then you can commit as many crimes as you want, and you’re untouchable. Being untouchable is the dream of authoritarians like Trump.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. She’s talking about the civil service there. But I will expand that a step beyond, and say, because these executive orders, they’re also threatening to take away, let’s say, the security clearances of some of these firms. They were threatening to bar them from even physically entering federal buildings.

That it’s all sort of part and part of the same strategy. Professor Gillers, please feel free to disagree with me if you want, but I’d love to hear your response to that.

GILLERS: I do disagree, but I don’t disagree that Trump’s goal is to accumulate in one person as much political and economic power as the American legal system and the Constitution permits.

That’s his objective. There’s no doubt about that, but I do disagree that these five firms that have reached an accord with the Trump administration are, and I think this was your word before, paving the way toward a totally authoritarian state. I think that is apocalyptic and you cannot connect these five, call them settlements, with the prospect of that happening, three firms did not settle. Five firms did settle. And I think there is a vast disconnect between what either set of firms did on the one hand, and the paving the way to a totally authoritarian state or a claim of moral bankruptcy for what they did, on the other hand.

CHAKRABARTI: Ankush. Go ahead.

KHARDORI: Yeah, I think, I share the concern about how this might affect how lawyers operate, but I just think it’s worth getting down to brass tacks here. Probably none of us who are in this discussion could even afford to hire any of these law firms.

They’re at an average of, I think, $1,000 an hour billing rates. Now, some of these partners bill up to $3,000 an hour. These are extremely wealthy people serving extremely wealthy interests. So if we’re concerned about how this might impact their clients, we’re really talking about Citibank, Google, Amazon, and maybe we are concerned about it.

I’m not terribly concerned. These are small parts of a very large industry. The vast majority of Americans do not have access to these firms for their legal needs. They would never be able to come close to paying for them. And I just want some of the claims that are in the executive order, you are right that they deserve scrutiny.

But for instance, the executive order says that Paul, Weiss has been engaged in some pro bono whatever litigation against the administration. What is that litigation? It does not exist. They’re not doing anything. I believe they litigated on some of the family separation issues during the first administration, but they’re not some prominent player in any of the litigation that’s currently moving through the courts, that we’re all paying very close attention to.

And the executive orders also cite DEI. This is absurd, as I’m sure Professor Gillers knows, the partnerships at these law firms are extremely skewed toward white men. 90% of the equity partners in this country, meaning the partners at these firms who share in the profits, are white. So the idea that they were like making these great big changes on the DEI front, that’s absurd too.

What’s happening is that Trump, the Trump administration, and true to form, is just tossing a lot of things at the wall. Using terms that they know will draw some support, draw some attention to, I think, mask their real intentions, which is really quite petty. Going after certain firms based on a small number of people that they hired.

It is corrupt, I agree. And it’s abuse of power. But I share Professor Gillers’ view. I don’t think like the average American needs to be concerned about this, to be honest.

GILLERS: The idea that the firms are subject to criticism because the clients they represent are wealthy, or because the lawyers at the firms earn millions of dollars a year.

It is interesting, but it’s a non-starter. It’s got nothing to do with the essence of the debate. We should not be in a position of saying, you should have stood up to Trump, for whatever value that might have had. We can talk about what that might be, because you make $6 million a year and you wish to avoid having your income halved.

CHAKRABARTI: That is not why I’m saying they should have stood up to the president. Just to be clear, I’m saying that perhaps they should have shown a little backbone and stood up to the president, the ones that settled. Because there comes a time in every nation’s history where we have to individually decide, does the values and principles upon which I believe this country is founded matter, or does my pocketbook matter?

GILLERS: Okay, so let’s just trace that. So a firm stands up to Trump, a Jenner or a Wilmer. They go to court, let’s say they win, and the executive orders are vacated entirely. Are we better off? Trump still has all the power. He could find other workarounds to attack those firms. Now he’s even more angry at those firms.

There are things he could do that we never know about, because no one’s fingerprints are on it. It’s all done quietly. Are we in a better position versus the firms that settled? Because they saw a way of minimizing what they were paying, what ransom they were paying.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Gillers, I’m sorry I had to cut you off before the break there, but you said, so a word which I think really captures this moment in essence perfectly. You said the ransom, that the Trump administration is essentially holding these law firms at ransom. I think that’s exactly right. It’s like ransomware, right?

Your whole life, your computer’s taken over and you have either the choice of hiring someone to rid yourself, to decon your life of ransomware, or you just pay the ransomware guys off. I get it. Tons of people, hospitals, et cetera. They pay the ransomware guys off. And you know what happens?

The ransomware spreads, they do it again and again. And politically, I would argue that’s exactly what’s going to happen now with the capitulation these firms are showing the Trump administration.

GILLERS: I think ransom is a good word. I used it. I think what Trump is saying to the firms apropos what we know about organized crime, nice firm you have there, terrible if anything happened to it.

And that’s what’s happening. And the firms have paid a ransom. They’ve decided, five firms have decided, that the price is low enough so that they’re willing to do it. Now, that may change. You may be right. Trump may come back and say, I didn’t ask for enough last time. Here’s my new demand.

You have to pick your spots. Right now, the firm’s made decisions against a set of facts and a set of threats. It could come to pass for me, for others, that the Trump machinery is so oppressive that we can say that this compromises the rule of law and that it is wrong for a firm like Paul, Weiss or a firm like Skadden not to stand up against it.

Wrong for anyone not to stand up against it. But what I have trouble with it is extrapolating from the current situation and deciding what the worst can be, and what we would expect if the worst happened. When that happens, when it gets worse, we’ll deal with it at the time. But the moment, I think the firms made a rather clever agreement using vague terms, regarding what they promised in exchange for what they’re getting.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, no, I take your point, and perhaps maybe, by the way, I’m loving the vigor of this conversation, and I think part of it is because we’re coming at this from different perspectives. I completely understand how as lawyers you are looking at this from, what are the facts of the case right now?

Let’s argue around those facts right now. As a journalist, I think I’m tasked with looking at, what does history say? What are the current politics of the situation? What are the potential implications? That’s our job. My job is to explore that. So with that in mind, Ankush, lemme turn back to you on something.

We have been discussing implications thus far in terms of the cost to the law firms. Even dollar cost to the law firms. I would like to dare to push this conversation into the realm of the moral cost to the country. How about even the cost to the belief or the sanctity of the office of the presidency of the United States?

Because when a president so overtly and so gleefully in an executive order, an instrument of great power, says, we’re going after you simply because of somebody you hired. I’m reading the Paul, Weiss EO again. He says in 2022, Paul, Weiss, quote, hired unethical attorney, Mark Pomerantz, who had previously left Paul, Weiss to join the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

And here’s the money quote, solely to manufacture a prosecution against me, being Donald Trump. There is something I would say in that does weaken the idea that a president of the United States doesn’t use his office for personal, political retribution.

KHARDORI: Oh, I think —

GILLERS: It’s worse than that. I’m sorry. Go ahead, Ankush.

KHARDORI: Oh, so I was just gonna say, I think you’re completely correct, it is an abuse of power for precisely the reasons you identified. I actually do have a question though, an earnest question. For Professor Gillers, that I’ve been batting around in my head, I think the structure of these deals violates federal criminal law and extortion.

Now, nobody’s ever gonna get prosecuted, because it’s Trump and he runs the Justice Department. But how, this is a sincere question, Professor Gillers, how does that influence, kind of your assessment of the cleverness of the deals and like the propriety of them?

GILLERS: I’m not an expert on federal criminal law, so I don’t know if your perception is fair.

But I don’t think it changes my view about the behavior of the law firms and trying to rid themselves of the specter of these executive orders. I don’t think they are, by doing that, encouraging victimization of themselves in violation of the federal criminal law.

KHARDORI: Oh, no, I don’t, I’m not talking about incentive.

I’m just saying lawyers should not break the law.

GILLERS: And I don’t think that the settlement agreements, again, subject to an expert on federal criminal law, but I don’t think that the settlement agreements themselves warrant a conclusion that the law firms that enter them are guilty of breaking the federal criminal law.

As a victim of an extortion attempt, here’s $1,000. So his store windows are not broken. Is he guilty of a crime?

KHARDORI: Yes. Conspiring to engage in extortion. If they instigate the deal. If it’s their idea.

GILLERS: No. No, they don’t. No, they don’t instigate the deal.

KHARDORI: No.

Paul, the reporting on Paul, Weiss was that Brad Karp instigated the deal.

GILLERS: Uh-huh. So you are, what you are saying because, and I’m not an expert in this area, is that if Brad Karp instigated the deal by seeking a meeting with Trump, in which he and Trump could come to an agreement, that he thereby is committing a felony under federal law.

KHARDORI: Very possibly.

CHAKRABARTI: Ankush, can I just say, maybe you were about to do this, I was gonna say, as a former federal prosecutor yourself, how would you answer your own question?

KHARDORI: Yeah. No, sincerely I leaked to some of this in my work. The Justice Department has a public page on the application of the Hobbs Act, which has a provision on extortion by public officials, including extortion under official right. Meaning under the authority of the office, and that public webpage, I just checked it a few days ago, contains two highly salient observations about the state of the law. First, that it’s extortion even if the money goes to a third party.

And second, that if the person who, like, comes up with the scheme, even if it’s the quote-unquote victim and they propose it to the bad actor, yes. They can be charged with conspiring to engage in extortion or bribery, depending on how you look at the facts. Now, I’m not offering a definitive conclusion on that.

Because any kind of criminal case, you need to know much more about the law and the facts. But I actually think, just based on my own knowledge, based on what the Justice Department has put out in the world on this subject, there is a colorable case that the people who engaged in these deals violated federal law.

Nobody is gonna prosecute that. But I think if we’re talking about the propriety of these deals. And the rule of law, like that, to me, is the more striking thing. And if you look at a firm like Paul, Weiss, they have a former attorney general among their partners. Loretta Lynch, the last confirmed U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Damian Williams works there.

These people definitely know these things. And there are plenty of former federal prosecutors at all of these firms. So that is why I said I don’t wanna offer it definitively. It was an earnest question for Professor Gillers, because I was sincerely interested, and I am interested in his analysis.

That to me is something that I find quite striking about all this. And problematic, more so than the effects that we may think are more society wide, which I share the professor’s views are limited right now, and if they spread, we should address them when they spread.

CHAKRABARTI: So can you just clarify for we, non-legal folks about why you think that, what you just said, is potentially the more problematic aspect?

KHARDORI: Oh. Just because I think lawyers should not break the law. Pretty simple. I’m not to be flip about it, but what happened was Brad Karp, according to the reporting, came up with this idea of getting out from under the executive order by paying the president a bunch of money to a third party.

And what did he get in exchange for that? He got the lifting of the restriction on the executive order, including being able to attend, go to federal buildings and the lawyers who had security clearances revoked, got them back. Those are official acts.

Undoubtedly, under federal public corruption law, at least the issuing of the security clearances.

The revocation and giving of them back. So what happened? Brad Karp paid money for the president to engage in official acts to benefit him.

CHAKRABARTI: I really appreciate you bringing this analysis. Because obviously I couldn’t have and it makes me wonder the following. In that what you’re describing here is no one, the only people that would potentially put a stop to a deal like this would be in the Justice Department.

Not gonna happen in the Trump administration, as you just said. But therefore, the DOJ isn’t gonna stop lawyers from breaking the law. Lawyers potentially have broken the law here, as you’re saying, in terms of federal extortion law. To me, again, maybe I’m just a broken record on this, it’s not, that doesn’t signify the collapse of the rule of law in this country, but it does signify another sort of removal of one of the buttresses to it.

KHARDORI: Yeah, look, I just say on the sort of the recourse front, because you’re right, the DOJ won’t do anything. Manhattan DA’s office could look at it. Ethical authorities could look at it too. And I think they should.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Gillers, go ahead. Yeah.

GILLERS: Yeah, in fairness, we should say that Paul Weiss or Brad Karp took a vote of the partnership before this was agreed to.

And that would include Loretta Lynch, and that would include Damian Williams, and that would include other partners who were former AUSAs and one would expect in putting forth this quote settlement that if there were a serious problem or even the illusion of a problem that they would’ve spoken up.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Gillers, can I circle back to one thing that you said earlier, that when I was reading the executive order —

KHARDORI: Sorry, how do we know they didn’t?

GILLERS: We don’t, no, we don’t.

KHARDORI: Yeah, I was just gonna say —

GILLERS: We don’t know they didn’t. But the idea that Loretta Lynch or Damian Williams or anyone else said, this is a violation of the Hobbs Act if you reach this agreement.

And that Brad Karp, notwithstanding that advice from people who understand these things, would nonetheless, go ahead and do it. It’s very hard for me to accept.

KHARDORI: Oh, I don’t know. I know Brad. I’m not, it’s not hard for me to accept at all.

CHAKRABARTI: Interesting. I’m gonna just leave that there without comment. For now, I wanna turn back to one thing, professor, that you said when I was reading the executive orders language on, we’re just going after you, Paul Weiss.

And also same thing with the Wilmer Hale EO for hiring people that we don’t like. I said, doesn’t that at least, doesn’t that compromise the moral authority of the office of the presidency. And Professor Gillers, I heard you say quickly, it’s worse than that.

GILLERS: I don’t remember the sequence, but I think in terms of moral authority of the office of the president, that is gone and will be gone for the next four years.

So no one is under an illusion that anything Trump does bespeaks an effort to assert the moral authority of the presidency. Yes, it’s been compromised, but it was compromised almost two months ago, and that will continue for months and years to come.

KHARDORI: I totally share Professor Gillers’s assessment of that situation.

And again, just to make this a little bit more concrete. This would be a different discussion if he were going after the ACLU. Right, or if you were going after Democracy Forward, which are the organizations that are actually in the courts litigating against him, not Paul Weiss. Because that would be a more direct affront to the principle that you are rightly concerned about, which is intimidating firms from going litigating against the administration.

But I think it’s telling that the White House hasn’t gone there yet, and it reveals their real intentions. And perversely, I’m not saying that we should, like, applaud them. Perversely, does some minimize some of the collateral effects?

CHAKRABARTI: But I gotta say, you know how the Overton window gets shifted, right?

It’s not like we pull it, move it from center all the way to far right immediately, or far left. It’s nudged. It’s nudged. I’m thinking from, back in 2017 when Trump first came into office in his first administration, the first thing he did was sign that executive order on the Muslim ban.

It was rejected in the courts over and over again, but they kept rewriting it until they got something that was deemed as legal in the federal judiciary. I’m using that as an example of why can’t we see this first attack on white shoe law firms as that initial nudge, what’s to say that they won’t go after the ACLU next?

GILLERS: We’ll see. We can say that there are two different issues here. Is what Trump is doing with those executive orders reprehensible, is it the functional equivalent of extortion? Yes. Yes. The second issue is, do we criticize the firms that have settled rather than sued?

Right now, given what was at stake, right now, given the risks to them, right now, and my answer is, it’s not for me. Certainly, I feel, to criticize them. I don’t expect them to be my gladiator. I understood always that their first primary, their primary responsibility is to their organization.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, understood. But let me ask you this. This is a quote I’m about to read that comes from the Cato Institute, of all places.

This is Walter Olson. He was quoted by CBS News. He says, these orders do more than just take revenge against particular lawyers who have crossed Donald Trump. Quote, they are meant to send a message that it is dangerous to oppose him in court. That you are apt to suffer not just yourself, but also firms you’re associated with, and they’ll suffer sweeping penalties, et cetera, et cetera.

That is a danger. Do you disagree with that professor Gillers?

GILLERS: Not at all. I’ve written about this. This is, all you gotta do is knock off one. Or two or three, and everybody understands that they better shut up. There’s no, if we’re focusing on the behavior of Trump, this is, we would’ve not been having this debate.

We’re having this debate because some people are alarmed to the point of view of apocalyptic predictions at the fact that five law firms have settled on the rather vague terms they did. That’s what this is about.

CHAKRABARTI: No, that is not what this is about. Sir, I’m just respectfully gonna correct you. It is about the direction in which Trumpism is taking this country. And we wanted to talk about how these actions against these law firms, which again, I don’t cry for them, but how these actions fit into that larger picture, if they do at all. Just wanted to clarify that.

KHARDORI: Can I?

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, sure. Ankush, we have about 30 seconds. Go ahead.

KHARDORI: Yeah. No, this definitely is a piece of the architecture that you’re describing, right? That the president is using this, his second term, to target and abuse his authority in particular ways for personal reasons. It is definitely part of that. It’s definitely a part of a pattern that we should oppose.

And it is bad, and we should criticize it, while trying to just do our best to maintain some perspective, which is what I and the professor are attempting to do.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, and it’s much appreciated. Honestly, the intellectual vigor of this conversation was quite thrilling.

Activism / Columbia Expelled Me for My Palestine Activism, but I Won’t Be Silenced And neither will anyone else targeted by the university. We are not afraid, we are undeterred, and we will continue to fight.

Grant Miner speaks at a rally in support of detained Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil. (Breakthrough News)

On March 13, I was expelled from Columbia University for participating in the protest movement against the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

I was not the only one: Twenty-two students, all of whom, like me, had been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, were either expelled, suspended for years, or had their hard-earned degrees revoked on the same day—all for allegedly occupying a building that has been occupied at least four times throughout Columbia’s history. This followed the extrajudicial arrest of recently graduated student Mahmoud Khalil by DHS, who still remains in custody at the time of writing.

In my particular case, I serve as the president of the Student Workers of Columbia—UAW 2710. As a PhD student, I am also a student worker—this was my fifth year teaching and learning at Columbia—and for us, expulsion is synonymous with being fired. We lose our pay and health insurance, and student workers who rent from Columbia face the immediate nonrenewal of their leases (Columbia, for their part, will try to evict you immediately).

Amid the university’s retaliation for solidarity with Palestine, it’s not lost on us that my firing occurred the night before we were going to begin bargaining for our next contract. The next day, Columbia unilaterally canceled our first bargaining session amid the backlash.

Columbia says that it is simply enforcing its rules. But that’s not what’s happening. Instead, the university is participating in a targeted attack on its students’ First Amendment rights to oppose genocide—an attack that the Trump administration has now eagerly joined. The same day that I was expelled from Columbia, the federal government sent Columbia a ransom note reiterating its desire to see protesters expelled or suspended, as well as a host of other demands the university would need to fulfill as a precondition for getting back over $400 million in already-appropriated research grants.

Contrary to Columbia’s claims, there is no individualized evidence against any student charged with wrongdoing. Specifically, students are charged with being in university spaces (variously, lawns or buildings) after closure, “misappropriation” of university property, and campus disruption.

According to Columbia’s rules, it is necessary to provide concrete proof, such as photos or eyewitness testimony, that an individual participated in a violation. Instead, Columbia has drawn up a list of “suspects,” and, using the argument that we can’t prove we weren’t involved, has found us guilty of all charges. That’s not just my interpretation—my expulsion letter cited the fact that there was “no countervailing evidence that [I] was not present or did not participate.” The only rational conclusion to draw is that the outcome of these investigations are strictly political in nature.

Expelled Columbia student Grant Miner, president of UAW Local 2710, which represents thousands of student workers, joined NYC protests demanding Mahmoud Khalil’s release.

He says the crackdown on the student movement for Palestine has only strengthened their resolve. pic.twitter.com/qXuSnjeLJf — BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) March 16, 2025

Trump is eager to brand protests for Palestine as antisemitic, as can be seen from the coordinated smear campaign against our students and coworkers over the past two weeks. It is regrettable that I have to mention this at all, as I would hope every reader already understands that there is nothing antisemitic about opposing a genocide. But in the current moment, when definitions have been twisted and manipulated beyond recognition, it is worth noting.

Like many of those protesting, I am Jewish, and to compound the irony, I also work in Jewish studies. As many have said more eloquently than I ever could, being Jewish and growing up with the knowledge of what our people have gone through is precisely what makes me stand up against the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. On a more practical note, I hope one can infer that if I was a particularly “self-hating” Jew, I could have simply not spent hundreds of hours reading medieval Hebrew literature. Nevertheless, I, along with so many others, have been swept up in Columbia and Trump’s witch hunt.

But these attacks threaten more than just the movement for Palestine. Trump is just as eager to weaponize accusations of antisemitism in order to cut public spending on vital research on topics deemed politically inconvenient, such as LGBTQ health and environmental science. What is unfolding at Columbia is a blueprint, a testing ground for things to come. Federal funding will be used as a cudgel. Charges of “antisemitism” or “support for terrorism,” despite the lack of any supporting evidence, will be used as the justification.

In some ways, it is easy to see why Columbia would easily throw its students under the bus for $400 million, because it has already done the same to its Palestinian and Arab students who tirelessly struggled to end our institution’s complicity in apartheid and genocide. Instead, the institution chose to back a wealthy minority of donors and trustees who would rather destroy this university than see it divest.

On March 21, Columbia caved to the rest of the Trump administration’s demands. Now, protests “in places where academic activities occur” are generally banned, as are masks “for the purpose of concealing one’s identity.” While Columbia has declined to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism, its new definition effectively makes Zionism, a political ideology, another protected class on campus. Most concerningly, Columbia has now agreed to hire 36 new officers who have the power to use force and arrest students who violate these new rules.

Beyond cracking down on protest on campus, Columbia has essentially ended its status as an independent intellectual institution. The Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies has effectively been put under academic receivership; they, along with the Institute of Palestine Studies and other departments focused on the Middle East, have a new administrator who will ensure that their courses are “comprehensive and balanced.” What will constitute “balanced” depictions of Israel is anyone’s guess, but prevailing winds suggest a crackdown on any effort to teach Palestinian history from the perspective of its Indigenous inhabitants.

At each step, Columbia has had the opportunity to fight back against genocide and censorship, as the UAW already has and continues to do. All across the country, students and workers are mobilizing to stop similarly politically motivated cuts at other universities. Why aren’t our universities taking up the same banner? Labor organizers know that there’s no placating the bosses. No matter how much you concede, they’ll always come back for more.

The only option is to stand firm. This applies not just to the fight against cuts, but to the broader struggle for equality everywhere. In its proudest moments, the labor movement has stood squarely on the side of the oppressed, and therefore on the side of justice. As a union president, I had an even greater responsibility to stand with my members who were beaten by the police just for protesting, and with my workers who stood up for what they believe in.

But we know that people of conscience will not accept this reality so easily. Trump’s crackdown has already failed. Since Mahmoud’s arrest, there have been protests across the nation, with thousands taking to the streets to demand his release almost overnight. ICE and DHS may be prowling the halls of our workers’ apartment buildings, but every day more and more people get involved in our union. At Columbia, in our upcoming contract campaign, we will fight to make sure that our international students are safe, and that Columbia will neither surveil our members nor turn their information over to the authorities.

Israel has officially resumed its genocide, killing over 1,000 Palestinians in the last 48 hours. In their attempts to stifle our demands, the Trump administration and our educational institutions remain complicit in that very same violence and are responsible for its escalation. As organizers and students who have been fighting for an end to the genocide for the past 16 months, we feel the weight of the devastation that Israel is choosing to rain down on Gaza—both in our grief, but also in our resolute determination to continue fighting for a free Palestine.

We know that this was what Mahmoud was fighting for, and he is one among the thousands of students and workers across who see clearly what was required of us in the call for justice. We are not afraid, we are undeterred, and we will continue to fight for the protection of workers, students, and our movement, and for an end to the genocide.