Since it’s been over 70 years since Sen. Joseph McCarthy used his power as chairman of a Senate investigative committee to bully and crush citizens at his whim, the closest younger Americans can come to visualizing the truly thuggish abuse of power to destroy dissenters may come, of all places, from a popular musical. “Wicked,” which opened on Broadway in 2003 and has generated a vast new audience with a recent movie version, features a character named Dr. Dillamond, a teacher at Oz’s Shiz University. Dillamond, a goat, is arrested and taken away for warning that under the Wizard of Oz’s despotic rule, critics or potential critics of despotism are being … arrested and taken away. “Something bad is happening in Oz,” he had warned. “Under the surface. Behind the scenes. Something bad.”
Something bad is happening in America right now, only it is neither beneath the surface nor behind the scenes. It’s out in the open, in plain sight and in our faces: an American president marshaling the full extent of federal power to retaliate against and threaten Americans whom he views as opposing him, abetted by sycophants and those too intimidated by the fear of what would befall them if they dared to cross him to so much as open their mouths.
Joe McCarthy was a piker compared to Donald Trump, who has repeatedly asserted that he has absolute power, and is on a mission to use it. These are ugly times in America, with each day bringing a fresh supply of something bad.
Here’s another one.
On March 6, Trump issued an executive order aimed at putting out of business Perkins Coie, a law firm that successfully opposed Trump’s multitudinous legal efforts to overthrow the 2020 presidential election, efforts grounded in fraudulent claims that the election was rigged against him. The order, which Trump entitled “Addressing Risks From Perkins Coie LLP,” is demagogic from the get-go. “The dishonest and dangerous activity of the law firm Perkins Coie,” the Trump order begins dishonestly and dangerously, “has affected this country for decades.”
This, of course, is garbage.
What Perkins Coie did was represent Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, appear in court in opposition to Trump lawyers’ risible allegations that the 2020 election was “rigged” and handle challenges to voting rights restrictions, taking positions that contradicted Trump’s political interests. Far and away the most skilled hooey-spewer we’ve ever known, Trump accused Perkins Coie of what he is guilty of, accusing it of “undermining democratic elections, the integrity of our courts and honest law enforcement.” This from someone who attempted a coup d’etat, has accused judges who rule against him of being corrupt and was convicted by a jury of committing 34 felonies, but Trump has concluded — with historically ample justification — that BS works.
The executive order banned Perkins Coie lawyers from entering federal government buildings, including the federal courthouses and federal agency buildings that they need to enter in order to represent their clients. This isn’t subtle: The firm has about 1,000 cases pending in federal court and thousands of active matters before about 90 separate federal agencies. By the order, Trump hopes to destroy a law firm that has had the temerity to represent individuals that challenge him.
He makes no bones about it. “We have a lot of law firms that we’re going to be going after, because they were very dishonest people,” said the man convicted of 34 acts of criminal fraud and found separately liable in a civil case for hundreds of millions of dollars for having defrauded a financial institution.
U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell has issued a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of the order, ruling that it “threatens to significantly undermine our entire legal system and the ability of all people to access justice.” It is, Howell noted “a means of retaliating against Perkins Coie … using taxpayer dollars for a personal vendetta.”
True enough. But even more fundamentally, it illustrates a wholly unconstrained threat to Americans, whatever their job or walk of life: that if they dare to oppose the president of the United States in word or deed, he may unleash the full power of the government against them.
And here’s the thing: If Americans accept this, America’s gone.
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