The second Trump administration is exceeding the bad acts of the first in disturbing ways. One of the most concerning patterns of behavior has been the ongoing challenges to civil society’s capacity to operate independently. Individuals have also encountered pressures with little recent precedent. The people affected must make difficult and deeply personal choices about how to respond. For the organizations and institutions of civil society, though, the answer is clear. Giving in ameliorates short-term stress and may avoid controversy. In the long run, however, appeasing would-be authoritarians is self-defeating. The only reward for capitulation is intensifying demands for more of the same. Because there is no lasting benefit to making avoidable concessions, bowing to any threat it is possible to oppose will only make things worse.
The political coalition behind President Trump is weaker than it may sometimes look. It contains true believers in a variety of ideologies, opportunists, and probably some who have misgivings but are too cowed to act on them. Cracks have opened around issues like IVF. There are significant disagreements among congressional Republicans. The administration, itself, has struggled with competence and professionalism. It is not the insurmountable force of nature the president would like to project. Many of its policy proposals are unpopular. To consolidate its hold on power, a fractious movement with a weak mandate must separate its strongest adversaries from each other and pick them off one by one. In this way, it could gradually diminish the pool of institutions capable of pushing back, leaving each with fewer potential allies to count and more reason to fear standing up for its peers with every round of attacks.
For this reason, it should be no surprise that the administration’s attempts to bring civil society to heel started almost immediately. There were the executive orders targeting law firms and universities. The order attempting to place content-based limits on Public Service Loan Forgiveness is another, subtler example because it seeks to make it more difficult for private organizations to work at odds with the administration’s goals. Efforts to scare private entities in business and civil society away from issues of equity and inclusion also serve this end. Where it can, the administration reaches agreements with its individual targets. Civil society’s responses to this tactic have shown a spectrum of capacity for courage. Because this method has worked in some cases, we can expect to see its continued use.
NGOs, the media, academia, and other groups comprising civil society should not expect to be rescued, as usual checks on and sources of frank advice and admonition to presidents are not functioning normally. Congress has done virtually nothing address this worrying slate of executive actions. Many executive branch appointees are not conventional political figures, nor are they always qualified for their roles. They seem to have been selected for qualities like visibility and personal loyalty. There is no reason to expect that they will advocate for democratic norms and rule of law. An administration that tries to deport graduate students for writing editorials and adopts authoritarian aesthetics is unlikely to self-limit. The administration should be expected to continue to harass civil society. Civil society must join the courts and some private sector voices of reason in trying to ensure that rule of law and civil liberties survive. This is both because it is the right thing to do and because it is the most pragmatic course of action.
There are no lasting prizes for giving in. Resisting the administration is where all possibility of good outcomes lies for civil society. Neither its institutions nor the missions they serve will thrive without rule of law, robust civil liberties, and lively public discourse. Giving in to any demands that does not pose an existential threat in the short term is a step toward being coopted or shut down by the authoritarian project. No one should go down that road willingly. We are already seeing evidence of what anyone could have guessed: that making deals with this administration does not buy long-term protection because its leader is not known for respecting entities like nonprofits or behaving consistent with his word. there is nothing to stop it from changing the terms after the fact. Many who knew him during his real estate career allege that kind of conduct was a way of life for President Trump long before he sought elected office. So, too, is it for many authoritarian regimes around the world. For this reason, appeasement begets appeasement. It doesn’t solve the problem. Resistance is no guarantee of success, but failure is a certainty without it.