TO: Interested Parties
FROM: Congressional Integrity Project
RE: After Weeks Of Destroying The Federal Government, Trump Turns His Attention To Attacking Civil Society, Universities, Organized Labor, and the Private Sector
DATE: March 19, 2025
After weeks of unlawful efforts to dismantle the federal government for the benefit of billionaire oligarchs at the expense of everyday Americans, President Trump and Elon Musk have now turned their attacks to civil society. They are waging unprecedented campaigns against law firms, universities, nonprofits, and private companies that oppose their agenda. Trump and Musk’s ongoing authoritarian assault on these groups are a gross violation of the Constitution and marks a disturbing escalation in their ongoing efforts to undermine the rule of law.
Trump Wants To Destroy Law Firms And Attorneys Who Oppose Him
Donald Trump: “We have a lot of law firms that we’re going to be going after, because they were very dishonest people.”
Sunday Morning Futures, Fox News, 3/9/25
Trump’s assault on the legal establishment began with a February announcement revoking security clearances from attorneys at Covington & Burling in retaliation for their work with Special Prosecutor Jack Smith calling for a review of the firm’s (nonexistent) contracts with the federal government. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard followed up on Trump’s order on March 10 and confirmed that security clearances had been stripped from a laundry list of Trump’s enemies, including attorneys Mark Zaid, Andrew Weissman and Norm Eisen.
Then on March 6, Trump launched an even more brazen attack on the rule of law, with an executive order targeting the firm Perkins Coie LLP, a large firm known for its work on behalf of political candidates, nonprofits and advocacy organizations. The executive order institutes a suspension and review of all security clearances at the firm, limits access for Perkins Coie attorneys to Federal Government buildings, which could even include federal courthouses and regulatory agencies where the firm’s attorneys have business, and includes a ban on federal government hiring of anyone who previously worked at the firm. One of the most far-reaching provisions of the executive order requires government contractors to disclose “any business” they do with Perkins Coie, a massively intrusive provision that strikes at the heart of attorney-client privilege and the rights of individuals and organizations to retain the counsel of their choosing.
Just one week later, Trump attacked a third firm, restricting the business activities of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in complete defiance of a federal judge’s ruling that the Trump administration’s moves to curb law firms from appearing in court are unconstitutional. On March 14, Trump attacked several lawyers by name during an address at the Department of Justice, signaling out Norm Eisen and Marc Elias to call them “bad people…they’re scum.”
Buried in Trump’s order attacking Perkins Coie is another broad provision directing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the attorney general to “review” and “investigate” law firm practices. Just yesterday, the Trump administration sent letters to 20 major law firms – including some of the largest firms in the country, such as Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Simpson Thatcher, and Skadden – attacking their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and practices. The purpose of these orders and letters is to instill fear in lawyers and law firms that if they dare oppose Trump they will face severe consequences. The goal is to bleed these firms dry and deter existing or potential clients from retaining disfavored firms or attorneys.
Trump Is Launching An Unprecedented Attack On American Universities
“All federal funding will STOP for any College, School or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested.”
@realDonaldTrump, Truth Social, 3/4/25
Trump’s entire eight-week tenure has been an unrelenting attack on American higher education, from catastrophic cuts to research funding and medical care to attempting to dictate athletic and diversity policy at every university in the country.
These attacks on higher education have also escalated in the last two weeks. Trump’s attack dog, acting DC US Attorney Ed Martin, sent a letter to the dean of Georgetown University Law School threatening legal investigations and refusing to hire any Georgetown students – or students at any other law school or university – if the school includes any “unacceptable” DEI practices in its curriculum. The First Amendment prohibits the government from dictating what university faculty teach or how to teach it and Georgetown’s Dean William Treanor identified Martin’s letter as both a “constitutional violation” and an “attack on the University’s mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution.”
Last Friday, just days after initiating a “comprehensive review” of Columbia University, the Trump administration announced the “initial” cancellation of $400 million in grants to the school, with no required hearing or judicial review, for what the administration called “the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” Less than a week later, the administration sent a letter to Columbia demanding major changes to student discipline and admissions rules. On Friday, the Trump administration’s Department of Justice began investigatingwhether student protests at Columbia violated federal terrorism laws. The administration’s statement about Columbia ominously concluded that “These cancellations represent the first round of action and additional cancellations are expected to follow.” Just three days later the Department of Education announced investigations of 60 additional universities for alleged “anti-semitic discrimination and harassment.” In anticipation of further attacks on higher education funding, universities ranging from Harvard and MIT to Notre Dame, Emory, and the University of Vermont have frozen hiring. Also on Friday, the Department of Education announced that more than 50 universities are being investigated as part of Trump’s anti-DEI crusade.
In another attempt to suppress speech, a Palestinian Columbia graduate who helped lead protests on campus was arrested by federal immigration agents last week and taken to a detention facility in Louisiana without being charged with a crime. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he will revoke the man’s green card for engaging in activities “aligned” with Hamas. Trump personally took credit for the detention of the Columbia student, calling it “the first of many arrests to come” and demanding that every college and university cooperate with the administration’s crackdown on free speech and protest. Further student investigations are ongoing; on Friday, federal agents searched two Columbia students’ residences. Columbia’s Knight First Amendment Institute called these escalating threats to deport student protestors an “existential threat” to American universities.
Trump Is Attempting To Dismantle Nonprofits And Pro-Democracy Groups
“Delete the NGOs”
@ElonMusk, X, 3/9/25
The Trump administration’s earliest moves included cancelling millions of dollars in grants to Christian non-profits doing international development work and seeking to have climate nonprofits criminally investigated by the Department of Justice.
Recent days have seen another major escalation in Trump’s attempts to dismantle the entire non-profit sector. On Friday, March 7, Trump issued an executive order attempting to alter the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which provides student loan relief for people working for nonprofits or the government, to exclude non-profit organizations that engage in what Trump called “substantial illegal purpose.” In an example of clear viewpoint discrimination, the order would ban PSLF funding to employees of groups supporting undocumented immigrants, diversity initiatives or gender-affirming care for children, among other disfavored beliefs.
This blatantly unconstitutional order came just one day after Trump issued a separate memo aimed at chilling legal pushback on his extreme executive overreach by requiring groups to pay for costs and damages if they are granted injunctions in suits against his administration that are later reversed.
DOGE leader and “Special Government Employee” Elon Musk also escalated his rhetoric condemning nonprofits over the weekend, repeatedly attacking the Democratic payment processing firm ActBlue, accusing ActBlue along with George Soros and Reid Hoffman of engaging in illegal activity and orchestrating recent protests targeting Tesla.
Trump Is Attacking Unions And The Right To Organize
Elon Musk: “I disagree with the idea of unions.”
New York Times DealBook Summit, 11/29/23
Donald Trump campaigned for office promising to fight for American workers, but his tenure has been a relentless assault on workers, unions and the right to organize. In his first few days in office, in an unprecedented move, Trump fired the acting chair of the National Labor Relations Board, leaving the board without a quorum to enforce laws that protect workers’ right to unionize. Last week a federal judge called the dismissal “flat wrong” in a decision that could set up a Supreme Court showdown over the boundaries of presidential power. Trump also fired two Democratic members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, leaving it without a quorum as well to carry out its mission of fighting employment discrimination.
Trump has set vehemently anti-union Elon Musk loose in an all out war against the federal workforce, firing thousands of federal employees and violating laws and rules that require due process for dismissals. The Department of Labor has become a particular target for the wrecking crew.
And now, in the single most anti-union presidential action since Ronald Reagan’s firing of striking air traffic controllers in 1981, the Department of Homeland Security announced late Friday that it would no longer honor its contract with the TSA union, which was signed last year raising wages and guaranteeing airport security screeners the right to parental and sick leave.
Trump And His Allies Are Ramping Up Efforts To Control Private Companies And Force Them To Comply With Executive Orders Attacking “DEI” And LGBT Rights
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller: “Every day under President Trump, he is saying hell no to DEI.”
CPAC, 2/22/25
One of Trump’s first actions in office was to issue an unprecedentedly sweeping executive order seeking to eliminate DEI in the federal government and in the private and nonprofit sectors. The EO instructed the agencies to identify “the most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners” in their area of jurisdiction and make recommendations to the attorney general of up to nine potential investigations of corporations, nonprofits, large foundations, colleges and universities with endowments of $1 billion or more, or bar and medical associations.
Trump’s executive order immediately created “fear and confusion” among corporate and nonprofit leaders and his efforts are now being amplified by Stephen Miller’s America First Legal, a group which has become a private enforcement arm and attack dog in the White House war on DEI. About two weeks ago, America First Legal petitioned the Labor Department demanding investigations of whether federal contractors, including Lyft, Meta, Paramount, and others are complying with Trump’s executive orders banning all federal contractors and subcontractors from “allowing or encouraging” DEI or affirmative action hiring practices. America First Legal also aggressively sues and threatensprivate corporations, including Apple and Target over their DEI policies.