“Real power is — I don’t even want to use the word — fear.”
Donald Trump made that remark to the journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in March 2016. Fear is, of course, a favorite tool of the president-elect. He has used it for decades to intimidate opponents, critics and allies to give up, give in or give way. He built his real estate empire through lawsuits and threats against rivals and partners.
He cowed and demolished political opponents through humiliation and invective. He consolidated control of the Republican Party and silenced G.O.P. detractors with pressure tactics and threats to end careers. And as president, he used the power of the office and the power of social media to make life miserable for anyone he chose.
His goal in these efforts has been to push people to check themselves rather than check his power. Now, as he prepares to re-enter the Oval Office, Mr. Trump is using fear not only with Congress but also with other essential independent institutions such as courts, business, higher education and the news media. The goal is broadly the same: to deter elected officials, judges, executives and others from exercising their duties in ways that challenge him or hold him accountable. He wants to make dissent so painful as to be intolerable.
America’s leaders and institutions must remain undeterred. They will need to show courage and resilience in the face of Mr. Trump’s efforts as they continue to play their unique roles in our democracy. Vigilance is everything: If institutions surrender to the fear and coercion — by bending the knee or by rationalizing that the next right actions aren’t worth the fight, stress or risk — they not only embolden future abuses; they are also complicit in undermining their own power and influence.
The early results suggest reason for concern.
Mr. Trump has put forward several selections who are unacceptable — Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — yet there are precious few senators, defense experts, military and intelligence leaders and other principled statesmen on the right who are willing to stand up to the president-elect’s insistence on confirmation.
When one did — Senator Joni Ernst, the Iowa Republican who voiced reasonable concern about Mr. Hegseth’s qualifications to be defense secretary — Trump allies besieged her until getting both of the outcomes Mr. Trump sought: She issued positive comments about Mr. Hegseth and, in doing so, discouraged others from standing up to him in the future.
Chief executives of tech companies seem to have learned the same lesson: After challenging misinformation, hate speech and criticism from Mr. Trump and his allies in the first term, several leaders have showered him with public praise and million-dollar donations for his inauguration, with Mark Zuckerberg going as far as nixing Meta’s fact-checking program while shilling for the president-elect by branding the election as a “cultural tipping point.” Ford, G.M., Boeing and other companies have sent money and fleets of cars for the inaugural, hoping to stay on Mr. Trump’s good side ahead of his threatened trade wars.
Some of this can be chalked up to people jockeying for personal advantage with a highly transactional president. Some may reflect genuine acceptance that the country has elected a flawed leader to disrupt the status quo. But those sentiments cannot be fully disentangled from the threat posed by Mr. Trump: his determination to get his way by all means necessary, including abusing powers at his disposal to take revenge on those he thinks have crossed him or even just failed to support him in critical moments.
That threat is real: Mr. Trump has selected people for top legal and law enforcement positions who have threatened in the past to retaliate against some of those who challenged him. And that is to say nothing of his informal ability to direct troll armies to harass critics. In the absence of leaders across civic life continuing to play their roles — including standing up against illegal and immoral actions when necessary — the acquiescence to fear will free Mr. Trump further from the checks and balances that have served our nation so well.
If legislators, for instance, don’t cut back on climate-related spending, he has threatened to initiate a constitutional showdown by rescinding the money. His running mate, JD Vance, once suggested that if courts overrule such actions, they may be ignored altogether. “The chief justice has made his ruling,” Mr. Vance said in 2021, imagining a confrontation with the Supreme Court and quoting a line that Andrew Jackson might or might not have said. “Now let him enforce it.”
Corporate giants with media divisions, such as those controlled by Disney, Comcast and Jeff Bezos, have been distancing themselves from their media assets rather than making a case for traditional accountability journalism that could invite Trumpian retaliation against their broader financial interests. For smaller, less financially secure news organizations, the expense of defending themselves in lawsuits from Mr. Trump and his allies may be enough to encourage self-censorship.
He has picked Pam Bondi to be attorney general and Mr. Patel to lead the F.B.I. and other candidates for positions that are critical to the rule of law — yet who have spoken to varying degrees about prosecuting people who cross Mr. Trump. “The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones,” Ms. Bondi said on Fox News in 2023. (In her confirmation hearing this week, Ms. Bondi insisted that “politics will not play a part” in prosecutorial decisions.) Mr. Patel has an enemies list of the so-called deep state and has vowed to “come after” members of the news media “who lied about American citizens.”
Business will face pressure, too. As president, Mr. Trump will once again wield enormous influence over regulation, mergers, industrial policy, licensing, tax enforcement and a host of business waivers and outcomes. Chief executives will be under pressure to get with the program on tariff, tax and spending policies rather than speak truth to power about potentially damaging short- or long-term fiscal decisions. Business leaders, economists and academics who were once counted on for expertise and warnings to Congress and in the news media about deficits, trade wars, sanctions and the broad exercise of government power on the economy will be expected to sing from the Trump hymnal.
Mr. Trump has also used this approach in his engagement with the rest of the world, going beyond his previous declarations that he would no longer fulfill various treaties and international commitments, including those plainly in the American interest, if he doesn’t win concessions. He is acting like a bully rather than a constructive leader, threatening allies like Canada and Mexico with heavy tariffs if they don’t stop the flow of drugs and migrants and warning developing nations they would be shut out of the U.S. market if they create a currency to threaten the dollar. He has demanded that Denmark and Panama allow Greenland and the Panama Canal to become American property.
Those actions only undermine our reputation as a trustworthy ally, leading other nations to wonder if they need to hedge against an unpredictable superpower, which would almost certainly undermine our economy, security and cultural influence.
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For institutions facing this kind of pressure, we’d urge them to meet the moment with three thoughts in mind.
First is simply demonstrating conviction by identifying the right thing to do, then showing the courage to pursue that path, even in the face of pressure.
Second is remembering that despite Mr. Trump’s transactional nature, no one can count on remaining in his good graces without continued unconditional fealty. (Ask those in his own inner circle who justified or turned a blind eye to misbehavior again and again, only to be cast out for a single episode of standing up to his excesses.) Any advantage gained may be fleeting; any risk overcome may return.
Third is demonstrating faith in the American system, with its remarkable series of checks and balances, with its strong set of rights, with its promise of equal justice.
Sometimes that will mean overriding the president’s worst impulses. Republican senators, for example, will probably confirm a vast majority of Mr. Trump’s nominees. But that tradition of deference shouldn’t keep them from using their constitutional power to reject those who are dangerous, extreme or unqualified. It was a promising sign that those senators set aside Mr. Trump’s threat to make recess appointments and told him that Matt Gaetz could not be confirmed as attorney general, leading to his withdrawal from consideration. They should take the same stand on Mr. Hegseth, Ms. Gabbard, Mr. Patel and Mr. Kennedy.
Sometimes resiliency will mean going to court and being forced to spend money to resist improper directives from the administration. That’s what publishers and news executives will have to do to continue investigative and accountability reporting when it draws legal action from Mr. Trump. (Small and nonprofit news organizations will need help finding the resources to fight government challenges and complex defamation suits.) When Mr. Trump files baseless lawsuits out of pure vengeance, as he did recently against The Des Moines Register over a poll showing him trailing Kamala Harris in Iowa, publishers will have to summon every resource to fight such abuses of the legal system.
That’s what governors will have to do if a federal official or agency demands their state use local law enforcement to round up migrants for deportation through illegal or unconstitutional means or reduce access to voting in ways that violate voting rights, civil rights or other laws. And if state prosecutors find that federal officials are violating the law, they shouldn’t hesitate to file criminal charges.
Challenging Mr. Trump in federal court proved to be a useful tactic during his first term. Federal courts routinely blocked some of his first administration’s worst policies; one study showed that he lost nearly 80 percent of the time when civil lawsuits were filed against his agencies’ rule making. For example, when he ordered an end in 2020 to the diversity-visa lottery program, he was sued by immigrant-rights lawyers, and a federal judge upheld the program, which stayed in place past Joe Biden’s election.
Even as leaders prepare to hold fast under pressure, they would benefit from some meditation on the anger and mistrust that helped make the Trump era possible.
Americans have lost their patience with the status quo and their faith in the ability of many institutions — including public health agencies, financial and business institutions, the Democratic Party, the courts, elite universities and, yes, the news media — to improve their lives and communities. In playing their unique roles in our democracy, institutions should also be wary of falling into a reflexive resistance posture, in which everything Mr. Trump proposes is implicitly wrong or dangerous or in which any tactics to oppose him are implicitly right and virtuous.
During Mr. Trump’s four years in office, the country saw that many of his fulminations fell apart when brave politicians or lawyers or ordinary citizens simply said no. America must see through the fear again. This is not the time to feel resigned to the old Trump tactics or be cowed by his threats and insinuations.
This country and its principles are too vital to sacrifice anything in the interest of going along when Mr. Trump huffs and puffs. America will stand strong as long as people stand up for it. There’s no reason to surrender or get a foreign passport or move to Canada. Those on his so-called enemies list shouldn’t be begging for pre-emptive pardons. Such moves only reward his abuses and even legitimize them.
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