The showdown between the Trump administration and institutions of higher learning intensified on Tuesday, when President Trump threatened Harvard University’s tax-exempt status after the school refused to accept his administration’s demands on hiring, admissions and curriculum. His threat, and the stakes involved, highlighted not only the billions of dollars in government funding that colleges receive every year but how that practice started and what all that money goes toward. When did colleges and universities begin receiving substantial federal funds? Around the time of World War II, the U.S. government started funding universities for the purpose of aiding the war effort, funneling money toward medical research, innovation and financial aid for students. The relationship between the federal government and higher education soon became symbiotic. As the government counted on universities to produce educated and employable students, as well as breakthrough scientific research, universities came to rely on continued funding. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In 1970, the government dispersed about $3.4 billion to higher education. Today, individual colleges depend on what could be billions of dollars, which mainly go toward financial aid and research. Harvard alone receives about $9 billion in federal funds, with $7 billion going to the university’s 11 affiliated hospitals in Boston and Cambridge, Mass. The remaining $2 billion goes to research grants directly for Harvard. What does the government money pay for? The funding freezes have caused work stoppages, cut contracts, imperiled medical research and left students in limbo. Reductions can also affect hospitals that are affiliated with universities, like the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital, both of which are affiliated with Harvard. Universities have stressed that losing federal funding would jeopardize dozens of medical and scientific studies, including those on cancer and diabetes. After the Trump administration froze $1 billion for Cornell, the university said that affected grants included “research into new materials for jet engines, propulsion systems, large-scale information networks, robotics, superconductors, and space and satellite communications, as well as cancer research.” When Mr. Trump pulled $790 million from Northwestern, the university said that the freeze would hinder its research on robotics, nanotechnology, foreign military training and Parkinson’s disease.The University of Pennsylvania, which had $175 million in federal funding suspended, said that faculty across seven different schools were affected. Their contracts, according to a statement by Penn’s president, included research on preventing hospital-acquired infections, drug screening against deadly viruses and protections against chemical warfare. Don’t universities have their own funds? Yes and no. Most universities are funded by tuition and fees, private donations including endowments, research grants, and state and federal funding. But much of that money comes with guardrails. Harvard had an endowment fund of $53.2 billion in 2024, far more than any American university. But that endowment fund does not serve as an A.T.M. for the school. Many funds have specific restrictions that dictate how and when the money can be used. At Harvard, for example, 70 percent of the annual distribution of the endowment is allocated to specific programs or departments by donors. There can also be legal restrictions on the funds, as well as rules on how much can be used for discretionary spending. What happens now? Harvard became the first university to refuse to comply with Mr. Trump’s demands, citing their severe restrictions, including those on freedom of expression. In response, federal officials responded by freezing more than $2 billion in existing grants. But Harvard’s rejection of Mr. Trump’s demands could mark an inflection point in his attack on U.S. academia. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “If Harvard had not taken this stand,” Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council of Education, told The New York Times, “it would have been nearly impossible for other institutions to do so.” University administrators nationwide, having watched Columbia concede to Mr. Trump to avoid losing $400 million in federal funding, will now wait to see how Harvard and its president, Alan M. Garber, proceed in their fight against the Trump administration. It’s unclear what actions the Trump administration may take next, though possibilities include investigating Harvard’s nonprofit status and canceling more visas of international students.

They are a group of progressive Jewish organizations and congregations, and they are coming to the defense of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Muslim graduate student at Tufts, who faces deportation after she helped write an essay critical of Israel. The coalition includes synagogues in places like West Newton, Mass., San Francisco and the Upper West Side of New York, along with J Street, a pro-Israel advocacy group. On Thursday, they filed a brief in federal court in Burlington, Vt., objecting to the tactics the government was using against Ms. Ozturk in the name of combating antisemitism. In the brief, the groups argued she should be released from the Louisiana immigration detention center where she has been held for over two weeks, after masked immigration agents surrounded and arrested her on a street near her home in Somerville, Mass. “Jewish people came to America to escape generations of similar predations,” the brief says. “Yet the images of Ozturk’s arrest in twenty-first century Massachusetts evoke the oppressive tactics employed by the authoritarian regimes that many ancestors of amici’s members left behind in Odessa, Kishinev, and Warsaw.” There have been reports of almost 1,000 international students and scholars at universities across the country who have lost their legal status since mid-March, according to the Association of International Educators. Anecdotally, the visas have typically been revoked with little or no notice and without telling the students what they might have done wrong. In some cases, students have committed legal infractions, like speeding or driving while drunk, according to universities and lawyers that are monitoring the revocations. But some have not. If the students do not leave voluntarily, they face deportation. The Trump administration has defended the campaign, saying it is revoking the visas of students who have broken the law, who have engaged in antisemitic harassment and violence, who pose a threat to the foreign policy interests of the United States, or who are terrorist sympathizers. A few Jewish activists have applauded the effort, echoing the Trump administration’s mantra that “a visa is a privilege, not a right.” But mainstream Jewish groups have expressed qualms about the crackdown, even while approving of the Trump administration’s focus on antisemitism. As the number of students the Trump administration is targeting has grown, Jewish groups have said that while they may not like the views of pro-Palestinian students, they cannot condone students’ being swept up for vague reasons, without formal charges against them. Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Ms. Ozturk’s detention followed the arrest two weeks earlier of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate who was a spokesman for pro-Palestinian protesters. An immigration judge in Louisiana found on Friday that the Trump administration could deport Mr. Khalil. But he is still challenging the case in a separate court. In response to his case, the Boston chapter of Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff wrote an open letter, titled “Not in Our Name,” that has been signed by nearly 3,000 faculty and staff members and students at universities across the United States. “We are united in denouncing, without equivocation, anyone who invokes our name — and cynical claims of antisemitism — to harass, expel, arrest, or deport members of our campus communities,” the letter reads. Sara Coodin, the director of academic affairs for the American Jewish Committee, said some federal interventions, including congressional investigations of antisemitism on campus, had been “transformative” in forcing universities to confront problems on their campuses. But she said Ms. Ozturk’s case appeared to be “a clear disregard on the part of the federal government for the rights of people on U.S. soil to speak their minds.” The only evidence that has surfaced against her is an opinion essay she co-wrote that was critical of Israel. “The idea that someone can be pulled off the street for something they wrote, something they think, really affects us all, and we all need to fight back against that,” said Elaine Landes, a member of Congregation Dorshei Tzedek, a Reconstructionist synagogue in West Newton, Mass., that is one of the parties to the court brief. “The whole push to fight antisemitism, to me, feels like we’re being used for another agenda, and that is not going to keep our community safe,” she said. “We need to look out for others.” Ryan Bauer, senior rabbi at Congregation Emanu-El of San Francisco, another signatory, said he supported Ms. Ozturk even though he disagreed with her essay. In it, she pushed for Tufts to end financial ties with Israel and to recognize Israeli conduct in Gaza as a genocide. “I don’t like her statements — I think they’re wrong,” Rabbi Bauer said. But, he added, he believes in free speech, and “the beauty of America is that we don’t all agree with each other.” He said he felt so strongly that Ms. Ozturk’s detention violated Jewish values that he talked about it in a recent sermon. “When you see the floor fall out from under her, it’s naïve to think that those cracks won’t eventually reach our feet,” he said. A federal judge in Vermont, where Ms. Ozturk spent a night in custody before being sent to Louisiana, is scheduled to hear her habeas corpus petition for release from detention on Monday.

An immigration judge in Louisiana found on Friday that the Trump administration could deport Mahmoud Khalil, granting the government an early victory in its efforts to crack down on pro-Palestinian demonstrations on U.S. college campuses. The ruling is far from the final word on whether Mr. Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident, will be deported. His lawyers will continue their fight in Louisiana and New Jersey, arguing that he has been targeted for constitutionally protected speech. The constitutional issues at the heart of the case will most likely get a fuller hearing in federal court in New Jersey than they did in Louisiana on Friday. For the time being, the decision by the judge there, Jamee E. Comans, affirmed the extraordinary power that the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has asserted to target any noncitizen for deportation. “The department has met its burden to establish removability by clear and convincing evidence,” Judge Comans said toward the end of a hearing at an immigration court in Jena, La. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Khalil led pro-Palestinian demonstrations on Columbia’s campus last year, and Mr. Rubio relied on a rarely cited law, declaring that his presence in the United States harmed the American foreign policy interest of stopping antisemitism. Judge Comans found that the government had met the burden of evidence that the law requires, which effectively amounted to a memo from Mr. Rubio declaring that Mr. Khalil’s presence in the country enabled antisemitism. The Homeland Security Department appears not to have submitted any other concrete evidence substantiating the claim, although it has not publicly released the documents it has filed in his case. After Judge Comans delivered her ruling, Mr. Khalil, who was otherwise silent throughout the hearing, criticized her harshly. “I would like to quote what you said last time, that there’s nothing that’s more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness,” he said. “Clearly, what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process. This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family.” Immigration judges are employees of the executive branch, not the judiciary, and often approve the Homeland Security Department’s deportation efforts. It would be unusual for such a judge, serving the U.S. Attorney General, to grapple with the constitutional questions raised by Mr. Khalil’s case. She would also run the risk of being fired by an administration that has targeted dissenters.“This court is without jurisdiction to entertain challenges to the validity of this law under the Constitution,” Judge Comans said as she delivered her ruling, apparently reading from a written statement. She denied Mr. Khalil’s lawyers’ requests that they be allowed to cross-examine or depose Mr. Rubio so that he could elaborate on his claims. “This court is neither inclined or authorized” to compel such testimony, she said. Judge Comans’s decision came at the end of a remarkable, nearly two-hour hearing at the LaSalle Immigration Court in Jena, La. Mr. Khalil was there in person, wearing a navy jumpsuit and holding a string of prayer beads. Most of the time was taken up by Mr. Khalil’s lawyers, who mounted arguments, both broad and technical, against Mr. Rubio’s memo and other claims the Trump administration has made about Mr. Khalil related to his immigration paperwork. Mr. Khalil’s lawyers noted that he has said in remarks on CNN that “antisemitism and any form of racism has no place on campus and in this movement,” and that Jewish demonstrators were “an integral part of this movement.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Judge Comans was mostly calm during the hearing. She focused primarily on keeping the parties from interrupting each another while asserting that she was interested in considering only one issue: whether Mr. Khalil could be removed from the United States under the law. “I’m going to hear from the parties on removability and that’s it,” she said. She declined to allow Mr. Khalil’s lawyers to address their other requests, including to delay the hearing so that she could review the evidence. She also would not allow the Homeland Security Department to introduce new accusations against Mr. Khalil during the hearing. Homeland security officials have accused Mr. Khalil of making paperwork errors that they say bolster the case for deporting him. They say he willfully failed to disclose the extent or duration of his membership in several organizations, including a United Nations agency that helps Palestinian refugees, when he applied to become a permanent U.S. resident last March. Mr. Khalil’s lawyers spent much of their time on Friday poking holes in those arguments, and Judge Comans declined to rule on the additional allegations. When Judge Comans issued her ruling, Mr. Khalil’s supporters in the room, including members of the New York City chapter of Jewish Voices for Peace, began to cry. Mr. Khalil rolled his prayer beads in his hands. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “Don’t worry,” he told his supporters, thanking them for being there. Marc Van Der Hout, a lawyer for Mr. Khalil, said in a statement after the hearing that “this is not over, and our fight continues. If Mahmoud can be targeted in this way, simply for speaking out for Palestinians and exercising his constitutionally protected right to free speech, this can happen to anyone over any issue the Trump administration dislikes.” Mr. Khalil’s immigration case now moves on to what is known as the “relief stage,” in which his lawyers will be able to argue for his right to stay in the country. If they lose, they can appeal, first to an immigration board and then to a federal court. But the free speech and due process issues that loom over the case may first be scrutinized in federal court in New Jersey, where Mr. Khalil’s lawyers are also fighting for his release. The judge overseeing that case in Newark, Michael Farbiarz, has ordered the government not to remove Mr. Khalil from the country. On Friday, Judge Farbiarz asked lawyers for the government and Mr. Khalil to brief him as soon as possible on the results of the Louisiana hearing.

The Department of Education said on Friday that it was moving to cut off all federal funding for Maine’s public schools because the state had ignored President Trump’s executive order banning transgender athletes from girls’ sports teams. The agency also said it had asked the Justice Department to pursue “enforcement action” against Maine, which the Trump administration has been targeting since the president picked a fight with the state’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, over transgender athletes in February. The administration had set Friday as the deadline for Maine to comply; last month, after a brief investigation, it declared that the state’s education system was violating Title IX, the federal law that prevents sex discrimination. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Ms. Mills has maintained that the state’s human rights law — which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity as well as religion, race and other protected characteristics — can be changed only by the Legislature, not by executive order. She has not expressed her own views on transgender athletes participating in girls’ and women’s sports publicly, though she has said it was an issue “worthy of a debate.”The Education Department said in a statement that it would “initiate an administrative proceeding to adjudicate termination” of the state’s K-12 funding, which totaled $249 million in the 2024 fiscal year. “The department has given Maine every opportunity to come into compliance with Title IX, but the state’s leaders have stubbornly refused to do so, choosing instead to prioritize an extremist ideological agenda over their students’ safety, privacy, and dignity,” Craig Trainor, the department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in the statement. In a letter to the Education Department on Friday, Sarah A. Forster, an assistant state attorney general, said that Maine would not agree to change its law and conceded that the two sides had reached an impasse. “Nothing in Title IX or its implementing regulations prohibits schools from allowing transgender girls and women to participate on girls’ and women’s sports teams,” she wrote. “Your letters to date do not cite a single case that so holds. To the contrary, various federal courts have held that Title IX and/or the Equal Protection Clause require schools to allow such participation.”The Maine Principals’ Association, which supervises interscholastic athletics, has said that among the 151 public and private high schools it oversees statewide, there are two transgender girls currently competing on girls’ teams. Since February, the Trump administration has hammered the state with overlapping investigations of its education system. Last week, the Agriculture Department froze funding that Maine said could threaten its school meals programs. In response, the state sued the department. Not long after the Education Department’s announcement on Friday, a federal judge in Maine issued a preliminary ruling in the state’s favor, ordering that the U.S.D.A. funding be restored and issuing a warning to the Trump administration. “The Federal Defendants are barred from freezing, terminating, or otherwise interfering with the State’s future federal funding for alleged violations of Title IX without complying with the legally required procedure,” the ruling said. It was not immediately clear on Friday where the administrative proceeding on the state’s education funding would be held, or when — or whether it would meet the specifications of the court’s order. The Department of Justice is expected to sue the state to try to compel its compliance. The announcement highlighted some fundamental legal questions underlying many of Mr. Trump’s recent moves on K-12 education, including: Will the courts uphold the administration’s broad interpretation of civil rights law? And how much latitude does the executive branch have to stop the flow of federal funds that have been allocated by Congress? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Next week, a Federal District Court in New Hampshire is scheduled to hold a hearing on whether the administration can follow through on its threat to cut off Title I funds to schools with certain diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Democratic-run states, teachers’ unions and progressive interest groups, like the A.C.L.U., have said it cannot, filing several federal lawsuits in response. Some education experts have predicted that the question could reach the Supreme Court.

When Preston High School in the Bronx announced in February that it was closing, it seemed to many that it was just another in a long list of urban Catholic schools that lacked the money and enrollment to survive. Not even this girls’ school with a famous alumna (Jennifer Lopez, class of 1987) seemed immune to a trend that has shuttered scores of parochial schools in the last few decades. But to Preston alumnae, current students and their families and some staff, something seemed off. Preston was not like those other schools. It was financially sound, and enrollment was close to 100 percent of the target number of roughly 370 students. What’s more, it has a powerful and organized group of former students that has refused to accept the explanation for the closure given by the Sisters of the Divine Compassion, the Roman Catholic religious order that owns the school. Now Letitia James, the New York attorney general, has been drawn into the fray.Ms. James presided over a boisterous public hearing on Tuesday to investigate the murky circumstances around the decision to close Preston at the end of this school year. A crowd of about 500 people packed the large auditorium at Lehman, another Bronx high school, delivering hours of testimony along with loud cheers and numerous standing ovations. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “This is a call to action for other schools and other folks who find themselves in similar positions to get organized and start preparing,” Jackeline Stewart-Hawkins, Preston class of 2002, said in an interview. Ms. Stewart-Hawkins is part of a wide-ranging effort by graduates, staff, families of students and elected officials to keep the school open. Amanda Farías, the majority leader of the New York City Council, who graduated from Preston High School in 2007, was one of the people who urged Ms. James to step in. In an interview last week, Ms. Farías called the school a “cornerstone of the community” and said she was mystified by the decision to close it, given its relatively solid financial standing and high enrollment. She accused the Sisters of the Divine Compassion, which owns the two buildings that house the school, of not being transparent. Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “They either don’t want to keep educating young women of color in the Bronx, despite the school being one of the places that has successfully done that and created people like me,” Ms. Farías said, “or they just want to completely eliminate their arm in the education space and don’t want to leave a legacy behind them.”She also spoke at the hearing, along with Vanessa Gibson, the Bronx borough president, and Kristy Marmorato, the City Council member whose district includes the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx that is Preston’s home. They all condemned the closure. Ms. James, who has the authority to ask the courts to take action, appeared sympathetic and promised a “thorough analysis” of the case. Her office is authorized to look into how nonprofit organizations like Preston conduct business. “We want to make sure every requirement was followed,” Ms. James said. The Sisters of the Divine Compassion did not have a representative at the hearing but submitted a letter that was read into the record. The order said in a statement on Wednesday that it had listened to all the speakers and would cooperate with the attorney general’s inquiry. With an average age of 83, its members say they can no longer govern the school or be landlords, and that they need to prepare for retirement. In a video released to explain the decision, several of the organization’s representatives said that the school’s enrollment, although steady now, is 34 percent lower than in 2012 and that the buildings are old and in need of expensive repairs. They criticized what they called a misinformation campaign and said that they had been “betrayed” by school administrators since the decision was made. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “I would have hoped that somehow the Preston community would be better dealing with it than they are,” Sister Susan Becker said in the video. In its letter to the school community, the group also cited financial instability and “changing demographics,” a phrase that was brought up repeatedly at Tuesday’s hearing. “The demographics have changed,” said Jennifer Connolly, the school’s principal, a vocal opponent of the closure who received a standing ovation when she was introduced. “I don’t know why that’s a bad thing.” Shortly after the decision to close was announced, The Bronx Times reported that the Bally’s Foundation offered $8.5 million to the Sisters of the Divine Compassion for the two buildings and offered to allow the high school to remain with rent of $1 per year on a 25-year lease. The foundation is the charitable arm of the gambling company that seeks a casino license in New York. The order rejected the offer with little explanation. Many Preston alumnae wonder whether the order received a better offer that requires the building to be delivered vacant. “That’s conjecture,” said Andrea Donkor, who graduated from Preston in 1999 and is a former member of its board of trustees. “But we cannot make sense of it otherwise.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In a statement to The New York Times, the Sisters of the Divine Compassion said that in their negotiations, despite the promise of a 25-year lease, Bally’s would not commit to long-term operating support for the school. “Bally’s was also unwilling to commit that the property would continue to be used as a school,” the statement continued, “or that Bally’s would not seek to monetize the property in the future.” Soo Kim, the chairman of Bally’s, disputed that assertion and said in an interview that the offer still stands, and it also includes an option for the school to buy back the buildings at any point at the same price, adjusted for inflation. He added that as long as Bally’s has its golf course in Throgs Neck, “the school will still exist.” “It’s a part of our company’s philosophy to reinvest in the communities,” Mr. Kim said. “We don’t know why they rejected the offer.” The Sisters of the Divine Compassion (also known as the Religious of the Divine Compassion, or R.D.C.) was founded in 1886 to care for and educate underprivileged children; it opened the school in 1947. Ms. Donkor and her sister, Crystal Donkor, are two former students who helped, along with Ms. Stewart-Hawkins and others, form Preston Forever, a group of graduates fighting the closure. Like Councilwoman Farías, they credit their Preston education and the Sisters of the Divine Compassion with instilling in them the independence, leadership skills and curiosity that motivated them to take action. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “Preston was the foundation for my trajectory to be the woman that I am today,” said Crystal Donkor, an English professor at Southern Methodist University.Their cause was boosted recently when John McCarrick, a lawyer whose wife and cousins attended Preston, submitted a brief to the attorney general. He said he was approached almost three years ago by two of the Sisters of the Divine Compassion — “rebel nuns,” as he called them — who he said were unhappy about the organization’s process of pulling away from the school. His brief asserts that the organization is illegally breaking its lease agreement with the school. “The notion that they somehow have the right to monetize this property because it’s valuable real estate sits wrong with me,” Mr. McCarrick said.

Prosecutors on Thursday filed felony charges against 12 pro-Palestinian protesters — all but one of them a current or former student at Stanford University — for breaking into administration offices in June and causing extensive damage. The charges were among the most severe levied against participants in last year’s pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses. More than 3,000 people were arrested at college protests and encampments in the spring of 2024, but they generally faced misdemeanor charges or saw their charges dropped. Jeff Rosen, the district attorney for Santa Clara County, which includes the Stanford campus, charged the 12 protesters with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy to trespass. They face up to three years and eight months in prison, as well as the payment of restitution to reimburse the university for the damage. Stanford is one of dozens of schools being investigated by the Trump administration for how they have handled pro-Palestinian protests and whether they have done enough to combat antisemitism on campus. The administration has also revoked the visas of several Stanford students and recent graduates, though the reason is unclear. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Rosen said that President Trump’s intense focus on Stanford and other universities played no role in the decision to charge the crimes as felonies. “What the federal administration is doing is what they’re doing. What I’m doing is applying the California Penal Code,” Mr. Rosen said. Mr. Rosen said he was swayed by the extent of the damage caused by protesters and what he characterized as deep, coordinated planning before the building was taken over. “Whenever you have multiple people working together to commit a crime, it’s much more dangerous to the public,” he said. That the actions were intended to highlight the group’s opposition to the war in Gaza made no difference, he added. “Speech is protected by the First Amendment,” he said. “Vandalism is prosecuted under the Penal Code.” Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT On June 5, police arrested 13 people in connection with breaking into the office of the Stanford president early that morning and barricading themselves inside. They made several demands, including that the university trustees vote on whether to divest from companies that support Israel’s military. They were cleared out of the building and arrested within a few hours, but not before they had broken windows and furniture, disabled security cameras and splashed fake blood inside the building, Mr. Rosen said. Mr. Rosen did not file charges against one of the 13 individuals, a student reporter for The Stanford Daily newspaper who was covering the protest, but not participating in it. Journalists and press freedom groups had demanded for months that Mr. Rosen decline to pursue charges against the student, Dilan Gohill, who was held in jail for 15 hours after his arrest, according to his lawyers. Mr. Rosen said that his office undertook a deliberate, methodical investigation before determining that 12 of those arrested should be charged but that Mr. Gohill should not be. He announced in March there would be no charges for Mr. Gohill. Mr. Rosen said the 12 protesters attempted to hide their communication, including the deletion from their phones of the Signal messaging app, through which they had exchanged messages shortly before their arrests. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT He said his investigators were able to “work around” the protesters’ attempts to conceal their planning and found they had surveilled the building; studied the patterns of local police officers and security guards; and assigned themselves specific tasks, such as who would break the window and who would use a crowbar to pry open the door. The protesters carried backpacks that were recovered in the barricaded building and contained hammers, chisels, screwdrivers and goggles, according to the Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office. Tony Brass, a lawyer for one of the protesters, Hunter Taylor-Black, said that he was upset that Mr. Rosen took more than 10 months to file his charges. Ms. Taylor-Black, a 25-year-old Stanford film student, and other protesters had already completed their suspensions from the university and were beginning to put their lives back together, Mr. Brass said. “The voice of student protest is an important voice in American history — always has been,” Mr. Brass said. “Everyone accepts there will be consequences for actions, and so did the protesters. But there was no need for adding this delay. Let them move on with their lives.” The other 11 protesters either could not be reached or did not respond to requests for comment. On the same morning as the protest, red graffiti appeared on the sandstone walls of the university’s main quad that condemned the police, Stanford, Israel and the United States. Phrases included “Pigs Taste Best Dead” and “Death to Israehell.” Mr. Rosen said he declined to file hate crime charges because his office could not prove that the 12 protesters were responsible for those messages. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Dee Mostofi, a spokeswoman for Stanford, said on Thursday that the university respected Mr. Rosen’s charging decisions. The university had separately levied its own sanctions on the protesters who were current students, including suspensions that lasted two quarters, a delay in degree conferrals and community service hours. Mr. Rosen said he did not want to see the 12 Stanford protesters serve prison time. Instead, he said, he would like them to plead guilty and to join the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s work program, in which they would clean highways or government buildings. “This is kind of biblical,” he said. “You trashed a building, so your punishment should be cleaning things up.” Felony charges for pro-Palestinian protests on campus have occurred in at least several instances elsewhere over the past year. Michigan’s attorney general brought felony charges against seven protesters at the University of Michigan, accusing them of resisting police officers who were breaking up an encampment in May 2024. Those cases are still pending. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT At Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, 11 people were charged with felony vandalism in February, a few months after they were accused of smearing red paint over buildings and a statue, causing $400,000 in damage. At the University of Rochester in New York, four students were charged with felony criminal mischief after putting up “Wanted” posters with photos of university community members, including some Jewish officials, in November. The university’s president condemned the posters as antisemitic. The severity of the charges stemmed from the cost of the damage caused by the posters, which were stuck to chalkboards and walls with “Super Glue or a similarly strong and durable adhesive,” according to court documents. The charges are still pending. Safa Robinson, a lawyer in Rochester who represents one of the students, said it was not unusual to see criminal mischief charged as a felony, since by law the seriousness is dictated by the cost of damage done. What is unusual, she said, is to see such a charge brought against student protesters. “In a college environment, a lot of times posters are plastered all over the wall — frats, sororities, bake sales, elections, all that kind of stuff,” Ms. Robinson said in an interview. “I think that because these posters touched on a sensitive topic or had a certain type of view, that they’re being treated in this kind of way.”

He failed to qualify for matching state campaign funds and fell short of the threshold to participate in two upcoming debates as he runs for governor of New Jersey. His spokesman works for a consulting firm in Washington, D.C., and he has no paid campaign manager. But Sean Spiller has something the other five Democrats running for governor don’t: a $35 million blank check from a group with close ties to the labor union he leads, the New Jersey Education Association. For more than six months, Mr. Spiller’s image has been plastered on billboards, campaign mailers and front-door hangers throughout New Jersey. He has been featured in commercials, digital posts and, more than a year before November’s election, a full-page ad in The New York Times. The publicity has been paid for by Working New Jersey, a super PAC funded largely with public schoolteachers’ union dues, according to a review of Internal Revenue Service records. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Since July, I.R.S. records show that a political arm of the teachers’ union has sent at least $17.25 million to Working New Jersey. The super PAC, in turn, has reported that it was prepared to spend as much as $35 million on behalf of Mr. Spiller, a science teacher by trade who draws a roughly $370,000 salary as president of the N.J.E.A. Working New Jersey has already spent $8.3 million on television, digital and streaming ads, according to AdImpact, which tracks political spending.The union’s unconventional strategy appears to have helped boost Mr. Spiller’s standing in the hypercompetitive race. Early surveys indicated that Mr. Spiller, a little-known former mayor of Montclair, N.J., had limited political support. But recent polls have suggested that he is now tied for second place. Representative Mikie Sherrill has consistently been at the front of the pack, with Mr. Spiller and the mayor of Newark, Ras J. Baraka, and the mayor of Jersey City, Steve Fulop, close behind her. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT But nothing about the race to replace the state’s term-limited governor, Philip D. Murphy, is certain with such a large and accomplished field of candidates. Fundamental changes to the rules that govern primaries have made it the state’s most volatile contest in recent history. A poll conducted in January by Emerson College found that 56 percent of Democrats remain undecided.The N.J.E.A. has long been among the state’s most powerful unions, with nearly 200,000 members and a willingness to take on political foes. Its involvement with the Working New Jersey PAC is among its most overt efforts to sway voters in a state election. Mr. Spiller, who emigrated from Jamaica as a child, has said that as governor he would focus on expanding affordable housing, strengthening schools and defending New Jersey against President Trump’s policies. Most of the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor are benefiting from spending by outside interest groups. But Mr. Spiller is the only candidate to have also raised so little on his own to directly fund his campaign. As of the most recent state filing, Mr. Spiller’s campaign had raised $183,000 in a race where every other prominent candidate collected more than $1 million — and several have taken in close to $3 million each. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In an interview, Mr. Spiller, 49, said there were metrics beyond fund-raising and the size of a campaign staff that were more indicative of support for his candidacy. He noted that he had submitted more signatures to get on the ballot than all but one other Democratic candidate. He refused to directly address questions about whether he considered it a conflict of interest that he was benefiting so significantly from dues contributed by members of a union that employs him as president. He noted that other candidates had turned to real estate developers and Wall Street bankers for contributions, and that by sidestepping that funding stream he had avoided being beholden to their interests, if elected.“Our campaign is based on fighting for working class folks,” he said. He also dismissed the significance of falling short of the $580,000 campaign fund-raising threshold that would have qualified him for 2-to-1 matching funds for the June 10 primary. “If I called millionaires and very wealthy folks, I could meet goals,” he said. By law, super PACs may raise and spend unlimited sums but are barred from explicitly coordinating with candidates’ campaigns. Officials with the N.J.E.A. and Working New Jersey said that Mr. Spiller had not been involved in allocating union funding or in any promotional efforts on his behalf. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “We recognized the need to put guardrails and protections in place to ensure that there was not a conflict of interest,” said Steven Baker, the union’s spokesman. “The candidate does not get to decide what is spent or how it is spent.” Mr. Baker said Mr. Spiller also had no role in the union’s decision to set aside money for political advocacy or for its political arm to send millions to Working New Jersey. A spokesman for Working New Jersey, Eddie Vale, said the same thing. “As an independent expenditure campaign, we cannot, and do not, coordinate with or talk to the Spiller campaign in any way,” Mr. Vale said. To voters, however, the Spiller promotional material piling up in mailboxes may be largely indistinguishable from the types of ads paid for directly by his opponents’ campaigns. Each carries a tiny disclaimer: “not made with the cooperation or prior consent of, or in consultation with or at the request or suggestion of, any candidate, or any person or committee acting on behalf of any candidate.” Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Specialists in campaign finance law say that Working New Jersey’s support for Mr. Spiller is part of a growing trend of outsourcing to special interest groups work traditionally done by campaigns.Daniel Weiner, an election law expert at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, noted that Mr. Trump also relied heavily on super PACs for core campaign responsibilities. “Every election cycle people push the envelope even further,” Mr. Weiner said. The trend can be traced to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United campaign finance decision in 2010, which freed political action committees run by corporations and unions to spend unlimited sums on behalf of candidates. “The theory was that these groups would not be interchangeable with candidates’ campaigns,” Mr. Weiner said. “Instead, the way they often work is they’re just sort of the alter ego of the campaign.” Only New Jersey and Virginia hold governor’s races the year after a presidential election, and their results are likely to offer some of the nation’s earliest insights into voter attitudes toward Mr. Trump ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. It is perhaps no surprise that New Jersey’s contest is on track to hit campaign spending levels that one top state elections official called “stratospheric.” That’s true of super PACs, too. In 2021, super PACs spent a record $13.4 million in support of all primary candidates for New Jersey governor. That record has already been dwarfed by the $35 million in anticipated spending by a single super PAC on behalf of Mr. Spiller. In the days leading up to the March 24 deadline to qualify for matching funds, Mr. Spiller’s appeals to potential donors took on an urgent tone. “I need you to donate $20 or more,” one email stated. “I’ll be honest with you,” another read, “we’re not yet where we need to be.” But his shortage of funds appears to have had no effect on Working New Jersey’s ability to spread his message. Officials running the super PAC said that they had conducted 13 internal polls to measure Mr. Spiller’s standing in the race and are prepared to continue targeting Democratic primary voters on television, social media, billboards and at their homes. Last Friday, people affiliated with Working New Jersey hung fliers on doors in Cranford, N.J. — an effort that the officials said was part of a statewide canvassing blitz that had already reached 661,000 homes. At one house, after leaving a door hanger, the representative sent a text message to the registered Democrat in the household with a link to the super PAC’s website: “New Jersey needs fighters like Sean to stand up to the Trump administration’s radical agenda and do something about rising costs.” Should he lose, Mr. Spiller is likely to face questions about the wisdom of investing teacher dues so heavily in a single political campaign.“He’s going to have to face his members” and explain spending millions of dollars, said Matthew Frankel of the Sunlight Policy Center, a nonprofit advocacy group critical of N.J.E.A. leadership. “On that,” Mr. Frankel added, “I think he’s in a world of hurt.” Mr. Baker, the union spokesman, said that the N.J.E.A.’s endorsement of Mr. Spiller and financial support for his candidacy were based on a conviction that he could “most forcefully and effectively advance” members’ priorities. Those priorities, he said, are multifaceted and include improving pension allocations, fully funding schools and defending freedom to read initiatives. “When you look at the national landscape, voters are very aware of what’s at stake in a state like New Jersey,” Mr. Baker said.

The Trump administration has frozen more than $1 billion in funding for Cornell and $790 million for Northwestern amid civil rights investigations into both schools, two U.S. officials said. The funding pause involves mostly grants from and contracts with the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education and Health and Human Services, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the unannounced decision. The moves are the latest and largest in a rapidly escalating campaign against elite American universities that has resulted in billions in federal funds being suspended or put under review in just over a month. Other schools that have had funds threatened include Brown, Columbia, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton. Cornell and Northwestern are both facing investigations into allegations of antisemitism and into accusations of racial discrimination stemming from their efforts to promote diversity. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Cornell officials said in a statement that they had received more than 75 stop-work orders from the Defense Department on Tuesday, but that they had no information to confirm that more than $1 billion in funding had been suspended. The affected grants, they said, supported research that they described as “profoundly significant to American defense, cybersecurity and health.” “We are actively seeking information from federal officials to learn more about the basis for these decisions,” said the joint statement from Michael Kotlikoff, the university president; Kavita Bala, the provost; and Robert Harrington, provost for medical affairs. Jon Yates, a spokesman for Northwestern, said that the university had not been notified by the federal government that funding had been frozen. Northwestern, a Big Ten university, is the first non-Ivy League school to have funding from the Trump administration targeted under investigations of alleged discrimination. The university issued a “progress report” last week that highlighted its efforts to protect Jewish students, including mandatory antisemitism training for all students, faculty and staff. “Federal funds that Northwestern receives drive innovative and lifesaving research, like the recent development by Northwestern researchers of the world’s smallest pacemaker, and research fueling the fight against Alzheimer’s disease,” Mr. Yates said. “This type of research is now at jeopardy.”Mr. Yates added that Northwestern had “fully cooperated” with federal and congressional investigations. Linda McMahon, the education secretary, has been explicit about the administration’s focus on elite universities, which Mr. Trump has criticized as bastions of left-wing thought. She has said that taxpayer support is a “privilege” that can be withdrawn if universities do not adhere to civil rights law. Like other universities, Cornell and Northwestern were the site of clashes over the war in Gaza. Cornell and Northwestern were among 60 universities that the Trump administration warned last month of potential enforcement actions over investigations into allegations of antisemitism. Each school also has investigations pending into accusations of racial discrimination. Last month, the Republican-controlled House Education Committee chided Northwestern over legal clinics at its law school that had represented organizers of an anti-Israel protest. University officials have said the legal clinics were providing training for students and were not representing the views of the school. In a letter to the school, Representative Tim Walberg, the chairman of the committee, and Representative Burgess Owens, the chairman of the panel’s subcommittee on higher education, described the training as “illegal, antisemitic conduct.” Cornell also recently defended itself against claims that it was not doing enough to stop antisemitism. In a New York Times opinion essay, Dr. Kotlikoff, the president of Cornell, described the nation’s universities as institutions built to uphold and advance democratic norms even in the face of escalating political and legal risks. “A messy event that turns into viral videos causes understandable concern to trustees and alumni, and adds more fuel to already burning fires,” Dr. Kotlikoff wrote last week. “But if we are to preserve our value and our meaning, we cannot let our caution overtake our purpose. Our colleges and universities are cradles of democracy and bulwarks against autocracy.”

Nearly 300 international students were abruptly stripped of their ability to stay in the United States in recent days, according to universities and media reports, sowing fear among students and confusion at schools scrambling to help students facing detention and possible deportation. The moves targeted students at a wide range of universities, from private institutions like Harvard and Stanford to public ones like the University of Texas at Austin and Minnesota State University-Mankato. The University of California had dozens of cases reported across its campuses. Several immigration lawyers told The New York Times that they began receiving frantic emails and calls late last week from students who had been notified by the State Department or their universities that their visas or statuses had been terminated without clear justifications. Criminal convictions have always put students at risk of losing their status, but participation in political actions and committing traffic infractions have rarely been cited as justifications. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In some cases, immigration officers have arrested international students related to their involvement in pro-Palestinian causes. In other cases, students had committed legal infractions, such as driving over the speed limit or while intoxicated, often years ago, several immigration lawyers said in interviews. But lawyers said the Trump administration had often given no reason at all, leaving them to guess why students were targeted.“This upends all usual practice by the government,” said Miriam Feldblum, chief executive of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, which represents more than 570 public and private colleges and universities across the country. “They are terminating students’ statuses in a way they have never done before and with virtually no explanation and little recourse to correct or appeal by either the institution or the students.” Late last month, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, ordered diplomats to scour the social media postings of some visa applicants to keep away from the country those suspected of criticizing the United States and Israel. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The State Department and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment. The recent moves add more anxiety to an already precarious environment for international students and scholars in the United States. Advocates for international education worry that such moves will chill the ability of U.S. schools to attract foreign students. Last month, Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate student who was involved in pro-Palestinian activism during campus protests last year, was arrested at his apartment and sent to Louisiana for possible deportation, despite being a permanent resident. Shortly after, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student from Turkey, was detained by masked agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, while she was on the way to meet friends. Ms. Ozturk, who had written a pro-Palestinian opinion essay, was also taken to Louisiana.The moves aimed at international students fit with the Trump administration’s broader policy agenda of reducing the number of immigrants, both legal and undocumented, and of forcing universities to crack down on what the president says is rampant antisemitism on campuses. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The United States issued more than 400,000 visas to students in 2024. Some of the students targeted recently had committed offenses like speeding or driving while intoxicated, the lawyers said. They said that such offenses did not ordinarily rise to deportation. Without a visa an international student becomes undocumented, and must leave the United States or risk being detained and placed in deportation proceedings. Several attorneys said that they had clients who had opted to leave the country out of fear that they could be arrested by agents from ICE, the Homeland Security agency charged with carrying out Mr. Trump’s pledge of mass deportations. Some of the affected students are graduate students who have doctoral dissertations that they are supposed to defend next month. Others are undergraduates. Still others have completed their studies and have been working in the United States, under a special program that allows recent international graduates to remain in the country for up to three years if employed. “This is totally unprecedented,” said Fuji Whittenburg, an immigration lawyer in Calabasas, Calif., who has been practicing law for 20 years. “I have never seen anything close to this.” She added, “A brush with law enforcement that didn’t necessarily result in an arrest or a conviction is all it took.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Ms. Whittenburg said that one of her clients was an Indian national who got a DUI when he was studying in the United States more than a decade ago. When he applied for a second student visa more recently, he disclosed the charge to U.S. consular authorities in his home country. They ultimately granted him the visa to pursue further studies in the United States. Harvard advised international students last week during a webinar to think carefully about traveling abroad, according to The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper. The staff also warned students that pro-Palestinian speech could be risky. During the webinar, Jason Corral, an attorney, said there seemed to be a change from President Trump’s first term, according to The Crimson. “The difference is we have seen situations where it seems as though people’s visas are being revoked simply based on their speech or protests,” he said. In an alert, a coalition of national student media organizations urged student media last week to “minimize harm,” citing threats to student speech. On Monday a letter sent to Michael Drake, the president of the University of California, and others by the Council of University of California Faculty Association said the university should help students who had been targeted, arguing it had a “moral obligation” to protect students and scholars’ legal rights. The letter, which was co-signed by the University Council AFT, a teaching faculty and librarians union, called on the university to allow deported or detained students to continue their programs remotely, to continue providing stipends, salaries and fellowships and to help students in the courts. Several students have sued the government to challenge their terminations, and lawsuits are expected to pile up. Stacy Tolchin, an immigration lawyer in Pasadena, Calif., filed two suits in federal court in Los Angeles on Saturday, and said that she would be filing more this week. In one case, the American Civil Liberties Union is representing a Chinese doctoral student at Dartmouth College who has been studying computer science. According to a complaint filed on April 4, the student, Xiaotian Liu, had not committed any crimes or participated in any protests. The college told the student in an email that this was “not standard or normal procedure,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in New Hampshire. “Xiaotian’s dream of finishing his doctoral program and obtaining a Ph.D. at Dartmouth College is now in severe jeopardy,” the lawsuit said.

In his attacks on law firms, universities and other American institutions, President Trump is relying on an illusion. The illusion is that the institutions are powerless to fight back and that they face a choice between principle and survival. These institutions do not have to capitulate to Mr. Trump. They have a realistic path to defeating his intimidation. Some law firms and others have begun to fight. In doing so, they have provided the beginnings of a playbook for standing up to his attempts to weaken core tenets of American democracy, including due process, free speech and the constitutional system of checks and balances. For anybody who is skeptical of this idea and sees Mr. Trump as all-powerful, it is worth recognizing that law firms have already won court rulings that block Mr. Trump’s executive orders against them. Many legal analysts believe that higher courts will likewise reject the orders as illegal. It is also worth remembering the many legal defeats of Mr. Trump’s first term. Courts, including the Supreme Court, rejected his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result; prevented him from adding a citizenship question to the census; and blocked his family-separation policy at the southern border. A grass-roots political movement helped defeat his effort to repeal Obamacare even though Republicans controlled both the House and Senate. Yes, Mr. Trump has adopted a more extreme approach to executive power in his second term. He has won some early policy victories, and he will win more. Nonetheless, he faces real constraints on his power. Indeed, the most likely path to American autocracy depends on not only a power-hungry president but also the voluntary capitulation of a cowed civil society. It depends on the mistaken belief that a president is invincible. Anybody who has dealt with a schoolyard bully should recognize this principle: The illusion of invincibility is often his greatest asset. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT We understand why the leaders of major institutions are nervous. Taking on the president of the United States requires courage. This is a moment for courage.The playbook begins with a recognition that capitulation is doomed. Some law firms and corporations, as well as Columbia University, have made a different bet, obviously. But the example of law firms demonstrates the problems with capitulation. Mr. Trump has signed executive orders punishing several firms that have done nothing wrong. They have merely employed lawyers who represented Democrats, defended liberal causes or participated in investigations into Mr. Trump. The orders lack any meaningful legal argument and yet contain severe punishments. They seek to bar the firms’ lawyers from entering federal buildings and meeting with federal officials, provisions that would prevent the firms from representing many clients. One firm that was subject to an executive order — Paul, Weiss — surrendered and promised concessions, including $40 million in pro bono work for Trump-friendly causes. Three other firms — Milbank; Skadden, Arps; and Willkie Farr & Gallagher — proactively agreed to deals with the White House and made their own concessions. A crucial fact about these agreements is that they include no binding promises from the White House. Mr. Trump can threaten the firms again whenever he chooses and demand further concessions. These firms are in virtual receivership to Mr. Trump. So is Columbia, which yielded to Mr. Trump after he threatened its federal funding. The university did not even win the restoration of that funding when it agreed to his demands; it won merely permission to begin negotiating with the administration. Editors’ Picks His Life Savings Were Mailed to Him by Paper Check. Now, It’s Gone. Timothée Chalamet Is Living a Knicks Fan’s Dream It’s Time to Put Away Your Winter Clothes. Here’s How to Store Them Safely. Mr. Trump’s influence over the compliant law firms should be especially chilling to their clients. The firms have just signaled their willingness to abandon clients that have fallen into disfavor with the federal government. That does not seem like a quality one would want in an attorney. “Once you make concessions once, it’s hard not to make them again,” Christopher Eisgruber, the president of Princeton University and a legal scholar by training, said when discussing the attacks on higher education. The second item in the playbook is an insistence on due process. The American legal system has procedures to deal with Mr. Trump’s various allegations against these institutions. If law firms are behaving inappropriately, courts can punish them. If a university is violating students’ civil rights — by tolerating antisemitism, for instance — the Justice Department can file charges. These processes allow each side to present evidence. They prevent abuse of power and establish ground rules that other organizations can follow. Mr. Trump may well win some cases that follow due process, and that is OK. Some universities have indeed allowed their Jewish students to be menaced. But the appropriate remedy is not the arbitrary cancellation of unrelated research funding, potentially slowing cures for cancer, heart disease, childhood illnesses and more. Columbia managed to adopt the wrong strategy in both directions. It was too slow to fix its problems and then prostrated itself to Mr. Trump. Other universities should both get their houses in order and stand ready to sue the administration. The three law firms that have filed suits to block Mr. Trump’s executive orders — Jenner & Block, Perkins Coie and WilmerHale — provide a model. So far, they are winning in court. Importantly, they have won the backing of many conservatives. As our counterparts on The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote, Mr. Trump’s campaign against law firms “breaks a cornerstone principle of American justice.” Paul Clement, perhaps the most successful living Republican advocate at the Supreme Court, represents WilmerHale and wrote a thundering brief on its behalf. “It is thus a core principle of our legal system that ‘one should not be penalized for merely defending or prosecuting a lawsuit,’” Mr. Clement wrote, quoting a 1974 Supreme Court ruling. He described Mr. Trump’s orders as “an unprecedented assault on that bedrock principle.” Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, granted Mr. Clement’s request for a temporary restraining order. This pattern should give law firms confidence that they will continue to prevail, so long as they fight. The Supreme Court is deeply conservative on many issues and favors an expansive definition of executive power. But it has defied Mr. Trump before, and conservative legal experts who share the court’s outlook are aghast at his assault on the legal system. Any institution that stands up to Mr. Trump should be prepared to make sacrifices. Universities may have to spend more of their endowments, as they do during economic downturns. Law-firm partners may lose some income. But they can afford it; partners at Paul, Weiss made $6.6 million on average in 2023. One mistake that the submissive law firms made was imagining they had any chance of emerging unscathed once Mr. Trump targeted them. Fighting him has costs, and surrendering has costs. Already, some students at top law schools say they will no longer interview with firms like Skadden. “We’re not looking to sacrifice our moral values,” one student at Georgetown University said. Finally, the playbook calls for solidarity, especially for institutions that Mr. Trump has not (yet) targeted. The initial response to his executive orders from many other law firms has been the opposite of solidarity. They reportedly tried to steal clients and hire lawyers from the threatened firms. Most big firms also refused to sign a legal brief in defense of their industry. Their meekness is ultimately self-defeating. The campaign to subdue law firms will either be defeated or it will expand. We are glad to see that other firms have spoken up. Even better, a few firms — Williams & Connolly, Cooley and Clement & Murphy — are representing the three fighting the executive orders. Corporate executives can also make a difference by making clear, even privately, that they will not abandon any law firm that Mr. Trump attacks. The business world has much at stake. The United States is home to an outsize share of financial and corporate activity partly because investors have confidence that the rule of law prevails here. If political power instead supersedes signed contracts and the rule of law, American business will suffer. Standing up to the abuse of power is inherently difficult. It can also be inspiring. People who do so often look back proudly on their actions and are justly celebrated for it after a crisis has passed. But crises usually do not end on their own. Resolving them requires courage and action.