Clashes Over Order
Terry H. Schwadron
May 1, 2024
If they were clashing television dramas, the scenes on university campuses and in the New York courtroom where Donald Trump was being clapped with gag order. violations would play to the strident chords of Law & Order — even as the participants pursue disorder.
In both cases yesterday, the bristling drama of the pressures to shut down disorder were crowding out any rational consideration of any substance about the issues really at stake.
At Columbia University and at campuses nationwide, the attention — heightened by the irrational entry of politicians seeking to make political hay for or against arresting sloganeering students — were fully awash in the flood of policing questions. Even as police arrived by invitation of Columbia officials to start arresting those who had taken over a building in what proved to be a remarkably calm exercise, the images, the talk, the focus was anywhere but on the serious humanitarian concerns of Gazan civilians caught up in the heavy-handed Israeli reaction to Hamas terrorism.
In the courtroom, the decision by Judge Juan Merchan to lower the boom on Trump for violating gag orders on repeated, disruptive, and trial-threatening statements about witnesses, jurors, and the court itself was an overdue sideshow that misses the point on whether Trump falsified records in an illegal effort to skirt campaign laws.
In both cases, we were seeing the power of policing towards restoring order — not the resolution of the substantive matters at hand.
Indeed, both cases, share little in common other than coincident timing and their roles in a general, deepening rejection of the authority of institutions to limit personal speech. Both the protesting students and Trump are snubbing the power of the institutions claiming control to risk an ascending scale of punishment to pursue a public power play for control — up to expulsion for students and fines and jail time for Trump.
A Myopic View of Reality from Campus
The student rebellion at Columbia, which seems to have slipped the bounds of a strict “pro-Palestinian” message into a much wider anti-war theme, likely erred by taking over a university building. It just guarantees that law enforcement officers will be called to the campus on grounds that have little to do with Gazan hunger or Palestinian dignity.
At other university campuses, authorities were being hammered by donors, politicians, and the rain of bad public relations into unleashing policing tools just to show that they were in charge. The hypocrisy of politicians who otherwise look away from the violence of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capital riots to demand action against rebellious students was difficult to brace.
Though Anti-Defamation League leaders and other Jewish groups were still talking about Jewish student discomfort at the nature of anti-Israel sloganeering, the reality from talking to widening protests was clearly ill-focused on anti-Semitic messages and much more focused on standing up for free speech to university authorities and the mayors, governors, and lawmakers lining up for law and order with partisan overtones that include pushback against college diversity and “leftism.”
It was surreal to watch authorities seeking to create two clear “sides” in a drama that now has diffuse aims, including plenty of Jewish voices participating in each.
It was impossible to understand why university protesters would choose to accept slogans and social media summaries of history rather than to engage in actual debate. The rebellion has birthed a self-generating growth pattern that is simply presenting a generational stand-off in the form of calls for changes in university or national policies about weapons and divestiture, as if that would bring hostages home from Hamas or deliver food to the starving.
Maddeningly, reports about unleashing state troopers in Texas and police in Los Angeles and elsewhere on protesting students, were coming while U.S. diplomats were reporting actual progress towards terms for an initial ceasefire in the Middle East. Israel agreed to lowered terms involving release of fewer hostages, and it was unclear whether Qatari emissaries and neighboring Arab nations could persuade Hamas leaders to cooperate.
In Court, an Order for Order
In the courtroom, the dry recounting of documents and bank accounts introduced as evidence almost masked the finding of gag order violations.
Justice Merchan wrote that though he was “keenly aware of, and protective of, Defendant’s First Amendment rights,” he would not tolerate continued violations and warned Trump that he will send Trump to jail if necessary. The judge set a $9,000 fine for the series of posts that prosecutors had filed, but more such complaints are pending. New York law sets the penalty per violation.
The judge said Trump’s claim that reposts of rotten remarks about witnesses Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels don’t count as violations of the gag order were “counterintuitive and absurd.”
Trump’s constant complaining about the judge and court proceedings that he sees as politicized have included repeated posts and statements that cross over into remarks about witnesses and procedures that Trump finds objectionable. Through multiple civil trials and this first criminal trial, Trump has pushed to see how far he could move the uncrossable line on gag orders.
Unsubtly, Trump has been challenging these presiding judges and the justice system altogether for control. While Trump chooses politically to stand by police and law enforcement as tools of his presidential hopes, he clearly has resisted seeing himself as subject to court orders and procedures.
Legally, a finding of gag order violation in this case will affect the remainder of this trial and will reappear in his other trials. If nothing else, it will affect how Trump’s credibility is adjudged in additional proceedings.
Or, as is the case, Trump immediately turned the finding into a fund-raising appeal.
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