Trump’s Threats Force Powerful Institutions to Choose: Cut a Deal or Resist

As President Trump flexes his power over universities, law firms, media companies and more, some of the country’s most powerful institutions have faced a choice, to cut a deal with the White House or fight back.

In recent weeks, an increasing number are choosing to do battle with the president.

Harvard University refused this week to cave to what its president called “assertions of power, unmoored from the law.” More than 500 law firms have thrown their support behind some of their embattled peers as Mr. Trump seeks retribution against lawyers who represented or helped his political foes. The country’s oldest news wire fought Mr. Trump in court after it was banned from the Oval Office.

The new face of resistance is not like the one of Mr. Trump’s first term, when officials who opposed his agenda from inside the government tried to establish guardrails to prevent some of the president’s more radical ideas.

Now the fight is out in the open. The guardrails are gone, in large part because Mr. Trump demands loyalty from everyone around him. With almost no opposing voices inside the White House, the president’s campaign against the institutions of government, society and law have been more intense and have played out faster than they did during his first term.

And while Mr. Trump has succeeded in wrenching enormous concessions through threats, lawsuits and coercion — and he has shown no signs of stopping — there are hints of a shift in strategy among some of his targets.

Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, said a buzz began building among the faculty as Mr. Trump turned his focus to the university in recent weeks.