I want to take a moment to reiterate and explain an idea I’ve discussed many times here but which is particularly relevant in this moment: all power is unitary. What does this mean? Basically it means that a political actor’s relative power is the same everywhere. It’s not divided up into different buckets. You’re not losing power on one front and maintaining or increasing it everywhere else. That’s not how it works. Losses and gains in one place show up everywhere else. So Trump taking hits on the economy weakens him in the courts and with DOGE, Congress and everywhere else. It applies the same on the upside. If Trump is winning big battles in the courts, that empowers him everywhere else, even in areas that have nothing to do with the courts or the particular legal issue in question.

This post isn’t quite a post in the way I normally do them, more jotting down some of my brainstorming over the weekend.

Universities are a core pillar of civil society. Law firms are not. Observers have been waiting to see what would come of an amicus-brief-organizing campaign in support of Perkins Coie, the Seattle-based firm which was the first to be targeted by the Trump administration. Perkins Coie is also, significantly, the law firm for much of the institutional Democratic Party. It finally came out, and the brief was signed by more than 500 firms across the country. But it was not signed by any of the nation’s Top 20 firms, measured by revenue. I don’t know enough about the internal finances of the nation’s top-grossing firms. But I suspect they’re mostly like Paul, Weiss, which is to say they’re largely M&A firms, at least in terms of where they make their money — M&A and the management of other corporate transactions I don’t know acronyms for. It’s basically impossible to be in that business if you’re at war with the state that regulates mergers and acquisitions.

Just after Paul, Weiss cut their deal with President Trump, I spoke to a number of people either at the firm or proximate to it. One thing they helped me understand is that for firms like that, with a big M&A practice centered on partners with books of business ranging well into the tens of millions of dollars, it’s not just the clients who disappear in a flash. The money-making partners can too. So these vast, hugely money-making entities are actually quite fragile in their own way. The equivalent of a bank run dynamic and poof, they’re gone. But law firms come and law firms go. It is what it is.

I get asked a lot about what ordinary people should do to have an impact in this moment. I’ve said a number of times that studies I’ve seen show that it was the work of Indivisible groups of mostly normie Democrats around the country that had the biggest impact countering Trumpism the first time around. That said, this isn’t meant to be prescriptive. Let a hundred flowers bloom. Different people will want to get active in different ways. I say this simply to make clear you don’t need a kick-ass theory or the perfect group. The biggest thing is just getting organized with other like-minded people.

UPDATE: As of 5 p.m. Friday, only half the tickets remain.

As TPM’s 25th year rolls on, we’re rolling out to Chicago. We hope you’ll join us as we continue to celebrate this milestone while also taking a sober look at the political landscape in which we find ourselves.

On May 14th, we’ll be nearly four months into Trump II. A lot has happened so far, to put it mildly. Josh & Kate will discuss some of the most consequential and important developments to date.

Tickets are on sale now for our live show in Chicago. You can get them here. If you are member, you should have already received an email with your discount code.

After the show there will be a brief audience Q&A, followed by a cocktail hour where some other TPM staffers will be around to chat. All attendees receive one complimentary cocktail.

Capacity is limited so please get your tickets as soon as possible if interested.

Everyone in the country at the moment, albeit from different vantage points, seems to have the same question: What the actual fuck is going on?

Is the plan to have permanent tariffs? Are these meant as the basis of some kind of negotiation? Are we going to have blanket tariffs as the basis of a system of corruption in which favored industries and companies gain exemptions in exchange for fealty and cash? (So, countries as universities and law firms?) Is the idea just to replace income taxes with tariff income and fundamentally shift taxes to the middle and working classes?

At a basic level, the entire MAGA movement, and Donald Trump from whom all of it stems, simply doesn’t grasp the nature of American power or its limitations. In their view, the United States is the natural and inherent dominating power in the world. We’re the most powerful and the strongest. And starting from that view, they look out onto the world and think if we are in charge, why don’t we act like we’re in charge?