Let the history books reflect that, when fascism reared its head in America, much of civil society chose to debase itself and accommodate it, rather than fight back.
Leaders in education, media, technology, retail, sports, and local government have bowed to President Donald Trump and his authoritarian ambitions instead of defending their democratic rights — to freedom of speech, to academic independence, to free enterprise unburdened by corrupt demands for payoffs.
The institutions in question are not feeble. They include giant corporations worth trillions as well as many of the nation’s most prestigious academic institutions. They comprise many of the richest and most sophisticated non-government actors in the world. They have access to the best lawyers — many of whom trained in their storied halls. These are the proverbial adults in the room. They had the power to create friction for fascism. They have instead created a glide-path.
They are choosing to play ball with an administration that deploys federal troops into American cities; has rounded up law-abiding immigrants and dispatched them to torture gulags; has kicked patriotic Americans out of the military out of animus; has gone to war with science and data; practices gangster capitalism; and has crusaded against diversity with all the subtlety of a 1950s segregationist.
Below, a survey of leaders who have caved to Trump’s demands — in some cases to make a buck; in others to unlock federal funds. In many instances, they’ve paid fines and settlements that look like protection money. The most cowardly have buckled preemptively, in a foolhardy effort to stay in the president’s good graces — or at least out of the line of fire.
Media Mavens
Disney CEO Bob Iger:
Disney, led by CEO Bob Iger, settled a contrived defamation lawsuit filed by Trump against subsidiary ABC, by making a $15 million “donation” to the future Trump Library, and agreeing to pay $1 million for Trump’s legal fees. The litigation stemmed from anchor George Stephanopoulos describing Trump’s sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll, which he was found liable for in civil court, as “rape.” A New York judge had previously found that Trump’s groping Carroll didn’t rise to the state’s legal definition of rape, but could be described that way colloquially. (“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’” the judge wrote.)
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After the settlement was announced, an ABC reporter told Rolling Stone: “It is frightening. My fear is this sets a tone for the next four years and that the tone is: Do not upset the president.” The reporter described the settlement as “a big win for Donald Trump,” while denouncing the “surrender” by ABC and Disney.
Paramount chair Shari Redstone and Skydance CEO David Ellison:
At the opening of the new Trump administration, Paramount was jockeying for federal approval of an $8 billion merger with Skydance — which would enrich Paramount chair Shari Redstone to the tune of $1.75 billion. In this context, the companies settled a flimsy lawsuit filed by Trump against 60 Minutes, objecting to an interview with 2024 rival Kamala Harris that was not edited to Trump’s liking.
This settlement included a $16 million donation to the future Trump Library. It was decried by Democratic senators as an apparent “quid-pro-quo.” After Stephen Colbert lampooned the deal as a “big fat bribe,” Paramount announced it was ending Colbert’s show, and his late-night franchise with it.
Skydance, run by David Ellison (scion of the tech titan Larry), also committed to installing an overseer at CBS to monitor and ensure “viewpoint diversity.” Skykdance additionally vowed to axe any diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) measures in the merged company. Brendan Carr — the head of Trump’s Federal Communications Commission, which oversaw the merger — hailed the new company for pledging to “root out the bias” and for partnering with the government to “eliminate invidious forms of DEI discrimination.”
For his part, Trump announced on Truth Social that he also expected to receive “$20 Million Dollars more from the new Owners” in the form of advertising and PSAs — bringing the total payoff to “over $36 Million Dollars.”
Tech Titans
Apple CEO Tim Cook:
Apple honcho Tim Cook has ingratiated himself to the 47th president with an unseemly mix of fawning, flattery, and gold. Before Trump re-took office, Cook traveled to South Florida and bent the knee at Trump’s compound in Mar-a-Lago. Cook then took his place among a billionaire’s row at Trump’s inauguration — after personally donating $1 million to help fund the spectacle.
Earlier this month, Cook gifted (and hand-assembled while genuflecting) a 24-karat gold desk ornament to Trump in the Oval Office. The golden prize — a “unique unit of one,” Cook insisted — propped up an Apple logo etched out of Kentucky-made glass, a token of Apple’s commitment to a U.S. supply chain. This obsequious display was rewarded. Trump has exempted smartphones and computers from his tariff war with China, where Apple produces many of its iPhones and Macs.
Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos:
Like Cook, Jeff Bezos also bent the knee at Mar-a-Lago and attended Trump’s inauguration. Amazon donated $1 million to Trump inaugural. Amazon has committed to questionable, lucrative deals with the Trump family, first inking a $40 million Amazon Prime Video deal for First Lady Melania before bringing The Apprentice, Trump’s old reality TV franchise, exclusively to Prime Video.
At the same time, Bezos has been neutering The Washington Post, a paper he was once seen as a news savior for purchasing. This began, pre-election, by spiking the paper’s planned endorsement of Trump rival, Harris, and has continued with a hollowing out of the paper’s staff and a dictate that its op-eds should champion only “free markets and personal liberties.” Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, attended Bezos’ extravagant wedding in Venice.
Best known for founding Amazon, Bezos also has a rocket company, Blue Origin, which relies on federal contracts, and competes with Elon Musk’s Space X. In April, Blue Origin won a $2.3 billion Space Force launch contract.
Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg:
Like the other tech titans, Zuckerberg bent the knee at Mar-a-Lago, and attended the Trump inauguration, which Meta donated $1 million to help finance. The Facebook chief, who once expressed revulsion toward Trump, soon MAGAfied Meta by naming a top Trump ally, UFC CEO Dana White, as a board member, while appointing a top GOP lawyer, Joel Kaplan, as the company’s head of global affairs.
Meta also got into the frivolous lawsuit payoff game, agreeing to pay $25 million to settle a long-simmering suit by Trump, who objected to his de-platforming by Meta following the insurrection he helped instigate on Jan. 6 2021. ($21 million will go to Trump’s library.)
Zuckerberg also made platform changes catering to far-right politics. He eliminated Meta’s third-party fact checking, opening the floodgates for misinformation and charlatans, earning a meme of approval from FCC chair Carr. The company also reversed policies banning hate directed at LGBTQ users, including accusations of mental illness or abnormality. The CEO described the past restrictions as “out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
Joining Trump’s anti-diversity crusade, Meta also jettisoned diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and its chief diversity officer. The billionaire has even deformed his philanthropy. The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative shuttered a free Bay Area school that had made a mission of serving “underrepresented minorities.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman:
Sam Altman, previously a Trump critic who once labeled him an “unprecedented threat to America,” experienced a sudden “perspective change” after Trump won in 2024. He, too, bent the knee at Mar-a-Lago, and his company donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural. Altman then timed the announcement of a multi-billion artificial intelligence data center project called Stargate so that Trump could claim it as a business victory shortly after retaking office. At the ceremony, Altman flattered Trump: “We wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr. President.”
Altman later accompanied Trump on a trip to the Middle East where Trump inked deals to ramp up AI investment in countries like Saudi Arabia. Alman has also proved successful in getting the Trump government hooked on OpenAI, offering the platform to federal agencies for $1 a year. “One of the best ways to make sure AI works for everyone is to put it in the hands of the people serving the country,” Altman told Wired. “We’re proud to [be] delivering on President Trump’s AI Action Plan…helping public servants deliver for the American people.”
Retail Giants
Target CEO Brian Cornell:
Just as Trump took office in January, Target reversed long-running diversity initiatives, to the detriment of both company employees and suppliers. CEO Brian Cornel had once celebrated the company’s commitment, telling Fortune in 2023 that Target’s “focus on diversity and inclusion and equity has fueled much of our growth over the last nine years.”
The capitulation to Trump’s anti-DEI crusade has sparked an enduring boycott from Black and progressive shoppers. The company also donated $1 million to the Trump inauguration.
University Presidents
University of Pennsylvania president J. Larry Jameson:
After Trump lodged an anti-trans executive order titled, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” the University of Pennsylvania banned transgender athletes from competition and erased the records of Lia Thomas, a transgender woman who had excelled in Ivy League swimming. Penn made the move in the service of unlocking $175 million in federal funding the Trump administration had frozen as leverage against the university.
Penn’s president, J. Larry Jameson, issued a statement in July vowing to abide by “definitions of sex — with respect to women’s athletics — that have been set” by Trump. He also offered an apology “to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or experienced anxiety” due to the inclusion of transgender athletes in competition.
Columbia University acting president Claire Shipman:
Columbia University paid $221 million in settlements to resolve trumped-up charges of antisemitism on campus. (The university is, in fact, notorious for calling in the NYPD to crack down on pro-Palestinian protesters.) In a letter announcing the deal, acting president Claire Shipman insisted that the decision to pay the Trump administration hundreds of millions of dollars should not be seen as a “binary fight between courage and capitulation.”
Shipman said the university stood a good shot of defeating the Trump administration in court: “We might have achieved short-term litigation victories,” she wrote. But she argued that such a fight risked “incurring deeper long-term damage.” Columbia’s concession unlocks — at least for now — $400 million in federal grants. Shipman touted the deal as “a carefully crafted agreement that protects our institution and our values.”
The university did not admit to any wrongdoing, but agreed to intrusive demands to abandon commitments to diversity in admission and hiring. The 22-page agreement forbids, for example, the use of “personal statements, diversity narratives, or any applicant reference to racial identity” as a “proxy” for affirmative action.
Brown University president Christina Paxson:
Brown University has long been viewed as a more progressive institution among the Ivy League universities. But Brown president Christina Paxson bowed to Trump, rather than fight in court, to unlock $510 million in frozen federal support. The university’s concessions include a commitment not to provide gender affirming care to minor trans students. The agreement also appears to exclude trans students not only from university athletics but also from any “single-sex” bathrooms and student housing. The LGBTQ+ outlet the Advocate, describes the university as now “functionally inaccessible” to trans students.
The university is also turning over racial admissions data over to the administration, with anti-diversity commitments similar those from Columbia. In a letter, Paxson described the agreement as necessary to preserve Brown’s “world-class” education and touted that she’d preserved the university’s “academic freedom and freedom of expression.” In the wake of the agreement, Trump saw things differently, declaring on Truth social: “Woke is officially DEAD at Brown.”
Sports Institutions
NCAA President Charlie Baker:
In February, the NCAA announced a policy banning trans women from women’s sports competition, “following the Trump administration’s executive order.” The NCAA’s top executive, Charlie Baker, the former GOP governor of Massachusetts, framed the change as a positive: “This national standard brings much needed clarity as we modernize college sports for today’s student-athletes.”
Blue City Mayors
Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser:
In April, Mayor Muriel Bowser dismantled Black Lives Matter Plaza, an intersection within sight of the White House that had been painted to honor the legacy of George Floyd and to denounce the abuse of Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement. Bowser made clear the effort was an attempt to appease people in the White House who “didn’t like it” and insisted it was a reasonable concession because the city had “bigger fish to fry.” Bowser’s city was nonetheless invaded by federal troops in August after Trump lied and declared the city was beset by an epidemic of crime.
Louisville, Kentucky, mayor Craig Greenberg:
In July, Louisville, Kentucky, Mayor Craig Greenberg struck a deal with the Trump Justice Department to change city policy and collaborate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), agreeing to hold arrested immigrants who have deportation notices for 48 hours so they can get picked up by the feds. In exchange, the administration agreed to take Louisville off the target list for “sanctuary cities.” Greenberg said that ducking a fight with the feds would “protect our law-abiding immigrant community and our entire city.”
St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer:
In August, St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer halted the city’s Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprise program, which promoted diversity through city contracting. In so doing, Spencer bowed to the Trump administration’s fiercely anti-diversity agenda. Spencer attributed the move, in part, to the city needing to preserve access to federal emergency dollars for recovery from a recent tornado: “The city does not take lightly the prospect that access to this desperately-needed federal funding could be foreclosed or clawed back,” she wrote.
Portland, Oregon, Mayor Keith Wilson:
The mayor of Portland, Keith Wilson, ordered revisions to the progressive city’s diversity and inclusion programs to strip preferences based on race and gender, in order to pre-emptively comply with Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders. Wilson was explicit that he’d made the move in hopes of retaining $350 million in grant funding. James Posey, president of the Portland NAACP, wrote a blistering rebuke, arguing that Wilson’s was “normalizing political coercion,” while insisting: “True leadership requires courage in the face of adversity, not capitulation.”
From Rolling Stone US
