2466 - Trump's Big Law Vendetta w/ Rachel Cohen

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Majority Report with Sam Seder
Episode 2466 - "Trump's Big Law Vendetta w/ Rachel Cohen"
Release Date: April 1, 2025

---

Introduction

In Episode 2466 of The Majority Report with Sam Seder, host Sam Seder engages in a profound discussion with Rachel Cohen, a former attorney at the prestigious law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (commonly known as Skadden Arps). The episode delves into the Trump administration's targeted attacks on major law firms, the implications for the legal industry, and the broader consequences for due process and democratic institutions.

---

Trump’s Vendetta Against Major Law Firms

Sam Seder opens the episode by outlining a wave of aggressive actions initiated by the Trump administration against top-tier law firms. These actions include:

• Threats via the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC): The administration is leveraging the EEOC to pressure law firms by threatening to revoke government contracts and security clearances. This tactic aims to intimidate firms that have historically represented Democratic clients or engaged in pro bono work counter to the administration's policies.

  Sam Seder [32:45]: "Imagine being an attorney of color working 60, 70-hour weeks, constantly doing outstanding work and getting an email from your boss about how they wanted to listen to the Trump administration to stamp out the illegal DEI that is happening at Skadden Arps."

• Cancellation of Government Contracts: By targeting firms’ financial foundations, the administration seeks to coerce law firms into compliance with its political and legal agendas.

  Sam Seder [03:33]: "On the program today, Rachel Cohen, lawyer, formerly of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher, Flom recently quit over that law firm's capitulation to Donald Trump."

---

Rachel Cohen’s Departure from Skadden Arps

Rachel Cohen shares her personal experience and the rationale behind her resignation from Skadden Arps. She emphasizes the untenable position law firms find themselves in due to the administration's coercive tactics.

• Unacceptable Demands: The administration demanded exorbitant pro bono commitments, with Skadden Arps pledging over $100 million in pro bono work, surpassing commitments from other firms like Paul Weiss.

  Rachel Cohen [32:50]: "They promised $100 million worth of pro bono hours to the Trump administration, which is more than twice Paul Weiss's $40 million that they promised. That was a terrible deal anyway."

• Intimidation and Antagonism: The administration's efforts are perceived as a form of retribution against law firms that support causes opposed by the administration, such as asylum representation and impact litigation.

  Rachel Cohen [33:58]: "They are using these kinds of EEOC enforcement mechanisms through a certain extent... They're using it wrong."

---

Impact on Pro Bono Work and Legal Representation

The discussion highlights the critical role of pro bono work in the legal system and how the administration's tactics threaten to undermine it.

• Erosion of Pro Bono Commitment: With law firms under pressure to meet massive pro bono obligations for the administration, resources may be diverted from supporting marginalized communities and defending due process rights.

  Rachel Cohen [43:09]: "It's tough because you don't want to come out to any type of outward facing media and act like corporate law firms... they are not on the front lines of justice work."

• Opportunity Cost: The redirection of pro bono resources toward governmental demands results in fewer resources available for defending individuals' rights, thereby weakening legal protections for vulnerable populations.

---

Specific Cases Highlighted: The Abrego Garcia Incident

Rachel Cohen discusses the case of Abrego Garcia, a father illegally deported to El Salvador due to administrative errors, illustrating the administration's disregard for due process.

• Due Process Violations: Despite having legal protected status, Garcia was wrongfully deported, highlighting systemic failures and the administration's manipulative tactics.

  Rachel Cohen [14:00]: "Abrego Garcia picked up his son after work from the boy's grandmother's house when ICE officers stopped the car saying his protected status had changed... couple months later he is sent to El Salvador."

• Public Perception and Misinformation: The administration has worked to mask errors and portray such incidents as isolated, misleading the public about the prevalence and causes of these injustices.

  Sam Seder [16:55]: "They were sent to El Salvador because of an administrative error... now they're in a dungeon."

---

Law Firms’ Response and Organizing

Rachel Cohen explains the internal reactions within law firms, emphasizing the importance of solidarity and resistance against the administration's coercive measures.

• Organizing and Resignation: Several attorneys, including Cohen, have resigned in protest, signaling a potential shift within the legal industry towards greater resistance.

  Rachel Cohen [55:44]: "Two other people at Skadden have already quit since they announced their deal."

• Cultural and Structural Challenges: The hierarchical and profit-driven structure of large law firms makes collective resistance difficult, as partners often prioritize financial stability over ethical considerations.

  Rachel Cohen [57:32]: "Skadden is an equity partnership only structure... many of these partners understand that Donald Trump has authoritarian tendencies."

---

Implications for Due Process and Democracy

The episode underscores the broader implications of the Trump administration's actions on due process and democratic institutions.

• Erosion of Legal Protections: By undermining law firms that defend due process, the administration weakens fundamental legal safeguards, threatening the integrity of the judiciary and the protection of individual rights.

  Rachel Cohen [52:19]: "It is about the people legally in this country who are getting deported or indefinitely detained over free speech rights or who are just due process rights violated."

• Democratic Backsliding: The administration's aggressive legal tactics are viewed as indicators of a potential slide towards authoritarianism, with significant consequences for the rule of law and democratic governance.

  Sam Seder [66:13]: "If there is such a thing as losing a democracy... we are in the process of losing it."

---

Conclusion

Sam Seder and Rachel Cohen conclude the episode by reflecting on the critical need for resistance and solidarity within the legal community and beyond. They emphasize that fighting against authoritarian tactics is essential to preserving due process, democratic institutions, and the rule of law.

Sam Seder [63:19]: "We won't rest. Only fighting is going to keep this role."

Rachel Cohen [61:39]: "Someone has to stand up... Whether we win or not, if no one had spoken on this, the story would have died quite quickly."

---

Key Takeaways

• Trump Administration's Strategy: Utilizing EEOC threats and contract cancellations to intimidate major law firms into compliance with political agendas.

• Resignation as Protest: Rachel Cohen and other attorneys leaving prestigious firms highlight a growing resistance within the legal community against authoritarian pressures.

• Threat to Due Process: The administration's actions pose significant risks to fundamental legal protections and the integrity of the judicial system.

• Call for Solidarity: The episode underscores the necessity for collective action within and outside the legal industry to resist authoritarian tactics and uphold democratic values.

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Sam Seder [32:45]: "Imagine being an attorney of color working 60, 70-hour weeks, constantly doing outstanding work and getting an email from your boss about how they wanted to listen to the Trump administration to stamp out the illegal DEI that is happening at Skadden Arps."

• Rachel Cohen [32:50]: "They promised $100 million worth of pro bono hours to the Trump administration, which is more than twice Paul Weiss's $40 million that they promised. That was a terrible deal anyway."

• Rachel Cohen [52:19]: "It is about the people legally in this country who are getting deported or indefinitely detained over free speech rights or who are just due process rights violated."

• Sam Seder [66:13]: "If there is such a thing as losing a democracy... we are in the process of losing it."

• Rachel Cohen [61:39]: "Someone has to stand up... Whether we win or not, if no one had spoken on this, the story would have died quite quickly."

---

This episode of The Majority Report provides a compelling and critical analysis of the Trump administration's aggressive legal strategies against major law firms, highlighting the broader implications for due process and democratic institutions. Rachel Cohen's firsthand account offers valuable insights into the challenges faced by legal professionals in resisting authoritarian pressures and underscores the importance of collective action in defending democratic values.

Transcript

[Emma Vigland]

You are listening to a free version of Majority Report with Sam Steder. To support the show and get another 15 minutes of daily program, go to majority SM please.

[Sam Seder]

The majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Tuesday, April 1, 2025. My name is Sam Seder. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Rachel Cohen, lawyer, formerly of Skatton, Arps, Slate, Meager, Meager and Flom recently quit over that law firm's capitulation to Donald Trump. Also on the program today, it's election Day. Wisconsin Supreme Court rate, race, record breaking spending. Meanwhile, two races in Florida. There are surprises that even one of them could be contentious. We will be talking about that later. Trump, meanwhile, launches the next wave of attacks on our functioning government. Massive layoffs in health agencies and more. And tomorrow is tariffs day or Liberation Day.

[Emma Vigland]

It's the new emancipation.

[Sam Seder]

As it becomes clear that Trump is seeking a huge transfer of wealth upward, Senate Republicans attempting budgetary sleight of hand may just ignore the parliamentarian.

[Emma Vigland]

You can do that.

[Sam Seder]

I wanted to thunderclap, but I had the wrong board. Up. Trump sued over his executive order imposing unconstitutional restrictions on voting. And Trump thugs send more people to El Salvador in prison after admitting they sent a Maryland father with legal status to rot. And essentially what is a dungeon. Proud boys and right wing militias now mobilizing to pro musk protests in Gaza. Israel kills 15 Palestinian paramedics one by one and then buried them in a mass grave. Trump task force threatens Harvard. And a federal judge delays Trump's temporary protected status rescission for Venezuelans. Cory Booker holds the floor for 18 hours while Chuck Schumer naps.

[Emma Vigland]

We will rest.

[Sam Seder]

That's a good point. And advanced bookings for Canada. U.S. flights through the summer are down 70% year over year. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen.

[Emma Vigland]

It is news day Tuesday.

[Sam Seder]

News day Tuesday. We've got so much to get through. Should say. I realized when I got into the office that today was April 1st. April Fool's Day. I hadn't thought about it. And so we don't have a April Fool's Day show. Again, legalized comedy. But if you want go back and we still have some of the Ken, Ken and Ken stuff, we should put more of it up. If you go on YouTube to Ken, Ken and Ken show, you can see some of our, I think some of them were April Fools or some of them were Halloween I don't know. So go check that out. Sorry, don't have more than that for you. We're going to get later in the program to talk about the massive cuts. 10,000 people at various agencies in health agencies ranging from primarily the fda, which does food and drug safety. Presumably it's going to be, I mean, this is the most libertarian philosophy and I've heard it for years and years and it's just absolutely absurd. And frankly also, well, I've heard it from like hardcore libertarians, people who say, I'm a libertarian. So like, literally where they had to, you know, Tim Carney, when I used to be on MSNBC with him Dylan Ratigan show, everything was prefaced I'm a libertarian. So the idea that agencies can be corrupted, that they can be bought out by corporate influence is very, very real. The idea that the solution to diminishing corporate power over our government is to shrink government is one of the dumbest ideas introduced in modern times, particularly relative to how serious the people are who.

[Jessica]

Present it, how they're the richest people in the world.

[Sam Seder]

Strength is a dynamic. Power is a dynamic. It does not exist in a vacuum. If you shrink government, you are ceding whatever power the corporations wanted to take from government. You're ceding it to the corporations.

[Emma Vigland]

Right.

[Sam Seder]

Jeff Bezos came, Bill Gates came, Mark.

[Emma Vigland]

Zuckerberg came, they all came. This is also a very old Republican adage, but it's made even more obviously insincere or is show. Its insincerity is shown by the fact that the people that are making this case are literally billionaires who are ransacking the government for their own ends, not just billionaires.

[Sam Seder]

I mean, you can see, I mean, we're going to play a clip from Ezra Klein.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

Which at the end of the day is almost the exact same dynamic. Like the like, as if people don't understand like government is some entity that exists in a vacuum and there's one person in there pressing a lever. Government is a process. And what the output of that process is is a function of input and what's happening with that process. And that process at times can be one way and it can be another way. And those two. The difference between those two ways is less corporate influence, more corporate influence. There's always corporate influence. It's just a question of how, how intense it is. But Will will talk about that. I only raise that because rfk, his whole thing was like, I, you know, there's a, there's a corporate capture Big Pharma in these regulatory agencies. And the idea that you get rid of corporate capture by attacking what it's capturing is just absurd.

[Emma Vigland]

Or firing the inspectors general who would find the waste and fraud that they're saying is the result of this corporate capture. It's entirely unclear.

[Sam Seder]

Those are two different, like sort of camps that both have their desire to basically allow for corporate power.

[Emma Vigland]

Right.

[Sam Seder]

The way that you keep people from, from taking hostages is you kill all the hostages and just keep killing the hostages. We'll talk more about that in a moment. But speaking of like kidnapping, more information. And of course we're only going to get this in dribs and drabs. Right? Because they sent 300 people to a, essentially a dungeon, a gulag in El Salvador. And there is no doubt in my mind, ostensibly because they were all members of a gang, a criminal terrorist gang. We have no way of knowing if that's actually true because their only methodology seems to be like tattoos.

[Jessica]

One of our goons saw a tattoo on his arm.

[Sam Seder]

We will only hear and it will take a while and we probably won't hear from all of them, from people who had full on legal status. Because if there were, it's possible there were people on those planes who were not here. We're here with, without documents. Maybe they overstayed their visa. Maybe they came into the country, their parents took them or maybe they came across the border without documents. We will not hear from them because their families or their friends who may also be undocumented don't. They have no. They're terrified not going to come forward.

[Emma Vigland]

They don't want to shine a spotlight on themselves.

[Sam Seder]

100%.

[Emma Vigland]

We're seeing this when they're with hospitals. This is the way that the government makes a group of people go underground ground.

[Sam Seder]

And so when we hear stories of this, two or three or four or five stories of like this, you can be sure that there was a lot more people who weren't what they say. And that's the problem with the failure of due process. Here is Jesse Waters hand waving this away. The idea that we could actually, that we claim, and here's the thing, they've got to claim that these people are in a gang to sell it politically. So who they are is obviously important. But you cannot determine who they are unless there is some type of official process which determines that. And what we call the legal term is due process. Yeah, it's not, it's not in the way that we use it in the vernacular.

[Bradley]

You can't take away people's due process like that. And I Again, I don't trust the El Salvadorian government to be making sure that they are not torturing people, that they're vetting them properly. They need to be vetted on this side.

[Sam Seder]

All right, pause it for one second. I just want to say something. We say as a shorthand, it's a person's due process. It is not a person's due process. It is a person's right to go through due process. That's a very subtle but important distinction because the due process is supposed to exist regardless of whether there's people to go through it or not.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

The due process exists in the same way that our laws exist. They exist whether there's people breaking them or. Or not. Due process exists. It is the way that we adjudicate things.

[Emma Vigland]

It's the bedrock of our judiciary, and.

[Bradley]

It'S constitutionally enshrined people that they're vetting them properly. They need to be vetted on this side. Democrats always say this could happen. It did happen. It's not. It didn't happen. Did you watch the video torturing? Yeah.

[Emma Vigland]

Do you.

[Bradley]

Do you read the shading? Time magazine was there when the gay barber from Venezuela who had a crown tattoo that said mom was being processed coming into the El Salvador. Oh, am I boring you again? I'm sorry, no. But you've been talking about this gay barber from El Salvador with some stupid tattoo for weeks.

[Sam Seder]

Yes.

[Bradley]

Jessica, come on. It's just a gay barber.

[Sam Seder]

He's not into you.

[Bradley]

He's an innocent guy who got swept up in a deportation, and hopefully we get it figured out and straightened out. But a lot of people in this country, Jessica, get arrested for things that they didn't do, get falsely accused, falsely against racial profit. That doesn't mean. That doesn't mean you just stop arresting people. That doesn't mean you stop arresting criminals because one guy was arrested who was innocent.

[Sam Seder]

Okay. All right. We don't need to hear any more.

[Emma Vigland]

Wow.

[Sam Seder]

The reason why he knows that innocent people get arrested all the time is because of due process. Because they get arrested, then they go through due process, and we find out they're innocent. This guy has already received the punishment, and it might as well be capital punishment. To that end, the Atlantic reported yesterday in the case of a father of a five year old disabled child, Abrego Garcia. He is here legally.

[Emma Vigland]

Came to the.

[Sam Seder]

Came to this country.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

A teenager because he was fleeing in 2011 gang threats in El Salvador. He received in 2019, protected legal status from a US immigration judge. In other words, he went through the process who found he would likely be targeted by gangs if deported back. That's what asylums for. He was scooped up by ICE because of a supposed clerical error. And of course there is no due process. So there was no assessment of like there was no way to catch that clerical error. On March 12, Abrego Garcia picked up his son after work from the boy's grandmother's house when ICE officers stopped the car saying his protected status had changed. Officers waited for Abrego wife to come to the scene to take care of the boy and then drove him away in handcuffs. Couple months later he is sent to El Salvador. In Monday's court filing, attorneys for the government admitted that the Salvadoran man, this being Garcia, had been deported accidentally. And here's the kicker that speaks to what Waters is saying. Although ICE was aware of his protection from removal from El Salvador, Brego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error, the government told the court. Trump lawyers said the court has no ability to bring Abrego Garcia back now that he's in Salvador in custody.

[Emma Vigland]

They have no ability. They can, they can stage a photo op in that El Salvador prison with the shaved heads of hundreds of men which included innocent people that were rounded up without due process.

[Jessica]

Who cares what those identity of those men are? Just put them in a cage.

[Emma Vigland]

They can do that.

[Sam Seder]

They are now.

[Emma Vigland]

But they can't bring him back to his family.

[Sam Seder]

It's too late.

[Emma Vigland]

You know what would have been would have prevented it from being too late if he had his due process and this was able to be delineated. Do we have this JD Vance tweet about this? He really thought he owned the liberal media here. Responding to Jon Favreau of Pod Save America who said any comment on this at Marco Rubio? How about you at J.D. vance? You just admitted to accidentally sending an innocent father from Maryland to a torture. It's cut off here, but you get the gist. Vance responds. My comment is that according to the court document you apparently didn't read, he was a convicted MS.13 gang member with no legal right to be here. My further comment is that it's gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported when ignoring citizens they victimize. Next slide is the actual court filing which completely contradicts what J.D. vance was saying there, which says that.

[Sam Seder]

That he was accused at one point of being a member of MS.13 but because he got his due process back then, they found now in fact he was clear to that right.

[Emma Vigland]

An informant had essentially fingered him As a. As somebody who could have been a gang member and there were no charges filed.

[Jessica]

And you can't necessarily take. I've just been on like, one grand jury duty session. You can't necessarily take the word of informants as face value. Typically, they want other evidence than one guy that works on the payroll. The cops. And, yeah, him.

[Emma Vigland]

They're incentivized to give information. It's the same arguments that were used against the Bush administration's use of torture during the war on terror. Information that's given under duress is not always reliable. And also the lack of reliability increases in many ways.

[Sam Seder]

Did he just do this? Did he just add.

[Emma Vigland]

No, this was yesterday. But this guy, Brian Metzger, who I think is with Business Insider. I'm not sure. Don't, Don't. Okay. Yep. Business Insider. So he tweeted that, going after the reporter who had tweeted out the filing and then immediately realized, FYI, edited this post because I mistakenly believe the determination from the immigration judge had been made in 2021. Whoops. No, that wasn't correct. Edited the Original post Because 2019, when this determination was made, was during the Trump admin, not the Biden. None of this matters. He wasn't convicted of a crime like you initially said.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, but he was implying.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

That the reason why the guy got off from being Ms. 13 was because of Biden and then had to re. Re. Had to remember that. Oh, wait, Trump was right.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah, it. This is also, I really want to note that gang databases and gang affiliations have been used to further mass incarceration in this country for quite a while. It's, you know, in 2016, I think it was Oregon that did away with their gang database because despite having less than 8% of their population being Black at the time, 64% of people in the database were black. And you see this across a variety of different states where it's used to elevate charges against poor people and marginalized communities by saying they have gang ties. And it's very. It's very difficult to determine how to get. How they get on one, how they get off of one. And throughout this, like, tough on crime, broken windows policing period of our history, this was used over and over and over again. So you see how our policies at home are now. And honestly, the militarization of our police force that escalated a lot of this in the wake of 9 11, where they got all this excess military equipment and the surveillance state expanded. They're using these same tactics that they've used against Many Americans and applying that to justify the disappearances of innocent people and bragging about it where they say there's nothing we can do. That's Stephen Miller. That's Stephen Miller basically going like, here's the doj. Suck on this.

[Sam Seder]

In the. In their filing, the DOJ says there is no jurisdiction in habeas. Plaintiffs admit, as they must that the United States did not have custody over Abrego Garcia. They acknowledge that there may be difficult questions redress ability in this case, reflecting their recognition that defendants don't have the power to produce Garcia from Sea cot in El Salvador. But even more, they can see that Garcia is not in defendants custody. Essentially they're saying like, we dropped them off already. There's nothing we can do. The government, we can't be compelled to have this guy show up because we don't have him.

[Emma Vigland]

There was nothing they could do when the plane was already in the air and the judge ordered that the plane turn around. Hey, the plane's already in the air. Oh, now this guy's innocent. Well, there's nothing we can't do. Although, yeah, can't bring him back.

[Jessica]

They all had a problem with the judge overruling the military plane.

[Emma Vigland]

Right?

[Sam Seder]

These people are ghouls.

[Emma Vigland]

I mean, they're fascists, right? They are fascists. This is a fascist administration. And on this issue there is no question they are disappearing people at this moment.

[Sam Seder]

We'll talk more about this later. We've got a couple of words from our sponsors. The show today is sponsored by Liquid iv. I barely have to do anything for this because all I have to do is take out this bottle of Liquid IV that I have here every day that I do the show. Sometimes I think like two days ago I forgot it was in the fridge.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah, you had to run and go.

[Sam Seder]

Grab it, run and go get it.

[Emma Vigland]

You need it for the show.

[Sam Seder]

I need it for the show and I need it for my. I feel the difference. At the end of the day, actually, I really do. And very little impacts me as a person. Like physically, I just always have a. Like this flatlined. But I can feel it when I'm not drinking Liquid iv. Doesn't matter what you do. You can get extraordinary hydration from Liquid iv. It is powered by L Liv Hydro Science. Liquid IV helps you break the mold. It's got flavors like hydration, multiplier, sugar free raspberry lemonade right here. It's a. I mean, it tastes like lemonade, but it's zero sugar. Has notes of ripe, freshly picked raspberries. And citrusy. I mean, people know what raspberry lemonade tastes like. It's delicious. True to fruit flavors that keep you hydrated. They have all sorts of hydration, multiple flavors on the website. Acai berry, lemon, lime, pina colada. They got a raspberry melon. They got a couple. I got four, I think four sugar free and then a bunch of other ones. White peach is a sugar free rainbow sherbet. Sort of like a fruity punch type of thing. Break the mold and your own ritual. And own your ritual. I should say. Just one stick and 16 ounces of water hydrates better than water alone. Powered by LVI Hydro Science, it's an optimized ratio of electrolytes, essential vitamins and clinically tested nutrients that turned ordinary water into extraordinary hydration. It's got three times the electrolytes a leading sports drink. Eight essential vitamins, nutrients always non gmo, vegan, gluten free, dairy free and soy free come in really convenient packets. Great for travel. I'm heading down to Florida on Thursday to do another one of those PBD things and I'm gonna take a couple of packets.

[Emma Vigland]

Good call.

[Sam Seder]

Yep. Embrace your ritual of extraordinary hydration from Liquid IV. Get 20% off your first order of Liquid IV when you go to Liquid IV.com use the code majority rep, not majority report. It's majority rep. We check that. Right, Russ? Oh, we got to introduce Russ today. Majority rep at checkout. That's 20% off your first order when you shop. Better hydration today using promo code majority rep@liquid IV.com we'll put a link in the YouTube and podcast description to that stuff. Also, every year you say you're gonna learn a new language. Maybe based upon what I did yesterday, I should maybe learn a little French. But I'm focusing on Studio Espanol. But few of us actually commit to it. Babbel makes it easy for you to learn one in less time than you think. The thing that's easy about Babel comes in very short, like 10 minute lessons. And I can knock off a couple of lessons when I'm walking to work. Or I can just listen to one lesson, then I listen to music or one lesson and an audiobook. It's great. Learning a new language is the pathway to discovering new cultures. So why not embark on learning something new? Great time to learn a new language. Incidentally, with everything that's going on in this country, Babel's, like I say, got quick 10 minute lessons. They're handcrafted over 200 language experts get you begin speaking your new language in three weeks or whatever pace you choose. And my daughter at college has been using it to learn a language and I'm like why am I even bothering sending you to college, right?

[Emma Vigland]

This is cheaper.

[Sam Seder]

And the thing is, conversing is really the key to understanding new languages. So Babel is designed using practical real world conversations. Conversations you can spend months with private teachers. The old way of learning languages and nothing screams Taurus like holding a phone translation app to your face all day. Babel's tips and tools are inspired by the real life stuff that you actually need when you communicate with a focus on conversation, you're going to be ready to talk wherever you go. Here's some proof. Studies from Yale, Michigan State and other leading universities continue to prove that Babel works. One study found that using Babel for 15 hours is equivalent to a full semester at college, significantly less expensive. They have over 16 million subscriptions sold. Babel's 14 award winning language courses are backed by a 20 day money back guarantee this year. Get talking with Babel. Let's get more of you talking in a new language. Babel is giving our listeners 60% off [e-mail] majority get up to 60% [e-mail] majority spelled B a B B el B A b b e l.com Majority babel.com Majority rules and restrictions may apply. We'll put the links in the podcast and YouTube descriptions. Quick break. Rachel Cohen, formerly of Skatnarp's Big Law in New York City and frankly around the country, she quit as a protest to their acquiescence to the Trump administration. Be right back. We are back. Sam Seder, Emma Vigland on the Majority Report. It's a pleasure to welcome to the program Rachel Cohen. She is a lawyer who technically is on the payroll for a couple more days as my understanding at Scatton Arbs, which is a one of the biggest law firms in the country, just give it for folks who don't know that world. Like tell us about that firm, how big it is, where it fits in, sort of like the legal world.

[Rachel Cohen]

Anyone who's not familiar with that world, I am a bit jealous and wish that we could all remain unfamiliar but unfortunately no longer the case. Scadden is one of like you said, the largest law firms actually in the world. So we have a presence on there's offices in Asia, in Europe and I believe our revenues were upwards of several billion dollars with a B last year. The partners have a profit per partner that is in the seven figures. And there's a lot of kind of prestige chasing in the legal industry, broadly, to the extent people care about for their employers. Scadden is very much on that list. There have been a couple of books that I've read, actually, where they were aimed at kind of legal audiences and the way that they shorthand characterized a bit character as someone who was well connected, but also maybe a little bit of a. I don't know if I can say douchebag on your show, because I watched it that much, was that they would say that they worked at Scatten Arps. So I'll be honing for that for some time.

[Emma Vigland]

That's good context.

[Sam Seder]

I. How many, like, how many, when we say the biggest law firm in the world, tell people how many, how many lawyers work there, how many partners are there?

[Rachel Cohen]

It's not necessarily one of the biggest law firms in the world, but it is one of the most profitable, I would say it has, like, some of the widest reaches. And so I believe our partnership is only about 1000 people. I can look it up right now. But it has much more to do with the level of profit that people have and the level of access that you have. There's a reason that our executive partner, Jeremy London, was speaking with Donald Trump directly about kind of the. The attack on law firms that has been launched by the Trump administration over the last several weeks. These law firms, Scadden, Paul Weiss, if people are familiar, these firms that have made major deals with the Trump administration, including promising millions of dollars worth of pro bono work to the Trump administration.

[Sam Seder]

I want to get to that because that, that to me is. Is the one that really sort of resonates here. But so it starts with Paul Weiss. And ostensibly, I mean, ostensibly, this is about Donald Trump taking vengeance against these firms that have had in the past a lot of Democratic clients. They're sort of like, loosely associated with Democratic politics.

[Emma Vigland]

And I think Paul Weiss's partner was involved in the Stormy Daniels prosecution, the hush money case that had, you know.

[Sam Seder]

And all these firms, there is somebody who either worked maybe in the context of the Mueller investigation or in other investigations against Donald Trump. So ostensibly, it's about revenge. Give me your sense of. Well, before we get to that, tell us what it is exactly.

[Rachel Cohen]

They.

[Sam Seder]

When they went to Paul Weiss, when they went to Skatton Arps, and we should say there are other firms that have done something very different. And we'll get to those in a moment. But what is it, what is it that. How does a Government. How does a federal government go and say we're going to attack or punish you? Like, like what are they threatening them with?

[Rachel Cohen]

The government is targeting a variety of corporate law firms and there's, there's firms that are fighting back there, firms that aren't, as you mentioned, targeting a variety of corporate law firms by threatening to cancel government contracts or also use the Equal Employment opportunity Commission, the EEOC's enforcement mechanisms to not only remove government contracts and security clearances, but from firms that they claim are engaging in quote unquote, illegal dei. My for two more days boss used that term in an email sent Firm Wide, which imagine being an attorney of color working 60, 70 hour weeks, constantly doing outstanding work and getting an email from your boss about how they wanted to listen to the Trump administration to stamp out the illegal DEI that is happening at Skadden Arps.

[Sam Seder]

You're imagine just being a lawyer and reading the words illegal DEI and saying, wait a second, a lawyer.

[Rachel Cohen]

Spell it out. It's diversity, equity and inclusion and accessibility.

[Sam Seder]

Actually we should say, at least in the government context. But I mean this, so, so there, so what can they materially do? They can, they can cancel government contracts that cost them money directly as a first order thing. They can also, I read, inhibit their ability to go into federal buildings, which I don't know how you, you can't obviously like go to federal court and litigate in that instance.

[Rachel Cohen]

And I do think, even to your point of like what they can do, I think that that's still very much being figured out and that's why people are challenging these, because there's a lot of people he's, he's using these EEOC enforcement mechanisms through a certain extent. And my firm actually hadn't even been targeted by an executive order. They just received an EEOC demand, which for the record, the deal they cut with Trump does not even include them dropping the EEOC demand letter or potential investigation. But they're using this kind of EEOC mechanism that a lot of former EEOC commissioners are saying is just patently illegal. They're using it wrong. And so even what they quote unquote can do I think is up for debate. But what they, what they are doing.

[Sam Seder]

We'Re talking about what they're threatening with because we really don't know what they can do yet until it's resolved in a court of law. And you can't know what they can do until you stand up to them. And your soon to be former firm refused to do that. So, and we should say that it Also sounds like, you know, because I'm reading this story about Coy. I guess it is. Is that the name of the park is Coy? Yeah. Tell us. Tell us their story. Because this is sort of like the alternate universe they decide. And, you know, frankly, the idea of a bunch of lawyers capitulating so quickly runs contrary to everything that I know of. Lawyers.

[Rachel Cohen]

Very bad deal. Even if you say these people aren't litigators, they're corporate, Whatever. They went to the White House, didn't even have an executive order lodged against them, didn't get the EEOC demand letter which requested personal information of my Firm, and also 19 other firms that was targeted at intimidating diverse employees, asking for name and email address and phone number and all of this stuff. They didn't even get that dropped. And they promised $100 million worth of pro bono hours to the Trump administration, which is more than twice Paul Wise's $40 million that they promised. That was a terrible deal anyway. But to jump back, and I have all of my little executive orders printed here, because this is such an esoteric and inaccessible part of the legal industry, which is already inaccessible deliberately for many people. And so even leading with kind of the way that these firms are being targeted, the executive order that was lodged against Perkins Coie, before I came on, I heard you talking about these deportations and kind of the Stephen Miller of it all. And I think that it's important to name that the attacks on these corporate law firms, who are not very sympathetic victims, and I do not argue with anyone that they are, the attacks here are to intimidate corporate law firms out of providing certain forms of representation. Right. And they do a lot of asylum representation. They do a lot of kind of impact litigation because they're very well resourced. And so the Perkins Coie executive order was launched explicitly naming that it was meant to be retribution because Perkins Coie had an attorney that used to work there named Marco Lias, who has since left and started his own firm that Trump really, really hates. And so we have this, but my friends and I started organizing in that moment because we read it, and it was clear in the executive order that the Trump administration was going to come after additional firms. And also in a public service loan forgiveness executive order which came out the next day, he listed all of these different things that he didn't think should qualify for public service loan forgiveness anymore. And it includes things like aiding and abetting violations of federal immigration laws. And we know what that means in Trump's speak. It includes things like Supporting terrorism. We know what that means in Trump's speak, child abuse, including the chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children or the trafficking of children to so called transgender sanctuary states. He's outlining what kind of work he does not want attorneys to be doing. And he followed it up, I believe, weekend before last March 21. It posted on the 22nd with directions to the attorney general to sanction attorneys that are engaged in this patient, and.

[Sam Seder]

They can go back eight years to assess whether these attorneys have been filing frivolous actions against the government simply based upon whether they lost. And so, you know, of course, Trump.

[Emma Vigland]

Was to apply that standard to himself. I'm not necessarily sure he would be able to do so with the level of frivolity. I mean, but his frivolous lawsuits were getting rewarded with this anticipatory obedience by what it was the other media organizations that, that gave in. But the law firms, too.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah.

[Rachel Cohen]

And it is anticipatory and it's also all projection. Right, but I'm sorry, please.

[Sam Seder]

Well, no, no, no. But I mean, I think the point you're making here is that this is all, any, any reason why they went after these firms was a pretense to basically say, you do not bring cases against us for immigration or any of our policy objectives that we want. And if you do, because Perkins Coylee lost one or two clients, apparently other clients were like, we appreciate what you're doing, but that's what this is about, Right? I mean, it's about these law firms worrying that they're going to lose access, worrying that they're, they're going to make targets out of their clients. Right. Like, I mean, if, if Scott and ARMS is like, representing, I don't know, pick a client, the, the federal government could be coming after these, these clients just because of their association with SCAT and arms. I mean, that is, that's the fear here.

[Rachel Cohen]

It is the fear, but it's also so ridiculous because it seems like all of these very smart people should understand, and I did work with them, and I do think that they're very smart, no matter how determined they are to prove me wrong over the last couple of days. But we have all of these very smart people, and surely you have to understand that you are not going to win by giving into a bully like the Trump administration. And I think it's this kind of like, historical condescension where we're convinced that we can sit around and say, well, Neville Chamberlain, what a fool, when he was just giving into the German demands. But do we think it was more obvious at that time, or do we think that we just for some reason believe that we're smarter than all of these people that are not that much older than us are still human beings that are smarter than us? It's not as clear as people think it is. And people are acting like it's still 2016. They're determined to prove that they're smarter than Donald Trump is. And whether that's true or not, right now, it doesn't appear to be because you are getting outplayed.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah, I think you're 100% right. I mean, I think it's very scary. I think, you know, once they come for the lawyers, once they basically say to the lawyers, you can't represent a certain various groups in our society, and the lawyers say, okay, then it's just the floodgates are open. Because right now, as it stands, there's, you know, mentioned this yesterday on the program, there's about two or three things that are basically slowing the role of the Trump administration. One is any type of political pressure. And we see that whether with the elections that are taking place today, because that undermines the confidence maybe of some lawmakers, but there's only so much that's going to do. And the other is organizing amongst people, broadly speaking, labor, whatnot. But at this very moment, the one thing that is slowing the roll is like the 80 some odd, maybe now 90 cases that have been brought against the Trump administration in various forms that are, are slowing their role. Now, here's the other thing about the. You brought up the pro bono stuff. The Trump administration now, like I say, is dealing with all of these lawsuits, whether they're from the acl, aclu, whether they're from the Brennan center, whether they're from Perkins Coy, all across the board, they don't have the resources to deal with all of these cases that are coming in the doj. I mean, if anything, they have less resources than they had six months ago because they're firing all these prosecutors, they're firing all these DOJ people, they're installing political appointees. Not always the brightest bulbs, frankly. Not at all.

[Rachel Cohen]

And I don't think that you can be a good attorney and work for the Trump administration because it requires you to kind of bend and disregard the law in so many different ways and the system itself in so many different ways that even if you are smart, you're probably not a very good attorney if you're working for that administration in this moment.

[Sam Seder]

I think that I think that's absolutely the case. We saw that just with the, the federal prosecutors in the Southern District who had to resign because they're just like, none of this makes sense. Yeah. Where is that pro bono work going? That's what I want to know. Because it seems to me that we could have, instead of. And this is aside from the fact that these are firms that were already doing pro bono work, they have a limited amount. I mean, I know this too. Like, they don't expand. This isn't an extra $100 million worth of pro bono work they're doing. They're going to be not doing other pro bono work to do this pro bono work. So there's an opportunity cost that's associated with it. But where are they deploying, where are they deploying these resources? Because we could have a situation where Staten Arms attorneys are fighting to deport people.

[Emma Vigland]

And it may just really quickly make sense to describe what pro bono work is more broadly for the audience and these corporate law firms relationship with it too. What it traditionally is and what they're. What the administration may be wanting.

[Rachel Cohen]

Yeah, thank you so much, Emma. Because I think that it's a, it's a super crucial piece of the puzzle here. So I. It's. It's tough because you don't want to come on to any type of outward facing media and act like corporate law firms that often charge upwards of $3,000 for top partners, that they're on the front lines of justice work. We know that they are not. And we know the people that are doing that work are historically extremely underfunded because of the nature of American capitalism. And so we have these law firms that kind of say to people that are coming out of law school and really want the high paycheck that, okay, we know that a lot of our clients, a lot of the representations that you'll be doing are just very, very well resourced. And maybe not exactly in the pursuit of justice, though they are in the pursuit of an adversari legal system, which I think goes back to Stan's point around. We need lawyers to bring cases because we don't have like a sua spontane legal system where stuff just goes to the courts when it's unconstitutional. You have to have lawyers to bring those cases. And that ties into the kind of pro bono work because what law firms will do to kind of entice people to do some reputation management. And also I really thought, because they believed in it, though it's certainly not appearing that way as those values are Kind of put to the test against losing a modicum of profit. We have corporate law firms that will partner with a variety of the organizations that you just listed. ACLU, Brennan center, etc. Or even kind of more local organizations and firms will allow their associates to do that pro bono work and count a certain number of hours or unlimited number of hours. Last year I think I did over 350 hours of pro bono work towards my bonus requirement. They'll allow them to count it towards their bonus. And so you get people who kind of. It's viewed as mutually beneficial. It's you're training up, you get more responsibility. You also get to work on things that you care about. And so if we have large corporate law firms that are the best resourced and often ally with these organizations because they have just enormous amounts of staffing, though I did overstate and looked it up. And I think we only have like 350 partners at Scadden, which is crazy because like I said, the revenue per year is in the billions with a B. But we have these people who are very well resourced who can kind of throw their weight and training behind these causes because otherwise they just don't have enough attorneys. And that's not because like thank God for big law. That's just the reality of the system in which we live and where resources have been allocated. And so I'm not arguing that that's normatively good, but it is really necessary within the legal system as currently existing. And so you have people that are being intimidated out of doing certain kinds of pro bono work. And you have all of these firm leaders saying no, we're still committed to pro bono. But two weeks ago they were saying the exact same thing about dei. They won't put any of it in writing. And you have the, the government taking these firms, asking them to do millions of dollars worth of work for them, while also issuing the kinds of executive orders and guidance and fact sheets, quote unquote fact sheets. We're using that as in the way that the administration uses it. We have them putting out these things, directing public interest attorneys to be punished, being stripped of their public student or their public service loan forgiveness if they work at certain organizations. So it's a multi tiered attack. He's also attacking judges. But I think it's actually quite smart that he went to these large corporate law firms first because it was a huge gamble. If they'd all united and stood up to him, it would have really undercut this all out assault on the legal system. But the first time I read one of the executive orders, I said to myself, he has somebody inside doing this work who has worked at one of these places before because he is betting on their kind of capitalistic cowardice to keep them from standing up for what's right. And I think that people's heads are so in the sand, they're so convinced that it's 2016 all over again, even though in 2016 they actually did stand up to the Trump administration. But they've been laying the groundwork for this for a very long time. The right is good at that. I have a case here that was the opinion came out on March 14, 2025. It's called RNC v. Justin Wetzel. It was a voting rights case. There's this judge on the fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Texas named James Ho, you may be familiar.

[Sam Seder]

And we should just remind people the fifth Circuit is. There's essentially really couple of judges down there that the right will venue shop. They will go down to the fifth Circuit. They know there's a couple of venues within the fifth Circuit, which is down in Texas, one of the states where when they, when they basically go into the lottery for judges, there's only like two judges there and they know who they're getting. And there was an attempt by the Federal Judicial essentially association to change that mechanism they had been using to venue shop. And they got so much pushback that they basically walked away from it. And so we're left with this. But that's why every time we hear one of these rulings, they'll come out of the fifth Circuit.

[Rachel Cohen]

Very much so. And so James Ho files the concurrence. He agrees in the judgment, no need to write an opinion, and he writes a concurrence that's two pages about how pro bono at corporate law firms has been biased for so long. There's another explanation. The pro bono activity in this case may just reflect the institutional bias at many of the nation's largest law firms. And then he cites some articles that are published in journals that are extremely right leaning. We have the Federalist Society, which is a, a right leaning organization on law school campuses that was founded decades ago that put out their own journals so that people can write extremely biased things and then cite to it. It's kind of the legal journal of Fox News and cites to things about pro bono institutional bias, as if the reason that pro bono tilts towards people who do not have resources is because those firms are biased and not because that's who needs free legal work. And so this is a really just across the board, intentional, well planned out, it's brilliant. Even though I think that it is normatively evil plan to undercut all of these things. And then you have big law attorneys who are convinced that they're, they're smarter than the Trump administration and they can outmaneuver him.

[Sam Seder]

Do you think that they're that like, they're, they're convinced that they're smarter than him and they're outmaneuvering him and they're going to be sly about this, or do you think it's like at the end of the day they're just like, well, let's make this less friction, let's just make this more frictionless and we'll just, it doesn't matter to us.

[Rachel Cohen]

I wish that it was the latter because I would understand that more. But people, I worked with these people for years, I worked with them for years. They genuinely just think that they are smarter than he is. And it's extremely troubling. And listen, I grew up in Ohio. I went to Ohio State and then I went to Harvard Law School. And it's something that I've seen play out over and over again. I hate to invoke the coastal elitism of it all because I think that that veers into anti intellectualism sometimes. And that's not it. We want people to read, to understand, to engage with the world. And it's not bad to do those things. But to assume that your educational credentials mean that you are smarter than someone who is a Republican because they grew up and, you know, a different place than you are, and that's what we see a lot of the time. There's this belief in many of these white shoe corporate law firms and in many of these liberal spaces, broadly with people with strong educational credentials, that the reason that these decisions are being made is just because the people making them are stupid. And that is so fundamentally incorrect. They are outplaying us. And there are people that need to be educated and engaged with. Hundred percent. But they are not Stephen Miller, they are not sitting in the White House making these decisions right now. And that's the way that law firm leaders are treating it. My understanding is that the line on the ground at Scadden right now to associate is that Scadden got a great deal because they didn't really promise him anything at all. They just promised $100 million in pro bono work. And they get to decide what the pro bono work is. And the second anyone pushes on it, the partners that are Saying it don't have answers for them, but have drunk the Kool Aid of their own intellectual superiority so deeply that it's going to be too late before they figure out that they don't.

[Sam Seder]

They don't understand that. I mean, frankly, Donald Trump, at the end of the day, if he doesn't get that $100 million worth of pro bono work, he still got what he wanted, which was to show that he could intimidate a firm like this. So if you're a smaller firm or you're an immigration attorney, you got your own, you're doing it on your own, and you're going against the government in immigration proceedings, you're terrified right now. You're terrified.

[Rachel Cohen]

And that's the thing that I'm so glad that you brought that back up, because I. It's so important that we bring back around. It's not about kind of the comeuppance of the corporate law firm. It is about the people legally in this country who are getting deported or indefinitely detained over free speech rights or who are just due process rights violated right and left. And that is the ultimate end game here. It's not about the law firms. And that's why I quit. Right. Like, it's not about, oh, no, my firm might get embarrassed. It's people are going to die. And they probably already have.

[Emma Vigland]

And in terms of it rings very true to me, what you're saying. Just the idea that they think they're smarter than they think this is Sidney Powell or something like this all over again, as opposed to a very well coordinated preplanned lawfare legal assault essentially from the Attorney General who's gonna do whatever Trump wants. It's frankly the problem with the Democratic Party where they think their views should be self evident as opposed to being. And the virtue of their views being smarter is self evident as opposed to making their case to the public. But that's a bit of an aside. Do you have a sense of what they want the pro bono work to be reoriented towards? Like, is this about cracking down on antisemitism, AKA kids on college campus exercising their free speech rights? Because that's what it smells like to me.

[Rachel Cohen]

At the very least, I am quite confident that that's one of the directions that it will be going in. And I think there's so much rhetoric that the Democratic Party and. And maybe critique those that criticize the critics is the word I was looking for. I also am not really my own intellect in this moment. Critics are leaning into is rhetoric that's really harmful here. Right. Like focusing on the fact that some of the people that are being deported had no criminal history, that we care about everyone's due process. Right. Like, we don't want to lean into some of this is okay. It's okay for some people to not have due process rights and not others. The notion of Pam Bondi is like Barbie Bondi, this, this playing into her as a moron when there's this clearly targeted attack. And then very much what you said. The branding around this task force to combat antisemitism is incredibly deliberate. My name is Rachel Cohen. I don't practice, but I've had an Internet presence for some period of time and I'm well aware that antisemitism exists. And so to position though the notion that the biggest threat to any minority in this country is an op ed written against dropping bombs on children and not an authoritarian government that is picking and choosing due process and free speech rights. If they win that kind of marketing battle and they're very close to it, we are in far deeper trouble than anyone has identified outside of a few spaces like this one.

[Sam Seder]

Tell me, just like your perspective on. I mean, you've worked with the folks at that firm. You went through law school. You probably have a sense of what the people at Paul Weiss are like. You may know some. Are you surprised that you're the only attorney to quit?

[Rachel Cohen]

I'm not the only attorney. Two other people at Scadden have already quit since they announced their deal.

[Sam Seder]

Is that right?

[Rachel Cohen]

Several others I know have quit who were not willing to kind of. I don't think that they will do media in the same way. Some of them might. But I think that people at Scadden are organizing around, refusing to recruit. They are holding. My understanding is that someone quit yesterday at the end of a town hall meeting and the rest of the group stood up and applauded him as he walked out. So I will say this. I don't know where the Paul Weiss people are because I'm not familiar of any of them quitting. But I will say none of this is to apologize for the big law industry. None of it is to say that the Scaddin reputation and characterization isn't a little bit warranted. But I stayed at that firm for as long as I did because the people that I worked alongside believed in pro bono the same way that I did, believed in the justice system the same way that I did. Even if we recognized that we were in this kind of very, very profit centric space, and I think that we will probably see other people quit, but even if we don't, I think that you're going to see really powerful organizing. It's just a risk averse industry and a lot of people, it's been an incredible opportunity to get to do this kind of media. It's also unbelievably overwhelming and I do not fault anyone who doesn't want to do it.

[Emma Vigland]

And can you. When you, we appreciate you coming on your, your thought there sparked a question for me. Is there a really noticeable split between the associates, you're a third year associate, and the partners at the firm? And if you could explain how the partners have this very much more direct financial stake in, you know, the clients and how they would, they're more likely to, you know, obviously cave on this front.

[Bradley]

Yeah, great.

[Rachel Cohen]

Thank you so much for opening because I think that's important to understand as well. So Skadden is an equity partnership only structure. Most of these law firms have an equity partner and then like a junior or income partner tier. And if you're equity partner only, all of the profits that go in and you might get a little bit of additional profits if you're the person that brought the client in, for example, but ultimately your, your profit splitting with the rest of the partnership. And so I've gotten the question a lot if this is a generational divide. I don't think that it is. And I think that that play. And that's not what you asked. To be fair, I'm, I'm voicing that because I'm sure there's people that are watching that are wondering the same thing.

[Emma Vigland]

But it overlaps. It overlaps.

[Rachel Cohen]

Yeah. And you're a little older if you're a partner, obviously. And I think that the way this all kind of ties into the kind of anti intellectual, like the notion that young generations just get it and older generations just don't, I think is one that's really harmful. And there's so many lovingly referred to as old heads. Right. That we can learn so much from. They just don't stay in the industry long enough to make partner, even if they go into big law for a couple of years, as I did to build up some financial stability, get trained up, you know. See, I really wanted to understand the private sector. I understand that that came with a lot of financial benefit to me and working for clients that I didn't always agree with. And so I make no apologies for that because there are no apologies to be made. I also did learn a lot. And so people stay and they make partner. And if they've self selected, they probably are a little bit more of a believer in institutions than I would personally identify. But I think that many of them understand just how out of left field this is. I think many of them understand that Donald Trump has authoritarian tendencies. And what I find fascinating is that they seem to think that someone else will fix it. And that's one of the things that made me, I experienced it at Harvard all the time, is you'd go in and people would say, I can't believe no one's doing anything about this. And I'd be like, your dad's a senator. What are you talking about? And so one of the reasons that I've decided to be so public on this and something that I think is so important for people to remember, I have an unbelievable amount of privilege. I am also just one person backed by a lot of other people. And I hope that it is encouraging to see what can happen when you are organized with people that you really believe in and one person is willing to speak about something that is happening. Because whether we win or not, I know that if no one had spoken on this, the story would have died quite quickly because you have to have someone that's able to go and explain it and talk about it and all of these things. And it's such an important story and it's such a difficult one to understand if you're not in the industry, it's so possible for a couple of us to do the right thing and have it mean something. And so if you're questioning and you're feeling so overwhelmed, this wasn't just me standing alone. Right. This is Friends whose values. It was a big values test to be in this industry following October 7th and to be in kind of a high profile client facing industry as conversations were ongoing about not just US Military policy, but also the rising transphobia of the Democratic Party and the willingness to sell people out. Those things are pressure tests. And once you know that you can trust people and organize with them, you've got your group. I hate to say it because I also just like those partners, keep waiting for someone else to do this stuff. But at a certain point, if no one's doing it, you have to do it. You have to. Someone has to.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

Rachel Cohen, thank you so much for your time today. Very much looking forward to what you do next. Keep us in the loop. Really appreciate both your coming on and telling us about it and every step you're taking and all those folks who have left that firm in solidarity and those who are staying and trying to figure out a way of, I don't know, undermining some of this stuff from within. I really appreciate your time.

[Rachel Cohen]

Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to explain.

[Emma Vigland]

Thank you.

[Sam Seder]

All right, folks, we are going to head into the. I guess the fun house half now. The. We had some other stories to do, but that was just a lot more impressive and important than I think I had anticipated. Really?

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

Inspiring.

[Jessica]

The Paul Wise.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah. Amazing. And luckily, it seems like some firms are beginning to stand up. The Paul Weiss thing was just like a complete capitulation. I feel like that was the first domino to fall, especially given the firm's history. But maybe there's more. Like, I'm not like Wilmer Hale might be, I think, standing up. That's full disclosure. My dad's firm, my sister works there now, but they had Robert Mueller as a part of their firm as well. But I think they're maybe holding the line, at least for right now.

[Sam Seder]

And we should say, like, this spirit of. Of dissent and of fighting and of not capitulating. You can do this in just about whatever. You can do this in organizations that you're in. You can do this in professions and neighborhood associations. It's super important that we elevate institutions, entities, people who speak out because it provides courage to other people. This is. I mean, we're entering a very intimidating and scary era in our country. And, you know, there's really basically three options. Fight, flight and acquiescence. And really, at the end of the day, only fighting is going to keep this role. I will say this again. It was not clear to people that Nazis were Nazis in the way that we understand Nazis today. In 1925 or 1927 or in 1935.

[Emma Vigland]

Maybe even, we had rallies in this country in support of the Nazi cause. One that was seemingly, deliberately, deliberately invoked by the Trump campaign. Just recently in Madison Square Garden.

[Jessica]

We had the Klan, like, you know, we don't need to reference Europe. We had the Klan here, Jim Crow South. That was. I mean, Robert Paxton, who's wrote the Anatomy of Fascism, talks about that as a proto fascism. This is homegrown. It's secessionist. The way that.

[Sam Seder]

There's also a good argument, frankly, that the Nazis got the ideas for a lot of the, like, eugenics in the. From over here.

[Jessica]

They got a decent. Yeah, the decent, Decent amount of the. Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

But. But within the context of a successful takeover and launching of authoritarian government, we just don't know. No one has experienced. Well, maybe not no one, but the vast majority of us have not experienced it. And there is no doubt, there's no way to predict where we will be in frankly, six months or 18 months or 12 months or 24 months. But I can tell you that if there is such a thing as losing a democracy, as sort of shabby as ours was, we are in the process of losing it.

[Emma Vigland]

It would look a lot like what we're experiencing in the identical. Right?

[Sam Seder]

Like, I mean, this is the, you know, we have television commentators pooh, poohing due process. We have the most successful and profitable law firms in the world basically saying we're not going to go to court. Okay? Like universities. Think about the cowardice associated in a law firm, that judge that they would go to. Like they've got to probably for the most part, the vast majority of these judges believe in the law, not all, but certainly the ones in this district, you know, are going to be, are going to see the law as somewhat sacrosanct.

[Emma Vigland]

They're going to ban a Wilmer or, sorry, what do you call Paul Weiss, partner from a federal building, call their bluff on that. Are you joking? If they're representing a certain client in federal court. What, what is like the threats, as she was saying, as Rachel was saying, are so, I feel like easily stood up against if these major firms with billions of dollars in profit and billing stood alongside one another.

[Sam Seder]

It's, it's very disturbing. And that's where we're at. And tomorrow we're going to be talking to some folks from a public interest law law firm about cases that they're bringing. And we're also going to be talking about the assault on our payment system because this is a multifaceted sort of assault on our government. And we'll go into the fun half probably won't be so, so much fun. We're going to be talking about the HHS firings. Talk a little bit about the tariffs and how people should understand these tariffs. And I'll just say this briefly because we're on the, on the free half and I want people to understand this. They're claiming that it's going to raise $600 billion a year. Let's just take it at face value. Let's assume these tariffs do understand that that's $600 billion a year. They're projecting it out 10 years, which of course is absurd because it may be a different president. There may be a Congress that actually is willingly is willing to sort of say, no, you can't have these tariffs, but let's just take these assumptions for granted. Understand when they say this, there's two things that are happening. Assuming these tariffs stay in. In effect, they're going to use the supposed revenue over the next 10 years, $6 trillion, as a way of computing their budget plans, which will include trillions of dollars of tax cuts. So on one hand, you're taking revenue from the US Government in tax cuts, and the other hand, in their mind, you're adding revenue in the form of tariffs, which are also basically taxes, regressive taxes. But the difference is, yeah, the tax cuts are going to the wealthiest and the tariffs are regressive. The cost of that car going up 25% or your avocados going up 25% or it doesn't matter. We'll feel it across the board. Impact somebody making $40,000 a year. Impact somebody making $70,000 a year. Impact somebody Making $100,000 a year. Much more than someone who makes $700,000 a year, $2 million a year, 5 million, a billion, whatever. Understand these tariffs are a redistribution of money from people with less money to people with more money. Yep, that's it.

[Emma Vigland]

Right.

[Sam Seder]

Government always redistributes money. Always. Every action it takes, you can see as a redistribution. The only question is, which direction is it going in?

[Emma Vigland]

And Trump doesn't have to worry about going through Congress to raise taxes on the poorest and the middle class through those tariffs because he could just do it through the tariff as a compounding.

[Sam Seder]

But why? Because Chuck Schumer.

[Emma Vigland]

Schumer, right.

[Sam Seder]

Allowed that Republican budget dirty budget to include a provision where Congress no longer has the authority to roll back those tariffs.

[Emma Vigland]

Yep. Made it unilateral for Donald Trump.

[Sam Seder]

We won't rest.

[Emma Vigland]

It's insane.

[Sam Seder]

We won't rest. We won't rest. We won't rest. We won't rest. You can only say it four times.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah. Time for a nap.

[Sam Seder]

There'll be a little disturbance, but we're okay with that. It won't be much.

[Emma Vigland]

Folks.

[Sam Seder]

It's your support that makes the show possible. You can become a member. Join the MajorityReport.com when you do, you not only get the free show, free of commercials, but you also get the fun half. Also just coffee, co op, fair trade coffee. That's why they call it just coffee. They also have hot chocolate. They used to have more stuff, but it's just coffee because it's of their. Just get the coupon code. Majority get 10% off.

[Jessica]

Matt, tonight left reckoning 7:00 Eastern Time. Same sort of Topics talking about today, I have Chip Gibbons of Defending Rights and Descent, which is one of my favorite sort of rights defense organizations talking about the Gaza protests. Also, we'll talk about the war crimes related to signal gate and that sort of stuff. So check that out. Patreon.com left Reckoning to get the post.

[Sam Seder]

Game Pete Scott's breath. I just wanted to tell you that your. Whatever that link was that you sent us, it broke our system. Do not send us big long links.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah, you ruined the im.

[Sam Seder]

You have liquor.

[Emma Vigland]

I can't read any of this crap.

[Sam Seder]

Broke the image. Do not send us extended links. They make sure they're tiny links, not ones that are literally.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, my goodness.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah, now we get.

[Emma Vigland]

I can't read any of this.

[Jessica]

I know it probably shouldn't be telling people how to break our chat, but.

[Sam Seder]

Well, there you go. We got to get that fixed. See you in the fun half. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now, but I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow, what? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on for. Hold on for a second. Emma, welcome to the program. Matt who? What is up, everyone? Fun path. No, M. Keen, you did it. Fun path.

[Emma Vigland]

Let's go, Brandon.

[Sam Seder]

Let's go, Brandon. Fun hack. Bradley, you want to say hello?

[Jessica]

Sorry to disappoint everyone. I'm just a random guy.

[Sam Seder]

It's all the boys today.

[Rachel Cohen]

Fundamentally false.

[Emma Vigland]

No. I'm sorry.

[Sam Seder]

Women. Stop talking for a second. Let me finish.

[Emma Vigland]

Where is this coming from? Dude?

[Sam Seder]

But. Dude, you want to smoke this?

[Emma Vigland]

7A.

[Sam Seder]

Yes. Hi, me. You're safe. Yes. Is this me? Is it me? It is you. Is this me? Hello?

[Rachel Cohen]

Is this me?

[Sam Seder]

I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind? We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm going to go star life. Who? Libertarians. They're so stupid. Though common sense says. Of course.

[Emma Vigland]

Gobbledygook.

[Sam Seder]

We bailed him.

[Emma Vigland]

So what's 79, 21 challenge.

[Sam Seder]

Man, I'm positively quivering. I believe 96. I want to say 857, 210, 501, 1/2, 3, 8, 9, 1111.

[Emma Vigland]

For instance, $3,400. $1900.

[Sam Seder]

5, 4, $3 trillion sold. It's a zero sum game, actually.

[Emma Vigland]

You're making me think less.

[Sam Seder]

But let me say this.

[Rachel Cohen]

You can call it satire.

[Sam Seder]

Sam goes satire on top of it all. My favorite part about you is just like every day, all day, like, everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy. We all right, folks, folks, folks.

[Emma Vigland]

It's just the week being weeded out. Obviously.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah. Sun's out, guns out. I. I don't know.

[Emma Vigland]

But you should know, people just don't.

[Jessica]

Like to entertain ideas anymore.

[Sam Seder]

I have a question. Who cares? I'll check.

[Jessica]

Chat is enabled, folks.

[Sam Seder]

I love it.

[Emma Vigland]

I do love that.

[Sam Seder]

Gotta jump. Gotta be quick. I gotta jump. I'm losing it, bro. 2:00, we're already late, and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulag.

[Emma Vigland]

Outrageous.

[Sam Seder]

Like, what is wrong with you? Love you.

[Rachel Cohen]

Bye.

[Sam Seder]

Love you.

[Rachel Cohen]

Bye.