Damned If You Do…

That’s the top of the New York Times’s website for Saturday.

Paul Weiss is a major law firm with ten offices from Brussels to Hong Kong and a headquarters in New York. It leans left and has typically helped progressive pro bono clients.

Paul Weiss settled a matter with the Trump Administration after Donald Trump signed an executive order that would have crippled the law firm. Its managing partner referred to the Executive Order as an “existential threat.”

The law firm could have taken the route of the progressive firm Perkins Coie, which has been able to get a judge to enjoin Trump’s efforts to punish that law firm. Paul Weiss, however, decided to settle the matter and, in doing so, agreed to represent some conservative interests pro bono. For years, the firm has devoted a substantial part of its pro bono practice to left-wing interests.

Notable employees have included Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Elena Kagan, Sonya Sotomayor, and Loretta Lynch. Paul Weiss has represented prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and illegal aliens crossing the border. After Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health ended Roe v. Wade, Paul Weiss famously founded a group to provide legal assistance to women seeking abortions. The firm has prided itself on its diversity, with the highest percentage of non-white lawyers of major law firms and a quarter of its equity partners being women.

In other words, it is a bastion of progressivism.

So the New York Times needed to take every available pixel on Saturday to destroy the firm. Instead of fighting, it made a deal to save itself. It is on the left’s side — a firm that has generated massive amounts of free legal support for the left. So, to save itself from Trump, it made a deal with a devil the left cannot bear.

It would be one thing for progressive groups to denounce it. However, the New York Times devoted the top of its Saturday website and newspaper to it. And on Sunday, the day with its highest circulation, the Times put a story above the fold.

Just think about this. On Sunday, the top two stories above the fold at the New York Times were about Congo Rebels and Paul Weiss. On Saturday, the top story was about Columbia University caving to Trump.

When a group of religious scholars, convinced all religions were the same, challenged C. S. Lewis to name something that makes Christianity unique, Lewis replied, “Grace.” Every religion has a concept of mercy, i.e., sparing someone from what they deserve. Only Christianity really has a concept of grace, i.e., giving one something he does not deserve.

Graceless progressivism must destroy one of its chief law firms, which has done everything else by the progressive book. It has represented terrorists, illegal aliens, and women seeking abortions, all while providing employment to three future progressive Supreme Court justices and honoring major diversity quotas. But settling with Trump is a bridge too far.

The left demands a fight. Surrender is not an option.

Ultimately, what the New York Times and the Left are signaling is that they will excuse violence against Trump. They will not excuse compromise. Just as the Times has sought to explain Luigi Mangione as the rational frustration with insurance companies, they’ll excuse violence against Trump. Just look at the media’s coverage of the Pennsylvania attempted assassination.

But daring to strike a deal will be punished. The ratchet goes one way. Devoting so much coverage to a single law firm’s agreement with Trump is the signal — violence can be excused, but deals cannot. This will only worsen as Paul Weiss is made an example of by the left.