In a post on X, former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade pointed to reporting by the New York Times’ Peter Baker as a hopeful sign that people who might once have appeased Trump are now openly defying him. Baker also highlighted what he described as a “worrying sign for Trump” among Republicans.

Baker wrote in the Times, “He may yet bring Canada and Israel to heel through force of personality, tariffs or other means. The Supreme Court has given him one free pass after another to use his executive authority as he sees fit, whether it be taking control of independent agencies, building his cherished ballroom or trying to crack down on mail-in voting. And every time someone predicts that Republicans in Congress will finally begin exhibiting some independence, they prove the prognosticators wrong. While they have resisted his pressure in some instances lately, Senate confirmation of Todd Blanche as attorney general made clear that he still dominates his party’s congressional wing.”

Baker continued, “But even among Republicans, there are some worrisome signs for the president. Although he has successfully punished several prominent Republican lawmakers he deemed disloyal by rallying his MAGA base to defeat them in party primaries this year, GOP voters have rejected Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidates in 10 nominating contests, including six in August alone. Polls show his support among Republicans slipping.”

After Trump won the 2024 presidential election and returned to the White House, major CEOs who had not necessarily been supporters of his policies — from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to Meta/Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg — were careful to avoid offending him. Bezos, during the election, notably killed a Washington Post editorial endorsing Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Against that backdrop, McQuade said Baker’s reporting suggested a broader shift in tone: more people in the U.S. and other countries are now realizing that there is no upside to appeasing Trump, especially when earlier concessions have not necessarily ended conflict.

In her Wednesday post on X, McQuade said Baker’s reporting was a hopeful sign that “people are finally learning that capitulating to a mob boss only brings more pain.” She added, “Standing up and speaking out is effective. And contagious. Pass it on.”

McQuade spent seven years as a federal prosecutor for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Eastern District of Michigan under Barack Obama. She is now a University of Michigan law professor and a frequent legal analyst for MS NOW, formerly MSNBC.

To underscore her point that “capitulating” to Trump only brings “more pain,” McQuade, now 61, shared Baker’s article and argued that people who might have appeased Trump in the past are now openly defying him.

Baker wrote, “This is a summer movie that’s been seen before: President Trump makes demands. When the other side does not give him what he wants, he escalates with bombastic threats of crippling punishment. The other side surrenders. Except that Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, evidently has not read the script. His refusal to buckle in the face of Mr. Trump’s trade ultimatum even at the cost of retaliatory tariffs has flipped the narrative of the president’s second term. Instead of giving in, Mr. Carney is testing whether defiance is a viable strategy against Mr. Trump.”

Baker said Carney is not the only person pushing back. “Universities and law firms are rebuffing his directives rather than signing on the bottom line,” the Times reporter noted. “Bond markets are rebelling against his fiscal policies. Even the ABC network, whose $16 million payment to settle a Trump lawsuit was seen as an early example of yielding to the president, has discovered that it did not buy peace and is now suing his administration for threatening its broadcast licenses. None of which means that Mr. Trump should be underestimated. Although his poll numbers are at or near historic lows, he remains the most dominant figure on the planet, able to reset the terms of the global conversation on a whim with a social media post and unafraid of wielding power in ways that his predecessors did not.”

McQuade is a frequent critic of Trump. In an August 23 tweet, she called out Trump and U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche’s “appalling transformation of DOJ as a tool of retribution.”