The bulwark against fascism is a strong set of institutions. Faced with the current set of anti-Constitutional power grabs, some of America’s institutions have been crumbling: independent agencies have been seized, Congress abdicated its core Constitutional powers as soon as the Republican Administration took power, and the judiciary has been slowly captured by right-wing politicization. Bad as it is, this is stuff that we pretty much expected to happen — after all, it was all in process already and announced during the campaign. There is a set of institutions whose utter silence confuses me, though. Where is the voice of the American business community?

We’re not in a recession yet, we don’t even have the full scope of tariffs in place yet, and still the Republican Administration is already causing economic chaos. The stock market is volatile. A trade war is in full swing. The regulatory landscape is a complete mystery. Government services that companies rely on are ending without warning. The Administration keeps threatening to use government powers to punish private entities for business activities and corporate cultures that they don’t like. The President, either as a private citizen or through his company, is launching spurious lawsuits to spur companies into settling with him. This is not a good environment for business, no matter the sector and no matter whether you’re projecting your financials ten, five, or even just one year out.

The situation is even worse for federal contractors, which receive most of the federal discretionary budget. Civil servants needed to approve contracts and sign checks have been fired. The Republican Administration is withholding payments for already-completed contract work. Contracts that were put in place through the intensively regulated, highly formalized federal procurement process are being dissolved without cause, and then immediately reallocated to Elon Musk’s companies without going through the same competitive procurement process. This is happening across government branches, including essential services.

I would think that companies across America would be speaking out, in both large and small ways, to preserve the stable conditions that led to steady American growth over decades. The conditions that they would have assumed in their long-term forecasts. There’s a lot that corporate America could do, from lobbying Congresspeople, to funding primary challengers, to maintaining their diversity initiatives, to defending themselves against spurious lawsuits in court. With only one or two prominent counterexamples, why aren’t they standing up for themselves — for their own financial gain?

One of the biggest reasons why this corporate silence confuses me is that we have examples constantly piling up that compliance doesn’t defend them from this Administration. A law firm that went out of its way to roll over for the Administration has been barred from future work with the government. A media company that anticipated the Administration’s desires and put money directly in their pockets has found a proposed acquisition blocked. A university that bent over backwards to police speech the way the right wing wants just got $400 million of research funding suspended.

In fact, it almost seems that this Administration hits hard at private institutions that do comply with their desires, while ignoring those that don’t. There is an easy way to understand this behavior: the Republican Administration is a bully. It’s made up of bullies. It’s turned the entire government into a bully. That’s what authoritarianism — fascism — fundamentally means. And a bully punches down. A bully hits out at those they perceive as weak, in an attempt to reinforce the idea that they are strong. A bully cares more about securing their own precarious dominance among their gang than about changing the behavior of outsiders.

A bully also hates confrontation. A bully backs down. We’ve seen this happening with the Administration, too, from immigration raids that turn up nobody to funding cuts that get reinstated when challenged.

It seems to me that corporate America has a choice. They can roll over now, suffer indignities, lose popularity, experience financial losses in the economic chaos, and — in the case of federal contractors — ultimately see their income streams unceremoniously diverted to Musk companies. Or, they can invest some near-term effort in punching back at the bullies and re-asserting a stable policy environment, in exchange for being able to make a profit at all in the medium and long term.

One of those paths simply seems untenable and irresponsible to me. The other path leads to financial gain, and also has the virtue of being right.

Why aren’t more companies doing what’s right?