The Trump administration’s crackdown on lawyers it does not like is something people thought “could never happen in the United States”, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA) has said. In response, the ABA filed a lawsuit in June asking a federal court to declare unconstitutional the Trump administration’s “unlawful policy of intimidation against lawyers and law firms”. So that’s an assault or a threat against law firms, and as effective as physical threats. When asked why lawyers were being singled out in so many countries, Behnke paraphrased – appropriately, given her location – the words of England’s greatest playwright in Henry VI Part 2. “I think the times lend themselves discord and law and lawyers are the ones that hold people to account,” she said.