Last April, we went to Carbondale, Illinois in order to see the full solar eclipse, and it was worth it. Over the past few days, we learned there was to be another solar eclipse in DC, a partial eclipse, this morning at about 7 a.m. We still have our eclipse-viewing glasses (thank you, Warby Parker), and thought we might get up early go outside and have a partial reprise of 2023.

Last evening, I looked for the precise schedule. We decided to sleep in. The partial eclipse was to start at 6:57 a.m., be at its greatest at 6:59 a.m., and disappear in its entirety by 7:01 a.m. That’s pretty quick, but you haven’t even heard the most important statistic. The greatest amount of the sun covered by the moon at 6:57 a.m. would be exactly 1 percent.

The site of the eclipse is the Northeast. If you live in Portland ME, I read you had a 62% eclipse and it will last for 45 minutes. Worth getting up at 6:27 a.m. in Portland. But what if you are in the 52nd state? In Nuku, Greenland, the eclipse was set to be 87% and the partial eclipse will last about two hours. It looks like the Vances have left Greenland too soon.

My Googling about the solar eclipse (which, to be truthful, didn’t mean much to me) was myyway from escaping MSNBC last night, where we watched both Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow. So much is going on ….. and of course, none of it good.

There were two shocking events. One related to this Tufts University Ph.D. student Rumeysa Ozturk, whose student visa was canceled and who has been arrested and imprisoned. Okay, you say, she must have deserved it. Well, I don’t know. All that I have seen reported so far is that she and three other Tufts graduate students wrote an op-ed criticizing the University’s failure to follow up on student Senate resolutions regarding Israel’s actions in Gaza. If there is more, I don’t know about it. And I think I would.

But there is an additional element to this situation. No one from the government told Ozturk that her visa had been canceled. She did not know, and had no way to know. She was simply walking down the street, when she was stopped by a number of armed police officers, handcuffed, put into a police car and carted off to jail. That was it.

Ozturk, by the way is from Turkey. This is how things work in Turkey. This is not how things work here. Strike that. This is not how things are supposed to work here.

Now, Ozturk needs a lawyer (maybe she already has one; that I don’t know), and where will she turn? She won’t go to Wilmer Hale, now under a Trump sanction. She might hesitate to go to Perkins Coie or to Jenner and Block, because although their sanctions have been put on hold by District Judges, their cases are still alive and, who knows, the District court opinions may be overturned.

That leaves Paul, Weiss and Skadden, Arps, the two firms who have signed agreements with the government to, among other things, undertake a certain amount of pro bono works that support the Trump agenda. They are not now being sanctioned and can, in fact, undertake any business they want to, in addition to what they promised Dear Leader. So, all to the good, right? Not so fast. If they take a case that involves fighting the government and the MAGA agenda, such as the Ozturk case, they will probably have the sanctions slapped right back on them. So they will say “No” to her request.

But let’s say that you aren’t Ms. Ozturk. Instead, you are a corporation that has business arrangements with the federal government or is regulated by the government. Would you go to Skadden or Paul, Weiss? I wouldn’t suggest it. For one thing, you know those firms are not only in the Trump crosshairs, and they could be resanctioned at any minute. For another, you would doubt how strongly they would represent you before the government for fear of being resanctioned.

This is why I think the caving of those firms, even from a practical perspective, is misguided.

And this is why the entire law world is endangered, and with it, of course, the entire American legal system. All lawyers, whether currently under federal sanction, formerly under federal sanction, and never under federal sanction, and all potentially under federal sanction for taking and pursuing any case which puts you at odd with Mr. Trump and his minions. That’s just the way it is.

By the way, as to Ozturk, did you see what Marco Rubio said when asked about her? I quote: “We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas.” Yup, that’s our Secretary of State.

By the way, it is starting out to be a beautiful Spring in Washington. The blossoms all look beautiful and are coming out at the right time, in the right order, to basically blue skies. Has there ever been beautiful weather like this before?

The answer is yes. On 9/11, the weather was gorgeous when the Twin Towers fell. And it was equally beautiful, I am told, on September 1, 1939, the day the Nazis attacked Poland.

Luckily, there is that little thing called a partial eclipse, which may – even for just an instant – mar that beauty, and thereby let us avoid another tragedy.