Yale alums warn Treasury chief Scott Bessent of Trump fascism risk

A group of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s classmates at Yale University urged him in a new letter to reconsider his role “in facilitating the Trump administration’s intended transformation” of the United States “into an authoritarian state.”

“Scott, please take a moment to step back, look down the road a piece, and think hard about whether you want to be responsible for enabling the descent of America into fascism,” says the letter, which is dated Wednesday.

“Be brave. Stand up for what you know to be right and be a voice of reason in the midst of this insanity,” the letter says.

It argues that “so many” of the actions of President Donald Trump and his second administration are unconstitutional and undermine the principles of democracy.

As of Friday, 140 members of the Yale Class of 1984 have signed the online letter to Bessent, a member of that class. He is also a former adjunct professor at the university, where he taught economic history.

The signatories include lawyers, CEOs, journalists, playwrights, a pastor, college professors, a farmer, and social workers.

The letter to Bessent says that he, as a Political Science major at Yale, knows “that the three branches of the U.S. government are meant to act as equal partners, providing checks and balances on each other to prevent the kind of power grab the executive branch is currently perpetrating.”

The missive then ticks off a list of examples of what it says are the Trump administration’s efforts “to usurp the power vested in the judicial and legislative branches … for their own personal aggrandizement, wealth, and power.”

The examples cited include giving billionaire Elon Musk and his “DOGE cohorts” extensive access to the private data of millions of Americans; “punitive attacks on independent news media, universities, citizens, judges and other governmental employees merely because they disagree with the administration;” and “illegal seizure and incarceration of people in violation of our immigration laws and the due process required by our Constitution.”

Bessent, in a statement to CNBC, said:

“It is equal parts odd and sad that a group of people, most of whom I have never met, feel they have standing in my life choices due to a tenuous overlap from 40 years ago.”

“How very brave of these people to wage their campaign from behind a keyboard rather than to engage in the real-life political process. They should look inward, exercise some agency, and come out from behind their desks—like I did—to get involved in the 2028 electoral cycle.”

“These are the same close-minded progressives who have sought to undermine President Trump at every turn. But to paraphrase President Teddy Roosevelt, ‘It is not the critic who counts… the credit belongs to the man in the arena.'”

“President Trump is the man in the arena. And the American people elected him—not these critics. Being part of the Trump Administration and serving the American people is the honor of my lifetime.”

Catherine Teegarden, a 1984 Class alumna, told CNBC that she sent a similar letter, also signed by fellow class members, via U.S. Mail to Bessent at the Treasury Department in March, but received no reply.

The new letter, which added some details of actions by the administration since March, was posted on the class’ Facebook page, where people could sign it.

“My initiative for banding together was just to amplify our voices,” said Teegarden, a New York resident who retired in 2023 after 30 years running an architectural education program.

“I know there were other people like myself who felt somewhat hopeless about what was going on in our government,” she said.

The letter echoes one sent in August 2017 to then-Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin from more than 350 of his fellow members of Yale’s Class of 1985.

That letter called on Mnuchin to resign, arguing he had a “moral obligation” to do so after Trump blamed violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on not only the organizers but on counterprotesters as well. Mnuchin rejected that demand. 

The new letter to Bessent also cites “blatant conflicts of interest such as the Trumps’ meme coins and Trump Media and Technology Group‘s investment accounts which are poised to move in sync with the administration’s whimsical tariff decisions.”

“While the global economic chaos this administration has caused may have set off the loudest alarm bells, the unlawful manner in which they are conducting official business at home should be equally alarming to you as Treasury Secretary,” the letter says.

“Your sworn oath to uphold the Constitution as you manage the nation’s finances demands that you do everything in your power to stop this administration’s unprecedented attacks on our democracy.”

David Kallick, one of the people who signed the letter, in an interview, said he did so because “I’m really concerned about due process and” other protections “in our Constitution that are being set aside by the president’s actions.”

“There are people within the administration and without who should know better,” said Kallick, who is director of the Immigration Research Initiative, a think tank.

Kallick, who said he did not know Bessent at Yale, said that the risk from Trump’s actions to date is “very real.”

“I think we’re seeing some actions that are starkly authoritarian, or, I should say, starkly autocratic, and I don’t know how far that could go,” he said. “If people like us and him [Bessent] don’t stand up and say ‘Enough is enough,’ there is a real danger … of further sliding into an autocratic government.”

Teegarden, the alumna who organized the letter, said a number of people declined to sign it “because they were worried about how that would affect their life.”

“A lot of people are scared to put their name out there, because of retribution,” said Teegarden, who also said she did not know Bessent at Yale.

Teegarden said other people asked her why the letter does not call on Bessent to resign.

“To me, that doesn’t really solve the problem,” she said. “We need someone there who is rational, who will speak up, to be that voice of reason.”

She said she hopes the letter will make Bessent consider his role in the Trump administration and push back against what she said are violations of constitutional and institutional norms.

“Why is he selling out? This was kind of my thinking about this,” Teegarden said, adding that she hopes “we plant a little nugget of concern” in Bessent’s mind.

“It’s really about the illegality of it all,” she said. “And he should know better.”

Hank Copeland, another Yale grad who signed the letter, said, “I don’t know Scott personally, but I’m willing to bet he doesn’t want to live in an autocracy.”

“He knows autocracy stifles human rights and shuts down the give and take that improve lives and make life interesting and make an economy dynamic,” said Copeland, an Indianapolis resident who runs a small tech company. “Eventually, rigid, top-down societies ossify and fail.”

Asked what he wanted the letter to achieve, Copeland said, “On the one hand, we’re whistling in a hurricane, and some classmates cite futility as their reason for not signing.”

“On the other hand, plenty of important acts in life are purely symbolic — exchanging rings or flying a flag or attending a funeral,” he said.

“We do these symbolic things to remind ourselves and others what we care about,” he said.

— CNBC’s Russell Leung contributed to this story.

Read the full letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent below: