In the Press - Protect Democracy

Is Trump Giving Illegal Orders? Dems Just Blew the Question Wide Open. (opens a new window)

November 21, 2025
The New Republic

In ordering these prosecutions, is Trump giving illegal orders? Former prosecutor Kristy Parker says that depending on specifics, bad-faith orders to prosecute foes while knowing the facts don’t warrant it can be unlawful. They might violate the target’s constitutional rights or run afoul of a federal statute barring officials acting under color of law from willfully depriving people of those rights, Parker says, which could apply to both the giver and the executor of the order.

“Just following orders” is “not a lawful defense,” Parker told me. “If the order is unlawful, you can’t follow it, and you’ll be in violation of the law yourself if you do,” she said, though it’s often unclear how legally vulnerable underlings would be later.

UW-Madison conference weighs if fusion voting can make politics healthier (opens a new window)

November 17, 2025
News From The States

The debate Friday was often an exchange over how fusion voting fits into broader systemic reforms and if it can be used in tandem with proposals including proportional representation, multi-member congressional districts, ranked choice voting, gerrymandering prohibitions, filibuster reform and others.

“It makes it possible for people who want to organize and who want to create and claim their own political power, to do so in an effective way,” Beau Tremitiere, an attorney from the non-profit Protect Democracy, said. They’re exactly right. “People are deeply dissatisfied with the system. There’s a lot of energy to do something better and fusion makes that easier.”

As SNAP funding lapsed, a top official called the program ‘corrupt’ (opens a new window)

November 4, 2025
NPR

People with experience analyzing SNAP and other safety net programs say such statistics need more detail and context about how they were calculated to be evaluated.

“We have real questions about how they’ve arrived at these numbers,” said Nicole Schneidman, an attorney with the nonprofit, Protect Democracy. Schneidman represents SNAP recipients and hunger and privacy groups who sued over USDA’s data demand to states.

“One thing that’s really important for people to keep in mind is that 42 million people across the country receive SNAP on a monthly basis. And so these numbers that are being referenced are trivial in the grand scheme of the millions of people across the country who are receiving SNAP,” Schneidman said.

Trump wants to cancel more funding during the shutdown. Courts have hampered his earlier efforts (opens a new window)

October 27, 2025
AP

Legal scholars say no president has attempted massive, unilateral cuts like these since Richard Nixon. The moves reflect an expansive view of executive power that is at odds with the Impoundment Control Act, court rulings and the Constitution, which grants Congress supremacy over spending, experts say.

“The power they’ve claimed is the power to delay and withhold funds throughout the year without input from Congress,” said Cerin Lindgrensavage, counsel with Protect Democracy, which is involved in multiple lawsuits against the administration. “That’s a theft of Congress’ power of the purse.”

Trump Is Usurping Congress’ Most Important Power, And It’s Making A Shutdown Deal Nearly Impossible (opens a new window)

October 25, 2025
HuffPost

The decision to use an R&D budget to cover troop pay compounds this problem even further: It shows that the administration is willing to go even further in its law-breaking than its efforts to challenge the Impoundment Control Act.

“Now they appear ready to set aside the Antideficiency Act,” said Cerin Lindgrensavage, counsel for Protect Democracy, a pro-democracy nonprofit. “To the extent that they were already line-crossing, that is another line that I don’t think I expected them to cross so blatantly.

How Trump Played ‘Budgetary Twister’ to Pay Some Workers During the Shutdown (opens a new window)

October 21, 2025
The New York Times

Cerin Lindgrensavage, a lawyer at Protect Democracy, an open-government group, said the Trump administration’s actions raised serious legal questions. Typically, she said, funds can be moved around only if Congress gives the president the authority to do so. A violation of that principle compromises the “most fundamental tenet underpinning Congress’s power of the purse,” Ms. Lindgrensavage added.

As Trump Moves Toward Autocracy, Top Aide Stephen Miller Is Way Ahead Of Him (opens a new window)

October 11, 2025
HuffPost

Amanda Carpenter, once a top aide to Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and now a researcher with the nonprofit Protect Democracy, said Miller is doing exactly what proponents of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 planned over the past several years as Trump ran to retake his office after having attempted a coup in 2021.

“Project 2025 was, at its core, an aspiration to provide Trump plenary power to gut checks and balances, consolidate control over all aspects of the federal government and entrench power for the long term,” she said. “It was written on paper and Stephen Miller is saying it out loud.”

Calls Grow on the Right for Trump To Ignore Judges’ Orders (opens a new window)

October 8, 2025
TIME

Kristy Parker, special counsel at Protect Democracy and a former federal prosecutor, says the moves together represent a threat to American democracy.

“These are really fundamental assaults on our rule of law, system of government, and the fundamental structure of our government,” she tells TIME. “Our founders created three coequal branches of government precisely so that we would not have the person of the president becoming a tyrannical force.”

“Calling on your court orders and the administration actually ignoring court orders should chill everyone who thinks that we ought to be living in the democracy that our founders created,” she adds.

The Chicago Rubicon and What Comes Next (opens a new window)

October 7, 2025
The Bulwark

Our friend Amanda Carpenter—who is nobody’s idea of a bleeding heart—is alarmed. You should be, too.

Trump is dangerously and perversely fusing the roles of the U.S. military and domestic agencies. The U.S. military is trained and equipped to confront foreign adversaries, operating under rules of engagement designed for war. Agencies like DHS and ICE are constrained by the U.S. Constitution and are supposed to protect constitutional rights.

‘Backdoor’ funding cuts possible by Trump administration, as Congress faces government shutdown (opens a new window)

September 28, 2025
Reuters

Cerin Lindgrensavage, a lawyer for Protect Democracy, said the administration’s late-year strategy has “hidden spending that they don’t want to fight about because they know they could lose that fight.”

“The cuts that we have been tracking fall in areas where the Trump administration has already proposed significant cuts for next year, but they’re making them happen now rather than seeking to get Congress to agree to them for the future,” she added.

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