In the Press

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Trump moves to use the levers of presidential power to help his party in the 2026 midterms (opens a new window)

  • August 19, 2025
  • AP

“Those are actions that you don’t see in healthy democracies,” said Ian Bassin, executive director of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan organization that has sued the Trump administration. “Those are actions you see in authoritarian states.”

Bassin noted that presidents routinely stump for their party in midterm elections and try to bolster incumbents by steering projects and support to their districts. But he said Trump’s history is part of what’s driving alarm about the midterms.

“The one thing we know for certain from experience in 2020 is that this is a person who will use every measure and try every tactic to stay in power, regardless of the outcome of an election,” Bassin said.

Judge orders White House budget office to reveal information about spending decisions (opens a new window)

  • August 11, 2025
  • Government Executive

Cerin Lindgrensavage, counsel for Protect Democracy Project, one of the organizations that filed the lawsuit, released a statement cheering the Circuit Court’s decision.

“Restoration of this website could not have come at a more important time — over the last two weeks journalists have broken story after story of OMB holding back funds using apportionment footnotes — and once this website goes back online we should all have a chance to learn where else OMB has been holding up money that — under law — should be spent,” Lindgrensavage wrote.

Trump FCC’s approval of Paramount-Skydance merger ‘reeks of the worst form of corruption’ (opens a new window)

  • July 25, 2025
  • AlterNet

Conor Gaffney and Janine Lopez, attorneys at the nonprofit group Protect Democracy, wrote Thursday that “no doubt the boards of Paramount and Skydance are hoping this saga ends today—now that they’ve appeased the FCC and cleared merger review.”

“But as we’ve seen time and again, businesses that capitulate to the Trump administration find themselves captured rather than in the clear—with the president quick to change his mind and come back for more,” they wrote. “The costs of capitulation are higher than they might initially seem, and the business calculation that Paramount and many others have made may be wrong. The price of protection only goes up, and the mob keeps coming around.”

NPR Logo

As USDA begins gathering data on food stamp recipients, it widens its ask of states (opens a new window)

  • July 25, 2025
  • NPR

“The new guidance from the USDA sheds some additional light on what types of sensitive data the agency is seeking on SNAP applicants and recipients, but the fact remains that we still don’t have good answers for why the range of data they’re requesting is needed or how it will be used,” said Nicole Schneidman, a technology policy strategist at the legal nonprofit Protect Democracy.

Schneidman is also one of the attorneys behind a legal challenge that argues USDA’s plan violates federal privacy laws.

“The agency says that it broadly wants to root out fraud, but it has neglected to explain what a person’s education status or roommate status has to do with that goal,” Schneidman said.

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Trump administration leaves Congress in dark on spending decisions (opens a new window)

  • July 14, 2025
  • Reuters

Trump’s focus on slashing the federal government also has made his administration less concerned about congressional queries, said Cerin Lindgrensavage, counsel at Protect Democracy, a group which is suing the administration over removal of online spending details.

“Usually, administration officials would be wary of angering the appropriations committee for the same reason it’s a bad idea to bite the hand that feeds you, but now, Congress is negotiating against an executive branch that seems happy to cut more spending,” Lindgrensavage said.

The growing surveillance state in the U.S. is far worse than you imagined (opens a new window)

  • July 10, 2025
  • PRISM

The Privacy Act—passed in 1974 partly as a response to the infamous Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) COINTELPRO surveillance program—restricts the sharing of personal information between government agencies. However, “the options for challenging the changes the bill makes to Medicaid’s data sharing setup would be limited, especially in terms of litigation,” said Nicole Schneidman, technology policy strategist at the advocacy group Protect Democracy. It makes “any effort to push back on this quite aggressive collecting of information much, much more challenging.”

Ian Bassin: The Democracy Champion (opens a new window)

  • July 8, 2025
  • The Chronicle of Philanthropy

As Ian Bassin studied the rise of left- and right-wing authoritarian regimes that came to power over the past decade, he saw they had one thing in common: The governments used everything at their disposal — litigation, voting restrictions, policy development, and public messaging — to restrict democratic rights.

If the US president threatens to take away freedoms, are we no longer free? (opens a new window)

  • July 5, 2025
  • The Guardian

“Trump is making clear that if he can do that to the world’s richest man, he could certainly do it to you,” said Ian Bassin, co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy. “It’s important, if we believe in the rule of law, that we believe in it whether it is being weaponized against someone that we have sympathy for or someone that we have lost sympathy for.”

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The Trump administration is making an unprecedented reach for data held by states (opens a new window)

  • June 24, 2025
  • NPR

“Every week we’re seeing new examples of this administration demanding or sharing sensitive government data for unprecedented uses,” said Nicole Schneidman, who heads the technology and data governance team at Protect Democracy, a nonprofit legal center that describes its mission as “defeating the authoritarian threat.” Schneidman said Americans should understand “the data that they have entrusted to state governments right now is truly a target.”

“Once this kind of data is in the wrong hands and in particular is aggregated, it can be used for an incredibly broad ranging set of purposes,” Schneidman of Protect Democracy said. “It is critical for every American to understand there is no ‘undo’ button here.”

Militarized LA: troops here to stay as Trump doubles down on deployments (opens a new window)

  • June 23, 2025
  • The Guardian

“The military shouldn’t be in the business of domestic law enforcement. That’s not what they’re trained to do,” said Beau Tremitiere, a lawyer with Protect Democracy, an advocacy group supporting the suit.

“If Americans weren’t aware of the risks posed by politicized domestic deployments by the military before the events in Los Angeles, they certainly are now. Healthy and respectful civil-military relations are yet another bulwark of US democracy that the president is trying to erode. We’re all on notice.”