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“He is not going to view himself as constrained,” said Kristy Parker, special counsel for Protect Democracy, a nonprofit that fights authoritarianism. “Emergency powers are like manna from heaven for someone like him. He can just wave a wand in the form of an executive order and absolve himself, as he sees it, from the need to answer to Congress.”
“Never before in this country has a president made so clear that mere disagreement with him or failure to show sufficient personal loyalty might cause that person to lose government contracts or even face investigation,” said Ian Bassin, co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group that analyzes threats to US democracy. “That’s how things work in Russia, and apparently, under Donald Trump, now here.”
In his Commencement address at Wesleyan’s 193rd Commencement Ceremony, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Protect Democracy Ian Bassin ’98, Hon.’25 urged the Class of 2025 to take collective action—both against the rising authoritarianism that preys on our frustrations, and toward a future that transcends the perils of our present.
“When the freedom of any one of us is endangered, act as if the freedom of all of us is endangered, because it is,” said Bassin, who was named an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters at the ceremony. “And rather than demonize those with whom we disagree or impose purity tests, we must forge common cause with the broadest possible coalition in defense of our Republic.”
Publicly discussing pending investigations could also hinder the prosecution itself, such as by tainting a jury pool, former prosecutors said.
“It definitely raises the question: if they are continually running afoul of those things, what is the true purpose here, and what is the true legitimacy of these cases?” said Kristy Parker, special counsel at Protect Democracy and a former prosecutor with the department’s civil rights division.
States could become “the new battleground in the fight against DOGE’s oversteps into the lives of Americans,” said Nicole Schneidman, a technology policy strategist at Protect Democracy and one of the attorneys involved in the suit. “This demand puts states in a no-win situation where they must break the law and betray their citizens or risk losing essential funding.”
“I think you’ve got a situation where our government is weaponizing its own powers in a manner that is inconsistent with our constitutional framework,” said Kristy Parker, who prosecuted threatening speech claims as a Justice Department lawyer and is now with the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy.
But John Paredes, counsel for voting rights watchdog Protect Democracy, which filed an amicus brief in federal court on behalf of North Carolina voters, noted the “damage” that Griffin and the state courts’ rulings did to public trust that the courts will follow the law.
“At the end of the day, this case is not difficult on the facts or on the law. Due process is due process, and equal protection is equal protection, whether you’re talking about federal law or North Carolina State law,” he told Salon. It’s alarming, he continued, how close the state came to having an election outcome overturned by “post-election shenanigans.”
“If any private company who processes and has access to states’ sensitive data complies with these kinds of federal demands, that is a dangerous and very slippery slope,” said Nicole Schneidman, an attorney and technology policy strategist with Protect Democracy, which describes itself as “a cross-ideological nonprofit group” dedicated to defeating authoritarian threats and protecting freedoms.
“It would validate a tactic where government pressure on vendors effectively allows the federal government access to states’ data while making an end run around states,” Schneidman said.
Yet lost in this saga has been the basic reason we don’t want a MAGA-brained January 6-er in such a crucial law enforcement role in the first place. We talked to former prosecutor Kristy Parker, counsel at Protect Democracy. She explains why this position is so critical to the legal order, why Martin has no business in it, and why she has cautious optimism that Trump’s assault on the rule of law might ultimately get repelled.
Democracy Forward, Altshuler Berzon LLP, Protect Democracy, Public Rights Project and State Democracy Defenders Fund are representing the unions in the case. They want a judge to preserve the status quo while the case moves ahead.
“President Trump has neither constitutional authority nor Congressional authorization to effectuate a government-wide reorganization and direct massive federal employee layoffs in service of that reorganization, either across or within agencies, and any attempt to implement such radical restructuring is entirely [beyond his legal authority],” attorneys wrote in the union’s request for a TRO.
Defeating authoritarianism is going to take all of us. Everyone and every institution has a role to play. Together, we can protect democracy.
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