In the Press

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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.

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‘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.

 

Pennsylvania Capital Star logo

Trump has deployed troops to three cities; Could Philadelphia be on his list? (opens a new window)

  • September 22, 2025
  • Pennsylvania Capital-Star

In that context, the National Guard is functionally a state militia, according to Beau Tremitiere, an attorney with Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to preserving America’s form of government.

“One state cannot lawfully invade another,” Tremitiere said. “There might be cases when the president could lawfully federalize the guard, even though it’s a bad and dangerous idea. It’s critically different when you’re talking about one state sending forces into another state and actively policing its streets. That’s never OK.”

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Project 2026: Trump’s Plan to Rig the Next Election (opens a new window)

  • September 8, 2025
  • Mother Jones

“The idea that we would unilaterally disarm our intelligence capabilities when the world is far more dangerous and more contentious and the role of the United States in the world is being challenged far more than in 2017 and yet we have far less capabilities aimed at protecting our elections, it’s madness,” says Alexandra Chandler, a military intelligence analyst for more than a decade who now serves as director of the elections program at Protect Democracy.

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The 5-Minute Fix | Democracy has been winning in the courts (opens a new window)

  • September 2, 2025
  • The Washington Post

“Authoritarianism works, in part, by attacking everywhere,” said Ben Raderstorf, a strategist with Protect Democracy and author of the newsletter “If You Can Keep It.” “It tries to overwhelm a democracy with a wave of stories that will shock, numb, and demoralize its citizens into acquiescence. But that’s never the whole story — and the wins for democracy are often just as prevalent as the losses, albeit usually less shocking.”

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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.”