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November 4, 2022
How Trump Could Snatch a Third Term — Despite the 22nd Amendment
“Anyone who says that obviously the 22nd Amendment will deter Trump from trying for a third term has been living on a different planet than the one I’ve been living on,” says Ian Bassin, who was an associate White House counsel for President Barack Obama and is now the executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Protect Democracy.
January 31, 2025
Supreme Court’s 2024 term puts a finger on the scale for the next president
Court watchers speculate that fights over mail-in ballot deadlines and dating absentee ballots will make their way to the justices.
Jessica Marsden, director of impact programs and counsel for free and fair elections at Protect Democracy, said the 2022 ruling in Moore v. Harper could play a role in the 2024 elections. In Moore, the justices held that state courts could review state legislatures’ election laws. The court also created an opportunity for federal courts to intervene.
“The size of this loophole is sort of unknown at this point in time, but there are cases percolating that will raise this issue and sort of test the size of that loophole,” Marsden said.
September 27, 2024
How Trump’s Unhinged Immunity Demand Could Unleash a Second-Term Crime Spree
Kristy Parker, counsel at Protect Democracy who served as a lawyer in multiple administrations, notes that Trump has signaled clear intent to do exactly this sort of thing. He has attacked Willis’s prosecution of him as corrupt, hinted at full-scale persecution of “vermin” Americans who oppose him, and openly threatened to prosecute President Biden as retribution. “If I don’t get immunity, then Crooked Joe Biden doesn’t get immunity,” Trump recently raged.
January 9, 2024
‘I Am Your Retribution.’ Trump Knows What He Wants to Do With a Second Term.
Erica Newland, counsel at Protect Democracy, disputed the claim that the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 gives Trump the power to create a Schedule F, writing by email: “The C.S.R.A. doesn’t give Trump and his allies the power they say it does and we have 70 years of history to back that up.” Instead, “The C.S.R.A. in fact limits who Trump can exempt from hiring and firing protections.”
December 20, 2023
Trump’s threats to Milley fuel fears he’ll seek vengeance in second term
Kristy Parker, a legal counsel at Protect Democracy who leads litigation on abuses of power and interference with government functions, said Trump’s comments about Milley are “deeply troubling” for American democracy.
“Even just the threats have an incredibly chilling effect on public actors’ ability to do the jobs we need them to do to have a functional democracy,” she said.
“Trump has shown and talked about weaponizing the Justice Department to retaliate against people who he perceives as his enemies and he did, in fact, do that to people when he was president the first time.”
September 27, 2023
Altered State: Trump has told us clearly what a second term will be: one-man rule
“Trump is a symptom of larger set of movements, different political threads that have come together,” Erica Newland, counsel for Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group working to defeat authoritarian threats, told the Editorial Board. “There’s a skepticism of expertise and a belief in strong executive authority. Portions of the conservative legal movement have spent the last 40 years casting doubts about the legitimacy of other institutions such as Congress.”
August 3, 2023
Georgia Election Workers Reach Settlement Terms With OAN
April 21, 2022
Rudy Giuliani Still on the Hook as OAN Formally Settles Georgia Election Workers’ Defamation Case on ‘Fair and Reasonable’ Terms
A federal judge on Wednesday agreed to dismiss a lawsuit filed by two Georgia election workers against the company which owns the One America News (OAN) Network, several of the network’s executives, and correspondent Chanel Rion. The judge, however, agreed to keep the case alive against one defendant: Rudy Giuliani.
May 12, 2022