As Americans, we have strong tools rooted in our Constitution and system of checks and balances to prevent our democracy from declining into a more authoritarian form of government. With experience upholding the guardrails of democracy in the American government, and working with experts who study the rise and fall of democracies around the world, we’ve identified key areas of risk that need our immediate attention. Here is what we’re doing to Protect our Democracy in each of those key areas:
A generally shared agreement about basic facts is indispensable to constitutional democracy. It allows a citizenry to debate policies from within the same reality, and to ultimately hold their government accountable. That is why autocrats seek to undermine truth in order to avoid accountability. Changes in our media landscape have undermined our shared reality, and President Trump has all but declared war on truth and basic facts. We are working to check the government’s ability to deliberately spread misinformation to help protect the American people’s ability to self-govern.
Today, Protect Democracy filed a second suit against the Trump Administration for documents related to their plans for the 2020 Census, following up on the refusal of the Commerce Department and the Office of Management and Budget to comply with FOIA requests filed on November 22, 2017. Read…
On January 16, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a report entitled “Executive Order 13780: Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States, Initial Section 11 Report” (the “Report”). From the Trump Administration’s perspective, the Report…
On February 2, 2018, in a letter signed by White House Counsel Donald McGahn, President Trump declassified the contents of a memo written by the Republican staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and that Committee released the memo to the public the same day. The purpose of…
Documents released by the FBI in response to a FOIA lawsuit by Protect Democracy contradict the White House’s claims about the atmosphere within the FBI when President Trump fired Director James Comey. Protect Democracy represents Benjamin Wittes in FOIA litigation seeking documents showing internal correspondence from FBI officials…
Independent facts and institutions, and the open exchange of accurate scientific information, are touchstones of a functioning democracy. Anti-democratic regimes often seek to delegitimize and suppress authoritative voices that offer accurate information, especially if it can be used to criticize the government. President Trump and his administration have…
