In this episode of Democracy Works from The McCourtney Institute for Democracy, the team discusses democracy’s many doomsayers and how to heed their warnings for the future without falling into despair.
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Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Liz Truss speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on February 20, 2025 in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
Getty Images, Andrew Harnik
America’s Liz Truss Problem
Apr 21, 2025
America is having a Liz Truss moment. The problem is that America doesn’t have a Liz Truss solution.
Let me take you back to the fall of 2022 when the United Kingdom experienced its own version of political whiplash. In the span of seven weeks, no less than three Prime Ministers (and two monarchs, incidentally) tried to steer the British governmental ship. On September 6, Boris Johnson was forced to resign over a seemingly endless series of scandals. Enter Liz Truss. She lasted forty-nine days, until October 25, when she too was pushed out the black door of 10 Downing Street. Her blunder? Incompetence. Rishi Sunak, the Conservative Party’s third choice, then measured the drapes.
What most people remember of the Truss premiership is the Daily Star wager that a head of lettuce would last longer than Truss. The lettuce won. But Truss’ stint as Prime Minister—the shortest ever, I should note—holds some lessons for America today.
Truss suffered from a self-inflicted political wound. She tried to push through an aggressive tax cut at a time when the financial markets were edgy and inflation was high. She also pledged to increase government spending to counter those stinging inflated prices. As it turned out, hers was a foolish fiscal plan—tax reductions and public spending increases don’t exactly go hand-in-hand—and it failed spectacularly. The tax cuts never materialized, prices didn’t decrease, and the Pound lost a ton of its value. Truss was out.
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Her plan was to uproot the existing fiscal conventions, to dislocate the British financial landscape through radically bold and risky economic policy. She envisioned a new domestic world order.
Sound familiar? President Trump is trying to kindle a similar revolutionary spark. He wants a new world order too, and he’s going to use giant tariffs—or at least the threat of giant tariffs—to realize his ambition. Like Truss, he is wagering the future of his country’s financial footing on an experimental and radical strategy. Like Truss, he is leveraging a plan that is almost impossible to simulate. And like Truss, he is staking the country’s very reputation, at home and abroad, on this untested ante.
Americans can only hope that Trump’s tariff train hasn’t gone completely off the rails, as the tax one did for Ms. Truss. Because here’s the thing: The Brits’ system of government enjoys at least one massive guardrail that the U.S. system cannot duplicate: Their head of government, their party leader, their administrative public face, indeed their constitutional chief, can quickly be replaced.
Liz Truss could float a genuinely radical and potentially calamitous idea and, if it didn’t stick, she could be sacked. Pursue an idea that causes domestic and international panic and the shelf life of any British chancellor is short. Donald Trump can’t be sacked. His shelf life is fixed by the Constitution: Four years. That’s a long time, far longer than the five days it took to replace Truss with Rishi Sunak.
In my four decades as a faithful student of the U.S. Constitution, I never imagined that I would question the wisdom of the Framers’ decision to separate the branches. But then again, I never imagined a president who held such disdain for the very conventions and traditions—and the rule of law—that made the office of the president so dignified and reverential. I’m now questioning.
Our system of separation of powers—unlike the parliamentary system in Great Britain—allows the U.S. Congress to shrug at the incoherence of the White House. There is little at stake for the individual members of Congress when the President is issuing controversial executive orders and playing fast and loose with America’s standing in the world. Aside from impeachment and conviction—a toothless process more political now than anything else—Congress has no ability to fire a rogue president.
Not so in Great Britain. The Prime Minister is a member of Parliament, an elected legislative official, so if she is incoherent or too radical or too risky, she can simply be replaced by another member of parliament from the majority coalition party. Hence the lightspeed transition from Truss to Sunak. It’s not a pleasant situation, and it triggers a spate of hand-wringing in London and elsewhere. But it is relatively painless and frequently invoked.
Once again, America’s Constitution is showing its age. A governing charter written for a virtuous and noble George Washington has a hard time standing up to an egoistic and mercenary Donald Trump.
It’s time for constitutional change. A number of proposals have surfaced that get us a bit closer to the British model without sacrificing the principle of separate powers. How about a constitutional amendment that allows for a Congressional vote of no confidence in the President? Or one that offers a national recall election? The bar for each of these possibilities would have to be extraordinarily high so that neither is used as casual political fodder. We’re experiencing too much partisan grandstanding these days.
Or maybe we should rethink the 25th Amendment. Article IV permits the Vice President and a majority of the principal officers of the executive departments to replace the President if he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” That is surely unlikely in this environment where those principal officers are hand-selected by the very leader they’re appraising.
No, I’m referring to the next clause of the 25th Amendment, the one that empowers Congress to appoint “[an]other body” to declare a President unfit. That “other body” could be an independent commission, a bipartisan conclave, or a representative sample of everyday citizens. It could be anyone. I could even imagine that it would be a good role for Article III judges on “senior status.” My point is that we might need that “other body.” Now and in the future.
If all this sounds strange, it probably is. Constitutional reform is always a bit out there. But before we completely dismiss the notion that Congress might invoke Article IV of the 25th amendment maybe we should ask ourselves if the proposal is any more bizarre than a process whereby a majority of legislators from the lower house can impeach a president but he isn’t convicted and removed from office, except by a vote of two-thirds of the upper house.
Make more sense? I’m not so sure.
Beau Breslin is the Joseph C. Palamountain Jr. Chair of Political Science at Skidmore College and author of “A Constitution for the Living: Imagining How Five Generations of Americans Would Rewrite the Nation’s Fundamental Law.”
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Would replacing the income tax with higher tariffs help ‘struggling Americans’?
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Trump's Tariff Chaos: Strategy or Stumble?
Apr 16, 2025
Few would argue with the claim that President Trump’s tariff policy is chaotic.
In early April 2025, Trump announced sweeping tariffs on all U.S. trading partners, including a 10% blanket tariff and higher rates for specific countries like China (145%) and Canada (25%). Just a few days later, however, he rolled back many of these tariffs, citing the need for "flexibility".
Again this past weekend, Trump announced major changes—this time targeting the tech industry. Products like smartphones, laptops, hard drives, and semiconductors were suddenly exempted from the 125% tariffs he had imposed on Chinese imports just a week earlier. But these exemptions are temporary, the administration noted, hinting at future tariffs that target semiconductors and other electronics.
The uncertainty has rattled business leaders. Last week, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned that the lack of clarity could push the U.S. into a recession if trade deals aren't finalized swiftly. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon also highlighted the challenges of navigating the instability caused by these policies.
“There’s no strategy here... zero,” said Michael Cohen, a longtime Trump confidante-turned-critic who testified against him in his Manhattan hush money trial. “This isn’t about strategy, this is about brute force... and dictating demands.”
Cohen is not alone. Michael Strain, an economist with the American Enterprise Institute, believes that Trump has no coherent policy, saying, “People are trying to figure out what game of five-dimensional chess the president is playing and I don’t think there is one. I don’t think he knows what he’s doing and he’s making mistakes and making this up as he goes along.”
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But while many worry about the chaos and suggest Trump has no idea what he is doing, could this actually be part of Trump’s “Art of the Deal”?
For years, many have described Trump’s negotiating style as chaotic and unpredictable and have suggested this is an intentional strategy to gain leverage in the tariff negotiations. This approach aligns with a negotiating approach known as "chaos negotiating," where unpredictability is used as a tool to unsettle adversaries as a way to push for favorable outcomes.
Proponents of this method believe it can be a calculated way to shift power dynamics. Critics argue it creates confusion and can backfire. In truth, it may be a bit of both. Many academics believe that negotiators are better off setting specific and clear goals when negotiating, although others believe that improvisation and even chaos are powerful methods as well. Thomas Green, a managing director at Citigroup Global Markets, believes that embracing chaos can be advantageous at the bargaining table. Admittedly, Green's approach challenges conventional wisdom; “I’ve learned to make chaos my friend in negotiations,” says Green. He played a pivotal role in negotiating the $350 billion settlement of lawsuits against major U.S. tobacco companies and used this approach as the team leveraged the unpredictability of the situation to outmaneuver the opposition. The negotiation demonstrated how chaos, when managed effectively, can be a powerful tool in negotiations.
Of course, no one can really know what Trump is thinking and perhaps that is his goal. David Bahnsen, the founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group suggested this, saying: “There is a certain chaotic dimension to this that lends itself to uncertainty.” Part of it is that President Trump likes that style. I do not think he has liked the last 4 or 5 days, and I think that's where this announcement is coming from. But investors that are trying to trade around this should be extremely careful unless they think they're inside the President's mind. I'd be very careful thinking you know what President Trump's going to do next, when I can assure you that he doesn't know what he's going to do next.”
So, what will become of this latest round of tariffs—and the complex web of negotiations they’re fueling? Will Trump’s unpredictability give him leverage or will it weaken the United States' credibility and negotiating power? The truth is, no one knows. The long-term implications for trust in U.S. trade policy and the stability of strategic partnerships remain uncertain.
However, Yogi Berra, a famous baseball player known for his witty and paradoxical sayings, might have summed it all up best for what the future holds for the U.S. tariff policy:
“It is very difficult to make predictions—especially about the future.”
When it comes to Trump’s tariff policy that certainly rings true.
David Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
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Getty Images, Richard Drury
Trump Administration Stifles U.S. Embassies Abroad
Apr 14, 2025
WASHINGTON – Since his return to office in January, President Donald Trump has ushered in an era of enormous upheaval in the federal government: from dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development in early February to the recent announcement of extensive tariffs. But amid these sweeping changes, the quiet change in U.S. embassy policies is going largely unnoticed.
Since Trump’s inauguration, embassies have largely avoided drawing undue attention from the Oval Office. Under orders from Washington, they’ve avoided contact with the press and visiting Americans, and in at least one case, canceled a long-planned embassy appointment with visiting American students without explanation.
Ian Kelly, the former U.S. ambassador to Georgia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, called the changes to the Foreign Service a “verticalization of foreign policy,” with all instructions and authority coming from the top down, leaving little discretion for diplomats on the ground.
He described the Trump administration’s approach to the Foreign Service as eerily similar to policies in what he called “less democratic states.”
A former U.S. ambassador with knowledge of the canceled student visit, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that ambassadors have been required to request explicit permission from the State Department in Washington for any public engagements.
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In the past, ambassadors have typically been afforded a degree of freedom in managing their appointments, determining with whom they met based on availability and scheduling.
“It's unheard of that an ambassador would have to go back to the State Department and ask for specific permission to meet with any group,” the former ambassador said.
The State Department refused to comment.
An atypical transition
While all ambassadors are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, they generally fall into two informal categories: so-called “political appointees,” often large donors, who come from outside of the Foreign Service, and career foreign service officers, who are trained and experienced diplomats recruited from within the Service.
Several diplomats explained that when a new president comes to power, political appointees are generally replaced, while career foreign service officers are usually retained.
As a new administration finds its footing, some embassies may not be assigned a new ambassador for months, meaning there’s often little guidance at first.
“You're in a holding pattern,” said Gordon Duguid, a retired senior diplomat. “You're not going to do anything different than you have been doing until you receive specific instructions.”
While some uncertainty is normal, the level of chaos that has marked communications since the beginning of Trump’s second term has been unprecedented, even in comparison to his first term, several diplomats said.
Kelly was appointed ambassador during the Obama administration and spent 15 months working under the Trump administration before retiring in 2018. As a foreign service officer specializing in media relations, Kelly recalled that, during Trump’s first term, guidance was hard to come by.
“Under Trump, I didn’t say much at all. I couldn’t,” Kelly said. “I didn’t know what to say, and what I knew I could say, I didn’t agree with.”
Silence at the State Department
In early February, Trump signed an executive order entitled, “One Voice for America’s Foreign Relations.” The order called for a “reform” of the Foreign Service and authorized the Secretary of State to revise key documents, including the Foreign Affairs Manual, which governs much of Service policy.
“All officers or employees charged with implementing the foreign policy of the United States must under Article II do so under the direction and authority of the President,” the order reads. “Failure to faithfully implement the President’s policy is grounds for professional discipline, including separation.”
That has put pressure on foreign service officers to avoid saying anything that might put them at odds with the Trump administration.
“Like so much else in this administration, it's kind of pre-World War II-type diplomacy where you just keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, don't talk to the press,” Kelly said.
The current level of silence from the State Department is unusual, Kelly added. Typically, State Department employees are granted some degree of discretion to speak with the press. That appears to have changed with the current administration.
Duguid’s impression was similar.
“Nobody is being given permission to speak up,” he said.
Many in the Foreign Service likely haven’t forgotten the first Trump administration’s fury.
Trump’s first impeachment shined a rare spotlight on America’s foreign service officers. In 2019, he ousted then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, just a month before his fateful July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In the call, Trump pressured Zelenskyy to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of Trump’s political opponent Joe Biden, in return for releasing aid that was already approved by Congress.
During the impeachment proceedings, Yovanovitch and several other top diplomats testified about the smear campaign Trump and his allies orchestrated against her.
“She suffered adverse consequences because her name did reach Donald Trump,” Kelly said.
In retaliation for their testimony in the impeachment proceedings, Trump later fired key witnesses, including Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman—the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council—and Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland.
“That was all because of the vindictiveness of the president of the United States. I mean, you can imagine what a chilling effect that has,” Kelly said. “People learned their lesson: you don’t want the Eye of Sauron on you.”
Budget cuts and a shrinking workforce
Members of the Foreign Service were among those to receive the “fork in the road” and “what did you do last week?” emails from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, although the State Department instructed its employees not to respond.
“It seems like they're trying to have a reduction in force without having to go through the legal obligations that come with a reduction in force,” Duguid said. In his 31 years at the State Department, he added, a reduction in force was sometimes discussed but never implemented.
If a reduction in force is implemented, he said, “personnel who have fewer labor protections … would be the first to go.”
But much of day-to-day embassy work, like processing visas, is done by those less protected junior officers. Without those workers, Americans living abroad may be left without access to key services.
The turbulence to come
The contradictory combination of little guidance and heavy-handed intervention in a traditionally apolitical workforce has led to chaos and confusion.
“Basically, you have a whole lot of people trying to do the job that they were instructed to do with no new guidance and now no money,” Duguid said.
In his first term, Trump proposed cutting the State Department budget by more than 30%, although Congress ultimately rejected the cuts. But that proposal may offer a glimpse into the new administration’s plans.
The first Trump administration was largely unprepared to take power, leaving diplomats able to continue their work without much interference. This time around, however, it appears that the administration has quickly moved to significantly tighten its control over the Foreign Service.
“People are extremely reticent to do anything in public for fear of getting crosswise with the new administration,” Kelly said. “This is going to be a rollercoaster ride.”
Sasha Draeger-Mazer is a national security reporter for Medill News Service and studies journalism and political science at Northwestern University.
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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on April 3, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Getty Images, Andrew Harnik
Competitive Authoritarianism Comes for Civil Society
Apr 09, 2025
The following is reposted with permission from his Substack newsletter, The Art of Association.
I make a point of letting readers know when I change my mind about matters that bear on the ongoing discussion here at The Art of Association. I need to introduce today’s newsletter about what the second Trump Administration entails for civil society with just such an update.
My views on Donald Trump have remained more or less stable for a decade. As I wrote in the aftermath of Trump’s re-election and before his second inauguration,
“Ever since I saw Donald Trump speak in person, at a campaign event in New Hampshire in the fall of 2015, I have regarded him as a demagogue. To me, he exemplifies the “dangerous ambition” that Alexander Hamilton warned about in Federalist Paper #1 — and that the framers of the Constitution sought to exclude from the presidency. Trump subsequently demonstrated major shortcomings as a chief executive during his first term; in my view, he never really grasped nor demonstrated much interest in the core responsibilities of his office. Then came his shameless and sustained if ultimately unsuccessful bid to overturn the 2020 election. From my vantage point, then, Trump has repeatedly shown himself to be unfit for the office to which he was just re-elected.”
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Nothing Trump has said or done since his new term began has disabused me of this basic judgment. What has changed, however, is my perspective on the resilience of constitutional democracy in America vis-a-vis Trump’s demagoguery and the populist nationalism that he stokes with it.
I used to think, and sought to persuade others (e.g., see here and here), that our constitutional system had a staying power against the likes of Donald Trump, one anchored in an interlocking set of self-defense mechanisms. These include the separation of powers, checks and balances, fixed and biennial congressional elections, federalism, the Bill of Rights, etc.
Moreover, as recently as a year ago, I proposed that, whatever malevolent designs Trump might pursue in a second term, they would be tempered (as they were in his first) by his incompetence at wielding the levers of governing power.
Ten weeks into the second Trump Administration, I am seeing things differently. To be sure, many of the self-defense mechanisms of U.S. democracy persist. For example, we still have an independent judiciary that I expect – contrary to its critics on both the left and right – will generally acquit itself well during the next four years. And we will have federal elections again in 2026, 2028, 2030, etc.
But I am considerably less confident than I once was that these mechanisms will serve to uphold constitutional democracy. All bets are off in particular when majorities in Congress – the branch of government best positioned and meant to check an encroaching president – are instead aiding and abetting his usurpation of their roles. A Congress that has ceded to the executive the powers of the purse (i.e., taxing, tariffing, and spending) that the Constitution grants to it is “Congress” in name only.
It also is clear that President Trump and his acolytes have learned some things. Their second time around, they are using a swarming approach that is more effective in overwhelming and bypassing democracy’s defenses. To quote Hamilton again, they are exploiting the executive’s capacity for – and comparative inter-branch advantages of – “decision, activity, secrecy, and despatch.”
In sum, I have come to appreciate how constitutional mechanisms of democratic competition and unabashed authoritarian impulses can co-exist within the same polity. And I no longer presume that the former will ultimately confound the latter.
What type of regime will prevail? That depends on how civil society responds. For constitutional democracy to win out, civil society actors must reckon with the logic of competitive authoritarianism and rethink their roles and contributions in the face of it.
The shades of gray between democracy and autocracy
Political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way first developed the concept of competitive authoritarianism in the early 2000s. Their goal was to describe and classify a growing number of hybrid regimes in which elements of ongoing democratic competition coincided with undeniable patterns of autocratic rule. Today, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, Narendra Modi’s India, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey stand as classic examples of this type of regime.
Trump has long made no secret of his admiration for these strongman rulers. In his second term, the U.S. will come to operate more like their countries. Levitsky and Way have recently observed how the U.S. is showing all the hallmarks of this regime type:
“Authoritarianism does not require the destruction of the constitutional order. What lies ahead is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. Most autocracies that have emerged since the end of the Cold War fall into this category…But the system is not democratic, because incumbents rig the game by deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics. Competition is real but unfair.
Competitive authoritarianism will transform political life in the United States. As Trump’s early flurry of dubiously constitutional executive orders made clear, the cost of public opposition will rise considerably…Americans will still be able to oppose the government, but opposition will be harder and riskier, leading many elites and citizens to decide that the fight is not worth it. A failure to resist, however, could pave the way for authoritarian entrenchment.”
A lot of elites have already decided the fight is not worth it. President Trump has made not only his congressional majorities but also media companies, law firms, and Ivy League universities bend the knee to his rule. He and and his appointees have quickly and unceremoniously fired and replaced senior military officers and agency officials who might have refused to do likewise. All the while, with Trump’s full support, Russell Vought’s OMB and Elon Musk’s DOGE are intentionally traumatizing and decimating the ranks of the federal civil service in order to bring it to heel.
President Trump is not just working the referees of our justice system – he is commandeering them to reward his allies and punish his enemies. He placed the Department of Justice and FBI under the control of his most committed partisans. They, in turn, are purging any lawyers, prosecutors, and investigators who prioritize constitutional scruples over the President’s demands. With a blanket pardon on Inauguration Day, President Trump gave a get-out-of-jail-free card to 1,500+ rioters, militiamen, and seditious conspirators convicted for their crimes on January 6, 2021. He is now lashing out with incendiary rhetoric and demands for the impeachment of federal judges who have the audacity to rule against his Administration. We are not in Kansas anymore.
All these acts of submission, vituperation, and domination send clear signals to the President’s friends and foes alike. It is how competitive authoritarianism takes root.
From a false negative to a false positive?
It may be that, having underestimated the stability of constitutional democracy in the face of Donald Trump’s leadership style and designs, I am now overestimating the threat he poses to it. But the authoritarian bent of his Administration is on full display wherever one looks.
For example, consider this footage of six ICE agents, masked and masquerading as “the police,” as they detain Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University graduate student and legal resident of the U.S. One minute she is walking down a suburban Massachusetts sidewalk, off to break a Ramadan fast with friends. The next she is handcuffed and frogmarched into a Black SUV, then whisked away to a federal detention center in Louisiana. Her thoughtcrime? Co-authoring an op-ed in a student newspaper that criticized Israel. Watch and listen to the video in full to see how your federal tax dollars are now at work.
A more plausible critique of my updated assessment is that it ignores the laws of political gravity. Insofar as Donald Trump is doing unpopular things, like the sweeping tariffs he imposed last week, he and his party will suffer for it in future elections. But this presumes an opposition party that can harness public discontent against Donald Trump and the GOP – a capacity that has eluded the Democrats for years now.
Hoping for a “return to normalcy” scenario also glosses over another real possibility. We live in a dangerous world, one made more dangerous by the amateurism and politicized preoccupations of Trump’s national security appointees. A sudden emergency – terrorism in the homeland, a Chinese assault on Taiwan, a crippling cyberattack – could very well serve to strengthen the Administration’s hand.
All this said, the struggle between those seeking to keep the polity as competitive as possible, to the point of re-establishing liberal democracy, and those who seek to put their authority beyond the reach of democratic contestation is not likely to hinge on a single event, on one particular red line being crossed (or not). It rather will be an ongoing and cumulative conflict sprawling across government, politics, and society.
The good news about this dynamic for those on the side of preserving and enhancing competition is that it enables a much wider array of actors and associations to play constructive roles in the contest. The bad news is that the longer the struggle persists, the more the ranks of the public-spirited contestants risk getting thinned out by flagging zeal and the human tendency to make the best of what seems inevitable.
Five vital signs for a healthy civil society
In competitive authoritarianism, it is necessary but insufficient for would-be strongmen to dominate government and politics. Ultimately, to cement their authority in place, they must subdue civil society. They can do this via payoffs, pacification, and / or distraction of those who are more malleable – and intimidation, investigation, and / or exile of those who are less so.
Here are five indicators we can track in the years ahead to assess whether civil society is rising to, or retreating from, the challenge we now face.
1). Collective action and mutual defense. These imperatives are rightly seen as key to the whole contest. The administration’s prime targets – e.g., law firms, universities, foundations, newspapers, scientific networks, etc. – must hang together when it tries to dominate one of their kind, lest they hang separately. Authoritarians like to subdue one institution at a time so that those next up become more apt to fold without a fight.
It is thus encouraging, for example, to see law firms like Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, and Jenner & Block contesting President Trump’s executive orders targeting them, other stalwart lawyers stepping up to represent them, and 500+ firms signing an amicus brief on behalf of Perkins. Conversely, it is discouraging to see other law firms striking Faustian bargains with the Administration and the largest “big law” groups staying silent about the frontal attack on their profession.
2). Widely shared and reflective patriotism. Given how Donald Trump has sought to wrap his bid to “Make America Great Again” in the flag, it would be tempting for his opponents in civil society to dismiss love of country as part of the problem. But this would surrender the most defensible high ground. It is on the basis of the values, achievements, and shared, warts-and-all history of democracy in America that we can envision a better way forward.
The celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026 offers an opportunity to reclaim the mantle of patriotism. President Trump will no doubt proclaim a nostalgic and exclusive form of this civic virtue to rally his MAGA followers during the Semiquincentennial. To counter it, we need to exhibit a reflective, forward-looking, and inclusive patriotism that resonates with an ample majority of Americans.
3). Broad and centripetal policy coalitions. It will once again be tempting for progressive philanthropists, advocates, and activists to intermingle their pre-existing policy preferences with their efforts to defend democracy. This helps them maintain their intersectional commitments and alliances on immigration, climate, DEI, trans rights, political economy, etc. But it makes it much harder to build the cross-partisan coalition of supporters that liberal democracy requires.
Civil society actors who are serious about stopping and reversing authoritarian drift should ask themselves a clarifying question: “Do the policy positions we hold currently appeal to a broad majority of Americans, including the median voter?” If the answer is “no” or “not really,” then they should either modulate the intensity with which they insist coalition partners and leaders share their policy preferences, or candidly acknowledge that they are prioritizing those preferences over the recovery of liberal democracy.
4). Repair and revitalization. One of the main reasons liberal democracy finds itself on the back foot is that so many of the institutions and professions it relies on have lost their collective way. Even as we come to the defense of these endeavors, we also have to admit and follow up on the pressing need to fix and reinvigorate them so they can once more serve democratic purposes.
Jen Pahlka and Mark Dunkelman have pointed out why and how this needs to be done with the administration and implementation of government policy. Others have done likewise with philanthropy (myself included). Darryl Holliday and his colleagues are doing this with local journalism and civic media. And a growing number of critical friends and leaders are mapping out the changes needed in beleaguered institutions of higher education.
Consider what former Harvard President and current professor Larry Summers recently had to say about his own institution and others like it:
“To maintain the moral high ground, which universities have in large part lost, they need a much more aggressive reform agenda focused on antisemitism, celebrating excellence rather than venerating identity, pursuing truth rather than particular notions of social justice and promoting diversity of perspective as the most important dimension of diversity.”
This would certainly be a step in the right direction – and make our universities much better able to ward off the populist broadsides that have only just begun to ramp up.
5). Independence and self-reliance. Finally, we come to a related and difficult rub. Many of the prominent nonprofits that comprise an ostensibly independent sector find themselves dependent on funding from a federal government that is now hellbent on squelching, diverting, or micro-managing their missions.
Upon closer examination, in the wake of the Trump Administration’s early disruptions, much of what we have taken to calling “civic space” is more accurately described as federally funded and subsidized space. They are not the same thing.
I will have more to say about this prosaic but nonetheless profound challenge in an upcoming post. Suffice it to say for now that, unless and until it is resolved in a reconfiguration of nonprofit funding patterns that enables greater institutional autonomy, authoritarians will retain the upper hand
Daniel Stid is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on civil society, philanthropy, and democratic governance.
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