Quince, a member of the board of Lawyers Defending American Democracy, was the first African American woman to serve on the Florida Supreme Court and as chief justice.
On Nov. 5, in elections around the country, we will determine whether these United States of America will continue to aspire to be a democratic republic or whether this country will give up its freedoms and embrace authoritarianism.
As an African American female who has lived through — and is still living through — systemic racism in this country, I know that despite the flaws in our system, our best path forward is to continue to work for justice and equality for all, to work with and preserve the rule of law and embrace and strengthen the constitutional ideals that are the hallmark of our American democracy.
We need not speculate on what our lives will be like should extremism continue to take over the branches of government. We have already felt the brunt of a judiciary that is driven by ideology instead of legal rules and precedent. We have already witnessed legislatures that have instituted laws suppressing not only the right to vote but also the right to dissent and to assemble peaceably to express that dissent. We are witnessing the suppression of the free flow of knowledge through book banning. Our children are now being exposed to revisionist history, and they are being told what books they can read, not by their parents but by the state.
Beyond these horrors lurks Project 2025. Promoted as a “conservative promise” for America, it is nothing close to traditional notions of conservatism. Project 2025 is an extremist blueprint for what is effectively authoritarian domination of America. It is a comprehensive plan to eradicate the American way of life, by ignoring the fundamental principles of the U.S. Constitution, the fundamental principles of human dignity and the ideals of a free, just and equal society that form the bedrock of this democratic America. The 30 chapters of Project 2025, described by Politico as an authoritarian Christian nationalist movement with the purposeful intention of moving America from a democracy to an autocracy-fascist-oriented country, are a daunting read.
This 922-page document seeks to destroy the fabric of our lives and many of our rights as embodied in the Bill of rights.
Here are but a few examples of what would happen to us if Project 2025 is implemented.
The First Amendment would be severely upended. While the First Amendment embodies five distinct rights — freedom of speech, freedom of religion (free exercise), freedom of the press, freedom to assemble and freedom to petition — religious freedom would be dramatically restricted if Project 2025 becomes the blueprint for America.
The freedom of religion has for many years been interpreted to provide for the separation of church and state. That separation would be eviscerated. Not only would Christianity be the “national” religion, but it would be supported by our taxpayer dollars going to faith-based organizations through USAID funding and other governmental programs.
We have already seen draconian legislation that has significantly stifled the right to assemble peacefully by designating protesters as rioters should any type of disturbance take place. And we know that counter protesters will make sure there is disturbance. We have also seen the press vilified when negative stories or opinions about specific politicians are expressed. Now we are threatened with the use of the military and Department of Justice resources to punish political opponents.
Beyond the threats to these basic rights, we see in Project 2025 the demise of our free public education system. While there certainly needs to be major improvements in our education system, Project 2025 seeks to “throw out the baby with the bathwater.” Instead of proposing changes, proponents of Project 2025 want to essentially eliminate the system and turn education over to private and religious organizations that are not bound by any standards or admission policies. These provisions are prime examples of violations of the principles of separation of church and state.
When did so many Americans get to the point where they do longer believe in the Constitution, in the Declaration of Independence, in the ideals that have served us well for over 200 years? How did we get to this point where a country that was founded to get away from a king’s command over the people’s lives seems on the brink of embracing this type of authoritarian leadership?
Maybe we need look no further than eliminating civics from our school curricula. Maybe we now have a population that does not understand the Constitution. A population that does not understand the concept of three co-equal branches of government or the separation of church and state. A population that has not learned from history but is willing to make the same mistakes that lead to ruin for other countries. A population that cannot or will not think for itself but is spoon-fed, told what to believe even in the face of evidence to the contrary.
This is not the America I know and love. Please wake up, America!
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.