“This is a country of legislation, and legislation is greater than anyone’s ambitions or desires,” said editor-in-chief Michael Tomasky in his opening remarks at TNR’s Stop Trump Summit in Philadelphia, held Saturday afternoon at the Independence Visitor Center. just a stone’s throw from the building where the Constitution was drafted. “That proposal is being challenged today in a way that hasn’t been the case in the United States yet, and that’s why we’re here today. “
Donald Trump’s presidential crusade served as the organizing theme for the panels that followed, and of course, the discussions focused heavily on the former president: his legal troubles and the prestige of the secret case in New York, his clients as a candidate, the pain caused during his presidency, and the pain that awaits him if he wins in November.
Daily Beast columnist Rotimi Adeoye told the story of a volunteer poll worker forced to live in her car, kicked out of her network because of the risks, after Trump’s team aired baseless allegations of voter fraud. Lizbeth Rodriguez, network engagement coordinator at the Women’s Center of Philadelphia, described a national landscape in which abortion providers were forced to act as “travel agents” for women seeking reproductive care in red states, in the wake of the Dobbs decision, made imaginable by three Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices. The presidency is still being felt, but the imminent risk of a second term is giving rise to a new risk circular.
The most sinister of these is Trump’s promise to dismantle the civil service and reconstitute it into a bureaucracy of loyalists, laid out in the 900-page Project 2025. Panelist Joe Spielberger is the policy advisor to POGO Action’s effective and accountable government team. a branch of the Project on Government Oversight, along with the American Federation of Teachers, one of the co-sponsors of the event. Spielberger explained the implications of Trump’s threat, obscurely foreshadowed by the little-known executive order, Appfinishix F, signed at the end. of Trump’s term.
“This would allow a president to purge the public service of nonpartisan experts, others who have served with integrity, and fill any and all federal enterprises with partisan supporters who would be willing to stick to any order without question, no matter how illegal. Once the task is complete, there will be “no one left who is willing to speak out and prevent a genuine authoritarian takeover of our federal government. “
What emerged from the panels was less an investigation of Trump as a sui generis figure in American politics than a kaleidoscopic depiction of the risk posed to American democracy by the movement he leads. As journalist Anne-Christine d’Adesky, who arrived late before the event, explained, said, the attack on reproductive rights and secular democracy are pieces of the Christian nationalist timeline that Trump has adhered to.
Stopping Trump, the panelists agreed, requires a broad coalition of small Democrats committed to the rule of law. Speaking to TNR’s Greg Sargent in a pre-recorded video segment, George Conway revealed that he believes former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney will most likely give an “unconditional endorsement” to President Biden at some point before the election.
However, the cracks within the anti-Trump coalition were evident. When Conway explained how Trump had “co-opted” the conservatism of the founding members of the Federalist Society, Sargent pressed him, wondering “the role of more endemic qualities in the movement that led to this moment. “Molly Jong-Fast of Vanity Fair echoed this point, saying of conservative Never Trumpers, “We all knew where this was going; It’s just that they didn’t need fascism like that. And you know, I respect them for joining us now, but there’s a peak point of guilt on the part of those guys.
The prevailing feeling that the enormity of the task at hand required a giant tent. It includes federal staff who, Spielberger explained, “play a critical role in protecting against authoritarianism,” and organizers like Kadida Kenner, one of the leading organizers of the vote in Pennsylvania, who push the importance of voter registration on an electoral basis. panel on the importance of the Keystone State in 2024.
The victory also calls for change in state legislatures, which Pennsylvania state Sen. Vincent Hughes has reiterated as the “safety net” for reproductive care and voting rights. And that requires winning voters. It is not the function of the judiciary to save Donald Trump from being president. That is our task; it’s up to the voters. And we can’t lose sight of that. There has never, ever been a silver bullet,” Conway said.
So where does Biden’s crusade lie? Jong-Fast’s prescriptions were simple: codify Roe, dedicate himself to term limits for Supreme Court justices, end gerrymandering, and reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. He was under pressure that Bernie Sanders is “still 100 percent on Biden’s train. ” And the explanation is that it passed the kind of progressive law that Americans wanted. “
Indeed, Biden’s appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and the Federal Trade Commission, as well as the Inflation Reduction Act, ushered in a new era of employee and customer power. “Nobody had any idea that the UAW would win an election in the South to organize a plant, they just did,” Democratic political strategist J. J. Hughes said in a statement. It’s “an unbelievable record,” he says. Make those choices based on who will be affected,” Abbott added. (It is said that there was no communiqué to change the administration’s policy in Gaza. )
And yet, will touting the administration’s achievements be enough to inoculate an insecure electorate that opposes Trump’s libidinal appeal? Rick Wilson, speaking in a prerecorded segment with TNR editor Walter Shapiro, wasn’t sure. “Democrats that elections are about politics, not emotions. . . It has to be more emotional, more evocative and more engaging. But sounding the alarm about a new Trump mandate is not enough “Doom and gloom is not an inspiring strategy to get other people to vote,” Abbott said.
So what to do before November? Adeoye came under pressure about the importance of defending liberal federal judges and, like Jong-Fast, advised reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act. Kenner under pressure that young voters, from whom Biden suffers, will have to get involved. Claire Finkelstein, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, made more somber recommendations. “We want to give a lot of power to the option of Trump being elected,” he said. A potential Trump victory would mean the firing of Special Representative Jack Smith, an eventuality that Finkelstein says Democrats need to prepare to revise special suggestions legislation to “give [special advocates and the Department of Justice] more independence. “
Speaking to Conway, Sargent recalled Barack Obama’s comment after the 2012 election that “the fever is passing to pass” within the Republican Party. This is not the case, and it will not be the case. A vindictive and undemocratic republican The party will not be the one to fix the situation correctly. “Do I think the rule of law is upheld?” asked Jong-Fast. “No, I don’t think so. “
Ben Metzner is an editorial intern for The New Republic. Es a critic founded in New York City.