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I spent eighteen years on Capitol Hill. I served as chief of staff to a congressman most would call a “hawk.” He took hard votes — even unpopular ones — and had strong opinions in support of America’s role in the world through diplomacy and, yes, through the use of force. I say that because what happened last Friday should alarm every American who believes in constitutional government, regardless of where they fall on the question of Iran.

One thing I can count on from Bright America readers, the next paragraph won’t come as a shock: On February 28, the United States and Israel launched a joint military campaign against Iran. The operation killed Supreme Leader Khamenei, struck military and nuclear infrastructure across the country, and triggered retaliatory attacks on American bases throughout the Persian Gulf. As of this writing, Iranian missiles and drones have hit targets in Iraq, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. The President has said this campaign could last four to five weeks. He has signaled it could go longer.

Congress did not authorize any of it.

The Gang of Eight received a phone call from Secretary Rubio shortly before the bombs fell. Rank-and-file members of both parties have said publicly that they were given little information about the operation’s objectives, legal rationale, or endgame. This is not a partisan complaint. Republican Lisa Murkowski has questioned whether last summer’s nuclear strikes even accomplished their stated goals. Members of the President’s own party are raising constitutional objections.

These are not fringe voices.

Allow me be direct about something. I believe the President must have the authority to defend the homeland. When American lives face an imminent threat, a commander-in-chief cannot convene a committee. The Founders understood this. The executive power to repel sudden attacks exists for a reason, and I will always defend it.

But that is not what happened here. This was not a defensive strike against an imminent attack. This was a planned, weeks-long military campaign, coordinated with a foreign partner, targeting a sovereign nation’s leadership and infrastructure. That is the definition of war.

And the Constitution is unambiguous about who authorizes war. Article I, Section 8 assigns that power to Congress. Not as a suggestion. Not as a courtesy. As a structural requirement of self-government.

The question is: Why has Congress been unable or unwilling to assert that authority? The honest answer is that this did not start last Friday. Congress has been ceding war powers to the executive branch for decades, across administrations of both parties. The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed three days after September 11, has been stretched to justify operations in countries and against adversaries that did not exist when it was written.

Presidents of both parties have exploited that ambiguity. And Congress has let them.

This administration has now launched three major unauthorized military operations: the capture of Venezuela’s president, strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last summer, and the current campaign. Each time, lawmakers complained. Each time, they failed to act. The War Powers Act provides a mechanism to force votes on unauthorized hostilities.

It has been invoked repeatedly, yet has not once succeeded in stopping this administration from doing what it intended to do. That pattern should concern every voter in this country, and not only because of Iran.

When Congress stops functioning as a co-equal branch of government, the people it represents lose their voice in the most consequential decisions a nation can make.

Sending Americans into combat is the gravest action a government can take. The Founders required congressional authorization precisely because they believed that decision should reflect the will of the people, expressed through their elected representatives. When that process breaks down, when a president can wage war without a vote, the connection between citizens and their government frays at its most critical point.

This is not abstract. If you are a parent with a child in the military, your representative in Congress should have a say in whether that child goes to war. If you are a taxpayer, you are funding operations that no one you elected has voted to approve. If you are a veteran, you served under an oath to the Constitution that includes Article I. Every one of those people deserves a Congress that takes its responsibilities as seriously as they take theirs.

Beyond the question of how our long-term security fundamentally changes after this attack, the clear and present danger is the fate of a country whose citizens have lost all faith that their representatives possess any real power. A weak Congress does not just fail to check the executive. It hollows out the public’s faith in self-government itself. People stop calling their representatives because they believe it will not matter. They stop voting because the big decisions happen without their input. That erosion of civic trust is more corrosive to national strength than any foreign adversary. We cannot win a war by committee. No serious person argues otherwise.

But a democracy that wages war without the consent of its people is weaker for it, not stronger. Congressional authorization is the mechanism through which the public signals that it stands behind the sacrifices being asked of its soldiers, its treasury, and its standing in the world. Without that signal, military action rests on the authority of one person. History offers no shortage of examples for how that ends.

The votes next week will matter. Not because they will likely succeed in halting operations, but because they will force every member of Congress to answer a straightforward question: Do you believe the Constitution means what it says?

That question belongs to all of us. Call your representative. Ask them where they stand. Their answer will tell you whether you still have one.

Find candidates at every level who understand that holding office means asserting the authority the Constitution grants, not surrendering it. The strongest check on executive overreach is not a law or a procedural vote. It is an engaged citizenry that refuses to accept representatives who will not represent them.

Kyrsten Sinema, the former U.S. Senator for Arizona, left the Senate in January 2025 with $4.2 million in her campaign account. Donors gave that money to support her candidacy, and federal law lays out a few options for how she can spend leftover funds (besides return it to donors): 1) wind down the campaign office, 2) donate to other candidates, or 3) give it to charity. Sounds fair, enough, right? After all, the funds contributed to politicians is not THEIR money.

Who would think they could bankroll their post-political life with campaign cash? Oh wait.

That’s exactly what appears to have happened with Sinema — though she certainly wouldn’t be the first or only one to abuse the system. This week, our strategic litigation partner Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed an FEC complaint alleging Sinema converted more than $700,000 in campaign funds to personal expenses in the twelve months after she left office. Beyond spending lavishly on airfare, car services, luxury international resorts, music festivals, and Michelin-starred restaurants, her campaign [without a campaign] committee also paid six former staffers a combined $379,398 — some of whom had already taken private sector jobs. All while Sinema was working at a lobbying firm.

Help Us Hold the Powerful Accountable

All told, $3 million of her remaining funds went to create the Spark Center for Innovation Learning at Arizona State. Which is fine. The rest? Not fine.

CLC has been tracking campaign fund abuse since 2018. The pattern isn’t unique to one party. Republican and Democratic former officeholders have both treated leftover campaign accounts like personal slush funds — cell phone bills, family salaries, computers, travel, years after leaving office. A Tampa Bay Times investigation found hundreds of thousands in dubious spending across 102 former campaign committees (and there are many thousands of such committees).

Congress saw this coming. In 1989, lawmakers repealed a grandfather clause that let sitting members pocket leftover cash. The FEC followed with regulations in 1995 covering any present or former candidate. The law exists. Enforcement is another story.

CLC picks its targets based on evidence, not party. In this case, Sinema is a former Democrat turned Independent, but CLC calls out Republicans and Democrats doing the same thing. And while some may think such work seems small given the unprecedented corruption swirling through the Executive Branch (which this movement is helping to illuminate and tackle, too), we MUST hold to account anyone abusing the power and privilege entrusted to them. Because all too often, corruption starts small before it snowballs.

Campaign donations belong to the democratic process. Not to the person whose name was on the yard sign. When a former senator is spending donor money at Michelin-starred restaurants after leaving office, something is broken.

The FEC has the complaint now, and key vacancies are being filled that will give the commission the quorum necessary to take up the matter. There will be two Democratic and two Republican commissioners, which often leads to deadlock and nothing getting done (regardless of which party controls the Administration). What’s unique here is Sinema is an Independent, and without partisan protection, perhaps we’ll finally get a precedent that scares more politicians into compliance.

Regardless, the filing creates a public record, puts future officeholders on notice, and reinforces a standard that shouldn’t need reinforcing: The money isn’t theirs; they aren’t entitled to live the high life off it.

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In 2018, Utah voters made a clear demand — they passed Proposition 4, a statewide ballot initiative that banned partisan gerrymandering and created an independent redistricting commission. The goal was simple: Voters wanted fair, simple maps.

But the Utah Legislature decided the voters were wrong.

In a bold twist, lawmakers repealed the citizen initiative, threw out the nonpartisan maps, and then drew their own lines to crack open Salt Lake County and dilute minority viewpoints. These legislators locked in safe districts for themselves for the next decade — but to do so, they had to erase the rules the voters of Utah had legally enacted.

You can imagine this didn’t sit well with our movement.

Once elections are over, a lot of politicians expect most citizens to tune out, and the rest to simply accept defeat. But they underestimated the movement holding them accountable. Campaign Legal Center (CLC), our strategic litigation partner, stepped in. CLC filed a landmark lawsuit on behalf of its clients — League of Women Voters of Utah v. Utah State Legislature — who represent Utah voters fighting to reclaim their constitutional right to reform their government.

What followed was a masterclass in legislative arrogance.

Last August, a state court ruled that the legislature’s repeal was unconstitutional (Victory #1!) and reinstated the anti-gerrymandering law passed by citizens. The legislature refused to concede. Lawmakers immediately passed a new gerrymandered map and a companion bill designed to bypass the court ruling.

The court blocked that attempt too, thanks to brilliant legal work by CLC. The judge tossed the rigged map and implemented a fair alternative drawn entirely without partisan data. (Victory #2!)

Desperate to keep their safe districts, lawmakers appealed to the Utah Supreme Court, where CLC again vigorously fought for voters. And last week, the Supreme Court dismissed the lawmakers’ appeal. (Victory #3!)

Allies of the legislature even tried a backdoor play in federal court. They relied on the extreme “independent state legislature” theory, which the U.S. Supreme Court resoundingly rejected years ago. On Monday, a federal court shut down this final desperate attempt, and the clock ran out for the 2026 election. (Victory #4!)

For the first time in decades, Utah will hold a congressional election under a fair map — but not without a Herculean effort by CLC, which Bright America helped fuel through the collective financial and moral support of our members and readers.

Help Fuel High-Stakes Litigation

This victory defends the core premise of a republic: Voters choose their politicians; politicians do not choose their voters. This case helps build legal precedent and puts other state legislatures on notice that they can’t ignore laws just because it was the citizens that made them.

Complex, multi-year litigation requires serious funding. State legislatures use endless taxpayer money to defend rigged systems, while everyday citizens lack the resources to fight back alone. Such injustice can feel insurmountable, but our movement is lucky to have its own superheroes — they just so happen be exceptionally talented lawyers.

And that’s exactly what we need when politicians anywhere try to crush the public: someone to stop them.

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The American constitutional order rests on a premise so foundational it rarely gets articulated: Citizens must be capable of making informed decisions (or at least, enough of us must be). While it wouldn’t be realistic to expect any of us to be perfectly informed or all-knowing, we have — until now — been operating in a public square where debate, however contentious, is conducted between real people with real convictions.

That premise is breaking.

Researchers at Indiana University, NYU, and Norway’s BI Business School have documented what many suspected but few could prove: coordinated swarms of AI-generated accounts, posing as ordinary Americans, can measurably shift the political beliefs of real people on social media. I wish I could tell you this was just happening at the margins, in edge cases. However, what was revealed in controlled experiments is that these artificial agents — thousands of them — held coherent conversations, adapted their arguments, targeted persuadable users, and moved opinion in statistically significant ways.

This is not a partisan issue. Treating it as one is a failure of seriousness.

Foreign adversaries — Russia, China, and Iran to name a few — have deployed bot networks against American political discourse for over a decade. What has changed is the technology. The bots of 2016 were typically crude, repetitive, and detectable. The agents being built now carry on extended conversations without breaking character. They learn, pivot, and are — to a degree that should alarm anyone who cares about national sovereignty — indistinguishable from your neighbor.

Informed Consent Is the Whole Game

Strip away the partisan noise and the constitutional logic is simple. Democratic self-governance requires — at its best — that citizens form genuine preferences, debate them honestly, and express them through free and fair elections. Manufactured consensus is the negation of that entire enterprise. When you cannot distinguish authentic public sentiment from a coordinated artificial campaign, accountability collapses. The signal drowns in noise.

This is not a “tech problem.” It is a sovereignty problem, with a constitutional dimension that progressives, moderates, and conservatives alike ought to recognize without much prompting.

The founders understood that a republic’s greatest vulnerability was not a foreign army — it was the corruption of civic deliberation from within. They built institutions, a free press, separation of powers, and independent courts — among other things — to prevent any single actor from seizing control of the information environment. AI bot swarms represent a new mechanism for precisely that kind of seizure, now available not just to governments but to any well-funded political operation.

What the Research Shows

The group sounding the loudest alarm is the furthest things from a collection of partisan activists: It is an interdisciplinary team of computer scientists, AI researchers, cybersecurity experts, psychologists, and journalists. Their conclusion: We are moving from an era of individual bad actors posting disinformation to an era of coordinated artificial swarms reshaping public opinion at industrial scale.

Wired reports that, by expert consensus, these systems are likely to become a decisive factor in the 2028 presidential race. The timeline is shorter than it sounds.

Add to that the problem is compounding: The researchers tracking this threat have lost access to the data they need. X, formerly Twitter, shut down the platform API that allowed independent researchers to monitor bot activity. Meta restricts similar access. We are fighting an adversary whose movements we can no longer track, at the precise moment the threat is accelerating. The platforms hosting this manipulation have made themselves opaque to oversight.

Action Is Happening — Just Not Enough of It

Some states are responding. Massachusetts passed two bills this month to regulate AI use in elections. Vermont now requires disclosure labels on AI-manipulated political content in campaigns, though research suggests that labels alone do little if voters cannot distinguish authentic from artificial in the first place.

But the federal response has been close to nonexistent.

This is the gap that deserves attention. Disclosure requirements are a start and restoring independent researcher access to platform data is not a radical demand, which really is the minimum condition for understanding a threat that is, by expert consensus, growing faster than any existing countermeasure.

What Voters Should Demand

If you believe in national security, foreign manipulation of American political opinion is an attack. If you believe in free markets, manufactured consensus distorts consumer and civic behavior alike, corrupting the information that markets and democracies both require to function. If you believe in the Constitution, you believe in a real public square — not a simulated one.

Supporting transparency requirements for AI-generated political content is not censorship. Demanding that platforms restore independent research access is not government overreach. These are the baseline conditions for a legitimate information environment, the kind the founders assumed would exist and built an entire system of government around.

Our strategic litigation partner Campaign Legal Center has been fighting for exactly this kind of disclosure requirement — demanding that AI-generated political content be labeled before it reaches voters. The question is whether the political will exists to follow the evidence and address the threat.

What the Founders Actually Feared

John Adams wrote that the Constitution was designed “only for a moral and religious people.” The broader point was that republican government requires citizens capable of self-governance, citizens who can reason, debate, and form honest judgments. The institutions were built for humans.

AI bot swarms are not a metaphor. They are literal armies of artificial agents designed to impersonate human deliberation and subvert it from the inside. The founders clashed with each other, in letters and pamphlets and convention halls, with a combativeness that modern politics has rarely matched. What they never contemplated was that one side of any debate could be manufactured wholesale, by a server farm, at a cost that keeps dropping.

We should fight to keep the public square real. Not for political convenience, and not for partisan advantage, but for the sake of a republic that functions as something more than a stage set.

The machinery is real. The stakes are real. The only thing we cannot afford is to pretend otherwise.

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For too long, the presidential pardon power has drifted from its constitutional purpose as an instrument of mercy to a tool of political convenience and personal protection. It is a flaw in our system that has allowed presidents of both parties to place their associates, family members, and political allies above the law.

But there is a bright spot on the horizon. In a rare and welcome display of bipartisan leadership, Republican Rep. Don Bacon has joined with Democratic Rep. Johnny Olszewski to introduce H.J. Res. 135, a constitutional amendment designed to restore checks and balances to this abused authority.

This isn’t about one president or one party. It is about fixing a systemic vulnerability that has eroded public trust in our justice system.

An Equal Opportunity Abuse of Power

To understand why the Pardon Integrity Act is necessary, we must acknowledge that the abuse of the pardon power is a bipartisan failure.

• The Trump Era: We have seen the power used to shield political allies and associates, with controversial clemency granted to figures like Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, raising serious questions about the use of public office for personal political gain.

• The Biden Era: Trust was similarly damaged when President Biden issued a pardon for his son, Hunter Biden, in 2024 (followed by pardons for the president’s siblings). These actions, protecting family members from federal felony charges, struck many as deeply personal and inappropriate, reinforcing the cynical view that there is a different set of rules for the powerful.

• Historical Context: The pattern extends back decades, including Bill Clinton’s last-minute pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, whose ex-wife was a major donor.

When presidents use this power to benefit themselves, their families, or their co-conspirators, they are not dispensing justice; they are obstructing it.

The Solution: Congressional Review

The proposed amendment introduced by Reps. Olszewski and Bacon offers a sensible, structural fix. It does not strip the President of the power to pardon, but it subjects that power to transparency and congressional oversight.

Here is how it works, according to the text of the resolution:

1. Immediate Transparency: The President must notify the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate within 3 days of granting a reprieve or pardon. If they fail to do so, the pardon has “no force or effect”.

2. The Waiting Period: A pardon does not become effective immediately. It only takes effect 90 days after Congress is notified. This prevents “midnight pardons” issued as a president is leaving office to avoid scrutiny.

3. Congressional Check: During that window, Congress can introduce a bill to nullify the pardon. If 20 Representatives or 5 Senators sign such a bill, it must be voted on.

4. The Veto: To actually overturn a pardon, Congress must pass the nullification bill by a two-thirds vote of both Houses.

This high threshold — two-thirds of both chambers — ensures that Congress cannot use this power for petty partisan squabbles. It would require a broad, bipartisan consensus that a specific pardon is an egregious abuse of power.

Why This Restores Trust

The bipartisan support for this measure highlights a critical principle: Accountability is conservative, liberal, and essential. Bacon has previously voiced concerns when crimes or pardons lack transparency, noting that when the system cannot identify or check specific crimes, “that is a problem”.

This amendment restores the pardon to its original intent: a safety valve for justice, not a loophole for corruption. If a pardon is truly just — if it is correcting a wrongful conviction or showing mercy to a repentant citizen — it will easily survive a 90-day delay and congressional review. It is only the corrupt, the personal, and the indefensible pardons that have anything to fear from this process.

By supporting the Pardon Integrity Act, we can ensure that the final word on justice belongs to the people and the Constitution, not the personal whims of any single leader.

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There is a dangerous cynicism settling deeper and deeper into the American electorate. It is the belief that corruption isn’t an aberration, but a baseline — a feature, not a bug. And when voters believe that everyone is on the take, they stop demanding better. They lower their standards. They shrug.

This exhaustion is the precise environment in which corruption thrives. And right now, the Department of Justice is providing a masterclass in how to dismantle public trust from the inside out.

The Crypto Conflict (to name just one)

The story begins with money, as it so often does. Recent investigations by our strategic litigation partner Campaign Legal Center (CLC) has illuminated a brazen conflict of interest at the highest levels of our justice system. Todd Blanche, the current Deputy Attorney General and President Trump’s former personal defense attorney, appears to have been at the center of dismantling financial regulations that directly benefited his own portfolio.

While holding between $159,000 and $485,000 in cryptocurrency assets, Blanche oversaw a dramatic shift in DOJ policy regarding digital currency. Under his watch, the DOJ disbanded the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) — an elite task force specifically designed to root out money laundering and fraud in the crypto markets.

The timing was impeccable. While Blanche held these investments, the administration began dropping enforcement cases and/or investigations against major crypto players who had donated millions to the President’s inauguration and reelection efforts, including Coinbase, Gemini, and Robinhood.

This goes well beyond a “technical” ethics violation. It is the government picking winners and losers based on who pays the piper, while the referee (Blanche) holds a betting slip on the game. As CLC has pointed out in their formal complaint to the DOJ Inspector General, Blanche certified he was complying with ethics rules while actively participating in decisions that could boost the value of his own holdings.

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From Financial Greed to Moral Blindness

If this were only about Bitcoin, it would be bad enough. But corruption is a rot that spreads. When officials practice “willful blindness” to financial crimes because it suits their interests, they lose the moral authority — and perhaps even the inclination — to investigate darker crimes.

This is where the story takes a disturbing turn toward the Epstein files.

The same Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, has a direct intersection with the Jeffrey Epstein saga. He personally interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime confidante, who is currently serving 20 years for sex trafficking.

We must ask a difficult question: If the leadership of the DOJ is willing to turn a blind eye to financial malfeasance because of personal or political conflict, why should we trust them to pursue the powerful names hidden within the Epstein files?

The connection here is not conspiracy — it is culture. A culture of impunity does not distinguish between crimes. It protects the powerful, whether they are laundering money or exploiting the vulnerable. When we allow our justice system to become a concierge service for donors and friends, we dismantle the very mechanism designed to hold predators accountable. The failure to prosecute financial crimes facilitates the failure to prosecute much worse. They are two sides of the same corrupt coin.

The Cynicism Trap — and the Antidote

The tragic result of this behavior is that the American public is checking out. Recent polling data from the Searchlight Institute reveals a startling statistic: 71% of voters believe the “typical politician” is corrupt. When the public assumes corruption is inevitable, they stop punishing it at the ballot box.

But there is a silver lining — a path forward that is as popular as it is necessary.

Contrary to the narrative that Americans are hopelessly divided, there is massive, bipartisan consensus on fixing this rot. The same polling shows that “trust-boosting” reforms are wildly popular across the ideological spectrum, such as:

• 85% of voters support term limits for politicians.

• 69% support a total ban on stock trading by government officials.

The data show an anti-corruption platform is not just “good governance” — it is a political juggernaut waiting to be unleashed. Americans are starving for leaders who will treat the disease, not exploit it, and who offer solutions that aren’t only aimed at helping one side win.

A Call for Brightness

At Bright America, alongside our partners at the Campaign Legal Center, we are shining a light on these conflicts of interest and corruption not to depress you, but to arm you with information and inspiration. The normalization of corruption is a choice. We do not have to accept a Justice Department that serves the crypto lobby while ignoring the victims of predatory crimes.

The leaders who will guide us out of this dark time will be those who embrace a radical (by comparison, but not in reality), “pro-trust” agenda. They will be the ones who understand that the only way to heal a fractured nation is to prove, through action and accountability, that the law applies equally to the billionaire, the crypto-bro, and the predator alike.

The antidote to corruption isn’t cynicism. It’s sunlight. And we intend to keep the lights on.

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In Washington, the most dangerous bills often wear the most patriotic names.

Case in point: the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility” Act — or the SAVE Act. On its face, the title sounds like a common-sense housekeeping measure, a simple lock on the front door of our democracy. But if you peel back the legislative label, you won’t find a shield protecting our elections. You will find a bureaucratic weapon designed to silence millions of legitimate American voters.

The premise of the bill is that we need extreme new “documentary proof of citizenship” to register to vote. But make no mistake: this is a solution in search of a problem that doesn’t exist, creating a crisis that definitely will.

Sounding the alarm is the urgent work of Bright America, and our strategic litigation partner Campaign Legal Center (CLC).

The 21 Million Missing Voices

The SAVE Act would require every American to provide specific proof of citizenship — such as a passport or a birth certificate — to register to vote. A driver’s license, the gold standard of identification for decades, would no longer be enough.

Proponents will ask, “Who doesn’t have a birth certificate handy?” The answer is: 21.3 million Americans.

According to recent data, 9% of voting-age citizens do not have easy access to these specific documents. While a passport is the easiest way to prove citizenship, only about 51% of Americans actually have one. By mandating documents that half the country doesn’t carry, this bill effectively places a “passport tax” on the ballot box, converting a constitutional right into a luxury for those who can afford international travel.

The burden doesn’t fall equally. It targets young voters, the elderly, and specifically married women who have changed their names. Under this act, if your driver’s license name doesn’t match your birth certificate because you got married, you could face a bureaucratic nightmare just to prove you are who you say you are.

The Administration has already tried to do all this by executive fiat — but thanks to CLC’s lawsuit to block the President’s unconstitutional executive order (which Bright America members are proud to have fueled!), they now must try to force this through Congress.

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The “Smoking Gun” in the Database

Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the SAVE Act is its reliance on federal databases to “purge” voter rolls. The bill would force states to run their voter lists against the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE database and Social Security Administration (SSA) records.

There is a fatal technical flaw here: these databases were never designed to be a master list of voters. In fact, the SSA did not consistently collect citizenship data for anyone born before 1981. That means millions of American citizens over the age of 45 could be flagged as “non-citizens” simply because their records pre-date modern data entry.

We don’t have to guess what happens when we rely on this kind of faulty data matching. We have proof. In a recent purge in Alabama that used similar data matching techniques, 93.8% of the voters removed were actually eligible U.S. citizens.

This isn’t a safety measure; it is a dragnet that catches legitimate voters 15 times more often than it catches anyone else.

Five Years in Prison for Your Neighbor

If the bureaucratic hurdles aren’t enough to scare you, the criminal penalties should.

Our elections are run by our friends and neighbors — people who put in long hours for little pay to make democracy work. The SAVE Act treats these civic heroes like felons.

Under this bill, an election worker who registers a voter without the specific, new “correct” documentation could face five years in prison.

Read that again. An election official could go to jail for half a decade not for letting a non-citizen vote, but for helping an American citizen register without the new, expensive paperwork. This provision seems designed to do one thing: terrorize everyday Americans out of volunteering, leaving our polling places understaffed and our democracy vulnerable.

We Already Have the Laws We Need

One tragedy of the SAVE Act is its redundancy. We already have strict laws ensuring only citizens vote. It is already a felony for a non-citizen to vote in a federal election, punishable by prison and deportation. These laws work. Non-citizen voting is vanishingly rare because the penalties are severe and the risks are high.

The SAVE Act isn’t about stopping a crime that rarely happens. It is about creating a new crime: the “crime” of being an eligible voter who doesn’t have a passport, or a poll worker who just wants to help their neighbor.

In a “Bright America,” we should be making it easier for every eligible citizen to have their say, not building walls of red tape around the ballot box. We must reject the SAVE Act and the wolf hiding beneath its patriotic wool.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that so many of our fellow Americans have been conned into believing this law is a shield, when it is actually a shackle. They have been sold a solution to a phantom problem, unaware that the 'protection' they are cheering for is designed to silence their own neighbors — and perhaps even themselves.

Tell Your Legislators to REJECT the SAVE Act

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The coup this time isn’t loud.

It isn’t starting with shattered glass or a mob on the Capitol steps. It is quieter, colder, and far more dangerous. It is arriving in the form of a subpoena, a database query, and a federal agent standing in the back of a county election office.

We are witnessing a Bureaucratic Siege of the 2026 midterm elections. The administration is no longer just talking about “rigged” systems; they are actively using the machinery of the state to dismantle the safeguards of American democracy.

The danger is very serious. But the hope is serious, too: The siege only works if we remain passive. We have the law, we have the numbers, and — crucially — we have the economic power to stop them together.

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Two-Front Assault

The strategy for 2026 is a coordinated assault designed to squeeze the life out of independent state elections.

On one side, we have the weaponization of intelligence. It is chilling to read that the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard — an official whose sole job should be focusing on foreign threats — recently accompanied FBI agents on a raid of an election center in Fulton County, Georgia. This raid, ostensibly about the settled 2020 election, sends a clear message to every election worker in the country: Count the votes the “wrong” way, and the federal government will come for you.

On the other side, we have the weaponization of data. The Justice Department is currently building an unprecedented national database, demanding that states hand over sensitive voter information, including Social Security numbers. The goal is not transparency; it is a pretext for a massive, federally orchestrated purge of eligible voters under the guise of removing non-citizens.

The President himself has made the endgame clear. In a recent interview, he explicitly suggested that “Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” claiming without evidence that states like Minnesota are “rigged”. This is an attempt to bypass the Constitution’s guarantee that states run elections, replacing local control with federal fiat.

The Shield: The Legal Firewall

The administration is banking on intimidation. They are betting that local officials will fold under the pressure of federal lawsuits and raids. But we can stiffen their spines by funding their defense.

There are nonpartisan legal armies fighting these battles right now, and they need our support. Here are the three organizations the New York Times recommends:

• Campaign Legal Center: Founded by a Republican, this group is currently fighting the administration’s demands for voter data in court and challenging executive orders that would force states to reject valid mail-in ballots. They’re also Bright America’s strategic litigation partner, and we’re proud to have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund its lawsuits.

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• The Election Official Legal Defense Network: This group pairs terrified election officials with pro bono attorneys who can advise them on how to respond to threats and lawsuits. They are the first line of defense for the people actually counting the votes.

• The Carter Center: For the first time, this legendary organization is turning its eyes inward, deploying nonpartisan observers to swing states like Georgia and Michigan to ensure transparency.

Donating to these groups is not charity; it’s investing in a future in which our republic survives.

The Sword: The “Resist and Unsubscribe” Campaign

Litigation takes time, but money talks instantly. This administration is empowered by corporate enablers — tech platforms that amplify disinformation and companies that remain silent while the rule of law is eroded.

It is time to deploy Scott Galloway’s “Resist and Unsubscribe” campaign.

The concept is simple: The President seems moved by the markets above all else. If we can impact the stock prices of the companies that enable this behavior, we can help force a change. We need to turn our economic power into political resistance.

1. Audit Your Expenses: Look at every recurring subscription you have, and see if the company is on Scott’s list.

2. Unsubscribe: If you are paying a company that actively enables the surveillance state or amplifies the administration’s “Big Lie,” cancel the service. Move your business to competitors who aren’t complicit.

3. Make Noise: Don’t just leave quietly. Post your cancellation. Make the silence of your wallet deafening. A one-day boycott is annoying; a quarterly earnings miss is terrifying.

The Ground Game: Flood the Zone

Finally, we must deny them the excuse to intervene. The administration’s narrative relies on chaos — long lines and “shortages” of workers that justify sending in federal agents or the National Guard to “secure” the polls.

We can stop this by flooding the zone. In 2024, nearly half of the country’s precincts struggled to recruit poll workers. We need a massive surge of citizens — especially young people — to sign up, get trained, and show up. If the polls are fully staffed by principled neighbors, the pretext for federal takeover evaporates.

The Verdict

In 1981, Ronald Reagan called the orderly transfer of power “nothing less than a miracle”. That miracle is not a guarantee; it is a tradition we have to actively guard.

The administration wants us to feel overwhelmed so that we unsubscribe from democracy. Instead, let’s unsubscribe from them — and double down on our country.

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BY TREVOR POTTER

This year, America will mark the 250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The question we should ask: What are we commemorating beyond the decision by a group of delegates to a Continental Congress to declare a formal separation from the British Empire?

I suggest that we are honoring our nation’s grand experiment in self-government, where a system giving “we the people” the authority to select our own government has been maintained for 250 years.

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This aspirational system has persisted despite initial and continuing flaws and evolved into a more modern democracy, thanks to the tireless efforts of generations of Americans who have fought injustice and strived to make a more perfect union where government is truly inclusive and representative.

The fact of the matter is we have reached the American Semiquincentennial at a time when our system of representative self-government faces a dire threat. At this moment, there are possibly no more obvious examples of this danger than a president who is threatening to “nationalize” our elections, seizing ballots in Georgia to perpetuate the lie that the 2020 election result was fraudulent, and brutally cracking down on protesters exercising their First Amendment rights to speech and assembly in Minnesota and elsewhere around the country.

We must recognize that dissatisfaction with our government over a period of decades has played a significant role in bringing us to this moment of crisis. The election of a would-be dictator did not happen in a vacuum. It’s an electoral result driven, at least in part, by the people’s lack of faith in governmental institutions.

Campaign Legal Center has mounted a vigorous response to the Trump administration’s lawless actions in the effort to fight the descent into something the Founders of our nation would have seen as more akin to an absolute monarchy — better known today as authoritarianism. Today’s struggle to preserve our self-governing democracy centers around constitutional rights, the rule of law and the ability of voters to be the ultimate arbiters of how our nation is governed.

On that last point, I am extremely gratified to have Campaign Legal Center’s efforts to safeguard the midterm elections recognized in a recent New York Times editorial titled, “Trump Could Interfere With the Midterm Elections. You Can Help Defend Them.”

We face weighty and significant battles, but when we ask ourselves how American democracy can last for another 250 years (or even another 13 until the 250th anniversary of the Constitution) the answers necessarily revolve around lofty, yet self-evident (to borrow a phrase), ideas that must serve as beacons for progress, even at a time of great peril. Below are four pillars I believe are crucial to that effort:

1) Reining in a Broken Campaign Finance System

To start, our political system must not be dominated by an elite class of billionaire and corporate special interests who can, by virtue of immense wealth, purchase the obedience of elected officials and drown out the voices of everyday voters. This distortion inevitably produces a government that is less responsive to the will and wishes of the majority. Correcting this imbalance will be extremely difficult, but the solutions are clear.

First, we need structural changes to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) — the very agency I once led — that will allow it to engage in meaningful campaign finance law enforcement. Congress must contribute to this effort by advancing impactful legislation to address dark money and coordination. Voters are entitled to know who is spending huge sums to influence our elections, and the need for a true firewall between candidates and outside spenders has never been more obvious.

States have an important role to play as well. They have the power to mandate election spending transparency, reduce the influence of super PACs and implement public financing programs that make candidates less reliant on special interests.

On a broader level, we must move toward a system that largely rejects the concept of money as speech which cannot be limited, to prevent even the appearance of corruption and ensure all voices can be heard. U.S. Supreme Court rulings, including the now 50-year-old decision in Buckley v. Valeo and 2010’s Citizens United, laid the groundwork for turning our campaign finance system into a hunting ground for influence through unregulated political spending.

It is worth remembering that during the most recent election, multibillionaire Elon Musk put the weaknesses of our system on display, in part by directly paying Americans to support then-candidate Donald Trump — and by seemingly buying his way into a political appointment. Breaking this cycle of spending likely will require a Supreme Court majority that is open to a big change in direction — or a constitutional amendment that grants an affirmative right to regulate money in politics.

2) Reckoning with the Reality of Racial Discrimination

The electoral process must be completely fair and unbiased. This means every voter must have the same opportunity to meaningfully make their voice heard.

Discriminatory voter suppression is sadly alive and well in our nation, more than 60 years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), a law designed to ban racially discriminatory voting practices. This is largely due to Supreme Court rulings that have severely undermined the critical protections of the VRA, and many fear the high court may be preparing to do further damage with its forthcoming ruling in Louisiana v. Callais.

Regardless of how the justices rule, Congress must reassert its constitutional powers and re-address the persistence of racial discrimination in systems that govern how Americans vote and how they are sorted into districts. The answer to this problem is to revive the bipartisan consensus that once viewed such discrimination as a blight on our democracy. This means pursuing legislation that honors the vision of the 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantee all citizens an equal right to vote, access to the polls and political representation.

On this issue, states can play a positive role by enacting State Voting Rights Acts, laws that take steps to shore up voting protections in the face of a federal government no longer making such protections a priority. Responding to Supreme Court actions that have undermined protections for voters, eight states have enacted their own VRA’s, in some cases going further than the national Voting Rights Act. Campaign Legal Center has played a leadership role in crafting model voting rights legislation that we believe every state should adopt.

3) Redistricting That Puts People First in the Voting Map-Drawing Process

To ensure equal representation, reduce political polarization and encourage the election of representatives who can meet the needs of their constituents, partisan politics must not be allowed to dominate the map-drawing process for congressional districts and state legislative districts.

Congress possesses the legislative power to end partisan gerrymandering nationwide for federal elections once and for all, and it should pursue such legislation on a bipartisan basis. The need for a national solution has been shown in stark relief during the current redistricting arms race. Unless partisan gerrymandering is outlawed nationwide — subject to remedial federal court review — we can expect this race to the bottom to continue, to the detriment of our democracy.

In states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Utah, Campaign Legal Center, in partnership with voter-driven organizations, has won significant victories in the effort to end partisan gerrymandering.

4) Reducing the Public Trust Deficit Through True Accountability

A fourth pillar of necessary reforms concerns greater accountability across government through strong, enforceable ethics standards. Currently, only the U.S. House of Representatives is subject to independent ethics oversight, thanks to the work of the Office of Congressional Conduct (OCC). The OCC is empowered to receive complaints of misconduct, pursue them through investigations, publish its findings and refer matters to the House Ethics Committee.

This level of transparency and accountability must also be applied to the executive branch, the U.S. Senate and the Supreme Court. When senior government officials, lawmakers and justices in our nation’s highest court are permitted to engage in questionable or outright suspicious activity without any meaningful investigation or sanction, it undermines public trust, which, by extension, weakens our democracy. This is more important than ever with an administration flagrantly violating ethics norms and rules — and with corruption trickling down to other parts of the government at a rate never seen before.

The Unique Nature of American Democracy

During the years that followed the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the 13 original colonies engaged in a vigorous process of debate that eventually produced the U.S. Constitution, which remains the oldest written national constitution still in force today.

That framework has been amended and improved over time, in the face of setbacks and retrenchments. This is a process that must continue if we want American democracy to persist and thrive for another 250 years. When this administration has ended, we must take stock of lessons learned, consider what amendments are necessary to prevent the authoritarian actions we have seen, and reform our system of government.

The good news is that strong majorities of Americans support the solutions I’ve outlined — and Campaign Legal Center is actively fighting to make them a reality. What is needed today is the political will to honor the wishes of all Americans who see the steps needed to achieve the promise of a more perfect union.

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Looking for more in-depth insights on issues critical to our democracy? Consider subscribing to the “From the Desk of Trevor Potter” newsletter, written by Campaign Legal Center’s founder and president, Trevor Potter. Get expert analysis and learn more about Campaign Legal Center’s efforts to protect and strengthen democracy for all Americans by subscribing via email or on LinkedIn.

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It’s easy to feel like the demolition of our democratic norms is inevitable — that the administration will simply create an illegal or unconstitutional (or both!) executive order and “rewrite” the laws of our republic.

But today, I have good news: Our movement won a victory that says they can’t!

In a massive victory for the rule of law, a federal court has issued a permanent injunction blocking the administration’s attempt to rewrite federal election rules by executive fiat. The court’s ruling in LULAC, et al. v. Executive Office of the President was crystal clear: the President does not have the constitutional authority to dictate the contents of federal voter registration forms. That power belongs to Congress and the states, not the White House.

This is a procedural brick wall for the administration — and it was built with the help of the people reading this column.

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The Anatomy of a Win

To refresh your memory, the administration issued an Executive Order trying to force the independent Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to impose new, restrictive “citizenship check” requirements — a move designed to purge eligible voters and sow chaos in our elections.

It was a blatant overreach. It was illegal. And because of the work we fuel, it didn’t stand.

The Campaign Legal Center (CLC) — our strategic litigation partner — went to court and argued a simple truth: The President is not a King. He cannot unilaterally change the rules of the game to suit his outcome. The court agreed, striking down the unlawful command permanently.

This Is What Bright America Does

This victory didn’t happen by accident. It didn’t happen because the system “magically” corrected itself. It happened because skilled lawyers were ready, resources were in place, and a legal strategy was executed with precision.

That is the power of Bright America.

Every time you contribute, you are funding the “seal team” of democracy — the experts who know exactly how to leverage the Constitution to stop authoritarian overreach in its tracks. You are funding the work that preserves the foundation of this country.

We talk a lot about the need to eventually renovate and rebuild our democracy following this destructive period. But you cannot renovate a house if the foundation has been jackhammered into dust. Our job right now is to protect that foundation. To hold the line.

Optimism is a Strategy

Today proves that the rule of law is still alive, provided we are willing to fight for it. The administration’s strategy relies on us feeling helpless. They want us to believe that their power is absolute.

This court ruling is a reminder that we have power too.

So, take a victory lap today. Tell your friends. This is proof that when everyday Americans come together to fund the defense of our freedoms, we don’t just make noise — we make history.

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PS: Spread the Word: Know someone who needs a dose of optimism? Forward this column to them. Let them know that the fight for our democracy is winning in the courtroom.

They thought they could act in the dark. They thought that by labeling a nurse a “domestic terrorist,” “gunman,” and “would-be assassin,” they could obscure the reality of a paramilitary force acting outside the bounds of law. But in the freezing cold of Minneapolis, something unexpected happened. The darkness didn’t hide the truth — it illuminated it.

The tragic, state-sanctioned killings of Renee Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti have brought us to a terrible precipice. But if you look past the fear, you will see something else entirely: An awakening. From the streets of the Twin Cities to the most unlikely corners of the internet, the sleeping giant of American decency is waking up.

The “Fake Pivot”: Don’t Be Fooled

First, we must be clear-eyed about what is happening in Washington. As outrage mounts, the administration is attempting a classic two-step. Legacy media outlets are reporting a “pivot,” with headlines claiming the President is “softening his rhetoric” or making an “about-face”.

The rest of us are not falling for it. This is a cosmetic shuffle designed to let the news cycle move on while the machinery keeps grinding.

• The Personnel Swap: Replacing the local commander with “Border Czar” Tom Homan is not moderation. Homan is an architect of mass deportation who has advocated for raiding workplaces and deporting U.S. citizen children.

• The Lies Remain: No one has been held accountable. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller retain their jobs despite spreading easily disproven lies that Pretti “brandished” a weapon he was licensed to carry.

• The Operation Continues: The crackdown in Minneapolis has not ended; it has merely recalibrated its PR strategy.

The Silver Lining: Enough People Have Seen Enough

The administration made a massive miscalculation: They underestimated the average American’s threshold for cruelty. The sheer visibility of the violence has shattered the “political” vs. “apolitical” divide.

I think this brief video sums it up pretty well:

The “power of witnessing” is breaking through the silos. We are seeing a revolt not just from activists, but from people who simply want to live their lives in peace and are offended the government is lying about it killing a citizen legally exercising his 1st and 2nd Amendment rights.

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

GEORGE ORWELL

• GOP Calls for Accountability: Senator John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, has called the killing an “inflection point” and demanded a full investigation, signaling that the administration can no longer count on blind loyalty. Senator Thom Tillis went even further, becoming the first Republican to call for Secretary Noem’s immediate firing, stating plainly, “What she’s done in Minnesota should be disqualifying.” They are not alone in their condemnations.

• Lifestyle Leaders Speak Up: From sewing circles to “Lord of the Rings” fans to fitness models, influencers are drawing a line. As one whiskey influencer on Instagram put it:

“This is a bourbon account but I can’t drink bourbon if ICE shoots me in the face.”

• Unexpected Defenders: Even the National Rifle Association (NRA) broke with the President, defending Pretti’s right to bear arms and rejecting the narrative that a legal gun owner is automatically a domestic terrorist worthy of summary execution.

I’m not suggesting any of this is noble, but it demonstrates a shift has occurred. I’ve spoken to conservative friends in Minneapolis and business leaders around the country this week, and they are telling me they feel it. It is time to welcome these folks into the fold with grace, allowing them the space to make their voices heard in their own way.

Minnesota Nice (With Teeth)

Ground zero for this awakening is Minneapolis itself. The resistance there offers a blueprint for other cities cross America. It is not built on radical ideology, but on radical neighborliness.

The people of Minneapolis are reclaiming “Minnesota Nice.” It turns out that “niceness” — real, deep decency — has teeth.

• Decentralized Power: There is no single leader for the administration to target. The resistance is like “mushrooms, roots under the soil,” popping up everywhere through mutual aid, grocery deliveries, and neighborhood watches.

• Joy as Resistance: In the face of terror, there is singing. There are marching bands and DJs. There are neighbors protecting neighbors not with violence, but with “swarms” of presence and care.

• Institutional Courage: It isn’t just the people in the streets. Local school boards, the Mayor, and the Governor are refusing to cooperate, proving that local institutions can be a firewall against federal overreach.

The Call to Action: Hold the Line

The pressure is working. Even Republican Representatives and Senators are sensing the ground shift, calling for independent investigations. They are worried that the public is souring on a federal agency acting “far beyond the limits of a police force”.

We must confirm that is true.

This is your assignment for today: Contact your Senators and Representatives immediately. Tell them that swapping commanders is not enough.

The Message: “I’m asking the Congressman/Senator to support an independent investigation into the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, and that you demand accountability and de-escalation nationwide.”

The darkness tried to take Minneapolis. Instead, it woke up America. Let’s keep the lights on.

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It is easy to look at the state of our democracy — the gridlock, the shattered norms, the attacks on the rule of law — and conclude that the American experiment is failing. It can feel like the walls are caving in.

But if you zoom out, the story changes. We aren’t necessarily witnessing a funeral. We are witnessing the violent, chaotic demolition that precedes a rebuild and renovation.

Historians and political scientists have long noted that American history moves in cycles. We oscillate between eras of “Private Interest” (individualism) and “Public Purpose” (community). We are currently at the messy end of a long era of fragmentation. The “Winter” is here, and the winds are tearing at the siding.

With that in mind, we need two distinct forces working in tandem to ensure we don’t allow the current attempts at an interior demolition to turn into a total tear-down. We need the Guardians to protect the structural integrity of the house, and the Builders to be ready to construct what comes next.

The Danger of the Demolition Phase

There is a seduction for some in the idea of “burning it all down” to start fresh — a sentiment often pushed by the very forces currently destabilizing our institutions.

But history warns us: While social cycles dictate that culture and policy must evolve, the foundation must remain. In architecture, you can gut the interior of a historic home, knock down walls, and modernize the wiring — but if you destroy the foundation, the project is over.

Our foundation is the Constitution, the rule of law, and our democratic institutions.

This is why the work of “holding the line” — the grueling, unglamorous work of Campaign Legal Center’s pro-democracy litigation, which is defending our freedoms, the rule of law, and voting rights — is actually the most critical work being done today.

Invest in our Guardians today!

Organizations and lawyers who are in the trenches defending the Constitution aren’t trying to “go back to the way things were.” They are ensuring that the structure survives the stress test. They are the reason that, when the dust settles, we will still be a Constitutional Republic capable of improvement, rather than a pile of rubble.

They are holding the line so that there is something left to renovate.

Enter the Builders: The Millennial Destiny

If the legal warriors and institutionalists are the Guardians keeping the foundation from cracking under the weight of the current chaos, who are the Builders?

History points to the Millennials (as a so-called “Elder Millennial” or “Xennial”, I may be biased toward this theory!).

Often caricatured as “entitled,” this generation is actually shaping up to be a reconstruction generation. Having come of age and experiencing early adulthood during financial collapse, pandemics, and political polarization, they possess a unique set of traits that history says we need for the next phase:

1. Institutional Craving: After decades of seeing things break, they are obsessed with making things work.

2. Collaboration: They value consensus and community over the “lone wolf” mentality of previous eras.

3. Civic Mindedness: They are voting, organizing, and engaging at higher rates than previous generations did at the same age.

The Guardians are buying us time. They are fighting in the courts to ensure the democratic machinery remains intact. And that is exactly what our Builders will need — a battered, yet unbroken, baton with which to run.

The Bright America Strategy

The Bright America we see on the horizon — a place of renewed community, functional government, and shared purpose (with plenty of disagreement, as we’ve always had) — relies on this partnership.

If we let the rule of law crumble now, there will be no tools for the emerging leaders to build with. But if we hold the line — if we aggressively defend our freedoms and norms through this chaotic transition — we’ll have a stable platform from which to make things better.

American history doesn’t teach us that we’re doomed. It shows us that we’ve always had Guardians and that Builders arrive just in time.

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Democracy is often viewed as a series of grand gestures — rallies, debates, and the final tally on election night. But one of the vital parts of our democratic machinery is rather quiet: it’s the simple act of a citizen placing a signed, postmarked envelope into a mailbox.

Right now, that quiet act is at the center of a high-stakes legal battle heading to the U.S. Supreme Court. The case, Watson v. Republican National Committee, isn’t just a technical dispute over deadlines; it is a fundamental challenge to the power of states to ensure that every lawfully cast vote actually counts.

The Dispute: Postmarks vs. Receipt

At the heart of the case is a bipartisan Mississippi law. It’s a common-sense rule: if you mail your ballot by Election Day, it counts as long as it arrives at the election office within five business days.

However, the Republican National Committee (RNC) is arguing for a radical reinterpretation of federal law. They contend that “Election Day” is not just the deadline to cast a vote, but a hard deadline for the state to receive it. If the Supreme Court agrees with the Fifth Circuit’s recent (and erroneous) ruling in favor of the RNC, the results could be catastrophic for voter access.

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What’s at Stake?

This isn’t just about Mississippi. A ruling against these laws would invalidate pro-voter protections in over 30 states that currently allow for the counting of mail ballots received shortly after Election Day. Here’s what’s at stake:

• Disenfranchising the Vulnerable: These laws are lifelines for voters with disabilities, the elderly, and rural communities who rely on mail-in options and cannot always guarantee the speed of the U.S. Postal Service.

• Violating State Sovereignty: For centuries, states have held the constitutional authority to set their own ballot receipt deadlines.

• Ignoring Congressional Intent: When Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform Act (ECRA) in 2022, they deliberately chose not to disturb state-level mail-in deadlines.

A Call to Action: The Power of “Showing Up”

The legal fight is being led by organizations like our strategic litigation partner Campaign Legal Center (CLC), who recently filed an amicus brief urging the Court to protect these laws. But legal briefs are only one part of the defense.

The impending chaos of the 2026 midterms is not a cause for despair; it is a call for strategic action. We have the tools to push back, and it starts with a “drumbeat of outrage” that refuses to grant legitimacy to efforts that would undo our system.

How You Can Protect Your Vote

1. Focus on Your Sphere of Control: Be the person in your community who understands the rules. Double-check your state’s voting deadlines and help your neighbors do the same.

2. Show Up and Participate: Democracy isn’t a spectator sport. Whether it’s volunteering as a poll worker, making a donation to strategic litigation partners like CLC, or simply casting a vote that is “impossible to challenge,” every action counts.

3. Stay Confident: The law, the Constitution, and the majority of American citizens are on the side of fair elections. We are in a winnable struggle.

The American people do not want their voices ignored. By supporting CLC’s efforts in the Supreme Court, we are ensuring that the “time of choosing” remains in the hands of the voters — not just the hands of the mail carrier.

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In 1787, as Benjamin Franklin emerged from the Constitutional Convention, he was famously asked what kind of government the delegates had created. His response — ”a republic, if you can keep it” — was not a guarantee of success, but a challenge. It was a reminder that the power of the American government does not flow from the top down, but from the bottom up.

Today, we find ourselves at a crossroads where that fundamental truth is being tested. We are hearing whispers — and sometimes shouts — from the halls of power, including from the President’s Deputy Chief of Staff, suggesting that “might makes right.” This philosophy argues that those with the most influence, the most money, or the loudest platforms should dictate the direction of our nation and the world.

But that is not the American story. Our history is defined by the rejection of that very idea.

The Architecture of Accountability

The founders understood that power is a heavy thing, and if left unchecked, it tends toward tyranny. That is why they didn’t just give us a government; they gave us a toolkit for holding it accountable.

At the heart of this toolkit is the First Amendment. While we often focus on the freedom of speech or the press, it also guarantees our right to “petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” This is the mechanism by which the servant (the government) is reminded of its master (the people).

When the government oversteps, when it forgets who it serves, or when it begins to believe that “might” is its own justification, the Constitution gives us the authority to stand up and say, “Not in our name.”

Democracy is a Verb

For nearly 250 years, the American experiment has survived not because of the benevolence of those in office, but because of the persistence of those outside of it. Democracy is not a spectator sport; it is hard, continuous work.

Holding the government accountable requires more than just casting a ballot every few years. It requires an active role in the daily life of our republic:

• Direct Contact: Making the phone calls and writing the letters that force representatives to hear the voices of their constituents.

• Petitions and Protests: Gathering in the public square to show that a movement is not just a digital trend, but a physical reality that cannot be ignored.

• Funding the Cause: Supporting the organizations who do the heavy lifting of defending our rights, like our strategic litigation partner Campaign Legal Center.

• Education: Ensuring that you and your community understand the stakes. Knowledge is the ultimate defense against the erosion of rights.

Holding the Torch

We are currently the stewards of a legacy that was paid for in sacrifice. From the suffragettes who marched for the right to vote to the civil rights leaders who faced down fire hoses, every generation has had its own work to do to expand and protect our freedoms.

The idea that “might makes right” is an old, tired concept that belongs to the monarchies and dictatorships our ancestors fled. Our country was built on the radical notion — even if imperfectly executed — that right makes might.

If we want to ensure that our children and grandchildren inherit a country where their voices matter, we cannot afford to be weary. We must continue the work of self-governance. We must remind those in power that they are not the masters of the people, but their representatives.

Democracy requires work. It has always been this way. And it is work that we must continue to do — together.

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If you read the interview with President Trump in The New York Times (gift link) on Thursday, you might have stopped cold at one specific line. When asked what limits his power as Commander in Chief, the President didn’t cite the Constitution, Congress, or international treaties. He gave a much simpler answer:

“My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me”.

He added, “I don’t need international law,” making it clear that he sees himself as the final judge of what the United States can and cannot do.

On the surface, this could sound like confidence. But to anyone who knows American history, it ought to sound like an alarm bell. It brings us face-to-face with the exact problem the Founding Fathers tried to solve 250 years ago.

The “Angel” Problem

James Madison, the father of our Constitution, knew that relying on a leader’s “morality” was a dangerous gamble. In Federalist No. 51, he wrote a sentence that should be hung in every hallway of the White House: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

The Founders built our system on a dark truth: leaders are not angels. They knew that even good people can be tempted by power, and that bad people will always seek it. That is why they created a government of laws, not of men. They built “parchment barriers” — written rules — to stop a president when his “own mind” might lead the country off a cliff.

When a leader says their only limit is their “own morality,” they are essentially saying, “trust me.” The Declaration of Independence was written because we decided we didn’t want to trust a King; we wanted to trust the rule of law.

The Party Trap

So, if the President is openly brushing aside laws and treaties, why isn’t Congress stopping him? Why has the legislative branch — which is supposed to have the power of the purse and the power to declare war — become so quiet?

The answer lies in a warning from George Washington that’s been largely ignored.

In his Farewell Address, Washington warned us that the “spirit of party” would be the undoing of our Republic. He predicted that Americans would eventually care more about their political “team” than their country. He warned that if we let factions divide us, the chaos would eventually lead people to seek safety in the “absolute power of an individual.”

We are seeing Washington’s nightmare come true. Today, Congress is often too paralyzed by party loyalty to do its job. If a President is on “their team,” many members of Congress will look the other way, even when he claims powers he shouldn’t have (this is true of both parties, and if you can’t admit it, check your “team spirit”!). Congress has traded its power for party protection.

How to Fix It: Ambition Must Counteract Ambition

We don’t need to reinvent the wheel to fix this — but we do need to use the tools we have. We need a Congress that remembers it is a co-equal branch of government, not simply a fan club OR an opposition group.

Madison argued that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” This means Congress should be jealous of its own power. A Senator should feel insulted when a President — any President — bypasses them to start a conflict or spend money, regardless of which party is in charge.

Here some BRIGHT IDEAS worth considering:

1. Stop the Blank Checks: Congress could say any law granting emergency powers comes with “automatic sunsets.” This means emergency powers or sanctions expire automatically after 60 days unless Congress votes to keep them. This forces our representatives to go on the record and do their jobs, rather than hiding behind the President.

2. Reclaim the Purse: The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse. If the Executive branch tries to move money around without permission — like using tariffs as “licensing fees” to bypass courts — Congress could cut off the funds.

3. Remember Who We Are: As we celebrate our 250th year since the Declaration of Independence, we ought to remember that “national strength” doesn’t come from one person’s unpredictability or willingness to use force. It comes from a stable system where no single person can dictate the law. That’s the entire point of Congress, and one reason we’re in this mess is that it has not been solving the people’s problems for decades. It’s time to explore ideas that would make Congress more effective, express the will of the people while protecting minority rights.

The safety of our freedom should never depend on whether the President is having a good day or a bad day. It should depend on the law. And the only way to ensure that is for Congress to wake up and check the “morality” of the Executive with the authority of the People.

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I wasn’t going to write anything today.

For the last week, I’ve debated whether to add my voice to what was sure to be (and was) a cacophony of the fifth anniversary of January 6th. My hesitation wasn’t born out of apathy, but of exhaustion. It has been five years. The facts of that day have been established, re-established, litigated, and proven. At this point, I reasoned, you seemingly fall into one of two camps: you either accept the reality of what we all saw with our own eyes — the violence, the chaos, the breaking of the Capitol — or you have decided to embrace a delusional storyline where up is down and black is white.

I thought there was nothing new to say. I thought the lines were drawn.

But through my own failure of imagination, I was wrong.

What I hadn’t anticipated is that the official White House website — the digital front door of our government, funded by your tax dollars — would today launch a dedicated page that doesn’t just spin the events of that day, but fundamentally rewrites them.

If you haven’t seen it, consider yourself lucky. The new page trumpets the “heroics” of the January 6th rioters, labeling them “peaceful patriotic protesters.” It attacks former Vice President Mike Pence for “cowardice.” Perhaps most perverse of all, it explicitly blames the injuries and deaths of that day not on the mob that beat officers with flagpoles and suffocated them with bear spray, but on the Capitol Police themselves.

It is one thing for a MAGA media personality to spew this revisionism on a podcast. It is one thing for a politician to say it at a campaign rally to rile up a base. But it is quite another to see it in black and white (literally) on the .gov domain of the United States.

It is perverse. It is beneath us as a nation. And it demands a response.

We have a factual record. We cannot forget the painstaking, bipartisan work of the January 6th Committee. Regardless of your politics, that Committee did the difficult work of unveiling and distributing the facts — not opinions, not spin, but video proof, sworn testimony, and timeline evidence. They showed us the text messages, the panicked radio calls, and the urgent pleas for help.

The new White House narrative turns that truth upside down. It asks you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.

It is also a rejection of what a bipartisan chorus knew to be true in the immediate, shell-shocked aftermath of the attack. We must not forget that in the days following the riot, the condemnation was universal. Kevin McCarthy said the President bore responsibility. Charlie Kirk condemned the violence. The leadership of the Republican Party, terrified and angry, called the rioters criminals. Even President Trump, before he began the long project of revisionism, called the very people he later pardoned “heinous.”

It is tragic to see what has become of the truth.

My friend , who served alongside me as a staffer in the House of Representatives on January 6th, 2021, shared with me a video she made today. It is worth the 1 minute and 48 seconds of your time to watch. It cuts through the noise of the last five years and drops you right back into the truth.

Watching it, I realized that for those of us who were there, and for those who care about this Republic, the nightmare fails to recede like most tragedies do. It doesn’t fade; it is being kept alive, fed, and mutated into something new and dangerous by the very powers meant to protect us.

And that is why I am posting today. That is why I can’t stay silent.

Because if the official record of the United States government is going to lie, then we — the citizens, the voters, the witnesses — must be the ones to tell the truth. We have to look these lies in the face and declare them false. We have to push back against these abuses of power.

We must show up for our democracy, not just when it is easy, but when the headwinds are strongest. We must never forget the nation we really are — not the one currently reflected on a White House webpage, but the one that survived that day, and the one that can still prevail if we are willing to fight for the truth.

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9,081,224

Number of times Bright America columns were read in 2025 that advocate for protecting the rule of law and our Constitutional freedoms through the high impact litigation of our strategic partner Campaign Legal Center.

It’s been a hard year.

We’ve seen freedoms we took for granted tested. Norms we believed were foundational proven fragile. Laws and institutions we thought were beyond the reach of any single person’s whims bent and, in some cases, broken. These weren’t partisan talking points — they were the guardrails that made our democracy work, regardless of who held power.

If you’re reading this and feeling that weight, you’re not alone. Millions of Americans are grappling with a reality that seemed impossible in the United States. And yet, here we are.

But here’s what I keep coming back to: the very thing that made this moment possible is also what makes our course correction not just possible, but probable.

The uniquely American belief that anything can happen cuts both ways. If the impossible can arrive, then the impossible can also be reversed. If we can lose our way this dramatically, we can also find it again.

And something remarkable has happened this year, even amid the chaos: more Americans give a damn.

You can see it in the polling numbers. You can hear it in the defections and the growing chorus of voices saying “this isn’t who we are.” You can feel it in conversations that used to be avoided and are now unavoidable. Millions of people have moved from the sidelines into the arena — not because they wanted to, but because they realized they had to.

For a democracy, there is no greater silver lining than citizens who refuse to accept the unacceptable.

When we conceived Bright America early this year, I kept returning to one image: a lighthouse casting light into darkness. A lighthouse doesn’t fear the storm; it exists because the storm exists. It doesn’t chase down every ship or fight every wave. It stands firm on the rocky shoreline, offering a consistent, unwavering signal that says, “Here is the truth, and here is the safe water.”

That’s what we’ll continue building in 2026: More lighthouses.

We take the raw fuel of education, hope — and we could never forget high-impact litigation — and focus it into a steady beam that cuts through the noise, proving that the darkness is not absolute. We’re not here to scream louder than the wind. We’re here to hold our ground and offer clarity — to remind our neighbors that they don’t have to wreck on the rocks of the present moment. And the safety of the harbor can and should transcend our politics.

This work matters more than ever as we head into the new year. The storm isn’t over. But neither are we.

And with that, here are my predictions for 2026:

1) High-Impact Litigation will remain the most effective way to save the rule of law and our constitutional freedoms

Litigation will remain the fastest path to durable guardrails in 2026. A court order can stop an illegal policy, force transparency, and set precedent that outlasts any election cycle. We’ve had inspiring wins this year, despite the setbacks, driven by our strategic litigation partner Campaign Legal Center — a nonpartisan team advancing democracy through law across voting rights, redistricting, ethics, and campaign finance.

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2) Patriotism will be reclaimed — locally, visibly, together

Despite efforts by the Administration to dominate the spotlight around major moments like the 2026 FIFA World Cup and America’s 250th birthday, a quieter and more durable expression of American patriotism will emerge. It will be defined by neighborhoods, faith communities, veterans’ groups, and civic volunteers — not by parties or policy litmus tests.

3) A new coalition will form around skepticism of AI’s unequal gains

Artificial intelligence will accelerate economic change faster than our institutions can absorb it. In 2026, the pushback will broaden and cohere. Communities will challenge data-center permitting and environmental impacts at the local level. Workers displaced by automation will demand national guardrails. Policymakers, labor leaders, environmental advocates, and small-business owners will begin converging — less to stop AI than to question who benefits from it. Expect early, serious conversations about restructuring parts of the economy to better distribute opportunity in an AI-driven era.

4) Electoral wins won’t resolve political fragmentation

Democrats will perform well in November — but not decisively enough to create sustained counterweight to Trump-era politics. The party will enter an open, sometimes messy search for 2028 leadership, with distinct camps forming around competing theories of the future. Republicans, meanwhile, will continue to fracture as internal battles over identity and leadership intensify. The result: motion without resolution, energy without alignment.

5) A global shock will reset the international landscape

History suggests the most consequential geopolitical events are the ones experts do not predict. With volatility across the Middle East, China–Taiwan relations, Ukraine, and Venezuela, a war, revolution, or sudden leadership change (anywhere in the world) is likely to alter global calculations. The United States will struggle to respond coherently — not for lack of power, but because of unresolved internal conflict over when to lead and when to step back.

6) The economy will dominate daily life — and defy easy answers

Kitchen-table economics will eclipse nearly every other issue. Both parties will strain to offer solutions that feel tangible. Healthcare costs will rise to the top tier of voter concern as Republicans remain without a credible plan and Democrats revisit familiar ideas while experimenting with state-level innovations to lower costs. Any leader, faction, or party not zeroed in on affordability will be punished by voters.

What predictions would you add to the list? Let us know by leaving a comment…

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In the closing weeks of 2025, a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court moved our democracy in the wrong direction by clearing the way for a gerrymandered congressional map in Texas to be in place for the 2026 midterm elections in its Abbott v. LULAC decision. Aside from the fact that the new Texas map illegally discriminates to weaken the voting power of the state’s Black and Latino voters, the Supreme Court’s ruling is deeply problematic on a number of other levels.

Most disturbingly, the majority in this opinion takes an appalling new turn on the issue of partisan gerrymandering. To illustrate the Court’s backward slide, consider that in 2004 then-Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote as a concurrence to an opinion in a key redistricting case that, if a state declared it would redistrict with the goal of denying a certain group of voters “fair and effective representation” for partisan reasons, then the Court “would surely conclude the Constitution had been violated.”

Then, in 2019, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a majority opinion in Rucho v. Common Cause that said “excessive partisanship in districting leads to results that reasonably seem unjust…such gerrymandering is ‘incompatible with democratic principles.’” Then he went ahead and denied relief from such partisan gerrymandering in federal court, falsely stating that federal courts were not capable of settling disputes over extreme partisan gerrymandering (despite a number of courts having done so).

This repudiation of partisan gerrymandering as unconstitutional and undemocratic has now completely disappeared in Abbott v. LULAC, with the majority opinion chiding the trial court panel of federal judges for not granting the Texas redistricting a safe harbor because, according to Justice Samuel Alito, “the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map…was partisan advantage pure and simple.” By Justice Alito’s logic, the claim that Texas was a partisan gerrymander, rather than a racial one, makes its redistricting a thing to be lauded and approved!

The majority’s brief written order employs tortured logic to avoid the standard practice of deferring to findings of fact at the lower court level, dismissing the substantial evidentiary record showing that race was used impermissibly to draw the new Texas map. The Supreme Court says the lower court failed to grant state lawmakers a “presumption of good faith” in their gerrymandering project — good faith that they were gerrymandering for political gain rather than for racial reasons. In this case, the basis for that “presumption” is a claim contradicted by mountains of evidence.

The majority also claims the lower court decision to block the Texas map interferes with the midterms, even though the general election is about a year away, and primaries in Texas don’t take place until March. This reasoning thoroughly distorts a judicial concept known as the Purcell principle, which, in practice, means courts should refrain from handing down consequential election-related rulings “on the eve of an election.” The majority opinion would appear to say that an election is always “imminent” once the last one is over, thereby denying court review even of blatant racial gerrymanders such as Texas’.

Anyone trying to make sense of the Supreme Court’s trajectory on redistricting issues has every right to be confused and frustrated. The situation could become even worse if the justices choose to undermine Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the one remaining portion of that law providing concrete tools for challenging racially discriminatory voting maps. This is the outcome many in the pro-democracy coalition are now worried about based on oral arguments during Louisiana v. Callais in October.

In the midst of these troubling developments, it is clear now more than ever that we need overarching solutions that take partisan bias out of the redistricting process and affirm the commonsense principle that voters should not be marginalized due to their race.

Fund the Fight Today

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the authority to pass a federal law banning partisan gerrymandering and requiring every state to create independent redistricting commissions, but these ideas have yet to receive much bipartisan support. Perhaps that will change pending the fallout from the current gerrymandering arms race. Similarly, if Congress could resurrect a bipartisan consensus on the need to prevent states from passing racially discriminatory voting laws, we could see a re-authorization of the Voting Rights Act that would better withstand judicial scrutiny.

In lieu of a national solution, Campaign Legal Center is playing a strong leadership role in beating back the scourge of gerrymandering by helping to establish and defend independent redistricting commissions at the state level (Michigan) or through lawsuits filed in state court (Wisconsin, Utah). We entered the current fray by filing a lawsuit in September on behalf of Missouri voters, challenging a gerrymander so egregious that opponents have managed to collect nearly three times the signatures needed to put a measure nullifying it on the 2026 ballot.

This unprecedented mid-decade redistricting arms race has been one of the dominant political stories of 2025 and has included many twists and turns. One of the most recent to dominate the headlines saw Indiana state senators rejecting a proposed congressional gerrymander in the face of immense pressure by the Trump administration.

It is worth noting that the president who ignited this conflict has employed a similar playbook on issue after issue: Ignore established rules and norms meant to prevent the concentration of power. Exploit weaknesses in current laws to achieve political goals — in the case of gerrymandering, pressuring states to do so. Finally, rely on the courts, especially the Supreme Court, to favor arguments that prioritize executive power or, more broadly, the power of politicians over their constituents.

Campaign Legal Center’s efforts this year to fight this rising authoritarian threat have largely focused on the courts, either through lawsuits or legal briefs shining a bright light on issues that must be seriously considered during judicial deliberations. For example, in the hugely consequential case Trump v. Slaughter, the amicus brief I filed along with my CLC colleagues explains why leaders of federal agencies with the power to impact our elections must remain insulated from presidential influence.

It has been a hard year — one that has seen an unconscionable assault on the pillars of our democracy. At Campaign Legal Center, we’ve had significant successes in pushing back, including winning a permanent injunction against portions of an unlawful executive order that asserts sweeping powers over our elections.

Thanks to the ongoing support of concerned Americans across the country, we are well-equipped and ready to fight the battles that surely lie ahead in defense of the rule of law and our constitutional rights. At a time when the sheer volume of threats to our system of representative self-government can seem overwhelming, I thank everyone who is fighting back for their efforts, and I invite those who are grappling with the gravity of this moment to support our cause.

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Looking for more in-depth insights on issues critical to our democracy? Consider subscribing to the “From the Desk of Trevor Potter” newsletter, written by Campaign Legal Center’s founder and president, Trevor Potter. Get expert analysis and learn more about Campaign Legal Center’s efforts to protect and strengthen democracy for all Americans by subscribing via email or on LinkedIn.

In September of 2020, two former White House officials — Democrat Bob Bauer and Republican Jack Goldsmith — published After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency, a concrete set of proposals to reform the office that had become simultaneously vulnerable to “dangerous excesses of authority” and “dangerous weaknesses in accountability.”

“The often-feckless Trump also revealed deeper fissures in the structure of the presidency that, we worry, a future president might choose to exploit in a fashion similar to Trump — but much more skillfully, and to even greater effect,” the authors wrote.

Little could they have known that the “future president” who would so exploit these fissures would be Trump himself in a second, nonconsecutive administration.

That future is now.

Both parties need to commit to ensuring it never happens again — that this anti-republican moment does not become permanent.

It is in neither’s party’s interest for it to continue.

Whatever one chooses to call this present state of affairs — a kleptocracy, quasi-monarchy, illiberal democracy, competitive or personalist authoritarianism — it is antithetical to the republican principles the Founders entrusted to the care of the American people in 1787.

First and most pressing — never resolved during the first term and magnified to a remarkable degree in the second — is the conflict posed by the president’s web of private family business ventures. Compelling the presidential entourage and security detail to pay for lodging at Trump properties, an ongoing abuse of power, to be sure, seems a trifle when compared to accepting a $400 million airplane and $2 billion in cryptocurrency investment from his Qatari and Emirati friends.

We may never know the full extent of Trump’s entanglements with foreign governments seeking his favor, whether in the form of, for instance, tariff relief (Vietnam) or computer chips (the UAE).

The point is, we should not have to wonder.

We need to return to the ethos under which public officials sought to avoid even an appearance of a conflict of interest.

Bauer and Goldsmith recommend a ban on presidential participation in a business interest. They write: “The president should not be able to maintain an active or supervisory role in the oversight of any businesses in which he or she has an interest on the day he or she takes the oath of office.” This wouldn’t mean full divestiture of assets; wealthy businessmen and -women need not be discouraged from running for high office. Neither would it mean a “blind trust.” The public has a right to see not just the headline value of a president’s assets, but to “all the information necessary to detect or evaluate any connection between his official duties and personal business interests.”

Note how in the examples of Vietnam and UAE above the administration’s entanglement of private business with the public interest is cross-pressured: In one case, he wields the “stick” of the state (tariffs) and in the other a “carrot” (permission to transfer chips essential for artificial intelligence) and created at least the appearance of receiving favorable private business outcomes.

Reject the Corruption

Which brings us to the subject of tariffs: The president can’t unilaterally and broadly impose them as he has under dubious emergency authority. They raise revenue. Under Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution, all revenue must originate in the House of Representatives, specifically the Committee on Ways and Means. (It’s simple and clear. You can look it up.)

The Supreme Court may adjudicate this particular dispute sooner rather than later. But it’s an institutional prerogative every candidate for office should reaffirm. The Founders had good reason not to allow the chief executive to raise money (or an army!) on his own. After all, even kings needed parliaments to raise taxes. When you see American and European CEOs and leaders of other countries falling all themselves to avoid the cudgel of tariffs, while the Congress sits idly by, you glimpse the power of a monarchy. Of the fusion of one man, his privately-held business, and the state. Of “ L’etat c’est moi .”

If you think blanket tariffs are a good idea, have at it. Pass a law.

Also, if you think bribing the president is a no-no, the law needs to be clarified.

Amazingly, according to Bauer and Goldsmith, it’s not certain whether statutory law against bribery is applicable to the president. Congress can fix this and, while they’re it, make sure that it’s clear that a president can’t accept a bribe in exchange for a pardon.

To repeat: The issue of corruption and financial entanglement, of bribery and pay-for-play schemes, should not have a partisan valence. If you are a Trump-supporting Republican who sincerely believes President Trump is guilty of none of these things, has kept an impregnable wall between his office and his business, then imagine how you’d feel if a businessman you didn’t like — say, Mark Cuban — became president. Which guardrails would you like to see in that case?

While we’re at it, would you be simpatico with a King Gavin Newsom sending the U.S. Marines into your town?

If not, then let’s agree that if a president deploys troops or National Guardsmen on American soil — which a president is authorized to do if there is a breakdown in civilian law enforcement — he or she must consult with Congress and periodically (say, every two weeks) justify via public report why the deployment is still necessary.

Notice what I haven’t brought up. Immigration. Gender norms. Wokeness. DEI. Vaccines. Nor Obamacare or “affordability” or monetary policy or guns. Things about which we can have spirited debates. Nor have I brought up Russia or Ukraine or Gaza or Venezuela. Nor the Epstein Files. Nor even the remarkable politicization of the Department of Justice, an agency whose firewall against political interference from the White House, fraught for decades, has always been more norms-based than statutory.

My remit here is narrow: to join both parties in a reaffirmation of a presidency that is above suspicion, free from financial conflicts, and within its broadly accepted Article II powers under the Constitution.

Quite simply, we can’t lurch between republicanism and whatever-it-is-we’ve-got-now.

That should not be a choice on the menu. That’s not doing politics the right way. Effectively, that’s not doing politics at all.

I’m paraphrasing, of course, Ezra Klein’s soul-searching essay in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. He meant it in the context of increasing concerns over the culture of commentary in the social media era, of unhinged rhetoric that encourages violence. I share those concerns. But we have seen political violence in America before. Violence is baked into our political DNA. The late novelist Philip Roth called it the “indigenous American berserk.”

What’s new is America doing the republic the wrong way.

With a nod to Ben Franklin, it’s not too late to keep it.

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Scott Galupo is a freelance writer living in Arlington, Va. In addition to contributing to The American Conservative, he writes for TheWeek.com and reviews live music for The Washington Post. He was formerly a staff writer for The Washington Times and worked on Capitol Hill.

For much of our nation’s history, we’ve had leaders from each major party — presidents, judges, members of congress — who have embraced their oath to defend the constitution. And while it’s been harder to come by such leaders in the present, something special and unmistakably American has taken root and is growing from the ground up. Americans from all walks of life — including economic sectors and political identities traditionally aligned with the right — are refusing to accept the Administration’s mounting abuses of power.

And as Maria Stephan and Adam Fefer write in their recent piece for Just Security, these are not the usual suspects. These are veterans, business titans, and faith leaders. They represent the “pillars of support” any administration needs to function. When these pillars shake, the machinery of overreach begins to grind to a halt.

The Unlikely Coalition

The narrative that resistance is limited to one side of the aisle is false. The political winds are shifting, and the signals are vivid. Cattle ranchers are openly expressing disapproval of the administration’s plan to import Argentine beef, viewing it as a direct betrayal of campaign promises. In a rare public statement, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — typically quiet on political mechanics — declared opposition to “indiscriminate mass deportation,” calling for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric.

We see this same resolve in our armed forces. Veterans and military families in Ohio are criticizing National Guard deployments in Democratic-majority cities, labeling them unnecessary and harmful to national security. Members of the Ohio National Guard are even using encrypted group chats to discuss their unwillingness to participate in these politicized deployments.

The Business of Democracy

The corporate world is drawing a line in the sand as well. Market stability relies on the rule of law, and executives are recognizing that authoritarian dynamics threaten the bottom line.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recently announced the company would not contribute to White House construction projects to avoid the potential risk of “doing anything that looks like buying favors”. Similarly, Disney shareholders criticized the politically motivated suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, labeling it a potential breach of fiduciary duty. Even in Silicon Valley, Salesforce staff and alumni forced CEO Marc Benioff to retract his call for National Guard deployments in San Francisco.

Binding and Breaking: How Resistance Works

Civil resistance is most effective when it employs an “economy of effort,” utilizing specific skills and resources to pressure the sources of authoritarian support. We are seeing two distinct tactics emerge: “binding” and “breaking”.

• Breaking involves refusing to comply. We saw this when Social Security Administration employees resigned rather than comply with “DOGE” requests for sensitive government records. It appears when airport officials refuse to show politicized Department of Homeland Security videos.

• Binding happens behind closed doors. This is where insiders persuade colleagues to withdraw support from unconstitutional orders. It is less visible than resignation, but it is equally vital for disrupting the chain of command that authoritarianism requires.

The Legal Firewall

This broad-based noncooperation creates a massive opportunity. The administration’s power base is cracking because people view their rights and economic interests as compromised. But individual courage requires institutional support. While a rancher can voice dissent and a CEO can withhold funds, we need a dedicated force to challenge unconstitutional actions in court.

Traditional institutional mechanisms like litigation remain crucial. This is where this movement — with our strategic litigation partner Campaign Legal Center (CLC) — enters the fight. While citizens disrupt the “pillars of support” through noncooperation, CLC fights back in court against the abuses of power. We provide the air cover for these acts of civil bravery.

Fund the Firewall

The history of successful pro-democracy movements (not just in America, but throughout the world) shows that “unlikely allies” are essential. We are building a big tent that welcomes defectors without shame, focused on our shared values of freedom and self-rule.

The American people are doing their part. Let’s do ours.

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