Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds and political reports. Elon will be departing from DC soon. We'll see we have such a great show for you today. Civil Discourse substack author and close friend of mine Joyce Vance talks about constitutional checks and balances.
Then we'll talk to Professor.
Laura Gamboa about how to save a democracy and the lessons from other countries authoritarian crisises.
But first the news.
So, Molly, I think we have pretty good news. I mean, I'm pretty excited to see that Elon couldn't buy and do his weird trickery that everybody believed won the twenty twenty four election in Wisconsin last night. Since Dev's got a big win.
Yes, so this was an interesting thing. You know again, Look, the trump Ism does not only Trump can defy political gravity. Everyone else has For whatever reason, it only works for Trump. It was the most expensive judicial race ever, about one hundred million dollars all in, Musk spent twenty five million. I bet it's actually more than that. He has this
America pack. But then all of the other Republican senators, so Republican senators, Republican donors, Elon Musk, Diana Hendrix, the U lines, Soros, Pritzker and Ricketts, you know, all the sort of people you would expect Rita Hoffman.
But the right definitely overspent the left.
With the right wing, saytes man Timothy Bellen, right.
And I think it's important to remember why this is important. First of all, it's good news because it means that our democracy, you know that you can't there's not just a straight line between how much you spend and what happens. That is good news. That's good news for any number of reasons. It means that voters still have autonomy. It means that they you know, you can advertise to them, but at the end of the day, they're going to
do what they're going to do. And I think what is And you know, the other thing that Elon did, which was really sketchy, was he did these you know, he paid people, right, voters who signed the petition got one hundred dollars and then the key handed out million dollar checks for recruiting captains. None of that worked. So
that's good news. That's good news for democracy. It's good news because you know, look, there's a straight line between Citizens United over durning Citizens United and the cluster fuck we find ourselves in today. And again, I think it's important to remember, like a lot of the stump Trump
is doing is really unpopular. So going in and slashing the federal government, going in and making it so that you can't get help for Social Security on the phone, these are things that are actually quite unpopular, and we're now seeing that voters don't like it and they're swinging against it. And every election on Tuesday swung to the left.
And that's a good sign for any number of reasons, and especially it's a good sign because, look, Trump is a Republican, but Trump is also an authoritarian, and that means he is trying to consolidate power. He is trying to do all the things Orbond died in Hungary.
And to know that it's.
Not politically popular, and so that means that Republican House members who are up for election in twenty six, and people like Tom Tillis, right, the Senator from North Carolina who's also up for reelection in twenty six, they're not going to necessarily give Trump the blank check that he wants, or if they are. Remember early on in this administration, Trump had won the popular vote and he had pretty good for him, still bad for everyone. Normal popularity numbers.
Now those numbers are you know, were what eight nine weeks into this ten weeks into this presidency, and every sort of two weeks the number goes down by about two one and a half two points. So by the time we're one hundred days into this thing, the guy will be back in the high thirties. But the point is this is good because Republicans, acting in their own self interest, will at least do some kind of check
on Trump. They don't want to lose the House. And I think we heard Musk say if Republicans lose the House, then Democrats can impeage, Democrats can run checks on Trump's power. Musk was saying that like that was a bad thing. But I think a lot of voters actually don't think that's a bad thing.
I agree. I think a lot of voters wouldn't think it's bad if the House goes home but does nothing. But I still find it quite disturbing since Mike Johnson just canceled votes after the Republicans rebelled against him.
Yeah, look, so this is fascinating in the fact that it's just proof of my theory being correct.
So I consider that to be fascinating.
Mike Johnson cannot do math, and we have seen this again and again and again. The one time Mike Johnson was able to do math was for the cr that's a continuing resolution that passed last week.
Or two weeks ago.
It got out of the House and literally no one thought it would and then it got to the Senate and Democrats couldn't figure out what to do, and it was a disaster and it made everyone look bad. Now, this bill, bipartisan bill for women voting after having children. Johnson was absolutely allergic to it. But because he cannot he fundamentally cannot do math, he was not able to whip against it. Now he is the Speaker of the House,
he should not lose on a bipartisan bill. First of all, I mean, this is like, I wonder if what the president here is for this. I mean, it just sort of shocks me. I think there's probably very little president for this. So nine Republicans joined all the Democrats. Johnson lost right to to two to two oh six.
Okay.
He then freaked out. He was supposed to lead voting on this Save Act. The Save Act would have made it very hard to vote. It would have made it so if you changed your name as a woman. And because nobody wants women voting because they're you know, they don't know their place, that it would have made it harder for women to vote. But because the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, was so upset, he just canceled all the voting for the week and I guess went home to pray about it.
You know, this sounds to be like the temperamental thing people make a cliche of women being like to me, Molly.
He cannot stand losing, so he should learn how to count. And you know Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who is, by the way, nobody is idea of a woke leftist, but she wanted to be able to volt remotely right after having a baby. I mean, this is really the bare minimum that these people can do. And she did it as a discharge position petition. I mean, it is really quite a fuck up for Johnson. It makes them look weak and it makes them look like you can't do math.
And he said that it was unconstitutional.
By the way, everything they don't like is unconstitutional and it could open up Pandora's box, Yes, a Pandora's box of like women working. So good to see this is like we can file this under one of the worst people you know getting.
You know schooled.
And by the way, it's not like these people are you know, the two people who came out against this bill, against Mike Johnson.
These are all like real right wingers.
So Max Miller, you'll remember, has had any number of problems because remember there was some allegations of domestic violence, but his statement was, I had a baby girl just over a year go. In the first weeks of her life, there were some complications. I can't imagine a mother who has spent nine months going through the ring are being told you can't be with your infant only because you are one of the four hundred and thirty five people. We are pro life, I mean ish pro family, not really.
As a new dad, I just couldn't support it. Mike Lawler, who is you'll remember, running for governor. He's not going to win, but he's trying to present himself as not a complete psycho, as a father of two young children, including a daughter born eight days before election, day. This is a common sense solution. Looks learn math, Mike Johnson, learn.
Math, Somali, Cory Booker, iron Man, just bladder control standing. You know, I know he played college football, was very good, so you know, he's a varied shape guy. But everybody's like, how did he do it? But what I'm wondering is how did this one action get so many Democrats to do the right things and start coming up the works.
There are a lot of people who are mat at Corey Booker for any number of things and want to criticize this as performative. But you're going to hear an interview in this episode with Laura Gamboa who talks about how important it is when you're fighting authoritarianism for an opposition party to oppose, and that is what Booker is doing here. He's posing Another important part of it is he broke strom Thurman's record for a philibuster. Now, our philibuster is bad, I mean, is the way that the
Senate works anti democratic? We can argue that all day long, and perhaps it is. But the point here is that what Corey Booker did was he said none of this is normal, and what we need from democratic representatives from senators and congress people, is we really need them to act in a way that makes clear what we all see with our own eyes, which is the richest man in the world taking a chainsaw to the federal government is not normal. And this is really, I think, an
important point. So I think it's good interesting thing that Corey Booker said, which I think is really important to be candid Strom Thurman's record always kind of just really irked me. That would be the longest speech, longest speech on our great Senate floor, was someone trying to stop people like me from being in the Senate. And look, I always think that the worst thing, the biggest mistake we made in twenty sixteen was saying that America was
better than trump Ism. And the reality is we're not right. We are a country that created Jim Crow. We are exactly this. We are divided, and we are capable of some really bad stuff. I think that it's really important that Booker talked about what the original sin of America is. And again, you know Thurman was he set this record philibustering against the Civil Rights Act of nineteen fifty seven. Now there's a new record, and it's by someone who is a black senator from the state of New Jersey.
And I think that is exciting, and I think that.
That is the kind of thing that rallies people and gets some serious about protecting armorms and institutions. So I was glad to see that. Good and good for Corey Booker, and millions of people watched it.
More importantly, Yes, I thought it was really interesting too that a lot of senators put holds on different judges and really started to come up the works like we've been really pressing for on this podcast.
Yeah, good for them.
Joyce Vance is the author of the Substack Civil Discourse and co host of the podcast Sisters in.
Law Welcome to Fast Politics. I think of you as my north star, Joyce Vance.
But I'm your south star because I'm in the Deep South. I mean, can I really be a north star down here?
That's right, good point, You're my southern star.
Just legal Michigan's I want you to sort of outline the top lines here. It seems to me like Trump keeps just like Trump one point zero, losing in the courts. So can you give us a sort of summation of that.
Yeah, So, look, Molly, here's the way that I view it donald Trump is trying to seize power that the Constitution does not allocate to him, power that is specifically forbidden to him, like, for instance, the power of the
purse that belongs to Congress. Every time he does one of these things, whether it's trying to change the Constitution with the stroke of a pen and write birthright citizenship out of the Constitution, or most recently, whether he's trying to tell the states who have the power to set the terms of their own elections, what the rules for
those elections are. Lawyers are going to court, and lawyers are winning in court because Donald Trump is trying to collect power that the founding fathers did not want to have fallen into his hands. They understood that president who was too powerful could become a tyrant. And that's what our three branches of government checks and balances constitutional system. That's the entire premise that it's set up around preventing tyranny.
So this has sort of gotten the ire of one Elon mush and I want you to talk to us about what that looks like. He's sort of attacking the judiciary, hoping to set the you know, he said he would donate to people who were for judicial impeachment. Can you talk to us about how unusual judicial impeachment is and how as a remedy. I really think Republicans are going to have a hard time getting that going.
Yeah, an impossible time, right, because impeachment is not the remedy for a judge's decision that you don't like. As the Chief Justice most recently said, and you know John Robert's issuing of public statement is is rare, only the second time that he's done it, both times directed at Donald Trump. The remedy if you don't like a decision that a strict judge makes is to appeal it. That's why we have courts of appeals and a Supreme Court. We don't impeach judges even if we think they've made
the wrong decision. And look, even if you can get articles of impeachment in the House, you're not gonna get a conviction in the Senate.
Judicial impeachment is super unusual too, Like it hasn't happened since since the eighteen hundreds. I mean, Nick, really not a thing that's gonna work for them in any way, shape or for right.
Well, there actually have been some more modern judicial impeachments, but they've involved, for instance, District Judge Alsey Hastings, who is impeached over alleged criminal conduct. It's extraordinarily rare, so rare that, although I know that there are one or two more, I can't give you even off the top of my head names of people who were involved.
Right.
That one sticks with me. It's one of the more recent ones. I think that there might be one in Louisiana. It just is not something that happens because judges don't buy and large tend to commit crimes.
So let's talk about what it sort of looks like right now. A lot of these dose quote unquote cost cutting measures are getting rejected in the courts. We're seeing they're being forced to reinstate people they fired, they're being forced to sort of undo all of these broadcuts. Can you explain to us how and we're seeing a real conflict between Trump and the judiciary.
The one I'm.
Thinking of the most is this these deportations. How long can Trump World go against the forts before we start really getting into the meat of a constitutional crisis.
Well, look, I mean, we're past talking about whether or not we're in a constitutional crisis. When you have a presidency that's engaging in the sort of behavior that we're seeing, we are already there, right, we have a president who's trying to assume the power of one, possibly two of the other branches of government. And the weird thing about living through a constitutional crisis I've been writing about this a lot lately, is it doesn't really feel all that different. Right.
Nobody's out in the streets tearing up the constitution and so there's no real trigger, which is why we're still asking the question, right, is it a constitutional crisis yet? But let me tell you it is. And what we're increasingly seeing is that it will be up to the courts to fashion a remedy for a lawless president. Courts don't have armies, they can't send folks out to enforce
their orders. Court orders are enforceable because as Americans we accept the power of the judicial branch, and although sometimes people push back a little bit, there is of course an appellate process. Sometimes judges have to issue orders directing parties to engage in better compliance with their orders than they have been. There has never been a moment in our history of this lawlessness where there's been open speculation
that a president might simply ignore the Supreme Court. If that happens, we're in the soup, right.
Right, And that's a real question for sort of what we're seeing.
I mean, I think a lot of Trump World wants to kick things up to the Supreme Court in the hopes that the Supreme Court will somehow grant him everything he wants in life.
Do you think that's realistic?
Well, look, we had the Attorney General saying that last week. You know, she was talking about the cases and losses in lower courts, and she spoke about getting to the Supreme Court in fond terms, almost as though they were a captive of the presidency. You and I both noted that moment following Trump's not State of the Union, but speech to the Joint Houses of Congress in session. We noted that really painful moment at the end where Trump
walks down the line of Supreme Court justices shaking their hands. Thanks, Elena Kagan tells the Chief Justice. Thanks, I won't forget what you've done, you know, I mean, just like this abominable moment that should have never happened, where Trump tried to show the court that they were, in essence a part of his government, not an independent branch. I don't
think that went down super well. I think that we will see I'm long past the point of hoping for nine zero decisions from the Supreme Court, but I think we will see seven to two decisions defining the power that a president can exercise and the power that a president cannot exercise.
Speaking of that, they're setting up a bunch of stuff to go to the Supreme Court. We saw I think a really major moment when the Supreme Court rejected Sullivan Vinior Times. Do you think that was a major moment that they decided not to take it on the docket. I feel like it was. And can you talk about why that's important?
You bet. I'm one hundred percent in agreement with you. You know, the Supreme Court rejected a case that had been widely viewed as an opportunity for them to overturn the precedent in New York Times versus Sullivan, an Alabama case near and dear to my heart because I started the practice of law doing a lot of defamation work, and what Times versus Sullivan does. I think we all
know this at this point right. It imposes a very high burden on someone who wants to sue for death if they're a public figure, in order to recover, they have to prove that they were defamed by someone who showed actual malice, reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of the statements that they were making. And there's been a lot of suggestion that that standard is too difficult and public figures can't recover, and so we need to
toss New York Times versus Sullivan out the window. Clarence Thomas has adopted that approach in a concurrence in one case, and there's been some sense that Justice Gorsich might be on board too. He also had made a speech, I think where he had sort of made those kind of comments. But the full Court did not take this case. It takes four votes for the Supreme Court to hear a case oncert Those four votes weren't there. This is why
it matters Hungary. One of the first things that Orbond did in Hungary was he made it easier to sue the press for comments that they made about him, in an effort to shut them down, in an effort to make them afraid to say it, to make even modern commentary out of fear that they would have these incredibly large, damaging judicial judgments imposed against them. And you know this
was no doubt a similar move. I mean, the free press, in many ways is what stands between you and me and Tyranny Molly, and so protecting the press at all costs is imperative. Apparently the Supreme Court, or at least enough justices, weren't interested in helping Donald Trump erode that either.
Yeah, and you know, I want to add an interesting thing about this is that the Sullivan New York Times case, this case that was brought up, was actually brought up by one of Trump's mega donners, Steve when Right.
So, yeah, this challenge that Wynn brought trying to say that he could not be sued, it very much had the look of this is what litigants do. The lawyers among your listeners will know this. When there's precedent that the lawyers don't like, or that really not the lawyers but parties that they represent don't like, there will be an effort to seed test cases across the country to try to get rulings that can then be appealed to the Supreme Court. And lawyers like to say bad facts
make bad law. Good facts make good law. So you're very careful about the facts in the case that you're trying to get up to the Supreme Court. You want good facts so that you can make good law, or at least good law for your client. And so this case very much had the flavor of something that was going to be used to argue that the standard in Times versus Sullivan was far too high, that parties couldn't meet it, and so it needed to be reversed, and
of course that ploy failed. I don't think we have to look much further than the Egene Carroll case to see why this matters, right, I mean, Trump would have liked to win in that lawsuit, and he did not.
Yeah, I have to tell you, I always like, I find you to be so soothing and also just a wonderful person and also such a smart layer. But it sounds like I'm telling you we're done, but we're not done. But I just needed to tell you that right.
Now before you hit me. Yeah.
Now, Well I need to tell you that because whenever I'm talking to you, I feel a little better. And I think it's so important right now with all of us, you know, the people in this country who care about democracy. We are very stressed out, and for good reason. And when you talk about Hungary, I would love you to talk about the ways in which it feels like everything matters in order to not slide into autocracy.
But I want you to.
Talk about a little bit about how we really there are good things happening despite all of the sort of carnage that this administration is creating.
Yeah, well, you know, I mean, there are good things happening, and it's at the risk of being a little bit silly. I have this breakfast club that meets every Wednesday morning. It's met just forever, for decades. It's a small group of women, different backgrounds, doctors, lawyers, business people, educators, retired people, all different political stripes, just interested in getting together and learning and spending time with women who are interested in
learning more about the world around them. I guess if we had a theme, it would be that. And I infrequently go these days because my Wednesday mornings are sort of bad. But I was able to go last week, and I was reminded that that's what democracy looks like, right, small groups of Americans getting together. And I was fascinated that this group that's so diverse, is completely united around the notion that democracy has to survive. And so I think this is what we all need to do. We
need to hug the people around us. We need to spend some time talking about what matters. We don't live in an era where democracy gets fought for on battlefield in Europe. We live in this moment where we're fighting for democracy in our living rooms, in the stands at football games, across the counter at the grocery store. And it's a little bit hard to get used to that and to think that you're not being dramatic when you
say things like that. But the reality is that the fight for democracy is happening at home, and it's happening right now.
Yeah.
And I think really great example is this race for Supreme Court in It was the most expensive judicial race ever, right this Wisconsin Supreme Court race. I'm wondering if you so this is something that is sort of a factor of modern life, is that we have now and some states have it in some states don't. We have these
sort of partisan judiciary elections. So I'm wondering if you can sort of speak to us about sort of how this came to be and what it means to have partisan judicial elections, because we also don't have partisan judicial elections in some places.
We have judges who are appointed.
So I'm hoping this was one hundred million dollar race for this seat, and I'm hoping you could sort of talk about it.
Yes, So look, this isn't an eternal problem. How do we pick our judges?
Right?
We expect our judges to be objective. We want them to be above party politics and personal grievances. How do we get them there? And there two primary ways. One is that they get appointed by somebody. That's the federal system. The other is that they get elected by the people. That's what a number of states have. And you know,
there are problems both ways. Right to get appointed to be a federal judge, depending on the administration, you have to be more or less in line with what they think their long term policy goals are to get a seat. So there's that to get elected, and particularly states are really different about how they do this. In some states, mine is one of them. Judges just run for re
election every six years. In other states, once you're in there's this sort of luke thumbs up, thumbs down vote where you only get booted out of office if the people think that you've really screwed something up, and so
elections to have their problems. You know, sometimes you feel like, especially now that we live in this era where political money can be injected into races for judges, you sort of feel like the judges should take the bench with patches on their robes displaying their loyalty right to the
big corporate donors that put them there. I think what you gotta do is you've got to hope that at some level you are selecting people of honor and integrity who understand the mission, and regardless of how they get on the bench, they will fulfill their duty to make decisions in their cases based on the facts and the law. That happens in a surprising number of cases every day, all across the country. But it's not a perfect system.
I don't think we should pretend it is. It's the best way we've got to pick judges.
We have definitely seen that happen, And a great example I feel like is that this Trump administration has lost with judges from five different administrations, right Republican judges, Democratic judges, Bush judges, Obama judges. Everyone has said that a lot of this stuff Trump has tried to do as illegal. I have one last question for you, which is about Trump did this executive order which is meant to mass with elections socrats are suing him.
Talk to me about sort.
Of what this means, how this works, and also ourn't executive orders sort of toothless ultimately.
But talk about it.
Executive orders are powerful to the extent that they're ordering people in the executive branch to do something. And so when you write an executive order, I think Trump is particularly good at this. You tool it so that you're directing people that you have control over to do something. Executive orders don't have any force beyond maybe being a bully pulpit if you're, for instance, directing the states to
do something. And so, to cut to the chase Molly, what Trump does in this executive order on voting is he tells states and by the way, if you don't do my bidding, no more federal funding for your elections. And that will be catastrophic in some places. You know, we don't have one national election. We don't even have fifty state elections. We have a series of elections being held across the country. Thousands of them local elections all across the country, and some of the counties that are
running elections are largely dependent. The federal funding that they get is essential, particularly if they're going to take advantage of modern technology and keep it secure. So that's what Trump thinks he has the force to do. There are a couple of things going on in this executive order. One of course, is this demand that no one can register to vote unless they can prove their citizenship. And that's really sort of crazy what happens, And this is
the long term theme. Right Republicans raise a lot of noise and dust claiming that there's voter fraud infecting our elections, and the reality is that that's not true. People who have looked at this and studied this, even Republican states that have tried to find evidence of people who aren't citizens voting in our elections come up largely empty handed. There's no evidence that voter fraud is impacting the outcome
of elections. And the problem is that they then use those baseless claims of voter fraud to engage in voter suppression, to keep people who are entitled to vote from voting. That's what's happening here because if you don't have a passport, it can be really hard to prove that you're a citizen. And you know who has passports. It's people like you and me. It's people who are upper middle class people who are doing okay. And a move like this disenfranchises
people who are older. A lot of elderly people, for instance, may have been born at home and don't have easy access to birth certificates, or they've lost the papers that they need in moves. It hurts black people in the South, and these voter suppression measures are always directed at keeping black voters from voting because Republicans fear that they will vote democratic. This is just more of that same and
it's just really offensive to democracy. And I think something that we don't do because we've lived with eight years of outrage and we no longer have the capacity really to get super outraged about any one individual of this EO that is an effort to suppress the vote is outrageous. It's the dying gasp of a lame duck president who wants to try to have a legacy, and that legacy is taking away democracy from Americans.
Thank you, Joyce Fance.
Thanks for having me, Molly. It's always good to be with you.
Laura Damboa, it's a professor at the University of Notre Dame.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Laura, thank you so much for the invite.
Mollie.
I want you to talk about this article you wrote in Foreign Affairs called how to Save a Democracy, But first I want you to tell us a little bit about your field of study so that we can understand exactly why you are the person to make this case.
I study democratic backslighting. I've been studying it for more than ten years. I particularly focus on what all positions can do to stop what I call potential autocrats. These are presidents or executive that are willing to undermine democratic institutions in order to get what they want, and so what I work on is what oppositions can do to
stop them. I wrote a book that was published in twenty twenty two called Resisting Backsliding Opposition Strategies against the Erosion of Democracy, in which I discussed how the strategies used by the opposition in Venezuela against Douguchavis failed, while the opposition the strategy is used by the opposition in Colombia against al Var u Riwe succeeded in stopping alvar Drive from undermining democracy, pretty much stopping him from staying in power after his second term.
So you really know what you're talking about.
You have an example here, you've studied where where stopping autocracy has worked and where it hasn't worked.
So first explain.
To us why Donald Trump is an aspiring autocraft.
What are the symptoms?
So there are plenty symptoms. Autocrats or potential autocrats often come to power with an anti systemic discourse that attacks democratic institutions. It attacks Congress, it attacks the courts, it attacks opponents. It just takes away legitimacy from opponents. It supports or endorses violence against those that disagree with him.
That is kind of discoursively. But more importantly, I think that because Donald trump property was present for four years, we had a pretty good idea of how authoritarian he could be. He pretty much broke the cardinal rule of the Marcusies, which is there is an election and you respect the result.
And he did it. There was an.
Election, he lost that election, and then he mobilized a group of people to attack the capital, to change the outcome, to to fail to certify the election, and he has refused to acknowledge the result of those elections ever since now as present, he has behaved. What we're seeing in the you as the closest example that I've seen is Guatemala.
What you have is an elite coalition that seeks to undermine the state, pretty much carve away in this case of federal bureaucracy, in order to promote corruption and impunity. That's what we have seen in the past two months now. The problem with that is that when you do that, then, so first of all, is the way it has been done is done by violating or defying or ignoring the law.
It has been done.
In the mesifiic scores that attacks the courts, and very importantly, it has also been done with a discourse that pretty much claims that only those who support him are entitled to the rights that are afforded to all of us by the Constitution.
And we're seeing that with the disappearing grad students. We're saying that with the fight with the sixty minutes in review, right, the idea that if you're not towing the party line, you're lying or you're doing something illegal. So the first part of this story of this idea of pushback against autocracy. It begins with don't throw away your shot. So explain to us what that means. And I think even more important, I think I just want to read one line because
I think it's so critical. The erosion of democracy happens gradually. The opposition has ample opportunities to fight back.
Yes, so before say the early two thousands, most democracies died via coups, right, And so the logic of a coup is you have usually a member of the armed forces, sometimes this a civilian leveraging weapons, and the armed forces takes over the presidential palace. And you know, immediately afterwards jail's opponents or persecutes them. Right, this happens in a
matter of two or three days. So because coups happen like in one shot, the position really has no time to fight back, right Like, within three days, Congress is closed, the courts are closed, the military has controlled, the opposition is all in the embassies. That's kind of what we
used to see in the past. But what we see today is a different form of democratic breakdown, is a slow form of democratic erosion that yes, eventually ends with the regime transforming into authoritarian into some form of authoritarian regime. But it happens over time, it happens very slowly. So if you think about I'm going to give you two examples. If you think about Venezuela, Uga, Chavis comes to power
in nineteen ninety nine. Even by two thousand, after he had changed the constitution, the position had half of the seats in the legislature, had a significant influence over courts at significant influence over the military forces, and the main
source of resources in Venezuela, which was the oil company. Likewise, if you think about the United States, yes, Donald Trump is the president, but Democrats have seats in Congress, they controlled governorships, they control majorships, they have seats in legislative assemblies, they have seats in council members. They have economic resources, they have media outlets. There's a lot of resources they can leverage to protect democracy. It is important to use
those resources and to use them well. And what I have found in my research is that oppositions who use the resources and use them well are more likely to fit autocrats than those that don't. Now, Democrats, like many other, many many other oppositions in countries in processes of autoqualization are facing what we call regim uncertainty, so they are unsure of how serious is the threat. Right, So what you have is some people saying, you know what, we should just duck and wait and you know in the
midterms this is all going to change. And then there's another group that is like a little bit more alarmed and.
Be like, no, we need to react.
I think both the streams are really bad. Right on the one hand, docking and changing and docking and waiting my meaning that you don't get a chance to protect democracy at this point in time.
We don't know if the.
Midterm elections are going to be free and fair, right, so there might not be midterm elections to win, or there might not be the ability to win midterm elections. But the only one the extremists, which is kind of what we sow early in Venezuela, is not necessarily good either.
This idea that you have to go the extra institutional route, stop the present at all costs, violating the constitution, violating the rules is also about idea, because what ends up happening is you give the present sort of the legitimacy he needs, the cover he needs to further entrench autocracy. Now there is a way to do this that is kind of in the middle, which is being strategic, Yes, being worried of being concerned by being strategic about the
resources you have, protect them and expand them. So use them biomis, use them, but also use them in a way that protects them without risking them.
Give me some ways to do that.
So there are various ways to do that. One way is to obstruct logization from Congress. In Columbia, they were incredibly successful in obstructing legization. U S low it down, you include amendments, you create procedure irregularities another way, and this has happening places in which sort of autocorization is a little bit further down the road, such as Hungary, Coland you can use these spaces as mechanisms to visivilize
what is happening. So say, for example, in the speech Donald trumk Gate to both the Joint Session of Congress, it was a mistake to not coordinate and do something together right, So Democrats could have missed the speech altogether, and if they all miss it, it's a huge visible signal of rejection. Or they could have disrupted the speech
one by one. Instead of having just one representative doing it, you could have added all of them doing it one by one, which would have been highly, highly disruptive and incredibly hard to stop. Or you could have leveraged the space to something else. I think what you cannot do is missed the opportunity to use those spaces.
Right, a really good point, And I think about what Corey Booker has done last night, which is he feilibuster for fifteen hours. What you're saying, it seems to me is that Democrats need to do absolutely everything they can to transmit that this is not normal.
Yes, and to slow down the agenda. They have their resources to do it. They might not succeed right because they're not the majority, but that doesn't mean they cannot delay it, or that they cannot leverage those spaces to send important messages to Americans, to their partisan members and to other still society organizations. At the end of the day, what we're seeing is a lot of responses, but they
don't seem very coordinated. So you have a few members of the party, members of Congress doing their own thing, you have seal society organizations doing their own thing. And I think Democrats have the ability to use these resources to somehow create a more ordinated response.
Right exactly, Okay, I want to keep going with this idea. Right, So they need a coordinative response. They need to transmit that this is not normal now, they need to use what they've got.
What does that mean? Go for that?
I think about it in broader terms. Right, So, in Congress, for example, the last sort of critical juncture would have been the budget. They had the ability to slow down, stop, or leverage the negotiation over the continuing Resolution in order to send a message that this is not okay. I can see sort of the strategic calculations of not having a shutdown. I mean, there are arguments an argument for that,
but they never made the argument. They did not leverage that unique opportunity they had to create a space to send a strong message to rally the troops to say this is not okay. Instead, they came out and said, well, you know what, a shutdown would be worse. And I think that that's a mistake.
Right now.
The second thing that I think could have happened is outside Congress. Really there is what we call a collective action problem. That is, it is really hard for individuals, So for instance, law firms or universities to protect themselves. So there is no gear agreement of how to fight together, right, and so universities or law firms or individuals being targeted by the government are scared, and so they're doing their
very best to protect themselves individually. But what we have seen so far is that nobody is protected against a leader with authority and tendencies. So ultimately what needs to happen is some kind of coordination amongst these very powerful institutions and these very powerful elites to fight back.
Right, you want something like a group to pay for legal fees or security or you know, there are a couple of saying Republicans in the Senate if you wanted them to stand up to trumpsm you would need to give them the infrastructure to do it.
Is that, right?
Exactly part of what needs to happen. I mean, I think sort of demonstrations and civil society out in the streets. Kinds of repertoires are incredibly useful, right, But as they stand right now, they're not necessarily long term, they're unsustainable
over time. To have the kind of repertoires that we need, we need to provide resources to social movements, right, resources to organize, resources to protect their people, resources to create, to think creatively about different strategies, right, And so I think that's that's one of the things that needs to happen, right, Like, I think we need to figure out what is the
long term organizational strategy outside of the regular institutions. Now, inside the institutions, I think you can leverage like politicians have a huge megaphone because they are occupying these seats. They have news outlets that interview them, and so they can leverage that megaphone to kind of coordinate or somehow organize these resources. I'm not sure if that's clear, but I'm happy to talk to say it again if needs be.
Yeah, No, that's very clear.
I want you to explain to us they kind of need institutional backing, they need some protection, right, Yes, and we can go to protect your own, which is one of your tenants here.
Yes, So I think you need better organized movements because these kinds of movements help protect their own. Right Now, Again, individual law firms or individual universities or students or the federal workers that are suing the government are kind of alone, and there's a lot of costs associated with fighting an autocrat.
So at the individual level, federal workers at the very least are losing wages, They're having to pay legal fees, they may be targeted by sort of supporters of the present online right, they might need somebody to take care of their kids, and then you have sort of as you go up, you have bigger problems.
Right.
So again, universities, their funds are being cut off, law firms their clients are being threatened. I think that if you create a broader organization, an actual organization, not the very good and very important spontaneous movement protests that we have seen, but an actual movement, that movement should think about how to.
Protect like the Tesla takeover. Right.
The Tesla take over I think is creative, I think is good. I think it's important, but I don't know how sustainable over time it is, especially if the government decides to repress these people.
Right, which is what it looks like they're trying to do exactly.
And so what needs to happen is a more structured organization that can help protect people who are engaging in this fight against the government, that can help protect or help survive the institutions that engage the fighter against the government. And I think that can only happen in in better organized movements like Outport in Serbia, which is the example
I give in the article. Right, what they say about is Outpor was a student movement, right, and they knew very well that the government was going to repress their activists, and so they created an in structure that protected the organization. But they also devoted time and resources to have lawyers at hand, to have people that would mobilize, to make sure that nobody was disappeared, that everybody knew which jail was these activists being taken to, you know, like, just
ready to react because this is gonna happen. This is not a like in a democratic regime, you can assume that somebody who's gonna go to jail, they're going to follow the new process. But that is not what we're seeing here.
No, certainly not tell me the last thing is get out in the streets. Can you explain to us what that looks like?
In regimes where elections are not fair, sometimes just participating in a elections is not enough because the regime will not be likely to accept the electoral outcome. We saw that in Guatemala recently. And we have seen it in Venezuela, we have seen it in Eastern Europe, we have seen it across the world. So when elections are not free or fair and it is unclear whether the government is going to accept the result elections or participating in elections
is not enough. It's important, it's essential because it vocalizes the attention, but is not enough. In order to actually succeed in these elections, you have to have a mobilization strategy. And again, this comes with organization. This comes with training, This comes with networks, This comes with information that can be provided so that you can mobilize people immediately after the results if the incumbent refuses to acknowledge the elections
and decides to stay in power. Right, that's what happened in Guatemala lately in twenty twenty three. The government refused to accept the results, was trying to steal the ballot. And if it wasn't for a very will organize indigenous and peasant movement that had already strategies in place to protest, non violent, to mobilize, to reach the places they needed to reach, probably they would have gotten away with it.
Laura, this is haunting, but also incredibly important.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you so much, Molly, thank you for having me.
No more fuck Jesse Cannon, Mali Jong past. Now let's let's hearken back to an era before Trump parkin.
I feel like this is my influence on you. Yes, heark Yes, yes, we get Harold.
Yes, So we're going back before the archbed dominated politics had ruled over the land from his castle and we were very mad as Democrats when Mitt Romney said that corporations are people, my friend.
Yes, remember Mitt Romney.
But now Trump has pardoned a corporation, which makes me think they may be people.
They're definitely people and good for mid Romney. Remember when we thought Mitt Romney was the worst we could do. Oh, hilarious, hilarious. Yeah, he is not the worst we could do. You know, Mitt Romney was not the worst.
We could do. He actually was the best we could do. So here we go.
Trump has pardoned I think it's worth remembering that they have really like pardoned every criminal group. There have been, you know, people where they've said they've pardoned the people who the stuff where they were involved on the right wing side against the son of Joe Biden, Biden. There's just a lot of like, crimes aren't really crimes if you're our friends. So this was this idea that corporations that have created legal fictions designed to maximize shareholder wealth
that that's no longer a crime. None of us should be surprised by this. This crew is not good.
Yeah, not good. Not good. That's it for.
This episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Thanks for listening.