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Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
What John Adams and his family can teach America today, according to this presidential historian
In late March, Kurt Graham gave the Howard R. Driggs Memorial Lecture at Southern Utah University, telling students about his own personal Mount Rushmore, which would feature presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Harry S. Truman and George W. Bush. 'I didn't pick these presidents because I think they're the best presidents we've ever had,' Graham said, adding, 'Although you can make a case for some of them, they're certainly not the worst presidents we ever had.' He picked them, Graham likes to joke, 'by sheer accident of my career.' He has, at one time or another, been the director of each man's presidential library, a vocation he did not envision when he was studying English as an undergrad at Brigham Young University. It has been an unexpected journey for the Wyoming native who's crisscrossed the country multiple times for work in service to history, and the Founding Fathers' ideals. After directing the Church History Museum of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, and then the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, Graham spent nearly a decade in charge of Harry Truman's library in Kansas City, Missouri. He later went on to serve as the interim director of the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas, Texas, and then, last year, relocated to New England after becoming the founding president of the Adams Presidential Center in Quincy, Massachusetts. It's a landmark role, stewarding the memory of one America's most influential Founding Fathers, and also that of Adams' son, the sixth president of the United States. The timing could not be better, either, as the work coincides with preparations for the United States' 250th anniversary next year. 'There is nothing like the American founding. The revolution is unlike any other event in the history of the world, because it didn't just change the lines on a map, it changed the whole society. … All of a sudden, 'all men are created equal.' That's insane. That is absurd,' Graham told me. 'If that's not exceptional, what is it?' Boston traffic is notoriously bad, and Graham twice offered to meet outside of Quincy, the town where John Adams wrote the Massachusetts Constitution and where he lived with his wife, Abigail, in a house they named 'Peace field.' When I declined, he gave me advice on parking in the dense town center to make the process a little easier. We met for lunch at a Japanese restaurant a block away from the Hancock Adams Common, a promenade linking the town's historical sites and lined with statues of the Founding Fathers. He is 6 feet, 3 inches tall, and at 58, exudes the presence of an executive or statesman with a distinguished salt-and-pepper gray spreading around his temples. A youthful smile is quick to appear and is quite disarming. But it's his professorial characteristics and his passion for presidential history that are the lasting impressions. Graham grew up in Cowley, Wyoming, a town with fewer than 900 residents, close to the Montana border. His father was in the Navy, and so the family moved around, but they called Wyoming home. While neither of Graham's parents went to college, they were both smart and made sure their two boys would get a quality education. 'A monarch can rule over a corrupt people, but a republic can't. You can't have a corrupt citizenry and have a virtuous republic.' Kurt Graham A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Graham went to Brigham Young University, where after his undergraduate degree, he stayed to do graduate work in American studies. Afterward, he earned a Ph.D. at Brown University, studying under one of the greatest scholars of American history, Gordon Wood. Wood's focus is on the founders and the Revolutionary War period. He also happens to be the historian referenced in the film 'Good Will Hunting' when the character Matt Damon plays belittles a smug Harvard student in a Cambridge bar, saying, 'You're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talking about ... the pre-Revolutionary utopia.' One of the many things Wood is known for is illuminating James Madison's notion of the 'disinterested man.' In an essay in 'Toward a More Perfect Union: Six Essays on the Constitution,' Wood parsed out the debate between the Federalists, who wanted a larger federal government, and the Anti-Federalists, who were opposed. Madison, a Federalist, struggled with what he took to be petty priorities of the Virginia Legislature, believing that the people needed to elect 'disinterested' men to help govern toward the higher ideals of a democratic government. '(The founders) called it 'disinterestedness' ... not someone who was uninterested, it was someone who is impartial,' Graham said. 'A republican citizen, a leader, is someone who can rise above the fray and make a decision for the public good even if it's against your own self-interest … it's for the good of the whole society.' Graham said that the founders banked on that sense of civic decency and virtue in the way they designed the government. 'A monarch can rule over a corrupt people, but a republic can't,' he said. 'You can't have a corrupt citizenry and have a virtuous republic.' Which is part of the reason why he believes that the Adams Presidential Center is such a timely effort. 'No matter what your persuasion is, no matter what you're thinking, nor whatever candidate you wish you could vote for, the thoughtful, careful, informed approach that the founders took is what's missing,' he said. 'The more we can remind ourselves that we are and want to be like the Adams, the Washingtons, the Jeffersons and Madisons of the world, that is important.' The Adamses, Graham said, are the only family within the founding generation whose legacy was not tainted by slavery. John and Abigail Adams fully believed that 'all men are created equal,' and John Quincy was so dedicated to abolitionism that he died arguing against slavery on the floor of Congress. 'We're really trying to focus on those values and the motives that the Adams had, because their sense of patriotism, duty and morality led them to public service,' Graham said. It's a rare opportunity for Graham as the center is being built from the ground up and is the first honoring the Adams family and, as such, is something of a blank canvas. Graham is ushering in a new point of access for scholars and history buffs, and — perhaps most importantly — educators and students of all ages. 'Anyone who loves their country is a patriot. Believe it or not, people who think differently than you, who vote differently than you, who have completely different ideas about the way we should conduct our public policy — they're patriots." Kurt Graham The center will remind everyday folks of the Adams family's role in defining the thing that Graham thinks actually makes America exceptional: taking the radical idea of republicanism, which declared that men could govern themselves, and creating out of it an original and functional form of government. 'We've always been proud of the fact that in America we show that we are capable of governing ourselves,' Graham said. 'Will that always be true? I don't think we can take that for granted, and I think that Adams' warnings are incredibly timely.' 'Remember Democracy never lasts long,' wrote John Adams in 1814. 'It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself.' The primary focus of the center, which does not yet have a location, is to both develop and share educational programming — everything from teacher training and youth leadership seminars to school-bound curriculum materials and lecture series. Events have already begun, with some in Massachusetts and more currently being organized. The center will also be the home of the Educating for American Democracy initiative, a consortium dedicated to strengthening and funding civics education. 'We wanted to use (the Adams family's) example of leadership, sacrifice, public service, and citizenship to inspire the next generation,' said retired Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Graham's boss, as the chairman of the Adams Presidential Center board of directors. 'For young people, we really want to help them on their journey toward critical thinking, citizenship and finding a way to serve something greater than themselves, whether it's in public service or just community service.' Graham's recent lecture in Cedar City was a meditation on the ideals of character, patriotism and public service. He highlighted the character of each man on his personal Rushmore: Bush, ever the problem solver, whose legacy is wrapped up in 9/11 even though his other accomplishments include an international program combatting AIDS; Truman's decisiveness toward Israel, ending a war by any means necessary and desegregating the military; John Quincy Adams and his lifelong diplomacy toward equality and sovereignty (he was the primary author of the Monroe Doctrine); and John Adams' fight for freedom, and the first peaceful transition of power. Graham defines patriotism in sharp contrast to nationalism. 'Patriotism, by its very definition, is diverse, it's inclusive, nobody has a lock on it. Anyone who loves their country is a patriot,' he said. 'Believe it or not, people who think differently than you, who vote differently than you, who have completely different ideas about the way we should conduct our public policy — they're patriots.' 'If there's a formula here, it's that patriotism plus character equals public service,' Graham said. That notion of public service and what it takes is important to Dunford, too. The general believes that the Adams Presidential Center can help Americans better understand their role as a citizen. 'Having finished 42 years of active duty in public service, my own view is that from time to time we become a bit complacent about our democracy, we take what we have for granted and we spend a lot of time focusing on the problems of the day,' Dunford said. 'Sometimes we don't look back and reflect on the journey that we're on. We are in pursuit of a more perfect union.' Graham published his Ph.D. thesis on the first federal judiciary as his first book, 'To Bring Law Home.' (He's currently writing another one, about the 'Jefferson Bible,' a version of the Bible in which Jefferson removed all of the miracles that had been recorded in scripture.) When he took his first museum-related job at the Buffalo Bill Center, leaving a teaching position at California State University, San Bernardino, it was a risk to leave academia and return to his home state, but he's never regretted the decision, and has had the support of his wife and five children, who range in age from 12 to 30. This current post feels something like a homecoming. 'Certainly, I identify readily and fully as a Westerner,' he said. But he also feels deeply connected to New England — especially Quincy, Massachusetts, which he refers to as the 'intellectual epicenter of the American Revolution.' (He pronounces Quincy properly, like a local — kwin-ZEE, not kwin-see.) Since the 2024 election, Graham has avoided broadcast news. Partisanship and polarization make him tense. It's not that he doesn't love his country or have a stake in national issues — he is passionate about local matters and local news. It's just that he thinks there are deeper subjects to consider than what is trending. 'I feel like my own health and my own attitude about the world is better when I think about how things were controversial and difficult before,' said Graham. 'But, I don't know, I find living in the 1790s kind of refreshing. 'They had knock-down, drag-outs, but they were substantive in how they sought to solve those problems,' Graham said. 'I'm not sure we are.' Adams and Jefferson, who debated and disagreed with one another, not only stayed friends, but came to their debates from a place of thoughtfulness, he noted. They were in conversation with each other, but also in conversation with the likes of 'Cicero, Rousseau, Aristotle, Locke and Hume.' Their perspectives, so dedicated to education, bred understanding, decency and a common concern that Graham thinks is supremely important for successful democracies. 'There was this big conversation, and big questions with big consequences being asked, and they wanted to engage in that.' As does Graham. The Adams Center is envisioned as an outlet that will help foster history and civics education, and rekindle these bigger conversations about virtue, liberty, knowledge and duty bringing them back to the forefront of American minds. A people lucky and hard-working enough to self-govern — again, what makes America exceptional. The American founding, Graham reiterates, is 'unique, it's sui generis, they created something out of nothing — if you will, something new under the sun. And yet, we just take that for granted.' He's hoping his new mission will change that. Graham did not set out to do this line of work — he says he's 'quit a lot of good jobs to get here' — but he does know one way he can participate in the centuries-old notion of civic duty. 'I've just come to the personal conclusion,' he said, 'that my contribution to my country is to build the Adams Presidential Center.'
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Top pollster Mark Mellman warns DNC drama is quickly becoming the Democrats' brand
Six months after their defeat by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, the Democratic Party and its national leadership are still mostly confused, shellshocked and lack a coherent strategy or direction. Donald Trump's first 100 days in power have been what he promised. Acting as the country's first elected autocrat and aspiring dictator, Trump and his administration have shattered basic norms about democracy, the rule of law, civil rights, the Constitution and the basic idea that the president should be a steward for and protector of the nation. Trump imagines himself, like a king or emperor, as the literal embodiment of the State. This is antithetical to America's centuries-long experiment in democracy and the principles of the Founding. In a recent interview with MSNBC, historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat issued the following warning about America's collapse into Trumpism and neofascism: 'Honestly, the speed at which this is happening and the kind of concentrated push to do this, it doesn't have any parallel in situations where leaders came to power through elections….If you look at the early Putin or the early Orban or Erdogan, they didn't move at this speed. This resembles more after there's been a coup.' Ultimately, Donald Trump's return to power was not preordained. It was a choice. Tens of millions of Americans elected Donald Trump for a second time. They did so with full knowledge of the wreckage Trump left in his wake after his first term in office and what he would do if put back in power. In so many ways, the American people unleashed this disaster upon themselves. The Democratic Party spent over $1 billion to lose the 2024 election, among the most important in American history. By almost every significant measure, Trump should have been a weak candidate and easily defeated. Instead, Trump and his forces consistently outmaneuvered and outsmarted the Democrats. The party failed when the country needed it the most. 'I was in charge and he won," former President Joe Biden said during an in-person interview on "The View" last Thursday. "I take responsibility.' But Biden still believes that he would have won the 2024 election and that Trump's victory 'wasn't a slam dunk.' So where do the Democrats go from here? I recently spoke with Mark Mellman, one of the leading pollsters and political consultants in the United States. Mellman is the president of The Mellman Group, a consultancy that has helped elect 30 U.S. senators, 12 governors and dozens of House members. He has also served as a pollster to Senate Democratic leaders for more than 30 years. Mellman has been a consultant to CBS News for over two decades and a presidential debate analyst for PBS and The Wall Street Journal. In this wide-ranging conversation, Mellman shares his insights about why the Democrats failed so spectacularly in the 2024 election, how the party should respond as Trump tightens his grip on power and why Trump's popularity and MAGA base of support may be much weaker than a superficial reading of the polls suggests. Mellman also shares his thoughts about the Democratic Party's weak brand and messaging, how it can be improved, and if the Democrats should follow James Carville's advice to be passive and let Trump self-destruct. How are you feeling? How are you making sense of Trump's return to power and what he has unleashed? I'm feeling a combination of depression, anger and motivation. Obviously, it's depressing to see the United States lurch towards authoritarianism. I never thought I'd see such a thing. But here it is, plain as day and I'm angry about it. However, as depressing as it is to see Trump and his minions try to destroy our democracy and our economy, at the same time, it is very motivating. It impels me to get out there and do what I can to prevent the United States from sliding even farther into authoritarianism and also to deal with the problems that made such a dire situation possible. I spend most of my time now trying to fight these battles. I am also helping my clients and others to do the same. So, that's the positive side, that's the motivation, that's the kick in the pants to move things forward. The depression hits when I look at the news each day and see what new terrible things the Trump administration has done. America's democracy is collapsing in real time. As political scientists, historians, and other experts have been warning, very loudly, the United States has succumbed to authoritarianism. The form and permanence of it are yet to be determined. Was the American system always so weak and rotted from within that it would be brought down in less than 100 days by Trump and his forces? First of all, the institutions are really important. But one of the things that we seem to have forgotten is that the people that we place in our political and social institutions are also very important, and their willingness to abide by the norms and mores of a democratic society is absolutely critical to the proper functioning of that democratic society. We have a president who does not respect those mores, who doesn't respect the guardrails, and, in fact, who sees himself as being some kind of authoritarian leader or king. The American political system was not built for someone like Donald Trump, given his many apparent intellectual, psychological and moral impairments. The system was built for people who respect it. We've had good presidents and we've had bad presidents. We've had good senators and bad senators; good members of Congress and bad members of Congress. But almost all of these leaders have respected the institutions and the norms of democratic governance. Donald Trump's utter disregard for democracy renders him a unique figure in American history. I was no fan of Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon. But for all of their testing of the norms and institutions, neither of them would have done the things that Donald Trump has (repeatedly) done. Today's Republican Party and "conservative" movement are now fully Trumpified. I wrote a column for The Hill recently called 'The Strange Suicide of American Conservatism.' American conservatism was, for a long time, Burkean in nature. Conservatives opposed major social or political changes. They wanted to keep the status quo; to keep what was before. In general, conservatives wanted to safeguard what they viewed as the tried-and-true ways of the past. Donald Trump is not a conservative. He is a radical revolutionary. The Republican Party helped him, allowed him and enabled him to overthrow and destroy American conservatism. I'm not a conservative. I've never been a conservative. But we desperately need a real conservative party in this country. We don't need a radical, right-wing, revolutionary, authoritarian party. That's what today's Republican Party has become by following Donald Trump. Reagan and Nixon were not my favorites, that is for sure. But both of those men were conservatives. Yes, they stretched the limits of the law for their own ends, but they did not seek to overthrow America's democratic system. That is what makes Trump unique. The American mainstream news media as an institution (and especially the centrists) and the responsible political class are desperately holding on to a model of American politics and society that mostly consists of convenient and self-serving fantasies and myths about American politics and the American public. What are some of the big myths that you see as having brought America to the Age of Trump and this democracy crisis? We have a president in the form of Donald Trump who is dedicated to overthrowing the American system of government. We have never had that before in this country. Trump and his MAGA movement are shattering all of the myths — and norms — about American democracy, government, and society that have been defining features of the country for nearly 250 years. It starts with that. Period. But you point to some false folk theories of democracy. For example, some would like to believe that voters consider all the issue positions put forward by candidates, weigh the importance of each, and make a rational calculation about which candidate best represents their positions and then vote accordingly. Such notions give rise to talk about 'mandates,' but they don't in any way describe how people actually make voting decisions. The median voter theory as developed by Hoteling and others has also informed a lot of thinking about politics. Oversimplifying, it suggests that voters array themselves along a single ideological spectrum from very liberal to very conservative. While some states and districts are a bit more to the right and others a bit more to the left, the theory argues that most voters, most of the time, cluster toward the middle and elections move candidates to the center, where the votes are. While this may have been true once-upon-a-time, today, gerrymandering and people's choices about where to live (Democrats in denser cities, Republicans in more sparsely populated areas) means fewer states and districts are truly competitive between the parties. I'm old enough to remember when we had four Democratic senators from the Dakotas — I'm proud some were my clients — but that's impossible to imagine today. The result is that Republican members of Congress tend to be more worried about a primary challenge from the far right than about a Democratic challenger from the center, while Democrats tend to worry more about challenges from the far left. Candidates are not, pushed to the center, rather, they are pulled to the extremes. Trump has been president for over 130 days. What is the chorus of public opinion telling us now? As a whole, the American people are very clear about their feelings toward Donald Trump and his administration. They don't like the way Trump is performing in office. They don't like Trump's policies, and they want him to change. Trump's approval rating is net negative. Moreover, Trump's approval rating is more negative at this point in his term than that of any president in the history of polling. It's not just Trump's overall approval rating that is horrible, but voters are distraught about his performance across the entire range of issues, including his former strengths like the economy and immigration. Trump receives net negative performance ratings on those issues as well. Trump is battling judges and the courts; the American people do not like it. Over 60% say Trump needs to do what federal judges tell him to do. Over 60% side with Harvard University against Trump's efforts to bully and take over universities and colleges. However, Trump's unpopularity is not really impacting the political terrain of the country in a big way yet because Republicans have insulated themselves as a result of gerrymandering and the way the public is so polarized and sorted. Independent voters have turned dramatically against Trump, but the Republicans remain in Trump's corner. Unfortunately, America's political system is flawed in that the Republicans can, for now, just ignore the public outcry against Donald Trump and his policies and behavior. What do we know empirically about Donald Trump's base of support? It is consistently at about 47 percent. Trump's MAGA people and other followers are wedded to him. It appears that he can do no wrong or anything that will force them away from him. What is the data telling us now? I'm not sure that Trump's base of support is that rock solid and guaranteed. For example, Trump's baseline is about 47%. He is now polling lower than that baseline. Trump is now at about 44% approval on average and lower in a number of polls. 6% of people who voted for Trump are now telling pollsters that they made a mistake. Granted, that is not a huge number. But it does show that Trump's base is not guaranteed to stay with him, especially as the tariffs and other economic consequences start to hit home. He will likely lose more support. Trump's bad behavior and other extreme positions, and just meanness will also likely push more American voters away from him. In the 2024 election, one of the key difference makers was the support Trump received from Americans who don't pay close attention to politics. A person does not have to follow politics closely to know that Trump is creating problems for the economy, for example. The news is saturated with this bad news. For those who are politically disengaged, walking through the store and seeing the prices of basic goods and services makes it even clearer that Trump is responsible for trashing the economy. Trump's tariffs will likely have a big impact on how voters respond to Trump and the Republicans. The way through the Age of Trump and this disaster is forward, and seeing clearly and without blindfolds or blinders. Part of going forward necessitates making sense of how we as a country got to this nadir. To that point, what do we now see more clearly in hindsight about the 2024 election? Trump's statements to the contrary notwithstanding, 2024 was a very close election by normal standards. Trump did not win in a landslide. He narrowly won the popular vote. He won the swing states. But you know he brags about that all the time, and certainly it's true, he did win the swing states. But those swing states were all pretty close. And the swing states usually move as a group. In recent times, no candidate has won fewer than seven swing states, the number Trump won. So that's quite typical, not some unique achievement on Trump's part. I do not think that it was foreordained that Trump was going to win. I'm on the record saying that it was a 50-50 election. If a Democrat went to bed that Monday night before Election Day feeling more hopeful than worried, then they did not really understand what 50-50 means. Trump's success can be greatly attributed to the power of the MAGA brand. Moreover, I would suggest that MAGA is one of the strongest brands in modern marketing. You can stop a random person on the street and they will be able to tell you what MAGA means — even if it is just "Donald Trump." What does it mean to be a Democrat? What is their brand? Because at present, the Democrats certainly do not have a winning one. The Democrats definitely have a branding problem. The number of people who have a very negative impression of the Democratic Party makes that clear. Your brand is what people say about your product when you are not looking — and the American people are certainly very negative about the Democrats. They're negative about Republicans, too, but they're even more negative about Democrats. To make matters worse for the Democrats, the polls show that the public is trending in the wrong direction over time and is now more negative towards the party than they used to be. You can see this in specific responses to open-ended questions as well. For decades, when people were asked what they liked about the Democratic Party, the number one factor was that the Democratic Party was for the average person. At present, the key association the public has with the Democrats is that they are for marginalized groups. There's nothing wrong with supporting marginalized groups. All Americans should have equal rights and freedoms. But the realpolitik is that by definition, marginalized groups are not the majority. If the public sees your party as primarily defending a minority of the population, then it is going to be very hard to craft a winning majority vote. As for "MAGA", whatever that may mean for a given voter, there's no question the Republicans have a much clearer brand than the Democrats currently do. The Democrats' brand right now is quite negative. In a series of interviews, as well as essays in The New York Times, James Carville has suggested that the Democrats just need to get out of the way and let Trump and the Republicans fail. The Democrats can then swoop in and exploit that opening. Your thoughts? I've known James since the mid-1980s, and he is usually right. I think that what James is suggesting here can be a good strategy when your opponent is destroying themselves. But I think in this particular case, that it is suboptimal because it leads Democratic Party voters to be angry with and attack their own party and its leadership. This anger could well cause the Democrats to elevate more radical leaders. In my opinion, that is not going to help the branding problem that the party is and the Republicans have given the Democrats an opening. Their failed and failing policies have created possibilities that the Democrats can and must exploit. The American people are increasingly willing to listen to what the Democrats have to say. But the Democrats have to have something meaningful to communicate when the American people are so eager to hear us. We can't just be silent. The Democrats also need to have message discipline and to grab the public's attention in good and positive ways, and not show off our internal battles. We have to make sure that we're grabbing attention in good and positive ways, not in negative ways; not suggest the Democrats' storyline is about internal battles. Showing off internal battles, be they ideological, personal, or otherwise, doesn't do anything to help the party. In fact, it turns the public off from the Democrats. What should the Democrats do going forward? The Democrats need to 1) recognize people's economic pain points and 2) then offer ideas that connect directly with those pain points. People have to understand how and why the Democrats' policies will actually help them. The Democrats also need a messaging strategy that embeds our policies in a larger context where we are showing the American people that we care about them. Democrats need to speak directly, authentically, and sincerely to the American people. Emulating the rhetoric of the Harvard Faculty Club is not going to win people over. Too often, Democrats are not speaking in clear and direct ways to the American people, and even worse, too many Democratic leaders and spokespeople sound condescending and even hostile to the needs, concerns, and worries of average Americans. As I interpret the polls, the conclusion I have come to — and it is an unpopular one in some circles — is that the American people dislike the Democratic Party even more than they do Donald Trump. Do you agree with that reading of the polls and other data? If so, what would you advise the Democrats to do? There is no question that you're correct on this. The problems run deep, and we Democrats need to repair our brand image in very substantial ways. The polls and other data are clear: the public is hostile to the Democrats. However, one of the most powerful indicators of the public mood is the congressional vote. There, recent polls show that the Democrats are leading in the generic congressional vote. Elections tend to be referendums on the incumbents. 2026 is going to be a referendum on Donald Trump and the GOP. Trump's performance could improve by then. That is always a possibility. But Trump could also be doing much worse than he is at present. We don't know what will happen. Yes, the Democrats need to work on their brand, and they have much to improve upon. But even allowing for that shortcoming, there are now more Americans who are planning to vote for the Democratic candidate than for the Republican candidate in 2026. In these conversations about Trump's return to power and the worsening disaster, there is the common thread of "well, the midterms will be here in 2026 and then the Democrats can get back Congress and stop lots of this! And then there is the 2028 election!" Given all that Trump and his administration and agents have been doing, publicly, from voter nullification and voter suppression, to , using the courts to keep Democrats from taking office when they win elections, trying to cut off the Democratic Party from fundraising, removing protections intended to stop foreign interference, etc. why would a person even reasonably assume that there will be "free and fair" elections in 2026 and beyond? It's the triumph of hope. I can't, and I don't, know whether we're going to have free and fair elections in 2026. But the work that we as Democrats are going to do to win those elections is similar to the type of work we are going to do to ensure that we even have free and fair elections in this country in 2026 and beyond. I'm not throwing up my hands, giving up, and saying let's not do anything because we're not going to have elections. That is not an option. Trump is an authoritarian. He has repeatedly demonstrated that. But the Democrats and all Americans must still do the work of democracy if we are to have any chance of preserving it. In these many post-mortems about the 2024 election and how the Democrats are now out of power in Washington, the "consultant class" is often cited as the main reason. You are a leading Democratic Party consultant and pollster. On a human level, how does it feel to be so villainized? What pushback, if any, would you offer against that narrative? Honestly, most of the races I was directly involved in in 2024 were winners. But there's no question that mistakes were made. But those mistakes were not made just by the consultant class. Politicians are free to reject the advice given to them by their consultants. Clients have the freedom to do what they want. Donald Trump doesn't always do what his consultants tell him to do, that's for sure. And the truth is, some of the people who are complaining about the Democratic Party's "consultant class" are the same people who are also somewhat responsible for the bad situation we're in as a country and party. Where do we go from here? We fight the battle. We're not going to get a third and a fourth and a fifth chance here. So, we have to think hard about what we're doing, and then once we figure it out, we have to fight even harder. We see people doing that already. There are people and organizations that have stood up to Trump and rallied the Democratic Party's base and other pro-democracy Americans. There are people doing that hard work in other ways as well. It is going to be a long battle, but the American people are finally getting their footing, and I hope it will grow in momentum and be sustained.
Fox News
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
NEWT GINGRICH: The only solution to the crisis of radical district judges
The fight over whether unelected federal district court judges should be able to unilaterally halt an elected president of the United States' agenda has reached a critical point. For the last three months, the American people's effort to profoundly change the Washington establishment has been blocked by radical district judges, who have wildly exceeded their authority. In the first 100 days of President Donald Trump's second administration, lower court judges have issued 37 nationwide injunctions against various administration actions. That is more than one every three days. This is not an issue of judges against President Trump. It is an issue of judges against the American people. In the 2024 election, the American people elected a Republican House, Senate, and President. President Trump carried all seven swing states. He received 77.3 million votes – 2.3 million more than Vice President Kamala Harris. We must protect the American people's right to elect those who manage the federal government. There are 677 district judges on the federal bench. If any of them can issue nationwide injunctions to override the decisions of the elected president, we are in a real crisis. Remember, these judges have never been elected by the American people. They face no consequence if their rulings result in ruined lives or wasted taxpayer dollars. Not all of them are overreaching, but some certainly are. And some of the nationwide injunctions which have been passed verge on insanity. One injunction asserted that the executive cannot pause or terminate fugitive admissions into the United States and had to accept hundreds of thousands of refugees – never mind the humanitarian or financial cost of the decision. Another injunction blocked the removal of men from women's prisons despite the risk of physical harm to female prisoners. A third injunction blocked the executive branch from doing anything about so-called sanctuary cities. It went wildly overboard and asserted the White House cannot even have conversations about sanctuary cities. These are just a few examples of the absurd judicial micro-management we are witnessing. When President Thomas Jefferson was working to build and protect our new nation, he warned that government ultimately controlled by judges would be a road to despotism. In a letter to William Jarvis on Sept. 28, 1820, Jefferson wrote: "You seem ... to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions: a very dangerous doctrine indee[d] and one which would place us under the despotism of an Oligarchy." As I testified at a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing, the Founding Fathers all believed that the three branches of government should be co-equal. If anything, the judiciary would be the weakest of the three branches. They were clear that the two elected branches could correct the judicial branch if it tried to impose its will on the American people. Alexander Hamilton warned in the Federalist Papers that the legislative and executive branches could powerfully respond to judges – and judges would have no means of defending themselves. As president, Jefferson and the Democrats eliminated 14 of 34 federal judges in the Judiciary Act of 1802. They did not impeach anyone (a lengthy and difficult task). Jefferson simply abolished the judgeships and the judges no longer had jobs. We do not have to eliminate district courts in the Jeffersonian tradition – unless we are forced to. Hopefully, the U.S. Supreme Court will recognize that judicial tyranny by lower courts is intolerable and unsustainable. The High Court could take decisive steps to eliminate nationwide injunctions by local judges – or make a rule that they are immediately adjudicated by the Supreme Court. In the meantime, the House and Senate have begun work to correct absurd overreach by the most radical district court judges. This week's introduction of the Judicial Relief Clarification Act of 2025 by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley and 20 senators is a powerful signal that the Senate can defend itself against tyrannical judges. When this is combined with Congressman Darrell Issa's No Rogue Rulings Act of 2025 (which passed in the House by 219-213) it's clear the district judges are forcing a constitutional crisis. We must protect the American people's right to elect those who manage the federal government. Lower court judges who think they can micromanage and override the elected president and Congress have a simple path: Resign and run for office. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will end this absurdity. If not, the Congress and the president will have to exercise their constitutional authority and eliminate nationwide injunctions by district judges. There is no alternative if we are to retain government of, by, and for the people.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Defending the Citadel
It's April 1952. U.S. troops are dying in Korea, President Harry Truman's popularity is cratering, and steel is the 'arsenal of democracy.' When union leaders threaten a strike, Truman issues Executive Order 10340 and seizes every major steel mill in the country. Now, a bit of alternate history: Before the mills can sue, the White House circulates a memo directing the attorney general to seek sanctions against any law firm that challenges the administration and rolls out firm-specific executive orders threatening to tear up existing defense contracts, yank security clearances, and blacklist any businesses that work with those firms. The pressure works. Several marquee firms planning to challenge the order stand down; their corporate clients can't risk losing multimillion-dollar government contracts. Public-interest firms that contemplate stepping in are barred from entering government-seized mills to investigate, while their board members and donors weigh the risks of being labeled supporters of 'subversive' organizations. No lawsuit is filed. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer never reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, and Truman's sweeping claim of wartime power becomes a tool available to all future administrations. That disturbing alternate history is no longer hypothetical. Today's White House has a strategy to erase tomorrow's landmark checks on executive power by punishing firms that would bring such cases in the first place. Specifically, the administration is wielding two separate weapons: (1) a memorandum ordering the Justice Department to pursue sanctions against attorneys who file 'unreasonable' and 'vexatious' lawsuits; and (2) tailor–made executive orders that cancel current federal contracts, revoke security clearances, and blacklist the clients of a number of named law firms. If the administration successfully bullies lawyers away from the courthouse, the Constitution won't merely be stretched. It will be sidelined entirely. With the Founders' emphasis on rigorous judicial review in mind, the White House's intimidation of law firms is an existential threat to the rule of law. The basic presumption underlying our judicial system is that, to preserve life, liberty, and property, government actions must be testable in an adversarial process where independent judges apply meaningful constitutional scrutiny. If, instead, the president starves the pipeline of litigation, the White House has effectively outmaneuvered the entire system. Since the Founding, presidents of all persuasions have pressed for new powers or exemptions in the name of war, national security, financial crises, or public health. Sometimes judges insisted on robust evidence and careful alignment with enumerated authority, forcing the executive to justify or scale back the scope of its actions. But in other moments, the courts did little to stand in the way—or worse, rationalized the executive's misbehavior. A shameful example is Korematsu v. United States (1944), where the Court upheld the mass internment of Japanese Americans; Justice Robert H. Jackson warned in dissent that the decision sanctioned a principle that 'lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.' When the public cheers the White House's assumptions of expanding authority, courts can be tempted to acquiesce. Those expansions pile up, decade after decade, shifting the balance of power the Constitution was carefully designed to maintain. The alternative is a tense but necessary clash between the branches, one that has heated up in recent years: The president issues sweeping executive orders, certain federal courts halt or slow down the implementation of those orders, and the White House publicly rails against 'activist judges.' Is that ideal? Certainly not. But this dynamic is still more or less in keeping with the checks-and-balances design—assuming the judges stand by their rulings and the president challenges unfavorable rulings through the appellate process. That friction is hardly new. In 2015, a federal district court in Texas halted President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) program, leading the White House to denounce the ruling as an inappropriate obstacle to 'lawful, commonsense' immigration reform. And in Trump's first term, a federal district court judge in Hawaii enjoined portions of his 'travel ban,' a ruling that the president called a 'ridiculous' decision made by a 'so-called judge.' Yet for all their fierceness, those fights involved a direct executive-judiciary clash that remained in public view. Litigation was happening. Courts weighed evidence, analyzed arguments, and explained their reasoning. If the White House believed that a broad injunction was truly overkill, it could (and did) ask higher courts to narrow the injunction or expedite the government's appeal. If the White House believed that a lower court decision was wrong on the merits, it could (and did) appeal. That's how the system is supposed to work. The president can square off with the courts in a public dispute—loud and messy, perhaps, but at least visible to the public and shaking, rather than shattering, our Constitutional order. Now, though, the White House is simultaneously wielding a sanctions memo and issuing firm-specific executive orders that heap additional penalties on any practices that represent the Trump administration's critics. But who decides when vigorous advocacy against the administration becomes 'frivolous,' or whether a specific firm is engaged in 'dishonest and dangerous activity'? The administration, apparently. The memorandum to the Department of Justice invokes Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11, the rule designed to punish truly baseless or bad-faith lawsuits, which imposes a high standard so judges don't chill legitimate legal claims that might be novel or creative. (Courts reserve that remedy for objective abuses of the judicial system—think of the 2023 Mata v. Avianca fiasco, where lawyers were sanctioned after filing a brief that cited completely fabricated, AI-generated cases.) But don't let that nod to Rule 11 fool you. Courts don't easily grant Rule 11 sanctions, not because judges are too lax, but because they must ensure that only lawsuits without any factual or legal foundation are penalized. By making such determinations and imposing consequences outside the courts, however, the administration is effectively paying lip-service to Rule 11 while avoiding the judicial safeguards that protect ordinary advocacy. The administration's maneuver is clever, to be sure. A sufficiently intimidated legal industry means no lawsuit, no judicial testing of executive action, no friction with the judicial branch, no losses in court, and more resources for the administration to focus into its other priorities. If enough attorneys bow out, an executive action could become effectively unreviewable. Even the most principled, engaged judge cannot address constitutional questions that never make it into court. It's akin to blocking the main road to the courthouse, ensuring a victory by default. Some large firms, including Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale, have been willing to risk the White House's ire on principle, but they're also private businesses that weigh reputational and financial pressures. If the White House threatens to revoke a law firm's existing federal contracts and those of its clients for retaliatory reasons, or damage its reputation with clients, those existential threats will be enough for plenty of firms to cry uncle—even if some try to resist. Whenever prior administrations even hinted at retaliating against specific law firms, the legal community—and ultimately the administration itself—treated it as an obvious breach of rule-of-law norms. In 2007, for example, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Charles 'Cully' Stimson went on the radio, read aloud a list of law firms representing detainees at the U.S. detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, and suggested that businesses should reconsider working with firms who 'represent the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001[.]' The backlash was swift: Bar associations condemned the remarks, businesses refused the thinly-veiled call for a boycott, the Pentagon publicly disavowed the statement, and Stimson resigned within three weeks. Today, the episode appears in professional-responsibility casebooks as a warning about unethical government retaliation—not as a blueprint. This White House, by contrast, has converted the same threat into official policy. As the Trump administration's executive orders rolled out, firms responded in dramatically different ways. Some opted to avoid further confrontation by making deals with the White House, whether preemptively or after being targeted. Critics see these bargains as capitulations to the administration's bullying, while the firms have generally described them as pragmatic measures to avoid existential risks. Skadden Arps, for example, described its preemptive deal as being 'in the best interests of our clients, our people, and our Firm.' Despite those risks, several targeted firms have chosen to fight back in an effort to hold the administration accountable in the open, before a judge, rather than giving in to private pressures behind closed doors. Yet even for these firms, the damage is likely already done: By refusing to strike a deal, wary clients may still walk away, important contracts are still in jeopardy, and firm resources are diverted into litigation—consequences that will linger even if they ultimately prevail in court. These concerning developments recently stimulated a broad and diverse coalition of civil liberties organizations, including the Institute for Justice (where I work), the American Civil Liberties Union, the Cato Institute, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and others, to submit an amicus brief in support of the law firm Perkins Coie's lawsuit against the administration. The brief warns that if allowed to stand, the administration's tactics would 'chill any law firm from participating in similar advocacy' and 'deprive courts of the expert counsel necessary . . . for a full and fair adjudication' of constitutional issues. That result would not just be bad for lawyers, but for every American who might one day try to hold the government accountable through litigation. In 1788, Anti-Federalist John Lamb warned Alexander Hamilton that any powers entrusted to the virtuous General Washington would one day pass to a far less scrupulous 'General Slushington.' Ultimately, the moral of that cautionary exchange is that the entire nation, including its future citizens, will reap whatever whirlwind we allow to be sown today. The measure one president uses to achieve your preferred outcome today will be in the hands of General Slushington tomorrow. The Founders knew that liberty is not long for a world where independent courts become rubber stamps or presidents can circumvent the judicial system entirely. If the judicial citadel is meant to continue guarding personal liberty, judges must have the courage to meaningfully scrutinize government overreach, and lawyers must be free to represent clients of their choosing—without being singled out for professional annihilation.
Atlantic
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
Oklahoma Is Asking the Supreme Court to Ignore History
Oklahoma is forcing the Supreme Court to choose: Either the justices can allow more religious control of public schools, or they can respect the wishes of the Founding Fathers. They can't do both. The Founding Fathers didn't see eye to eye on all the details, but people in the founding era did agree that it would be the death of public schooling if schools came under the authority of any specific religious denomination, or even if a school appeared to favor one denomination over another. Many believed that public schools had a duty to encourage religion as a general idea and could even offer some generic religious instruction, but a line was drawn at direct control. The reason was that public schooling was not just an educational offering but also a project of building a national identity and citizenry. No public school could ever be run by a church, because no public school should teach any religious idea that divided Americans. In the centuries since, that fundamental principle has remained intact. By the 1960s, the idea of any devotional practice in school had come to seem divisive, so the Supreme Court prohibited teacher-led prayers and school-sponsored religious devotions of any kind. The wholesale exclusions of religious practices were new, but the guiding principle was as old as the United States itself. Oklahoma's plan for a public school run by the Catholic Church would upend that principle. It would fly in the face of the Founding Fathers' intentions and go against two centuries of American tradition. And it puts the six members of the Supreme Court's conservative majority in a bind. In previous decisions, they have insisted that they will be guided by history, using that rationale to allow for more religion in public schools. In this case, however, if they want to follow their own rules, they must decide in the other direction. Nomi M. Stolzenberg and David N. Myers: Private religious schools have public responsibilities too In 2023, the Oklahoma government approved an application from the Catholic Church to create a virtual charter school. Like other charter schools, this one would be funded by taxpayers. But unlike other charter schools, this one would be explicitly religious, teaching students Catholic doctrine. Oklahoma's state attorney general objected, pointing out the obvious: Such a school would be a flagrant violation of the state constitution, to say nothing of the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court will hear the case next week. Many on the religious right are hopeful. This Court has given their movement some significant victories in recent years—each time justifying the decision by pointing to history. In 2020, in a case about a Maine school-payment program, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that all private schools, secular and religious alike, had to be included in the program in rural areas where public options were not available. He justified his decision by claiming that sending public funds to religious schools was the 'early American tradition.' In 2022, Justice Neil Gorsuch ruled that a football coach at a public school must be allowed to pray with his players at the 50-yard line of the football field. Why? Quoting two older opinions about religion and public schools, Gorsuch said that this had long been the rule: Decisions about religion in public schools must be guided by 'history' and faithfully reflect 'the understanding of the Founding Fathers.' But the case from Oklahoma makes claiming history as a justification harder for the conservative justices. In this case, the history is unambiguous: The Founding Fathers would never have approved of a public school that taught the religious doctrines of one specific kind of Christianity. The Founders were obsessed with the idea of public education. They worried that their fragile new republic would not long survive if children—by which they meant white children—did not learn to be proper American citizens. Some—particularly Thomas Jefferson—took a starkly secular approach. He envisioned an elaborate public-school system that carefully excised any mention of God or the Bible. Jefferson dreamed of a system of free schools for all white children in Virginia, with advanced opportunities available for the more talented white boys. Jefferson hoped for a classical education, free of Christian teaching: He argued against 'putting the Bible and Testament into the hands of the children.' Instead, Jefferson wanted them to learn 'the most useful facts from Grecian, Roman, European and American history.' Other Founders disagreed, seeing more of a central role for Christian education in public schools. Benjamin Rush thought that the new nation desperately needed 'one general and uniform system of education' but insisted that religion was absolutely essential, and that the proper religion for American public schools was, in his words, 'the religion of JESUS CHRIST.' Rush's evangelical approach was just as much of a nonstarter as Jefferson's Bible-free one. The people who created the first generations of American public schools were guided by a different principle: These schools—if they were going to be truly American—should teach a generic, religion-based morality, but they could not be run by any single church or inculcate any specific religious beliefs. In Massachusetts, for example, a new law in 1789 attempted to clarify the structure of the state's public-education system. The state was not averse to religion. At the time, the Congregational Church was the official state church, even receiving funding from public taxes until 1833. Ministers were given power to inspect the state's public schools and authorized to report any religious teaching that seemed divisive. Children in public schools would pray and read the Bible. But even so, lawmakers limited the role of the Church, specifying that 'no settled minister shall be deemed, held, or accepted to be a School-Master' in the new system. A few years later, Connecticut, another state with Puritan roots, passed a similar law, similarly clarifying the role and funding of public schools. The state's taxpayers certainly considered it vitally important that children learn to be moral, upstanding citizens. Like most Americans at the time, they thought that teaching children vague prayers in public schools was one good way to do that. But they also agreed that any specific religious group, in the words of Connecticut's 1795 law, 'shall have no power to Act on the Subject of Schooling.' In order to be 'public,' in other words, schools could include religion, but they could not be run by any single religious group; they could not teach any religious idea that wasn't generally agreed upon. There were outliers. In Pennsylvania, for instance, unlike Massachusetts and Connecticut, the 1776 constitution confirmed any existing right held by 'religious societies' to conduct public schools, and a revised 1790 constitution left those rights untouched. By 1818, however, the state had passed a law mandating new public schools that taught only generic Christian ideas, scrupulously avoiding teaching any specific denominational religion. Listen: A remarkable school-choice experiment Yet the tendency—the 'early American tradition'—was undeniable. When the American Philosophical Society, a scholarly group founded by Benjamin Franklin, ran an essay contest about public education in the 1790s, the most serious entries offered many different visions but agreed that churches should not be in charge. One winning writer, the Reverend Samuel Knox, later explained his vision to the Maryland legislature. In freedom-loving America, Knox wrote, 'every particular religious denomination' had every right to set up its own 'particular, private seminaries.' But any truly American system of public schools must be scrupulously guarded from 'that narrow restriction and contracted influence of peculiar religious opinions.' Another essayist wrote anonymously, but historians believe him to be the Reverend William Smith. Smith had plenty of experience with the challenges of creating public schools, having collaborated with Benjamin Franklin to set them up in Philadelphia. Like Knox, Smith considered it simply obvious that the new nation's public schools must be free from the domination of any single religious body. Schools run by 'sects,' Smith wrote, directly oppose the goals of public schools. Instead of bringing the citizens of a new nation together, Smith argued, a public school run by any one specific church would only lead to 'divisions amongst mankind.' Today's conservative politicians might not see a problem with creating divisions among Americans, but the leaders of the founding generation definitely did. The purpose of early public schools was to bring young America together, and those schools carefully excluded any religious idea that might drive it apart. The justices can now either score a short-term win for today's religious conservatives, or respect centuries of history and precedent. Let's hope they follow their own guidelines and strengthen one of the best traditions of America's past.
