It’s time for America to wake up and for Congress to wake up to the devastation being wrought by the Trump administration, Skye Perryman told the Texas Tribune Festival Nov 14.
Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, was among four panelists speaking in a session titled, “A Democracy: If You Can Keep It,” presented at St. David’s Episcopal Church, one of multiple venues for the festival of ideas.
A participant asked what will happen when the U.S. Supreme Court rules against the Trump administration and the president refuses to comply with the court order.
Skye Perryman
This already is a problem with the administration, Perryman explained. But she warned: “This administration ignoring court orders across this country should not be normalized. Court orders at the local level keep people safe and we need to also be focused on that.”
Democracy Forward litigates to enforce court orders nearly every day, she said. “It is important that the vast majority of the American people, including, by the way, many conservatives and many who have been aligned in the past with the president, believe the government should follow court orders.”
The answer to the participant’s question is: “It’s going to come to the people. One branch of government cannot check another branch of government without broader mobilization. And so it is time for Congress to wake up. Yes, it’s time for the American people to demand that Congress wake up.”
For example, she said, the president’s allies tried to put a provision in a Senate bill earlier this year that would have made it harder to enforce court orders. “And guess what? It was stripped out by the parliamentarian. It was also deeply uncomfortable for the president’s allies. So it is going to be up to the people, and that’s not just Congress, it’s mass mobilizations. It’s learning again how to strike and how to boycott and how to save the people in this country. … We are going to have to learn to build those muscles, and we’re starting to see some of those muscles. We’ve got a lot of working out to do.”
Norm Eisen
Another panelist, Norm Eisen, executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, told participants there are certain features necessary to protect democracy against authoritarians like Trump.
“We studied other countries and we observed there were five features you need to have in order to achieve one of these democracies. And one of those is you have got to meet ‘Flood the Zone.’ … You’ve got to meet ‘Flood the Zone’ with rule of law shock and awe.
“Flood the Zone” is a sports metaphor used by Trump advisers to indicate their strategy of dumping so much change so rapidly it is like a flood that cannot be stopped.
“So what we have attempted to do is No. 1, defend the rule of law itself,” Eisen said. “For example, … I tried to join DOGE; I believe in government effectiveness and efficiency. And they denied my entry and they told The New York Times — probably a strategic error — “We don’t want any Democrats.” Boom! Lawsuit number one.
Defending the rule of law also involved filing cases to protect birthright citizenship — “No, Donald Trump doesn’t get to choose who’s born here as citizens” — and election integrity — “The executive order on elections made it easier for him and his people to vote and harder for everybody else.”
That’s lesson No. 2, he said: “You’ve got to protect elections.”
“We learned in our studies that will hold back the autocrat. Unless you can have free and fair elections, you do not have a system to restore democracy.”
“Unless you can have free and fair elections, you do not have a system to restore democracy.”
Third, he said, “the autocrat attempts to corrupt the system to set up a vicious cycle to line their pockets, their cronies, their families, and you’ve got to push back on the corruption. And we’ve done that.”
That pushback has included lawsuits related to the donation of a new Air Force One from Qatar and about Trump’s attorney general filing cases against Trump’s enemies.
“But the best corruption message, the way to convey it is the Epstein case and the Trump Epstein files,” he added. “We’re litigating deliberately on the Trump Epstein files because that is the worst corruption scandal. Donald Trump’s involvement with Epstein is the worst corruption scandal you can imagine. He’s hiding that. He’s covering it up. They’ve sent Ghislaine Maxwell to concierge service. She got better snacks in that prison than I had in the Green Room. So we’re fighting that case to exemplify the corruption and all our 225 cases and matters fall into those categories.”
Eisen did not elaborate on strategies four and five.
Perryman also emphasized the importance of being vigilant on local issues and elections.
A “very hyper local attack on democracy, that’s all part of a broader playbook we’re now seeing play out at the federal level,” she said, explaining that most elements of Project 2025 were tried out in Texas before going national.
The gap Democracy Forward is attempting to fill , she said, is elevating local and national voices — “the ability of people to get into court to stand up and say, ‘I’m going to demand a public accounting of my governor, of my state legislature, of my president; we’re going to talk about this publicly and we are going to expose it publicly and win a lot. “
It is important not only for legal challenges to be filed on the federal level but also for “people in communities having a lever to push back when their districts are gerrymandered and they haven’t been fairly represented for some time.”
Melody Barnes
Melody Barnes, executive director of Karsh Institute of Democracy at the University of Virginia, echoed the local imperative by talking about the role of local journalism.
“We know people are more civically engaged when they have access to local journalism,” she said. “We know that they are more likely to see themselves and to build community when they have local journalism.”
But, “when people don’t have that information, and we see these deserts, … we see the imploding of democracy.”
The irony, she added, is that studies show people don’t trust social media but at the same time “they are informing themselves about politics and their government through social media. So they are trying to learn about ways to engage in what’s going on through an entity they ultimately don’t trust to give them accurate information.”
The panel was moderated by Rosa Flores, MSNBC national correspondent, and also included Eddie S. Glaude, professor at Princeton University.