It’s Not Too Late to Harden American Democracy Against Trump
As usual, Trump signals what he’s planning to do before he does it.
He’s already signaled that he won’t accept the results of the 2024 election if he loses. Since announcing his candidacy, he has cast doubt on the fairness of the 2024 election on average once a day (according to an analysis by The New York Times).
As he did before the 2020 election, Trump refuses to commit to accepting the 2024 election results. “If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results,” he said in a May 1 interview with The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.“ If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”
Trump has also signaled that if elected he’ll use the Justice Department against his “enemies.”
Before announcing his candidacy, Trump falsely claimed that President Biden was “weaponizing” the Justice Department against him. More recently, he’s been claiming that the multiple legal indictments against him constitute a “new way of cheating” in order to “interfere” in the 2024 election. And he’s been open about his plans to seek vengeance by using the Justice Department if he wins reelection.
In one post about special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation, Trump warned there will be “repercussions far greater than anything that Biden or his Thugs could understand” and that if the investigations continue, it would open a “Pandora’s Box” of retribution. In another, Trump wrote that his federal indictments are “setting a BAD precedent for yourself, Joe. The same can happen to you.”
In another post, he asked, “When will Joe Biden be Indicted for his many crimes against our Nation?”
Trump has also said he plans to invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office. The Act empowers a president to “take such measures as he considers necessary” to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.”
He has warned us of his plans. What can be done to harden American democracy in advance?
The Electoral Count Reform Act will help. It has given authority to governors (not state legislatures) to certify electoral slates at the state level. It raised the threshold for challenges in the Joint Session of Congress under the 12th Amendment. It has expressly limited the time for floor debate. And it has clarified the role of the president of the Senate (the vice president) in counting the electoral votes as solely ministerial and thus without any discretion to invalidate electors or choose between dueling slates.
...continued
