Protect Democracy

Protect Democracy Logo

Protect Democracy is a heavily-funded organization using strategic litigation, or "lawfare", to promote a progressive agenda. Specifically, Protect Democracy was founded to push back against President Donald Trump, claiming that he is "authoritarian" and futher asserting that America's electoral system "benefits authoritarianism".

Protect Democracy was co-founded in 2016 by Ian Bassin, Justin Florence, and Emily Loeb, who were former attorneys in Barack Obama's White House. Harvard University's Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's book "How Democracies Die" is a guidestone for the organization. They are also on the board.

The group is also associated with so-called "Never Trumpers", or professed Republicans who denounce president Trump such as Jeff Flake and Evan McMullin.

'Crisis of Winner-Take-All Elections'

Protect Democracy' took part in a Panel Discussion sponsored by Fix Our House, New America, and Protect Democracy dated November 15, 2022 titled "The Crisis of Winner-Take-All Elections and the Potential of Proportional Representation". From the description:

On November 15th, Fix Our House, New America, and Protect Democracy hosted a discussion about the collapse of competitive elections in our democracy and pathways for reform. The popular focus on gerrymandering overlooks the fact that winner-take-all elections are primarily responsible for robbing millions of voters from having a meaningful say in elections. Congress has the power to move the House to a more proportional system of representation that would address the root causes of our uncompetitive elections, along with the growing threats of extremism, violence, and division that are currently exacerbated by our winner-take-all elections.

Key questions included:

Why are so many elections uncompetitive?

How do uncompetitive elections result in gridlock and polarization? What’s at stake here?

What are the root causes, and what role does gerrymandering play in this crisis?

How could a reform like proportional representation calm some of the extremism and rising threats of political violence?

Speakers:

• Jennifer Victor, Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University
• Brendan Nyhan, James O. Freedman Presidential Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College
• Aziz Huq, Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law at the University Chicago
• Lilliana Mason, SNF Agora Institute Associate Professor of Political Science at John Hopkins University
• Lee Drutman, Fix Our House Co-Founder and Senior Fellow at New America

The Constitution Enables the GOP

Time Magazine observed in June, 2020 (shortly before the 2020 election), that while the group was founded to harm President Trump, Protect Democracy also wants to fundamentally change America to thwart opposition in the future:

"Yet the group is also looking beyond Trump, seeing him as a symptom of a system whose weakened defenses leave it open to abuse, and figuring out what can be done to strengthen American democracy in the future, regardless of who is in the White House next year."

This vision can be observed in the work of Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, who wrote an article titled: "The Biggest Threat to Democracy Is the GOP Stealing the Next Election" in July 2021 published in The Atlantic. The authors argue that the Constitution's Electoral College and the U.S. Senate "allows the GOP to pursue extremist strategies that threaten our democracy without suffering devastating electoral consequences." They argue that "[S]erious constitutional reform" is needed in order to "expand access to the ballot, reform our electoral system to ensure that majorities win elections, and weaken or eliminate antiquated institutions such as the filibuster so that majorities can actually govern."

Protect Democracy staffer also expressed this sentiment on social media. On November 30, 2017, attorney Kristy Parker said "We did do this to ourselves. Trump is a symptom, not the cause. We need more people to accept the responsibilities of citizenship and to understand what the role of a citizen in a democracy really is." She linked to a New York Times article by Thomas B. Edsall that touted Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's book "How Democracies Die" started with the line: "President Trump has single-handedly done more to undermine the basic tenets of American democracy than any foreign agent or foreign propaganda campaign could." Edsall continues "And in 2016, for the first time in U.S. history, a man with no experience in public office, little observable commitment to constitutional rights, and clear authoritarian tendencies was elected president."

America's Electoral System Benefits Authoritarianism

During a June, 2022 panel discussion titled "Event: How America's Electoral System Benefits Authoritarianism, and How We Can Fix it", Protect Democracy, Unite America, and R Street claimed that "the U.S. electoral system—single-member plurality—is structurally and uniquely advantaging authoritarianism: diluting minority voting power, weakening competition between the major parties, preventing an electorally viable new center-right party, and rewarding extreme factions at the ballot box."

Panelists:

• Didi Kuo, Associate Director for Research and Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University
• Lee Drutman, Senior Fellow, Political Reform Program, New America
• Nick Troiano, Executive Director, Unite America
• Matt Germer, Resident Elections Fellow, Governance Program, R Street

'unbiased, but not neutral'

A "media guide" from the event suggests that media be "unbiased, but not neutral" in covering "threats to democracy" that are "consistent":

The media has an essential role to play that is unbiased, but not neutral in applying a consistent standard about threats to democracy. In other words, when specific actions threaten democracy, they should be covered as major news stories in themselves, not as part of a political or ideological debate.

As an organization founded expressly to reverse the increasing authoritarian threat in the U.S, Protect Democracy created the Playbook as a toolkit for media professionals to identify and contextualize these threats for the benefit of the American public.

The guide was authored by Jennifer Dresden, Aaron Baird, and Ben Raderstorf, with contributions from Sohini Desai, Emerson Goldstein, Nanya Springer, Justin Florence, and Ian Bassin. It offered the following "experts" as a resource:

• Sheri Berman, Columbia University
• Larry Diamond, Stanford University
• William Howell, University Of Chicago
• Aziz Huq, University Of Chicago Law School
• Didi Kuo, Stanford University
• Steven Levitsky, Harvard University
• Jennifer McCoy, Georgia State University
• Anne Meng, University Of Virginia
• Michael Miller, George Washington University
• Yascha Mounk, Johns Hopkins University
• Kim Lane, Scheppele Princeton University
• Dan Slater, University Of Michigan
• Timothy Snyder, Yale University
• Susan Stokes, University Of Chicago
• Daniel Ziblatt, Harvard University

'The Democracy Endgame'

"The Democracy Endgame" is a concept from Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt, authors of "How Democracies Die", which "offers stark warnings about the impact of the Republican Party and Donald Trump's presidency on U.S. democracy..."

Excerpt from the Protect Democracy website:

"The threats to our democracy did not end with the 2020 election. Authoritarian politics continue to fester, especially at the state level, and could very well return to the White House. A coordinated, long-term, and nationwide strategy is very likely needed to protect and perfect our democratic institutions.

"To help write the next chapter in the grand strategy against authoritarianism, Protect Democracy invited some of the country’s top democracy scholars to an essay and discussion series titled Democracy Endgame: The Grand Strategy Against Authoritarianism in the U.S.

"In this essay and discussion series, scholars propose medium and long-term strategies to protect and rebuild American democracy. They consider critical questions like:

• "How should pro-democracy actors in government, civil society, the private sector, media, and academia orient their strategy over the coming years and decades?
• "What are the longer-term goals when it comes to rebuilding democratic society on cultural and institutional levels?
• "Are there key inflection points between progress towards a more inclusive democracy and a return to backsliding?
• "What do good outcomes in the medium- and long-term look like? And what are the off-ramps for authoritarian-leaning actors, factions, and voters in the United States?

Background

Excerpt from the Protect Democracy website:

"Our founders, who came from the White House Counsel’s Office and upper echelons of the Department of Justice, assembled a group of some of the world’s leading experts on the decline of democracies in the 21st Century to sound the alarm that the global wave of authoritarianism had landed on U.S. shores.

"From our earliest days, we recognized that as much as having an autocrat in the White House posed an acute and immediate danger that required forceful and urgent action, Donald Trump was a symptom — not cause — of the authoritarian movement. And we understood that the threat of authoritarianism would outlast his presidency.

"We believe confronting and defeating this threat requires a generational effort that will evolve and shift over time. Therefore, we set out to build the strongest organizational foundation we could, recognizing that we need to deploy different tools and strategies at different moments. In short, we believe that if we build a good company, it will make good products — in this case, the products being strategic interventions to protect our democracy."

Never Trumpers

An excerpt from February 28, 2018 article by David Weigel published at the Washington Post titled "Trump skeptics gather to ask whether democracy can survive him": reveals the connections of the so-called "Never Trumpers":

"On Tuesday night, in a penthouse event center atop the American Psychological Association’s Washington offices, more than a hundred people from the political left to the center-right met to discuss their common question: How could American democracy survive President Trump?

The National Summit for Democracy, which grew out of 2016 independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin’s group Stand Up Republic and were co-sponsored by Protect Democracy, held workshops for people involved — broadly speaking — in promoting democratic elections and societies around the world. What was new was applying their work to the United States.

“The last two years have gotten us to rethink our focus,” a representative from Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund said Tuesday night.

"There were representatives from Poland and from open-press institutes next to representatives from the left-leaning groups MoveOn and Indivisible. Norm Ornstein, the longtime American Enterprise Institute scholar who has become a fierce critic of the modern Republican Party, had a front seat at Friday night’s dinner, where he pressed Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) on an issue he was happy to talk about.

"'The scarcity of subpoenas, the scarcity of hearings, the lack of any serious interest in getting things done — in history’s eyes, this will be seen as a terrible failing of this Congress,' Whitehouse said. 'It’s going to be hard to explain why we didn’t do that.'

"McMullin, who was drafted to run for president by Trump-skeptical conservatives, has dug in against the president even as some former anti-Trump allies have gotten on board. He and running mate Mindy Finn, a political strategist, founded Stand Up Republic, and then Stand Up Ideas, as campaign and think-tank offshoots of the protecting-against-Trump project. In 2017, Stand Up Republic spent $500,000 on ads urging Republicans not to vote for former judge Roy Moore in Alabama’s Senate race; in 2018, Alabama write-in candidate Mac Watson was among the attendees of the two-day summit.

Whitehouse was part of a bipartisan lineup Tuesday, handing the microphone to Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who is retiring this year after becoming one of Trump’s leading Republican critics. Flake warned specifically that “authoritarians all over the world are taking aid and comfort” from Trump, and that the president was going to encourage left-wing populism to grow in the countries he attacked in his speeches and tweets.

“Words matter, and my concern has been that when the president uses rhetoric like he did during the campaign, referring to Mexican immigrants as rapists, it has a real impact,” Flake said. “It has an impact in the Mexican elections, which are happening this year. It may well contribute to the election of a leftist populist leader in Mexico. And if it does, it will likely mean that Mexico will turn their back on a lot [of] intelligence sharing, security sharing with us.”

Whitehouse suggested that the Trump-era threats to democracy consisted in large part of manipulating the media, new and old, to mislead the public. With some effort, he said, it was fixable.

“We changed the way we looked at pollution after the Cuyahoga River fire,” Whitehouse said. “We changed the way we looked at our diets — it used to be canned vegetables, red meat and all that stuff. We live 10 years longer as a result. In the same way we took care of pollution and junk food, we need to figure out, as citizens, how to take care of the pollution and junk food in our news diet.”

Funding

According to the June 2020 article from Time Magazine:

"As the election nears, Protect Democracy is focused on securing the Nov. 3 contests against foreign and domestic meddling. The group, which is officially nonpartisan, is funded by foundations and individual donors, including the LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Boston-based investor Seth Klarman, who before Trump was the GOP’s largest donor in New England. Protect Democracy is lobbying and advising states on election procedure with an eye to ensuring a legitimate result."

Staff

According to the Protect Democracy Website, the following individuals (with mini bios) are "Board Members".

• Ian Bassin, Co-Founder and Executive Director

Ian Bassin is co-founder and Executive Director of Protect Democracy. He previously served as Associate White House Counsel, where in addition to counseling the President and senior White House staff on administrative and constitutional law, his responsibilities included ensuring that White House and executive branch officials complied with the laws, rules and norms that protect the fundamentally democratic nature of our government. His writing on democracy, authoritarianism, and American law and politics has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Salon and other publications. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. *

• Jeff Berman, Board Member

Jeff Berman is a founding partner of Magnet Companies. He previously served as President of Whalerock Industries, a media and technology company based in West Hollywood, and General Manager of Digital Media at the NFL after holding a series of positions at MySpace. Jeff was the independent director on the board of Buddy Media (acquired by Salesforce) and has advised companies across a broad range of industries. From 2001-2005, he was Chief Counsel to U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer. Jeff has also served as a public defender in the District of Columbia and as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a B.A. from Connecticut College. *^

• Justin Florence, Co-Founder and Legal Director

Justin Florence has overseen the organization’s work to advance its mission, including legal, policy, advocacy and communications strategies, as Protect Democracy’s Co-Founder and Legal Director. Justin previously served in the Office of the White House Counsel as Special Assistant to the President and Associate Counsel to the President; as Senior Counsel on the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee; and in the Supreme Court and Appellate practices of two leading national law firms. Justin is a Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School, where he co-teaches the Democracy and Rule of Law Clinic. His writings on democracy and rule of law issues have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School. ^

• Jerry Hauser, Board Member

Jerry Hauser is the founding Chief Executive Officer of The Management ​Action​ Center. He was previously at McKinsey & Company, and has played leadership roles in a number of nonprofits. At Teach For America, he served as the second-in-command for seven years. He also served as the CEO of the Advocacy Institute. Before graduating from Yale Law School, where he was active in legal clinics and a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal, Jerry worked as a high school math and history teacher in Compton, California. He is the coauthor of the book Managing to Change the World.

• Richard R. Buery, Jr., Board Member

Richard R. Buery, Jr. is the Chief Executive Officer of the Robin Hood foundation, New York City’s largest anti-poverty organization. From 2014-2018, he served as Deputy Mayor for Strategic Policy Initiatives for the City of New York, in which capacity he implemented Pre-K for All, supported women- and minority-owned businesses, and oversaw a number of mayoral offices. In addition to Robin Hood, he has served as Chief Executive Officer at Achievement First, Chief of Policy and Public Affairs at the KIPP Foundation, and President and Chief Executive Officer of the Children's Aid Society. Richard is a graduate of Yale Law School and Harvard College. Richard founded his first nonprofit at a Roxbury housing development while still in college. He was a teacher in Zimbabwe, a campaign manager to former Cambridge Mayor Ken Reeves, and clerked at the Federal Court of Appeals in New York. Richard is a Public Service Fellow at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, where he served as Distinguished Visiting Urbanist during the Spring of 2019. He is also a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School, a Senior Fellow at the GovLab at NYU, a partner at the Perception Institute. He serves on the boards of the Kresge Foundation, iMentor, United to Protect Democracy, Atria Health Collaborative, the Grace Church School, and on the Alumni Advisory Council of the Tsai Leadership Program at Yale Law School. ^

• Cecilia Munoz, Board Member

Cecilia Munoz is currently Vice President for Policy and Technology at New America, a Washington-based think tank. She served as Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council under President Obama, and earlier as Director of Intergovernmental Affairs where she oversaw the Obama Administration’s relationships with state and local governments. Before joining the Obama Administration, Cecilia spent 20 years at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the nation’s largest Latino civil rights organization. In June 2000, she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in recognition of her work on immigration and civil rights. She also serves on the Board of the Kresge Foundation and the US Programs Board of the Open Society Foundations. *

• Kori Schake, Board Member

Kori Schake is a senior fellow and the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Before joining AEI, Dr. Schake was the deputy director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. She has had a distinguished career in government, working at the US State Department, the US Department of Defense, and the National Security Council at the White House. She has also taught at Stanford, West Point, Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, National Defense University, and the University of Maryland. Dr. Schake is the author of five books, among them “America vs the West: Can the Liberal World Order Be Preserved?” (Penguin Random House Australia, Lowy Institute, 2018); “Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony” (Harvard University Press, 2017); “State of Disrepair: Fixing the Culture and Practices of the State Department” (Hoover Institution Press, 2012); and “Managing American Hegemony: Essays on Power in a Time of Dominance” (Hoover Institution Press, 2009).*

Team

• Ian Bassin, Co-Founder and Executive Director
• Justin Florence, Co-Founder and Legal Director
• Mojgone Azemun, General Counsel
• Aaron Baird, Communications
• Ben Berwick, Counsel
• Victoria Canavor, Chief Operating Officer
• Alexandra Chandler, Policy Advocate
• Sara Chimene-Weiss, Counsel
• Courtenay Cotton, Senior Engineer
• Chris Crawford, Policy Advocate
• Dagny Crepeau, Impact Associate/Paralegal
• Emerald Cronin, Compensation and Benefits Manager
• Orion Danjuma, Counsel
• Jared Davidson, Counsel
• Soren Dayton, Policy Advocate
• Sohini Desai, Impact Associate/Paralegal
• Michel-Ange Desruisseaux, Impact Associate
• Jennifer Dresden, Policy Advocate
• Corey Dukes, Policy Advocate
• Deana El-Mallawany, Counsel
• Farbod Faraji, Counsel
• Aurora Fonseca, Partnerships
• William Ford, Impact Associate
• Isaac Gilles, Partnerships
• Laura Goldstein, Finance Manager
• Emerson Goldstein, Impact Associate/Paralegal
• Delaney Gomen, Data Analyst
• Rachel Goodman, Counsel
• Rachel Homer, Counsel
• Jiamin Huang, Data Analyst
• Holly Idelson, Policy Advocate
• Brad Jacobson, Director of Product
• Blake Jelley, Communications & Advocacy Strategist
• Selma Khalil, Impact Associate/Paralegal
• Cameron Kistler, Counsel
• Christine Kwon, Counsel
• John Langford, Counsel
• Juliette Leader, Organizational Management Associate
• Becca Leviss, Partnerships
• Cerin Lindgrensavage, Counsel
• Stephanie Llanes, Director of Org Management and Counsel
• Rebecca Lullo, Impact Associate
• Jillian Lynch, Talent Associate
• Jessica Marsden, Counsel
• Kyle Miller, Impact Associate
• Paulina Montanez-Montes, Communications
• Genevieve Nadeau, Counsel
• Erica Newland, Counsel
• Jessica Nicholson, Operations Manager
• Brenna Olrich, Operations Associate
• Alan Palazzolo, Frontend Developer
• John Paredes, Counsel
• Kristy Parker, Counsel
• Chris Parr, Impact Associate
• Sonya Petri, Impact Associate/Paralegal
• Jacek Pruski, Counsel
• Ben Raderstorf, Policy Advocate
• Quinn Raymond, Project Manager
• Emily Rodriguez, Communications
• Ariela Rosenberg, Policy Advocate
• Ahmed Shaaban, Director of Partnerships
• Erika Smithson, Data Analyst
• Nanya Springer, Communications
• Jon Steinman, Communications
• Clint Swift, Data Analyst
• Anne Tindall, Counsel
• Beau Tremitiere, Counsel
• Tommi-Ann Tsuruga, Software Engineer
• Grant Tudor, Policy Advocate
• Nicholas Tulach, Software Engineer
• Chris Vaeth, Policy Advocate
• Rolando Velasquez, Operations Associate
• Scott Welder, Impact Associate/Paralegal
• Helen White, Counsel
• Brittany Williams, Counsel
• Beau Wright, Director of Operations

'Advisors'

According to the Protect Democracy Website, the following individuals are "Advisors".

• Anne Applebaum, Author and Professor of Practice at the London School of Economics
• Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Professor of Italian and History, New York University
• Sheri Berman, Professor of Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University
• Mona Charen, Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Columnist, and Former Speechwriter to First Lady Nancy Reagan
• Linda Chavez, Chairman, Center for Equal Opportunity, Columnist, and Former White House Director of Public Liaison to President Ronald Reagan
• Erica Chenoweth, Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
• Tom Coleman, Former U.S. Representative (R-MO)
• John Dean, Former White House Counsel
• Matthew Dowd, Author, Political Analyst, and Former Chief Strategist, Bush-Cheney 2004
• Mickey Edwards, Former U.S. Representative (R-OK)
• Mindy Finn, Co-CEO and Founder, Stand Up Republic
• Michael Gottlieb, Former Assistant United States Attorney and Associate White House Counsel
• Aziz Huq, Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School
• Marcos Daniel Jimenez, Former United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida
• Khizr Khan, Lawyer, Constitutional Rights Advocate and Author
• Rachel Kleinfeld, Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
• Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University
• John McKay, Former United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington
• Michael Miller, Associate Professor of Political Science, The George Washington University
• Yascha Mounk, Associate Professor of the Practice of International Affairs, Johns Hopkins University
• Brendan Nyhan, Professor of Government, Dartmouth College
• Spencer Overton, Professor of Law, The George Washington University School of Law
• Thomas Perrelli, Former Associate Attorney General of the United States
• Richard Primus, Theodore J. St. Antoine Collegiate Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
• Robert Raben, Former Assistant Attorney General
• Jennifer Richeson, Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology, Yale University
• Kim Lane Scheppele, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University
• Timothy Snyder, Richard C. Levin Professor of History, Yale University
• Donald Verrilli, Former Solicitor General of the United States
• Kimberly Wehle, Professor of Law, University of Baltimore and Former Associate Independent Counsel in the Whitewater Investigation
• Evan Wolfson, Founder, Freedom to Marry
• Daniel Ziblatt, Professor of Government, Harvard University