← Next Comes What
Next Comes What
2 Ways to Avoid an Authoritarian Abyss — Courts & Crowds Not Kings
00:32:42
How the people and the courts will make or break American democracy under Trump 2.0. Read the post that inspired this episode: Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: This week Next Comes What...
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- [00:00]
Andrea Pitzer
You're listening to Next comes what from Degenerate Art. This is Andrea Pitzer. Be sure to stay to the end for concrete things that you can do. And subscribe@Andreapitzer.com so that this podcast can remain free for everyone. Maybe it's not surprising that lately people have been asking me about countries that fell into an authoritarian abyss. Can you talk about how those concentration camps, how Hitler managed to do this? Well, I'm glad that you asked about that. When will the tipping point come? They want to know because in the beginning, the Nazi camps didn't look that different than other camp systems that had already developed. Has it already passed? Which I think is part of why the world was slow to realize what was going on. Because in fact, the Nazis themselves in the beginning didn't have the potential to implement this final solution. And what are the effective ways to resist?
- [01:04]
Unknown Speaker 1
But if you start going to protests, aren't you afraid they're going to institute martial law? This is a question I keep seeing over and over again.
- [01:09]
Andrea Pitzer
I've mentioned in passing before that in the research that I've done on concentration camp history around the world, the two most critical tools for a country facing a destabilizing internal threat tend to be one, keeping a vestige of independence in the courts, and two, maintaining and exercising the right to public protest. Without either of those, it becomes very difficult for a country that's going awry to correct course. And that answer isn't necessarily reassuring to a lot of people.
- [01:43]
Unknown Speaker 2
Federal government changes over here and ice raids over here and plane crashes over there, and you are feeling so overwhelmed.
- [01:54]
Andrea Pitzer
Since the Supreme Court has embraced both financial and ethical corruption from its members, people wonder if the judiciary is effectively closed as an avenue to re establish democracy. Clarence Thomas is really testing a very poor design at the Supreme Court, which is the justices themselves are not subject to any code of judicial ethics. Federal judges on lower courts are subject to this code, but not the Supreme Court justices themselves. Others say on social media that protest is useless or too dangerous because Trump and Musk could care less about public opinion, and massive protests might trigger an even greater clampdown.
- [02:36]
Unknown Speaker 3
If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.
- [02:51]
Andrea Pitzer
I realize that those who don't read history for a living necessarily have a lot of context. Unfortunately, as we've seen across history, it really only takes a small number of people to be dedicated to this harmful goal. And then a larger group of people who are willing to let it happen. So a few days ago, I decided to write in a more focused way about these two critical democracy saving institutions, courts and crowds. One very much rooted in formal rules and roles and the other more ephemeral by design with no permanent structure to it.
- [03:29]
Unknown Speaker 3
There's a potpourri of things going on down there in the real picture. What are these folks trying to accomplish? I think it's hard. These folks is such a varied number, I mean, as you saw in the report there. So I think it's not so much what they're trying to accomplish as what they're trying to express.
- [03:44]
Andrea Pitzer
And as if to bless this idea, no Kings Protests against Elon Musk and Trump's executive overreach took place all over the country on Monday, President's Day.
- [03:55]
Unknown Speaker 3
Now, one of the largest rallies was held on Capitol Hill here in Washington, D.C. and thousands of people also protested in New York City, Boston, Austin, Texas and Denver, Colorado. Rallies were also seen in Los Angeles, Tallahassee, Florida and Cincinnati, Ohio.
- [04:11]
Andrea Pitzer
They were promoted by 50, 51, 50 states, 50 protests. One movement is the tagline. I had a chance to spend a couple hours on Capitol Hill and do some firsthand observation, which I'll use to explain more about what I still think are our two most reliable ways to save the country. Make no mistake, the members of the public who showed up at the Reflecting Pool on west side of the U.S. capitol on Monday were in a mood. They were angry and frightened and convinced that the current administration was not only a blight on the nation, but was in the midst of an illegal power grab. And from blocks away, I began to converge with people who were carrying signs on their way to the protest as well. Even before noon, hundreds of people had arrived. It would grow to thousands, and chance of no more money for Elon Musk floated across the pool as I approached. Even before I could get to the demonstration itself, I ran into a couple who were carrying signs saying no Donald Musk and Shame on gop. Now, they didn't want to give their names, but they explained that they were on vacation and they had come directly from the Holocaust Museum to the Capitol.
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Unknown Speaker 1
Literally. We went from there to here. And the parallels between yeah, are shocking and so disheartening.
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Andrea Pitzer
They were former recent Deep Red Republicans, they explained to me, and since youth they had been committed to the Republican Party, but the party had grown unrecognizable to them. They were convinced it couldn't be salvaged.
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Unknown Speaker 1
They are never coming back, ever coming back again. Never. Never.
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Andrea Pitzer
They asked what they wanted to see changed. They said that we were in the middle of a coup and they were there to demand government by and for the people.
- [06:22]
Unknown Speaker 1
The GOP is complicit in this. The senators and Congress are doing nothing and this is an aberration and we need to do something about it.
- [06:31]
Andrea Pitzer
As I did get to the demonstration later, there were Musk signs decrying billionaire populism reading but out Elon or nobody elected Musk. An informal poll of mine showed that Donald Trump was only marginally less vilified than Musk. At one point, the crowd broke out in a chant telling Congress, do your job. Even though everyone knew that neither the House nor the Senate was in session until Tuesday. And what Congress should be doing is a real question right now. So I'm focused on courts and protests today, but I want to step aside just a second to talk about legislators. Oh, I think we're already in a coup. With the very simple explanation that the way our Constitution was written, the first article in that Constitution firmly establishes that it is Congress that has the power to make laws, not the executive branch, not the judiciary, but Congress. Representatives and senators are encouraging the countless court cases brought by 19 state attorneys general, by the American Bar association, and by many other organizations. And they have at times seemed to be waiting on the court cases to provide some kind of direction.
- [07:50]
Unknown Speaker 3
Since we don't have many Republican colleagues who want to help us, we are doing everything we can with our colleagues through the courts to make sure that we uphold the rule of law, stop this illegal shutdown of aid and stop the other illegal actions around the around the the government.
- [08:08]
Andrea Pitzer
Why aren't elected officials who oppose the President's agenda doing what Alexandria Ocasio Cortez called for when she asked her colleagues to stop playing nice in the Senate and block every damn thing that we can.
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Unknown Speaker 2
We need to be a pain in the ass.
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Andrea Pitzer
There are those who respond that the 2026 elections and battle for control of the Senate will, will very much be tilted against Democrats.
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Unknown Speaker 1
So the Senate is much harder for Democrats. Currently we have only five Senate seats that are rated as competitive. That's New Hampshire and Georgia and Michigan, which are held by Democrats. North Carolina and Maine, which are held by Republicans.
- [08:51]
Andrea Pitzer
But at the same time, we've seen people in government service resigning their jobs rather than collaborate with illegal actions. NBC News has learned that the Acting Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Michelle King, stepped down over the weekend after she refused a request from DOGE to access sensitive data of millions of Americans at the agency. No one is asking representatives or senators to pointlessly resign their jobs. But on the whole, they're not showing a similar spirit of refusal in the places where they can still act.
- [09:26]
Unknown Speaker 3
I'm trying to figure out what leverage we actually have. What leverage do we have?
- [09:31]
Andrea Pitzer
Some members of Congress do seem to have the view that they're just waiting for the wheels to fall off during the Trump administration so that he can take the blame.
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Unknown Speaker 3
Captain Chaos and extreme MAGA Republicans spent last year promising to lower the high cost of living and running away from Project 2025 as if it didn't exist.
- [09:54]
Andrea Pitzer
Others are out there actually talking about what they can do and what constituents can do and how those things might complement each other.
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Unknown Speaker 2
Right now I feel like an emergency medicine doctor in which you've got a triage, which means you've got to go to, like, the most important situation, life threatening situation first. And right now, it's our democracy that is on life support. And so I think that it is important that no matter who you are, that you go ahead and rise up.
- [10:26]
Andrea Pitzer
People like Ocasio Cortez and Maxwell Frost have worked on raising public awareness and joining people in the fight, rather than just encouraging from the sidelines about protecting.
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Unknown Speaker 3
The people who make this government work. So I just want to thank you all so much for the work you've done on behalf of my constituents and Florida's 10th congressional district because I know that we can't operate without you.
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Andrea Pitzer
To be fair, the Senate did filibuster the nomination of Russell Vaught, who now leads the White House Budget Office.
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Unknown Speaker 3
Russell Vaught also pronounced vote. Russell Vogt is the Mastermind of Project 2025 and all of the chaos and the lawlessness that Trump has unleashed across our country. Today, my Republican colleagues are trying to jam through the confirmation of this man, Russell Vogt, and it is our job to say stop.
- [11:24]
Andrea Pitzer
But no nominations since Matt Gaetz has been torpedoed.
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Unknown Speaker 3
It's Valentine's Day. If you're watching this live, things might not be going well in your love life. We've got new data on the loneliest people on the planet. Spoiler alert, it's liberal women all next on the Matt Gaetz Show. Let's do this.
- [11:41]
Andrea Pitzer
Still, they will have their biggest clear opportunity to do something next month when Capitol Hill works to avert a government shutdown on March 14. To avert that shutdown will require some votes from Democrats and is the most obvious place where elected officials in Congress who are opposed to Trump's agenda can exercise power. Every Democratic legislator I've heard address the current crisis with Trump dismantling the government has gone immediately to the court strategy as the first line of defense.
- [12:15]
Unknown Speaker 3
Stopping this, stopping this will require action by the court.
- [12:21]
Andrea Pitzer
This does seem like a sound strategy to start to bring the law to bear on illegal actions. And countless cases are already making their way through. The only one in which the Trump administration's arguments are widely seen by legal experts to have even potential substance is in the case of Hampton Dellinger's removal as the head of Office of Special Counsel, which unfortunately may be the first case to arrive before the Supreme Court.
- [12:49]
Unknown Speaker 3
This was an Obama judge, and and I'll tell you what, it's not going to happen like this anymore. Strong words prompting a firm response from.
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Andrea Pitzer
The US Chief justice himself. We do not have Obama judges or.
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Unknown Speaker 3
Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.
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Unknown Speaker 4
What we have is an extraordinary group.
- [13:08]
Andrea Pitzer
Of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. It's important to note that, because if that case goes badly, it should not be seen as a harbinger of how every case will go. The rest of the cases brought so far with the slightest pressure on material facts reveal mostly a grasping and venal free for all in progress. Even Tanya Chutkin, who seems to be giving the government the benefit of the doubt about whether the situation is urgent enough for her, the judge to issue a temporary restraining order to bar all of Doge's intrusions. Even Chutkin seemed startled when the government didn't seem aware of exactly how many people had been fired. She went on to say the court is aware that Doge's unpredictable actions have resulted in considerable uncertainty and confusion for plaintiffs and many of their agencies and residents. It remains uncertain when and how the catalog of state programs that plaintiffs identify will suffer. And by the filing that asserted that Elon Musk isn't the head of Doge and has no special authority in the new administration, that the courts so far overall are setting limits, even temporary ones, and it has happened again and again already. This is a tremendously good sign for judicial independence.
- [14:31]
Unknown Speaker 3
Well, we're winning in court.
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Andrea Pitzer
More than a dozen federal injunctions and temporary restraining orders have been issued. There are three main issues, however, brought out by several legal scholars. The first is that when the cases work their way up to the Supreme Court, many of these decisions could be reversed. And that's just a realistic threat that we're going to be facing during the whole Trump administration and beyond. The second question is the question of enforcement. If various court rulings are not enforced by law enforcement agencies. Out of the Department of Justice's loyalty to Trump, what are we going to do? The third question is or just thing to note is that the law is very slow moving, with frequent delays for appeals and administrative due diligence. I won't speak a lot about enforcement. That's not my area of expertise. Except to note that there are more options than most non lawyers probably realize, from U.S. marshals to privately hired law enforcement. And I'll include links in the Friday roundup where you can read more about those if you'd like. And in terms of timeliness, while the courts are the least speedy and change oriented of our three branches of government, and while most judges see themselves upholding tradition, so far they also seem more responsive and tuned in to the magnitude of the crisis that Trump has launched, more so even than the legislative branch. This is where we're so I don't want to minimize the effects of what is already happening. Some of the damage that's already been done cannot be repaired.
- [16:25]
Unknown Speaker 3
Autocrats are dancing on the grave of aid. They're very pleased that it's gone. And that's a sign, in fact, of all of the great work AID has done to oppose tyrannical regimes and support democracy and human rights around the world.
- [16:44]
Andrea Pitzer
Careful ecosystems built over decades to protect the public health and the most vulnerable citizens have been smashed. The food chief at the Food and Drug Administration has resigned. Jim Jones says he's leaving his post in protest of the Trump administration's firing.
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Unknown Speaker 3
Of nearly 90 staff members.
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Andrea Pitzer
As food chief, Jones oversaw food safety and nutrition. One NIH employee told me at Monday's protest about a co worker whose position had taken years, many years to fill because so few people in a lucrative specialty would take the pay cut of working in the public sector to do the necessary work. That coworker had already been fired, and even if courts were reversed immediately, this NIH employee asked how many people would simply not return when they had other options, and how many people could even be replaced and who would come to such a government position at this point in time. So we do find ourselves in a grave situation, and given the timetable consideration, we probably have to consider the courts only a wrench in the works. They're a way to stop some immediate harms, perhaps, but mostly a way to dampen the scale of the damage until we have an executive more inclined to serve the people than to serve himself. But there is a lesser advantage in this delay, too. Even if the Supreme Court ends up ruling in favor of the Trump administration in most of the cases that eventually reach it. That too will take time, and in the interim, legislators and the public can use the decisions of more independent, less corrupt judges as a drumbeat to raise public awareness and alert those who checked out as to what's really happening in the country. Media coverage of these decisions can play a role as well.
- [18:39]
Unknown Speaker 3
We are seeing a string of court setbacks or outright losses for Donald Trump when it comes to trying to rewrite the citizenship clause of the Constitution. A big loss. 70 lawsuits now are trying to deal with various ripe targets in places that Trump and his team seems to have overstepped. Many executive orders are paused, awaiting further reviews.
- [19:00]
Andrea Pitzer
In the end, it's the people expressing themselves and demanding rights, including the right not to be exploited or abused by the current administration. So protesting is a key part of this right, but the umbrella is much larger than that. People expressing themselves takes a lot of forms.
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Unknown Speaker 4
I'm going to take my time to say what MAGA has stood for these past three weeks. MAGA stands for trying to erase trans people from existence. MAGA stands for resegregation and racism. MAGA stands for censorship and book bans. MAGA stands for firing air traffic controllers while planes are crashing. MAGA stands for firing the people overseeing our nuclear arsenal. MAGA stands for firing military veterans and those serving them at the va, including canceling research on veteran suicide. MAGA stands for cutting funds to education, including for disabled children. MAGA is profoundly corrupt, unmistakably anti democracy, and most importantly, MAGA is explicitly a Nazi movement. You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is. I will now engage in the time honored American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience.
- [20:09]
Unknown Speaker 3
Get the heck. Get out.
- [20:13]
Andrea Pitzer
This is why I've talked about networking before. It's important to know who's inside your trusted group to be able to provide support to one another. Right now. Even if you're not terribly affected by what's happening, volunteering with your library at a food pantry or working out a community program, particularly one where the relationships are more complex than just donors and recipients. Although donors are important for a lot of efforts, it's good to go beyond that relationship where you can.
- [20:42]
Unknown Speaker 2
My team was out there on Roosevelt Avenue and we were taping Know youw Rights cards to to food carts, to businesses. We're putting them in bodegas. Do that.
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Andrea Pitzer
The more connections there are between people who care for one another on a grassroots level, the harder it will be to impose the kind of atomized, reeling society that will give Trump and Musk and many Republican officials free reign.
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Unknown Speaker 1
We stand up and we take this risk now, or we risk moving into a state of society that most of us in America, especially white people, white people in America, have never experienced. But let's not forget the fact that black folks are keenly aware of how the state can use violence against them and get away with it.
- [21:29]
Andrea Pitzer
If mass protests take place on the scale of those we've seen force government change or oust corrupt rulers elsewhere, it will be due in part to people feeling connected enough with their neighbors, sharing enough of a vision of a shared future to take a chance. The current protests that we saw on Monday and prior to that are in the hundreds or thousands, for the most part, which is a good start. But protests will likely become larger and more dangerous over time. We have to consider the deliberate cruelty inflicted on immigrants deported to Guantanamo or to Panama for eventual transfer to some distant camp as a warning shot and symbolic of the kind of harm the current government would like to inflict on anyone who opposes them.
- [22:20]
Unknown Speaker 2
You are feeling so overwhelmed.
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Andrea Pitzer
To understand the direct connections there, we need to look no further than watching border czar Tom Homan calling to investigate Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.
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Unknown Speaker 5
So it's like AOC and others don't want ICE to enforce the laws that they enacted. She's a member of Congress. Let us enforce the laws you enacted. That's what we're supposed to do.
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Unknown Speaker 3
You can't go after her.
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Unknown Speaker 5
Do you think others should? No, I think I've asked doj, where is that line of impediment, of interference? Now, if someone stands in your way, prevents you from arresting somebody, put your hands down, that's impediment. But what line is telling people to hide from mice, not open the door? Where do you cross that line on impediment? So I simply ask the Department of Justice, give us that line.
- [23:10]
Andrea Pitzer
You have talked to them about this, that's what you're saying?
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Unknown Speaker 5
Absolutely.
- [23:21]
Andrea Pitzer
Minority groups of every kind are already facing attacks, with white supremacy becoming a public rallying cry of key people in the Trump administration. In really literal ways. Musk and Trump have embraced white Afrikaners as a vulnerable refugee group. At the Munich Security conference, Vice President JD Vance promoted the interests of Germany's AfD, the party most in line with Nazi ideology and rhetoric. Racist framing, along with direct targeting of the civil service and anything that can be tied, however spuriously, to DEI efforts. These appear to have the goal of undoing every post War, civil rights advance made by the country to go against this. Not everyone will be able to protest in public. Those who are caregivers to older relatives, those with disabilities, those with infants and toddlers, or whose identity puts them at particular risk in public, they may decide to stay behind the scenes. Some people will be organizers and educators. Others will become legal observers, not joining protesters in advocacy or making political demands, but documenting what unfolds in ways that can hold up in court. Those who are protesting may be fed by those who are not. Other people altogether may be coordinating legal services or bail. There are a lot of roles to be played in this podcast. I talk a lot about foreign examples from history, and there are so many protest traditions on which to draw, from Gandhi's work in India to protests during apartheid in South Africa or under dictatorship in South America in the 1970s and 80s, not to mention dramatic examples more recently in places like South Korea.
- [25:14]
Unknown Speaker 3
South Korea's president declared martial law basically in the middle of the night, effectively accusing the opposition of trying to destroy.
- [25:22]
Andrea Pitzer
The country from within.
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Unknown Speaker 3
And then, almost as quickly as the declaration had been made, Parliament, including members of the president's own party, pulled the rug out from under him, reversing the call.
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Andrea Pitzer
But we have a deep and powerful tradition of righteous American protest right here in the US One that has chiefly been led by Native Americans and black people and other minority groups. These protests were rarely spontaneous. They were often done strategically, with a lot of education and with specific goals in mind. And what's happening with the protests, like Monday's gathering around the country, are kind of a way to put down a marker to let people see that there are others like them out there who are unhappy with what's going on. But to grow to a size that can make real demands, a lot more people are going to need to reach out and connect with communities of those disaffected people. We're going to need teach ins. Some of them will be high profile ones, such as the ones that politics and pros are setting up as part of a new series. There'll be1 on March 7th that includes David Cole, who's done tremendous work on civil liberties in the U.S. kelly Robinson, the head of Human Rights Campaign Jamie Raskin, the congressman locally here, lawyer Ali Cole. And Sky Perryman, who is president of Democracy Forward, which is leading some of the court battles that are currently happening fighting the new administration. That's a start. But we're going to need even more teach INS from career community organizers like Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes. I'll put a link to some of their organizing materials and to the Politics and Prose virtual broadcast in this week's Friday roundup.
- [27:12]
Unknown Speaker 2
I'm telling you, it matters. We are in the wizard of Oz. They want you to think that it's this big green floating head that is too big to confront when they are little, little, little, little men with little, little, little fragile, fragile fragile rather big, big fragile egos.
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Andrea Pitzer
Just like every exercise of judicial independence is useful, whether it's making a tremendous difference yet or not, every public action of citizens and residents exercising the right to express and work for the kind of society they want to build is.
- [27:55]
Unknown Speaker 1
A step forward if the threat gets you to comply. If you are afraid of martial law, such that you choose not to exercise your rights in a situation where your life and your liberty are on the line, then we already have martial law.
- [28:11]
Andrea Pitzer
It helps to stop the erosion of rights and preemptive clampdown. It will make those in power more nervous about actually asserting themselves against civilian demonstrations later. And these small steps are necessary. Relationship building is as important as any other action. Most people feel better after doing something, anything than doing nothing. And I'm thinking back to my days teaching karate when people are just learning to do push ups. Sometimes even one is impossible. But you break it down into smaller pieces, they do smaller parts, and almost everybody gets stronger in predictable ways over time. As I saw on Monday, some protesters or just stunned fired federal employees looking for a public outlet for grief over the losses of their jobs and whole ecosystems of government service. Others were moved by Musk's egregious role in destroying a government he clearly doesn't understand. On any level, I am become meme.
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Unknown Speaker 3
Yeah, pretty much I'm just living the meme. It's like there's living the dream and there's living the meme, and it's pretty much what's happening. You know, you're like, I think you're bigger. I mean, Doge started out as a meme. Think about it. Now it's real.
- [29:45]
Andrea Pitzer
Some felt moved by simple patriotism at odds with everything that seemed to be happening since January 20th. Julia Kasdorf brought her guitar and sang a version of the Star Spangled Banner that ended unconventionally or the land of.
- [30:01]
Unknown Speaker 3
The free.
- [30:05]
Andrea Pitzer
And the home of the.
- [30:09]
Unknown Speaker 3
Honest citizens of America.
- [30:13]
Andrea Pitzer
That's all you get. I asked a woman with a sign that was decrying dictators why she'd come out, and she said, because I'm an American. This particular protest had a generic rallying cry against executive overreach against kings. Some on social media have called these kinds of protests boomer cringe. What did they think they were doing? What could possibly be accomplished? But we're only at the beginning for now, especially for those who may not have experience. Showing up is a lot.
- [30:49]
Unknown Speaker 2
I'm telling you, it matters.
- [30:51]
Andrea Pitzer
Later demands will become more specific. Danger will likely increase. But often in history, defiance of unjust government starts with saying not this. Saying no is a first step, even if it's just the first of many. One of the key reasons that legislators are unable or unwilling to do as much as people would like is that the same system that elected Donald Trump elected them. Just as legacy newspapers are bound to the current U.S. political and economic systems in ways that make it difficult for them to report in unusual times, current elected legislators are by and large bound to the current models of politics in ways that make it difficult for them to work against the current administration. They do have an important role to play right now, but few of them will choose to play it or even understand how to. Which isn't to say that the public shouldn't keep pressuring them to act, it's just to say that we shouldn't wait on them if they don't lead the way. In the end, whatever salvation we see is likely to come from courts saying no and specifying remedies, and the people saying no and making demands about how they're ruled. And that's it. Thanks for listening to Next Comes what?
- [32:28]
Unknown Speaker 4
Please share this with anyone who's looking.
- [32:30]
Unknown Speaker 1
For ways to help each other survive this mess. To support this podcast, Please subscribe@Andreapitzer.com and consider giving Next Comes what?
- [32:38]
Andrea Pitzer
A five star review where you get your podcasts.