Trump Thwarted, Orban Toppled: The New Roadmap for Democrats

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This episode is presented by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Many of the most important legal fights in this country come down to a basic question. Who gets to make decisions about our bodies and our health care? That question isn't theoretical. It's playing out right now. The Trump administration's backers in Congress are trying to permanently defund Planned Parenthood, an effort to shut down health centers and block patients' care, especially from those with low incomes. Together, we have the power to protect and expand affordable care. Visit plannedparenthood.org slash defend and make a gift today. This is Amicus Slate's podcast about the courts and the law and the Supreme Court. I'm Dahlia Lithuig. Mr. President, you are on with about 5,000 Hungarian patriots, and I think they love you even more than they love Viktor Orban. Well, I can't believe that. I can't believe it. Because I love Hungary and I love that Victor. I'll tell you, he's a fantastic man. We've had a tremendous relationship. The pro-democracy pushback, the same surge that took so many years in Hungary, has happened here in just 15 months.

The American rights favorite comparative roadmap to autocracy has suffered a near fatal blow at the ballot box, flipping from a stark warning to those of us who care about democracy to a shining example. As recently as last week, the conventional wisdom for aspiring autocrats was Bianorban, not a Trump. In Hungary, Viktor Orban, who had been in office for almost two decades, had taken control of so many of the levers of democracy, the courts, the academy, the press, the arts, the Constitution itself, that his illiberal regime appeared bulletproof and permanent. As our friend Ian Bassinet Protect Democracy reminded us two weeks ago on this show, Donald Trump. could not yet make similar claims. Sure, there's been a lot of obeying in advance and taking the deal, especially in the corporate media and the academy. But Trump is being thwarted by trial courts by universities, independent reporters, military officials, and protesters every single day. Well, this past weekend, we learned that even Viktor Orban's seemingly iron grip on the levers of democracy was ephemeral. He was routed amid record turnout in the recent election and routed to such an extent a supermajority as to make it legislatively and constitutionally possible to claw back what's been stolen from the machinery of democracy in Hungary. My guest today, Ambassador Norm Eisen, is here to teach us what just such a process could look like in the United States. Now, before we get to Norm and his concentrated shot of optimism for court reform and coalitions and combating corruption here in the U.S., I want to flag that right after this episode, Slate Plus members, will have access to my weekly bonus back and forth with my Amicus co-host, Mark Joseph Stern. We're discussing how and why several Supreme Court justices spring speaking engagements have turned into an airing of interpersonal grievances and what it signals about some of the big decisions that we are still waiting on from One First Street. I think our deep fear from the start here was that she's mostly pissed off about Calais, right? Our deep fear has been that the blockbuster case of the term, there are many, but the biggest one, the attack on the Voting Rights Act is going to turn out as bad as we all think, and that she is furious at Brett Kavanaugh and is taking it out on him in public. And, like, if that's what happened here, then all the facts kind of line up. Go to slate.com slash amicusplus so you can join us for that. Okay, time for this Eeyore to hear from the most tiggerish of advocates for democracy about what we need to learn from Hungary in the law and in our politics.

Norm Eisen served as the U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014. Among his many other hats that he wears and titles he has, he is for our purposes the co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, which has been helping lead the successful national court fights against the Trump administration. Norm is also the co-founder and publisher of the indispensable The Contrarian. He's also one of my go-toes, always on. both authoritarian creep and the tactics of a successful resistance. So Norm, oh boy, did I need you this week. Welcome back. Thank you, Dahlia. It's always such a pleasure to be with you. And of course, what better place. to celebrate the resurgence of democracy against as seemingly impregnable authoritarian and to contemplate its larger implications together. Thanks for having me. I want to talk about the fragility of democracy because I would love for your sort of 40,000 foot diagnosis of what happened in the United States. This was a democracy with challenges. It's a very old democracy. This was supposed to be a robust democracy, had competing branches of governments, had checks and balances, functional court, free media, thriving academy. All of this seems to have been taken over by the forces of illiberalism inside. I want to say inside a decade. Maybe we can fight about that. Maybe inside a decade and a half. And I guess I'm really sort of first principles asking the question, was this a poison pill that is just baked into U.S. democracy or into all democracies? Or were Trump and Maga, I'm smirking while I say this norm, some kind of political wizards who managed to turn a functioning democracy into a second-rate protection racket in the blink of an eye? Yeah, they're political wizards the same way that Mickey Mouse in the Sorcer's Apprentice segment of Fantasia. He uses the magical powers and creates total chaos and the broom that he animates, attacks him. You know, this is the wizard gang that can't shoot straight. Look, in trying to take account of what has happened in the past 15 months in the United States, there are two competing narratives. And weirdly, events across the ocean cast one of those narratives, I think, into brighter light. There's one story of the past 15 months that is an account of the weakness of American democracy and the devastation, destruction, and death that Donald Trump and his MAGA enablers, his cronies in the executive branch in Congress in the oligarchy have succeeded in bringing to heal the once mighty Article 1. Congress have become the majority lap dogs for Trump allowing him to run amok. This is a view of the world where Trump's kneecapping of the independent agencies, which the Supreme Court is about to authorize with Humphrey's executor.

It's a view of autocratic rise, universities, law firms, media, giants, ABC, CBS, genuflecting. But there's another view of the world. And it's the view of the world that I subscribe to, Dahlia. And at Democracy Defenders Fund, with our about 300 legal cases and matters, including many of the landmark wins of those 15 months. And that is that the... Democratic, the pro-democracy pushback, the same surge that took so many years in Hungary, has happened here in just 15 months. And many of them, as I say, are cases we've worked on. That is an account of Donald Trump losing again and again in the courts and being forced. I represent the city of Los Angeles and all the National Guard litigation. And they see. sent me the video of the National Guard, my wonderful client, Heidi, the city attorney, sent me the video of the National Guard slinking out in the middle of the night after one of our court wins. I was at the Supreme Court with the other independent agency. The Fed, I was there to see how even the most hostile members of the Supreme Court bench are not going to kneecap the Fed. That's the story of Letitia James. James Comey, Trump trying to criminally prosecute people, where we were very proud to develop the theory at Democracy Defenders Fund that Trump's phony, crony U.S. attorneys are illegal. We started with Alina Habba. We filed briefs for 200 bipartisan judges, Talia. In those James and James Comey cases, they were thrown out. That's the story of Trump's attempt to take over our elections. He did an electioneo. to take over American elections. A year ago, we went to court and blocked it. He tried to do redistricting. We represented those Texas legislators who sounded the alarm. We defended Prop 50, the antidote in California, creating new seats to block Trump. And on and on and on exposing his corruption. Now we're fighting the biggest oligarch takeover the Paramount Warner's merger. We're deep into that. We help put together this. Pledge of support for the AGs from 3,000 Hollywood heavyweights. My preferred account is a combination of the two. My greatest anxiety today! I'm anxious about continuing the pushback, the next 300 cases, the election wars we're going to have here this year, I think we'll win. But, you know, I'm anxious about it. I'm anxious about after we have that breakthrough, what does 2027 look like, for example, in the House of Representatives. My biggest anxiety is the central problem that is confronting Petter Magyar and the Hungarians today.

I think, do we go the way of Brazil, which had accountability and sustained the autocratic turnaround? Or do we go the way of Poland? Up down, up, down. That's my biggest long-term concern for the United States. And for Hungary. There is a tendency right now in the sort of post-gaming of Hungary to be like, oh, look, it was never actually, you know, authoritarianism in the first place. Like, clearly, it wasn't that bad if it was so fragile. And I love what you're saying because you're saying, like, yes, it was that bad. Yes, this is that bad. And also... People can fight back. So it's sort of yes and, and I think it's a really important framing. It doesn't mean you sit back and do nothing and hope it implodes. It means people like you are working day after day after day because it is really threatening. It is really pernicious, but also it can be beaten. And I think that's such an important sort of way to contain the... flip, I guess Viktor Orban wasn't really, you know, that much of an autocrat. It does raise an interesting question that I'll ask you. Dahlia and I are good friends, so I'm allowed to get tear off the script. Dalia, if Viktor Orban, to your point, if he was such a dictator, how did they have... free, unfair, they were not free and fair, like we say in the United States, but they did have free but unfair elections in Hungary. How did that happen? I mean, it's actually a question I wanted to ask you, because if you look at his gerrymandering record, it's almost inconceivable, right? These were not. free and fair, underrymandered elections. And yet, I think it's just, and it goes to that voter turnout point, right? It turns out that even with a huge thumb on the scale against both freedom and fairness, the people can still move the needle. I think that's the answer, right? I think that's right. The solution is to win by margins that are too big to cheat on. That's what Viktor Orban calls it, liberal democracies. And that is the kind of regime that Donald Trump is trying to impose here. We will do everything to protect the 2026 elections from sabotage. We're now about 300 cases and matters. Come November, we might have 400, we might have 500, we might have 500, we might have 600. But ultimately, it is up to all of us to turn out in numbers too big to cheat on. That is the ultimate guardrail. Even Viktor Orban was not willing to take on 80% of Hungarians. This does sort of lead to the repair piece of this. And this is really...

what I needed you to walk me through because I do wonder if you have some, I don't know what to even call it, a pull-down menu of what are the instrumentalities of democracy you fix first? What is essential? Is it true that the corruption stuff is top of the chain? Is it true that free press has to be done immediately? Or is it just sort of everything everywhere all at once it all needs to be repaired immediately? And that's what we have to do in the United States. The number one item on the pull-down menu, and Mug-yard is doing all of this, he's very brilliant politician, and that was the failure in the Polish presidential election. They didn't have a Petter Mug-Yar to put forward who could do the things I'm about to describe. The number one item in the pull-down menu is to maintain your supermajority big tent and to use it as a contract process. You have committed now to people across the political spectrum in Hungary. We're about to make these commitments in the United States. And I'm going to be very loud about this and it's not going to be popular. When some of my friends listen to this podcast, I can already imagine the kovetches I'm going to get. You make a contract. And then you stick to that contract. In Magyar's case, he made a set of promises about what democracy is, Dahlia. People don't want to hear about Locke and Burke and John Rawls. The way that democracy hits them is to have a better life. And there's nothing wrong with talking to people about... the cost of living crisis. That's not smaller than talking about ethereal democracy ideas. And that's what Mugyard did. And he did it brilliantly. And he connected the cost of living with the corruption. And his deal with these right left and center in Hungary and he was ruthless and rigorous and disciplined in making this commitment. He's like, look, I am going to stop the stealing. They are stealing from you and making everything more expensive. They're just incompetent because they're in their totalitarian power games. They're not getting the real people. That's making things more expensive. I'm going to bring the cost down government services. That includes better government services. It's what Zohran Mamdani calls sewer socialism. And I'm going to reduce the corruption. And it was a very simple message. You've got to deliver on that. You've got to be brutal in hammering that home. LBJ-like, like how he passed the civil rights laws and the great society laws. Politics is not for the faint of heart. And you've got to tell the people you did it. The Biden administration did some of the most amazing policy accomplishments since LBJ. Nobody knew about it. are not enough people knew about it. And to do that, you have a populist leader. That is maintaining that compact with the people is everything. And it needs to be a big tent. I like to call it in the United States A to Z. We used to call it Cheney to Chomsky.

before Chomsky had his Epstein problems. A to Z, Abigail Spanberger and Andy Beshear, kind of representing one, all the way over to Zohran Mamdani, A to Z, big tent. That's what we need. And that's going to mean, look, I proudly proclaim myself. a strong two-state, justice, fairness, liberal Zionists. Do you know how many Shabbat dinners I had when I was ambassador? I brought together people from Israel and Palestine to talk to each other. We ran a track two process in Prague that I hosted while I was ambassador. But people have wildly different views on Israel, for example. Big tent. There are other issues that are larger that transcend that. And Muggar did that. And he's like, I don't want to talk about that other stuff. We're going to talk about costs and corruption. That's part one. And then the rest of the pull-down menu is you've got to deal with all the power centers. And it's in no particular order. Article 3 in the United States, the courts, they must be cleaned up. They're a mess here. That's been a project of decades to break our courts, and the Supreme Court has to be unbroken. We can talk about that. Congress has given up its power, has to claw back war powers and more. And then we have to do more to constrain Article 2. I'll say one last thing. I've gone on way too long. No phony tolerance for autocracy. Magyar went to see the president of Hungary. Viktor Orban Apparachic, and then he tweeted afterwards, the president must go. He's not fit to lead our country. He must resign. He's not pulling punches. Maybe we pulled some punches in 2021 to 26 that we shouldn't. Accountability. More in a moment with Ambassador Norm Eisen.

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NPR understands your curiosity is boundless, but your time isn't. That's why they make up first, the three biggest news stories of the day, with the reporting and analysis to understand them in under 15 minutes. Up First's distillation of President Trump's claims of election fraud in California was a super useful preview of what we can expect in the midterms. There's no shortage of news right now. Up First doesn't just give you the headlines. It gives you the context. Recent episodes covered how American citizens are getting caught in ISIS's growing surveillance web, what the Iran war means for the U.S. economy, and why Attorney General Pam Bondi's exit is bigger than it looks. Up First does something most daily news shows don't. It asks better questions to get better answers. Not just what happened, but how it came about, why it's a big deal and what happens next. That's the difference between knowing the news and understanding it. Follow NPR's Up First podcast so you can understand what matters and what happens next. It's hard news through a human lens. Let's return now to my conversation with Norm Eisen. I'm old enough to remember because you've just said the thing that's really important, right? Corruption, corruption, corruption. That was a huge part of the message, right? They are self-dealing. They are enriching their selves and their families. Everyone hates that. But I'm old enough to remember you and emoluments the first time around. I remember you and I having conversations where we said the public is not going to stand for this. And the public has stood for corruption that now makes emoluments look. frankly, adorable, right? So I want to hear a little bit more, one more beat on we've been talking about corruption in Trump and self-dealing in Trump and the oligarchs in Trump and the like meme coin and the stuff that is happening now is so profoundly disheartening in terms of corruption and kind of crickets. in the United States on this. So help me understand how to take the anti-corruption message that really was metabolized in Hungary and import it to an American public that seems to just be like, eh, corruption's okay. Well, I think the corruption narrative did work in 2020. Donald Trump was ousted. And. We can analyze what went wrong in 2024 to a fair thee well. My view is that a relative handful about 150,000, give or take voters in three states, the same three states we always talk about, were aggravated about a series of issues and took a gamble, you know, if 150,000 approximately plus one. I had changed their vote in those three places. It's not much more than Phil. A couple of stadia demonstrating I'm utterly unfit for leadership in the United States because I didn't say stadiums. My political consultant friends say I'm too coastal elite. A couple stadiums fall.

of people changing their mind about a few. That's my view. I do not think it was a giant repudiation like in Hungary where they have an electoral magnifier system. The electoral college was a disproportionate reflection of what those, about 150,000 voters, I think it was a little less actually in those three places. So let's not. over read 2024 as a referendum authorizing corruption. Trump, after all, said he would drain the swamp. He hasn't. He has, I saw a poll by one of the long-term pollsters. that's been polling since before Nixon. Trump now is minus 42 in this poll. He's one point lower than Nixon at his lowest point in the middle of his corruption scandal. The crickets are chirping loudly if you listen to them, Dahlia, that they don't like the billions that Donald Trump and his family have made. Over 300 million American Jiminy cricket voters. They don't like the billions Trump has made. They don't like the crony capitalism. No, I'll tell you why we're not doing emoluments again. We're focusing on other corruption like the Paramount Warner's merger, where instead of the independent review that the feds usually do under both parties, you have an endorsement of... preferred oligarchs with Trump making his preference open. Pete Hegseth saying the quiet part out loud, he can't wait for the Ellicence to take over CNN. Dahlia, when you turn the channels, every channel is going to be Fox News. And we're fighting that. That's a corruption battle. So I think we're well situated in the United States to have a simple message in 2026, not dissimilar to Hungary. On the cost of living, there is a crisis because of the betrayal of Trump and his MAGA enablers. You are paying more. There's a corruption tax that every American is paying. And if the Democrats are successful in getting power back, that they will lower costs. They will make life and the pursuit of happiness affordable by investigating and stopping the corruption. And they're already doing it. The Democratic and Republican AGs stopped Live Nation and Ticketmaster from robbing us all this week. That was a huge. Victory against corruption with Donald Trump having rubber stamped that deal. And the feds backed out. The state stepped in. Bipartisan, no less. You've now connected up. And I think this actually was ably done in the Hungarian messaging to connecting up.

corruption and cost of living, right? We're not doing well and we're not doing well because they're enriching themselves. There's a third piece of this, and again, this harkens back to conversations you and I have had for years now. For years. And that is democracy itself, getting people to care about democracy. And You know, folks kept telling us before the 24 election and you were in those calls with me that nobody cares about democracy. Nobody cares that democracy is just an abstraction and that Americans vote on the price of eggs or, as you said, you know, on the price of gas and that these. democracy pieces. We'll talk about court reform as part of this, but electoral college reform, gerrymandering, all of the ways in which democracy needs to be kind of stripped down and fixed up. Americans did not seem to really go to the polls because democracy was under threat. And that was a piece of, it seems to me, the Hungarian elections. So I want you to do the same thing for the democracy conversation you just did for the corruption conversation, which is make it salient and relevant for me why Americans this time around care about the electoral college and Puerto Rico and statehood and court reform. When Muggar was talking to the Hungarians about the cost corruption nexus, he was talking about democracy. And I really venerate Joe Biden. I've known him for decades. I worked on one of his presidential campaigns. You know, I've been rattling around so long, Dahlia. I kind of gotten to know a lot of people. He's a good man. His concerns about democracy were genuine. But the way to... deal with it is not to have abstract conversations, as I say about ideas from Locke and Burke and John Rawls. It's to talk about the costs of America not functioning the way we promised we would have a more perfect union and the pursuit of happiness for Americans. And Instead, what we have is a cost of living crisis and a corruption crisis. That is the result of America and our idea is not working properly. You don't even have to say the D word. We should banish it.

Because it's too abstract. I've learned this the hard way. I was going to say, says the boss of the democracy defenders. We should just call it like balloons. I know. I'm changing the name of our organization to the cost, affordable. You shouldn't even say affordability. I'm changing it to the cost of living and anti-corruption club. You know, we have to find a way to translate this when we talk to average folks, because when we're defending democracy, what we really defending are those ideas of the pursuit of happiness. You can afford happiness. There's a wonderful Yiddish saying, you know, Dahlia, English is not my first language, which comes as no surprise to many. In Kemachin Torah. No flower? No Torah. What that essentially means is without being able to afford the cost of living, you can't pursue the American dream. You can't pursue your values. Torah is a stand-in in our Jewish lexicon for living a virtuous life, pursuit of happiness, essentially. So I think we have to find a better way. Fortunately, My target audience with the democracy defenders understands what I'm talking about when I say we defend democracy. That's how we defend democracy. So you're at the very end of your pull-down menu. You said the magic word, which is accountability. And then I took us on some train to some other station. But I would love your thoughts on, because you've said, right, Poland, up and down, in and out, you know, sometimes on, sometimes off. And we tried accountability, seems to me. Last week on the show, we talked to Jamie Raskin about impeachment, the need to hold this president to account. Another one of my adventures first term, emoluments at impeachment. I remember it well. Talk to the folks who say all of the attempts to bring accountability after 2020. were either ill-conceived or created a backlash. Because what I'm hearing in Hungary is, oh, hell no, there will be accountability. And that means sweeping investigations and trials and people are going to jail. And there is a sort of stratum of American thought that holds that, like, if we hadn't tried to have accountability after January 6th, Trump wouldn't have been swept back into office. So can you talk about accountability? because it seems like it's got a bad rap. Accountability is another one of those words. Like nobody knows. I don't even like to talk about affordability. I talk about the cost of living crisis, the corruption crisis that's contributing to the cost of living crisis.

The worst criminals who are stealing from the American people right now, they're stealing from you and from me and from 330 million others. Of course, as we always have, they have to be brought to justice. We have to get that money back for the American people. But we can't be in an endless cycle of the Hatfields and the McCoys. That's what Donald Trump is doing now. He wrongly perceives. that he was unfairly targeted. He was fairly targeted, Dahlia. And he's going after, just this week, we got the news he's going after the Ukraine whistleblower, who was the foundation of our impeachment proceedings. There's no basis to have a criminal referral against that individual. Other countries have phrased it well, truth and reconciliation. Because you have to balance the part where we're going to get to the truth with We're going to reconcile. And we can't survive as a country in a permanent Hatfield and McCoy intergenerational feud. We have to try to get back to what Mugyard did, which is to reconcile a big tent right left and center that agrees on certain things. And we were working on that in the democracy movement. We had a conference. You might have spoken at our anti-authoritarian conference in the summer of 2024. We workshoped a set of 10 principles. You can find it on the Democracy Demenders website. It's guided the democracy movement these past 15 months, friends. When I talk to my conservative partners, many of whom are on our board, a Bill Crystal, a Joe Walsh, Barbara Comstock, many others. You know, we have a set of things we agree on, and that is an affirmative agenda. So I think we need to have truth for the worst offenders, but we need to have reconciliation for others. Those defectors are a very important part of the movement. You know, who would have thought Marjorie Taylor Greene? God, it's hard for me to imagine there's room in the big tent for her. But, you know, she has been terrific in calling out the worst of the worst. And Tucker Carlson, he's been platforming anti-Semites. Candace Owens, she's even worse. She peddles anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. But God bless him, when Trump did his infamous Easter tweet, attacking the Iranians or his civilization, his genocide tweet, which in itself is a war crime. Even that far right Alex Jay Jones, like the worst of the word. Jahlia! He lost his anti-Semitic caucus. That's like his base. That's his base. He lost them. So we're seeing some cracks.

I'm never going to make common cause with Tucker Carlson, Candice Owen, and Alex Jay Jones. But there is a big tent that we can reconcile. And there's going to need to be a lot of reconciliation. But the crux who broke the laws, the criminals who are out there stealing every day. No, you can't steal from the American people say, oh, 2029, let's kiss and make up. No. So you've mentioned the Paramount. Skydance, Warner Brothers, merger. I think it's sort of playing in the background for a lot of people. And you're right, I think it's gotten a lot more attention with folks in Hollywood speaking out. Let's listen to our friend Katie Fang. This is her testimony. Senate Democrats held a hearing on it on Wednesday. Yes, and let me say before we play Katie Fang, she was there representing the democracy defender's action. where she's a senior advisor, or soon to be renamed, the Cost Cutting Corruption Killing Club. Let's take a listen. I have reported on First Amendment law for years. I have covered the cases. I've interviewed the litigants. I've explained that doctrine to millions of viewers. And I can tell you that the framers designed the free press clause precisely because that they understood that a concentrated power, whether held by a king, a parliament, or a corporation acting in coordination with a government. poses an existential threat to self-governance. What this merger enables is not a hypothetical version of that threat. It's an operational one. Tell us why this matters in all the things that you are doing, why this feels like a touchstone of freedom. Here's why it matters. Part of the challenge of having accountability is there's extremely... high legal burdens, hurdles to hold the president accountable. They're not insurmountable. We had a court judgment recently from Judge Amit Mehta here in the District of Columbia that Trump was doing political activity in his lips speech and can be held accountable for some of the wrongdoing around that. But it's very high. However, the oligarchs who are in there bending their knee and pushing... Cash to Trump or doing his bidding can be fought in court. And they are his enablers of the attacks on the First Amendment. And the Ellisons are Exhibit A of this. They openly curry favor with him. David Ellison is having a dinner for journalists in his web. And Donald Trump here in D.C. I think it's in the days ahead. I mean, it's open collusion.

So you can go after that. The Paramount Warner's merger is an example of that. This is a misbegotten consolidation. The entertainment studio is going to drive costs through the roof for all of us to have so much control of streaming services of movies in one hand, propaganda being pushed on those platforms, but also the news consolidation. We don't want... as Katie said, we don't want CBS fate to then become the fate of CNN. You don't want to turn the channel from Fox News to CNN and you get the same content or worse. So this is something we can stand up to. The AG's just one. Live Nation, Ticketmaster, they can go to court to stop this. There's been an explosion, a mutiny on the Hollywood bounty. We were proud to help lead it at Democracy Defenders Fund. We worked with movie stars. and working folks in the industry over 3,000 of the biggest actors, producers, directors, writers, but also folks you've never heard of who run the cameras and do the catering and the makeup, working people, and news people like Katie Fang and Jim Acosta joining together to say in the name of another Hollywood TV show. Nobody wants this. I think that will be challenged and defeated in court. It is not a done deal for the Ellison's or for democracy. There is that word again. There's that word. We're going to have to call it balloons. So listen, I want you to now set my mind at rest about one other piece of this, which is Maga had Project 2025, sealed in amber long before 2025. And it was just a roadmap for the takeover of government, of institutions, of the law, of the family, of civic life. It was the whole thing. That was like some pretty asymmetric warfare they had going there, Norm. Like they were ready to go. And as some of us dare to dream of a hungry-style route, we could call it anti-corruption, we could call it Norm's wish list. What is the damn analog of Project 2025? Who's working on it? What's in it? Just make me feel good. Make me feel like there is a blueprint and it's good to go. Well, let's not get too excited about Project 2025 because... It was a millstone around Trump's neck. He had to disclaim it in the campaign. Then they implemented it. And almost everything in there is illegal. And they gave us a blueprint in advance so we could fight back. So if you like Donald Trump being, I think the Nixon was minus 41 and Trump is minus 42. If you like that, then have another one.

I'll give you an example, birthright citizenship. The fact that they said they were going to eliminate birthright citizenship enabled me to start working with the ACLU and others on a birthright citizenship case in summer of 2024. We filed it on day one and we're at the Supreme Court. I think we're going to win at the Supreme Court. You know, the key thing I think is simplicity. Like Mugyard, cost. and corruption, the lower cost, lower corruption club, the new name of my organization, cut cost, cut corruption club, C5. So that discourse is happening in plain sight. That's how we got to 300, about 300 legal complaints. Just go on our website. Hopefully. The new pro-democracy big tent will be smart enough to follow up. We did a legal complaint on the illegal boat strikes. It's murder on the high seas. Well, somebody should follow up on that. We laid out the law. We laid out the facts. It's there in plain sight. I'll tell you what I think it should look like. Others have their own view. All big tent consensus issues. Costs. corruption. We have to have a reasonable crime policy. My wonderful colleague, A.G. Matt Plotkin, the Vera Institute. They have sound common sense middle of the road crime policy. The courts, we cannot have this continued. cacistocracy. We have to have some court reform, common-sensical, like term limits, court reform. And I think we can't have porous borders. And the chaos at the border was a devastating indictment for all the good things the Biden administration did. They cracked down on it. It was too late. We have to finally do common-sense immigration reform. Again, what ice, the crazy ice, nobody's asking for that in our cities. People don't want the criminals. We do have to get the criminals. But my dad was an undocumented migrant, Talia. He jumps ship from Poland. at Ellis Island in 1940s like, oh, I'll be back. I just want to walk around New York. And he stayed here for another four decades. You know what I'm saying? Those are simple issues. Don't overcomplicate. If you don't like those issues, pick some other issues that we agree on. Run on them. Be simple about them. Be common sense. Unify the country. Equality. But it's equality for everybody. Don't present it as special interest bleeding. Explain that we want that pursuit of happiness for every American person. I think even the most ultra-maga people in their hearts other than Stephen Miller actually live and let live. They want that too. My best friend is ultra-maga. And yet we agree on so much. We disagree on a lot.

But he doesn't want deprivation of equality or cruelty to migrants. Pick your issues, keep it simple, fucking deliver. And tell the people you've delivered. And that's the recipe for Muggar and it's the recipe for the United States. And we can constitute a new, new deal that can have a decades long run. It's much simpler said than done. Let's pause to hear from some of our sponsors. Summer always reminds me how quickly dehydration can catch up with me. Between warmer weather, travel, and long days with two kids under three, I can feel when water alone isn't enough. That's why I keep drip drop on hand. It's an easy way to stay ahead of dehydration before I start feeling tired. drip drop is proven fast hydration that's built to hydrate you faster and more effectively than water alone. It uses science-based formulas for rapid hydration so you feel results fast while getting three times the electrolytes of leading sports drinks. And it's trusted by over 90% of top college and pro sports teams. Because hydration isn't just something you do when you're behind. It's how you stay ahead. Drip drop zero sugar plus is a breakthrough fast absorbing formula with an advanced blend of six key electrolytes, 15 essential vitamins and nutrients and no sugar or artificial sweeteners. There are 16 original flavors and 8 zero sugar plus options, including my preferred choice after a long day outside with the kids, zero sugar passion fruit. Right now, drip drop is offering podcast listeners 20% off your first order. Go to dripdrop.com and use the promo code amicus. That's dripdrop.com promo code amicus for 20% off. Stock now at dripdrop.com and use promo code amicus, AMI, CUS.

Hi, I'm Jack Ravichie Kramer host of The Best One Yet. At T-Boy, we're always talking about small decisions that can have an outsized impact. One of the simplest is staying hydrated. Whether I'm traveling, getting a workout in, or heading into a busy day, I keep Liquid IV on hand. It's clinically demonstrated to hydrate faster than water alone and contains three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drink, plus eight vitamins and nutrients. It's an easy addition to your daily routine and help support hydration when you need it most. Shop now at Liquidiv.com. Liquid IV hydration that goes wherever life takes you. And we are back talking constitutional and democratic repair with Norm Eisen. I want to land on the courts, but I also just want to note we've just workshoped the new name of whatever it is that Norm is building. You heard it here first. It's like C4, C5, C7, C3PO. I love it. And I also just want to say, you actually said something super important that doesn't get said enough, which is you don't need a telephone book-sized project 2025 because we know this and we know how to do it. And it's in our kind of DNA and in our bones. But I want to. Talk about the court for one second. You mentioned it. This is ultimately a show where we talk about the Supreme Court. And I think it's really important. We're heading into the last couple of weeks of oral arguments. And then the end of the term, we're going to have a raft of hugely consequential decisions that are going to come in the last week of June. And the court's going to give Trump a couple of losses, but a bunch of wins. And then we're going to get told it's this like really temperate, moderate court. And we should keep it exactly as it is so that when Samuel Alito allegedly retires, he can be replaced by someone. far to his right, if such a thing is imaginable. The thing you started to say, Norm, is so important, which is the conversation about Supreme Court reform has to be a cornerstone of what we say out loud because we have been afraid to say it out loud for a very long time. cornerstone. And it has to be a predicate that we build up to so it's not coming out of the blue. And, you know, this is one of the places as we reflect back on the lessons of our beloved Joe Biden and the very many good things that that administration did. I can't say that the... opportunity to do court reform was a particular, although the reform was not particularly dramatic now, they put a lot of judges on the bench historic. And we're seeing the positive results of that in the extraordinary judicial guardrail pushback on Trump, where I think there's been kind of a shift in the force, the vibe, where, you know, with these decisions now.

from the Supreme Court that are going to be very bad for him. People see that the courts have been to some extent of guardrail. I am on record in favoring a pretty aggressive form of term limits. and I've done policy papers. It really tracks some of the Sheldon White House reforms that he's advocated for and attempted to legislate, where you would have some rotation where every president would appoint, and you'd have some remediation. We have the power to do that. We can back that up with the power of the purse. We can back that up with the jurisdiction, reallocation, if necessary. It won't be a successful project if the big tent is not behind it. If you can't muster a coalitional backing, you know, Magyar is running on the corruption of the courts. He ran on that. He struck a bargain with the Hungarian people. And now when he delivers, he has supermajority support. Unlike Trump, who, you know, about 150,000 votes, that's no mandate. And you've seen his floor just collapse because he didn't listen to the constituencies that voted for him. Maggiore does have a supermajority. He has enough to change the Constitution. But I think he's going to be careful in how he does that to stick to the deal he made with the Hungarian people. Ultimately, you are going to need to build, but it'll be a multi-year project. You are going to need to build towards constitutional reform in the United States. But in the meantime, there's things like imposing a set of term limits, rotating people out on the Supreme Court, rebalancing. I think that's constitutional. I've argued at length why it's constitutional. And the tools that Congress has to enforce. their balance vision. But you've got to run on it. You've got to explain it to people. And, you know, the court has, there was a lot of anxiety in the shadow docket days. But now we're seeing a series of decisions already, the city of Chicago National Guard decision, the terrorist decision. I think you will see a series of additional big ticket decisions. And you know, you're going to get bad decisions in one place that counts a lot. That's elections. I don't think. Voting Rights Act Article 2 is going to survive very much tragically. But on the plus side, at least they didn't drop that decision in December when you would have had huge nationwide redistricting. So, you know, we do have to talk about as one of those five Cs court reform. But I think I'll stick with the names Democracy Defenders Fund and Democracy Defenders Action. We'll just have our Five Seas Club, Dahlia. You have been on a journey of naming today. It's very biblical. I want you to play us out for one second where you started and where you just ended, where you started with Hungary and where you just ended, which is the ballot box, because one of the things that democracy defenders has prioritized is protecting elections. And I would just love for you to remind people.

That the vibe that the fix is in, he's going to deny the election, he's going to send National Guardsmen in to hassle people in their polling places. He's collecting data already. You know, there's no point voting because we're going to lose. My God, if Hungary has put the lie to anything, it's the fix is in story, as you said. But can you just play us out with why this is one of the three pillars that is so important? Yes, our three pillars at democracy defenders are based on a conversation ahead with a wonderful Polish veteran of the democracy wars in that country, you know, which have been up and down since the Iron Curtain, Solidarnas, the peace, the law and justice party, and then the... coalition government coming in and the poor presidential showing poor candidate for the pro-democracy party. Now you have a split government with an autocratic president and a coalition that can't get as much done, pro-democracy coalition. He said to me, Norman, there are a thousand and one things that you can do. at democracy defenders. But there are three things that you must do. Number one, you must protect the rule of law. Because if you don't, it will be used to put you in jail. I'm paraphrasing. If you do, it'll be a guardrail. Number two, you must protect elections. Because guardrails are not enough. You have to break through. You have to make a democracy U-turn. The elections are how you do that. And that's what's going to happen in this country in 26. Be of good cheer. And number three, you must cut off the corruption because that is how the autocrats create the vicious cycle of fueling their attacks on rule of law and winning elections. And it worked for Viktor Orban for 16 years. It worked for Viktor Orban. So that's all we do. We do those three things at the democracy defenders fund and action. On the elections front, be of good cheer, you Dahlia Lithwick listeners. We will have a large enough margin in 26 that the pro-democracy forces will triumph. But there also will be attempts to do those wicked, naughty things. We're in court right now cutting them off. Like the elections order, there's just been an elections takeover executive order. We're in court to stop it, and we will. Multiple people are in multiple courts, belt and suspenders. So, you know, I don't care who you vote for. As I say, don't be too disappointed in me. One of my very best friends from my synagogue, my best synagogue friend is Ultra Maga. And, you know, we find a lot of other things to agree on, and we find a lot of things to disagree on. But he's a decent, lovely, beautiful person. Whoever you vote for, vote.

And if we do that, if we achieve similar historic turnout levels, it will be a big pro-democracy supermajority in November in the United States. And it will lay the foundation for the democratic renaissance, the reconstruction, the unfinished reconstruction, and the return and resurgence, all the R-words, if you vote. And vote early. and vote by mail. And maybe you'll have me back to Alia to talk about with your listeners exactly how Trump is going to try to subvert that and how we and others in our coalition will defeat him. It's a date. Norm Eisen served as the U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014. He is co-founder and executive chair of the soon to be renamed, but probably not, but possibly Democracy Defenders Fund, which has been helping lead the... And action. And action fund, which has been helping lead the successful national court fights against the Trump administration. He is also the co-founder and the publisher of the contrarian. really hope you are all reading it. And Norm, you always remind me that optimism isn't a feeling. It is a way of self-reinforcing democracy every day. And holy honey, I really needed you to remind me that that which happened in Hungary is eminently doable here. But it requires not just action, but optimism. And I thank you for that every day. Thanks, Norm. Thanks, Dahlia. That's all for this episode of Amicus. But wait, there's more. Amicus Plus members. Let's head on over to the Amicus Plus bonus smokeless cigar bar where Mark Joseph Stern is right now waiting to unpack some really big legal news that we couldn't squeeze into this main show. On today's Amicus Plus bonus episode, there is an unusual amount of Supreme Court justice generated gossip. As America's apex jurists have been slagging each other in public, and it has Mark and I a little worried about what it means for a couple of the big decisions pending at the high court. Visit slate.com slash amicus plus to join us. By joining, you support our work, and you can play all the games you like at slate.com. Pares, as mentioned, is my producer, Sara's emotional support game during these troubled times. You will also get. Add free listening to All Slate Podcasts and paywall free reading at Slate.com. Visit Slate.com slash amicusplus, or you can also subscribe to Slate Plus directly from the Amicus Show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Our bonus episode is available for you to listen to right now. We'll see you there.

Thank you so much for listening and thank you so much for your letters and your questions and your comments. Keep them coming. We are reachable by email at amicus.com. You can find us at facebook.com slash amicus podcast. You can also leave a comment if you're listening on Spotify or on YouTube or you can rate us and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sarah Burningham is Amicus's supervising producer. Our producer is Sophie Summergrad. Hilary Fry is Slate's editor-in-chief. Susan Matthews's executive editor, Mia Lobel is executive producer of Slate podcasts. And Ben Richmond is our senior director of operations. We'll be back with another episode of Amicus next week. This episode is presented by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Many of the most important legal fights in this country come down to a basic question. Who gets to make decisions about our bodies and our health care? That question isn't theoretical. It's playing out right now. The Trump administration's backers in Congress are trying to permanently defund Planned Parenthood, an effort to shut down health centers and block patients' care, especially from those with low incomes. Together, we have the power to protect and expand affordable care. Visit plannedparenthood.org slash defend and make a gift today.

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