Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. The American people elected him to govern, and under the Constitution, he has the authority to assemble an administration to carry out the policies on which he campaigned.
Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin from Michigan has now openly described a strategy to undermine that democratic choice. Unable to defeat Trump at the ballot box, she wants to make it so dangerous for Americans to work for him that they refuse to participate in his administration in the first place.
It is a breathtakingly brazen attempt to circumvent the democratic process through political intimidation, and Slotkin apparently sees nothing wrong with explaining it in public.
During an October 13 appearance at the University of Chicago, Slotkin outlined what Democrats should do if they regain control of Congress. She advocated pursuing "signature cases" against people working for Trump, emphasizing that unlike the president, those around him "have no such immunity."
"I want young people coming out of school to say, 'Should I go work for the Trump administration?'" Slotkin explained, before describing what she hoped they would conclude instead.
"Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don't want. And so, let me avoid participating in that."
And then she made clear that frightening conservatives away from political participation was the entire point: "I want that deterrence message sent."
This runs directly counter to the most fundamental principles of constitutional government. The criminal justice system exists to investigate, prosecute, and punish actual wrongdoing. Slotkin wants legal proceedings to serve an entirely different purpose, intimidating people into surrendering their right to political participation before they have done anything at all.
And the implications go far beyond the young staffers she specifically identifies.
What Slotkin is proposing is nothing less than an attempt to usurp the democratic process itself.
The American people chose Trump. They empowered him to govern, which necessarily includes selecting the people who will help him implement his agenda. Slotkin wants to interfere with that authority by frightening those people away, effectively imposing a veto.
If a defeated political faction can use the threat of legal persecution to prevent the winner from assembling an effective administration, what is left of the democratic process? Elections become meaningless when the losing side can obstruct the implementation of their results by making government service personally ruinous.
This also strikes at the heart of freedom of association. Americans must be free to support political candidates, join political movements, and serve in government without fearing state retaliation merely because their political allegiances are disfavored.
Of course, actual wrongdoing should be pursued. But Slotkin's objective runs directly counter to that principle. She wants to use legal persecution to deter people who have done nothing wrong and whose only offense is their willingness to work for the man Americans elected president.
The historical parallel is unmistakable.
The Soviet system perfected the use of selective political persecution to intimidate entire populations. It was never necessary to prosecute everyone. Destroy a few careers, ruin a few lives, and thousands of others would understand the consequences of associating with the “wrong” people.
The objective was to make fear do the work of repression.
Indeed, even a Soviet party apparatchik might have thought twice before explaining the strategy quite so openly. Slotkin apparently has no such reservations.
And that brazenness may be the most revealing aspect of the entire episode.
After a decade of outrageous lawfare abuses with virtually no accountability, the people who advocate these tactics have become so emboldened that they no longer even bother concealing their objectives. What should be regarded as a massive assault on democratic government is now discussed openly as an ordinary political strategy.
That is how thoroughly lawfare has been normalized.
And it exposes a much larger problem.
For years, the left has had the lawfare battlefield largely to itself. It has developed the methods, shaped the institutions, established the narratives, and dictated the terms of engagement, while conservatives have been forced into an endless succession of defensive battles.
Even now, after everything that has happened, we barely have a coherent theory of lawfare capable of explaining the system as a whole.
We discuss individual prosecutions, particular judges, abusive investigations, and the people whose lives have been destroyed. But we have scarcely begun to understand the machinery that connects these abuses, the institutions that facilitate them, the incentives that sustain them, and the mechanisms through which they are converted into political power.
Providing legal representation to victims is essential, but it cannot possibly be enough. A system that can destroy one person and thereby intimidate a thousand others has accomplished its objective even if that individual is eventually vindicated.
We have to stop treating lawfare as an endless series of isolated abuses and start confronting it as the organized political system it has become.
That is why we established the Counterlawfare Institute.
Most Americans have little understanding of the machinery of lawfare. They may recognize that Trump has been subjected to seemingly endless legal attacks, but they have no idea how the larger system operates, how its various elements reinforce one another, or how its effects extend far beyond the individuals directly targeted. That is why public education is absolutely essential. We need to develop a comprehensive theory of lawfare, expose the entire machinery and all its interlocking elements, and make Americans understand the threat it poses to democratic government. Because this system will not disappear when Trump leaves the political stage. Left unchecked, it will be used to intimidate whoever challenges the left after Trump, undermine election results, and ultimately entrench de facto one-party rule.
We must build the intellectual and institutional capacity to understand this system, expose it, confront it, and ultimately defeat it. The days of allowing the left to define the battlefield while everyone else scrambles to defend the latest victim must end.
Slotkin has inadvertently provided one of the clearest possible demonstrations of what is at stake.
When political intimidation becomes a means of overriding the ballot box, we are confronting something far more dangerous than the abuse of individual defendants. We are confronting a direct threat to democratic self-government itself.
And it is long past time to fight back.
The Counterlawfare Institute was founded to expose and defeat the machinery of lawfare. We are entirely volunteer-run and depend on your support. If you believe that elections, rather than political intimidation, should determine who governs America, please consider making a donation to help us fight back.
