Hello world! Let’s fight fascism!

All the cool kids---and most of the tragically uncool ones as well---have a newsletter. I guess it's my turn now.

I'm Paul Gowder. I'm a law professor at Northwestern University with a law degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford. (Here's the rest of my bio and my academic background, and here are the books I've written.)

As the title of this newsletter suggests, I believe that we in the United States are currently faced with an extraordinary challenge to our constitutional democracy in the person of Donald Trump, who aspires to be free from legal and political accountability---to create an authoritarian regime. In this, I'm one of hundreds of political scientists, including experts in democracy and authoritarianism like Steven Levitsky and Kim Lane Scheppele, to sound the alarm about America's slide into authoritarianism under Donald Trump.

But hope is not lost. Authoritarians---even military dictators, let alone the kind of "competitive authoritarian" regime that Trump is threatening us with---require vast numbers of ordinary people and intermediate institutions to cooperate with their abuses of power to get off the ground.

That's what the other part of the title of this newsletter is about.

• We can withhold our cooperation, both as individuals and as groups. For example, we can demand that employers hold firm against attacks on "DEI" and universities refuse Trump's demands to discipline their students and employees for exercising their First Amendment rights.

• We can impose sanctions on those who do cooperate. For example, we can decline to do business with the universities and law firms that have collaborated with the regime, and we can decline to include employees of corrupt agencies like ICE in our social worlds. We can choose to do business with others, such as independent media organizations, not captured by the regime. And we can, of course, refuse to do business with Tesla, and encourage others to do likewise by protesting at Elon's dealerships.

All of these things impose costs on authoritarian moves, costs that Trump and his cronies may be unable to pay.

The law also permits us to impose costs on Trump's authoritarian moves. The courts are a critical coordinating mechanism for public opposition to dictatorial behavior, because when the courts say that something is illegal people listen---an adverse ruling makes it more likely that officials, institutions, and ordinary people will refuse to cooperate with Trump. That's why Trump still gives lip service to the authority of the courts---or at least the Supreme Court. And that's why lawsuits have already led to some important concessions by the regime. For example, when Maine sued Trump over its refusal to disburse funds for hungry children because the state permits trans athletes to compete, Trump backed down. And two of the most prominent immigrant students illegally detained because of their free speech have been freed by the courts, Mohsen Mahdawi and Rümeysa Öztürk.

So I'll be writing about both of these things. I'll be writing about collective resistance, about why we should believe that Trump is making authoritarian moves and how we can collectively stand up to it. And I'll be writing about the law---about why Trump's behavior is illegal and unconstitutional, and how we ought to litigate against it.

If we work together, we can hold onto our democracy and our constitution.