Protect Democracy

Protect Democracy is a nonprofit organization based in the United States.^[1] A nonpartisan group, Protect Democracy seeks to check what it believes are authoritarian attacks on U.S. democracy.^[2][3][4]

Protect Democracy

Formation	November 2016
Founder	Ian Bassin Justin Florence Emily Loeb
Type	501(c) nonprofit organization
Purpose	Anti-authoritarianism advocacy
Region	United States
Executive Director	Ian Bassin
Website	protectdemocracy.org

Protect Democracy states that it seeks to use litigation, legislative and communications strategies, technology, research, and analysis to stand up for free and fair elections, the rule of law, fact-based debate, and a better democracy for future generations.^[5][6][7] According to Time Magazine, the group is a "defender of America's system of government against the threat of authoritarianism."^[8]

In 2023, Protect Democracy was named as one of five winners of the 2023 Skoll Award for Social Innovation by the Skoll Foundation.^[9]

Leadership

In 2016, Protect Democracy was co-founded by Ian Bassin, Justin Florence, and Emily Loeb, who served as lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office under former President Barack Obama.^[10] In forming the organization, Protect Democracy's founders consulted with political scientists who later became members of the group's board of advisers, including Harvard University political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.^[8][11][12]

Bassin, a former White House associate counsel, serves as the executive director of Protect Democracy.^[13] He was named a "MacArthur genius" in 2023.^[14]

Activities

Accountability of candidates and elected officials

Protect Democracy advocates for maintaining a strong separation between the White House and the Justice Department.^[2] In 2020, the group collected letters from hundreds of DOJ alumni, calling for former Attorney General William Barr to step down.^[15][16] The DOJ alumni also claimed the Mueller report presented enough evidence to charge former President Donald Trump with obstruction of justice.^[17]

Protect Democracy has criticized both Democrats and Republicans over resisting congressional oversight.^[18][19] In 2021, the group represented 66 former members of Congress, including two dozen Republicans, challenging Trump’s efforts to block the January 6th Select Committee from accessing his presidential records.^[20] During the 2020 election, Bassin urged then-candidate Joe Biden to reverse course after declaring he would defy a subpoena if called to testify in Trump’s first impeachment.^[21] Biden eventually backed off his comments.^[22]

Following the January 6th Capitol riots, Protect Democracy represented Capitol Police officers suing Trump under the Klan Act for his role in inciting the crowd.^[23][24] In February 2022, the Court denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the case.^[25] In an amicus brief filed in the case, the DOJ rejected Trump’s claim to have blanket immunity from civil liability for his conduct in office.^[26][27] Protect Democracy also represented Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman in a case against former Trump aides and allies, accusing them of intimidating and retaliating against him for testifying against Trump during his first impeachment.^[28][29] In December 2023, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit ruled that Trump was not immune from prosecution for his actions on January 6th.^[30][31]

The group also sued the 2016 Trump campaign on behalf of Jessica Denson, a former Trump campaign staffer, in an attempt to invalidate the non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that she and other staffers were made to sign.^[32] Denson got her own NDA overturned in 2021, and two years later, a judge ruled that her victory extends to all who signed the NDA.^[33]

First Amendment work

Protect Democracy’s litigation has advocated on behalf of First Amendment rights. In 2019, the organization filed a lawsuit on behalf of Reverend Kaji Douša, challenging a previously secret Department of Homeland Security (DHS) surveillance operation that targeted activists, journalists, lawyers, and faith leaders, all of whom spoke out against the Trump administration.^[34][35] In 2023, a federal judge in California ruled that U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the DHS violated Douša’s rights by retaliating against her for ministering to migrants and refugees.^[36][37]

In another 2023 lawsuit filed on behalf of Penguin Random House, PEN America, and individuals in Florida, Protect Democracy worked with Ballard Spahr to challenge the constitutionality of the Escambia County School District’s removal and restriction of books discussing race, racism, or LGBTQ issues from public school libraries.^[38][39]

A third lawsuit, filed on behalf of several businesses in Florida, challenged the state’s Stop WOKE Act.^[40] In March 2024, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit of Appeals upheld a lower court’s injunction blocking enforcement of the law, ruling that Florida businesses' speech rights were improperly restricted.^[41]

Law for Truth

The group also launched "Law for Truth," which uses defamation law to impose accountability on those who spread election disinformation.^[42][43] Law for Truth has brought lawsuits on behalf of election workers in Georgia and a postmaster in Pennsylvania, who suffered online and offline threats to their safety due to false media stories about their alleged involvement in election fraud.^[44][45][46] Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the Georgia election workers in the cases against Rudy Giuliani, The Gateway Pundit, and the Hoft brothers, were awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal for their defense of the 2020 election.^[47]

In July 2023, Giuliani conceded that the statements he made about Freeman and Moss were false.^[48] In December of that year, a federal court ordered Giuliani to pay Freeman and Moss $148 million in compensatory and punitive damages.^[49][50]

Protect Democracy's case representing Robert Weisenbach, the Republican postmaster in Pennsylvania, was settled out of court.^[51][52] In another lawsuit, the group represents Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, who sued former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake for defamation over claims she made about Richer’s role in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election.^[53][54][55]

National Task Force on Election Crises

In 2019, Protect Democracy also convened the nonpartisan "National Task Force on Election Crises," a cross-ideological group of more than 50 experts on elections, security, public health, and other areas.^[56][57][58] The Task Force issues analyses and reports, holding press briefings on how the electoral system is supposed to work for the purpose of building resiliency against efforts to subvert the electoral process.^[59][8][60]

Preventing abuses of emergency power

Protect Democracy represented El Paso County, Texas and the Border Network for Human Rights in a 2019 lawsuit, alleging that Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build a wall on the southern border violated federal statutes, including the National Emergencies Act and Consolidated Appropriations Act.^[61][62] The lawsuit was ultimately rendered moot by the Supreme Court after changes in policy under the Biden administration.^[63]

The group has written amicus briefs focused on executive overreach in relation to two of the Supreme Court’s cases involving deliberations over presidential emergency powers: A Trump administration migration restriction in Arizona v. Mayorkas and the Biden administration’s student debt cancellation program in Biden v. Nebraska.^[64] The group argued that both cases together represented an opportunity to “[propose] a standard for how the Court should consider challenges to executive actions based on congressional delegations of emergency powers.”^[65]

Advocating recusals from elected officials running their own elections

Protect Democracy has challenged Republican and Democratic officials over claims that they were misusing their offices to improperly interfere in elections. In 2018, Protect Democracy sued then-Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, seeking his recusal from overseeing a recount in an election in which he was also a candidate.^[66][67] The group also filed a lawsuit against then-Florida Governor Rick Scott, claiming the Constitution sets limits on an elected official’s ability to exercise governmental powers over their own election.^[68][69] Protect Democracy later challenged Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, a Democrat, for appearing to use his governmental position to advance his own candidacy for governor.^[70][71]

Preventing voter suppression

The organization has also pushed back on efforts to impinge the right to vote.^[72] In 2022, the group filed a lawsuit against individuals and organizations conspiring to intimidate Arizona voters who were using drop boxes to deliver their ballots in the 2022 election.^[73][74] Days later, a federal court issued an order barring the defendants in the case from confronting, photographing, and doxing voters, in addition to carrying guns and wearing body armor near drop boxes.^[75][76]

In 2023, it was one of the groups that filed a lawsuit challenging Virginia’s lifetime ban on voting for anyone convicted of any felony.^[77] The suit argues that Virginia’s disenfranchisement provision violates a little-known federal law: The Virginia Readmission Act, a Reconstruction-era statute designed to protect the newly-enshrined rights, including the right to vote, of formerly enslaved citizens.^[78]

Electoral Count Act

Protect Democracy advocated for passage of the Electoral Count Act (ECA), which was passed into law in 2022.^[79][80][81] According to Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent, the group “wrote one of the earliest blueprints on how to reform [the] ECA.”^[82]

Reports

"The Authoritarian Playbook"

The group has released research on "The Authoritarian Playbook," which can be used to distinguish authoritarianism from other forms of politics.^[83][84] This guide catalogs the seven basic tactics that are almost always present in examples of democratic backsliding around the world:^[83]

• Politicizing independent institutions
• Spreading disinformation
• Aggrandizing executive power and undermining checks & balances
• Quashing dissent
• Marginalizing vulnerable communities
• Corrupting elections
• Stoking violence

In 2024, the affiliated 501(c)(4) United to Protect Democracy issued "The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025," which details the alleged threat a second Trump administration would pose to American democracy.^{[85][86][87][88]}

Election-related reports

Protect Democracy has issued reports and policy proposals examining the links between anti-democratic extremism and the U.S. electoral system.^[89][90] In partnership with Interfaith America, the group also developed the "Faith in Elections Playbook," which supports faith-based communities with resources to engage in the 2024 election.^[91][92][93]

State-level election subversion report

In 2021, along with the States United Democracy Center and Law Forward, Protect Democracy issued an initial report on state legislative attempts that threaten to subvert elections.^[94][95] It has subsequently released updates to the report.^[96][97][98]

Long-term reforms

Collaborating with the University of Chicago's Center for Effective Government, Protect Democracy experts have hosted two “Rethinking Our Democracy” series in The Washington Post, proposing institutional reforms to strengthen American democracy.^[3][99]

The group has also advocated for reforming the U.S. system of government toward proportional representation.^[100][101]

Guide to identifying a politicized investigation

In response to the federal and state investigations against Trump, the group issued a guide seeking to tell the difference between politicized investigations and normal, appropriate efforts by law enforcement.^[102][103]

Software

VoteShield

Protect Democracy developed the software VoteShield, which uses publicly available data to track changes to voter rolls, identifying potentially suspicious irregularities.^[104][105]

See also

• Democratic backsliding in the United States
• Democratization
• Efforts to overturn the 2020 US Presidential election

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103. Board, The Editorial (2023-06-09). "Opinion | Donald Trump Should Never Again Be Trusted With the Nation's Secrets". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-09-21.
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External links

Protect Democracy's press mentions page on the organization's website