>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made in a firing.

President Trump decided last month that he wanted to fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors.

This doesn't seem, at first glance, like the kind of story that would rise to national attention, given everything else going on in the world, but this story is not just about firing one person, it's about power.

President Trump has said that he thinks he can fire really anyone he wants for cause.

And the Justice Department says, by the way, that the president has basically unlimited authority to determine what is cause for firing.

And the result is a kind of legal theory known as the unitary executive.

That's an idea that gained prominence in the 1980s.

But in some ways, it goes back to the country's founding.

The question is just how much power should a president have?

For those who believe in the unitary executive, the answer is it's almost unlimited.

And so this administration is now conducting an aggressive purge of the civil service, installing loyalists everywhere.

The FBI, CIA.

The list goes on.

And maybe you wonder what's wrong with the president seeking to install loyalists at all offices of government.

Well, Valery Perry of the Democratization Policy Council wants to address that question.

She has said that really since the late 19th century, the notion of an independent civil service has been important in terms of ensuring the consistent administration of policy without regard to the party in power, that we should care about competence and regularity and continuity, not just blind loyalty.

So that's point one competence over blind loyalists.

But Perry's work spans beyond the United States and finds a trend worldwide.

Democracy watchdogs have noted a backsliding of democratic norms in many nations.

It's a troubling trend.

Fewer people are voting.

It's become routine for losing parties to challenge the legitimacy of elections and a consistent theme, Perry finds, is the hacking of the civil service.

She says that a politicized civil service can create substantial scope for nepotism, corruption, erratic and unequal service delivery, support for an independent civil service structure has been viewed as a key element of democratization and good government.

So, in other words, you want to become more democratic.

Stop using loyalty tests for the tens of thousands or more government service jobs that you're interested in.

Prioritize competence and stability.

Want to become more authoritarian?

Purge the government at every level.

Demand to know who everyone voted for.

Chase out any dissenting ideas.

Valery Perry lives and works in Sarajevo, but has ties to the Rochester area, and every so often we get to sit down in the same room.

And today is one of those fortunate days.

Dr. Perry is a senior associate for the Democratization Policy Council.

Welcome.

It's nice to see you in studio.

Thank you for being here.

>> It's nice to be here in person.

>> And I'm going to keep telling you, get closer to your microphone because we're not on YouTube.

We're seeing each.

>> Other.

>> Fair enough.

>> Remind listeners about the work that you do in Sarajevo.

>> Sure.

No, I went to Sarajevo, to Bosnia Herzegovina shortly after the end of the war.

There in the late 90s, and stayed and ended up using that as a perch and a home to promote good governance, human rights, and to try to learn the lessons from really that catastrophe, so that other countries, other communities could learn from it and hopefully avoid some of the same mistakes that we saw roll out there.

>> Looking ahead this hour, I just want to say I did ask Dr. Perry before the program.

Are there examples where backsliding democracies have arrested that trend and have gone back in a good direction?

Or should I just be cynical about the state of the entire world?

And it turns out there are some examples of some positive trends that we're going to talk about.

But before we get there, let me just ask you a little bit about what we are seeing when it comes to these kinds of firings that when the president says, I can fire someone from the fed, I can fire someone in the FBI, I can do it for whatever reason I want.

And the Justice Department basically says he's the president.

He gets to determine what cause is.

What do you make of that?

>> I mean, I think it's been a surprising and fascinating in a dark way to see that all of the vaunted checks and balances and institutional checks and power that we've learned about, or at least I learned about since elementary school, can basically be put to the put aside and ignored or actively destroyed.

For so long, we thought, you know, there's three branches of government that you've always got one branch keeping an eye on the other branch, et cetera.

but what we've really seen is a perfect hacking of this system.

Both over time and now all at once.

With this second Trump administration.

And it's been quite troubling.

I think the the issue of the mass firings of the civil servants, whether you're looking at State Department, USAID, Department of Education, the list goes on.

It's been truly shocking because for such a long time, you know, there was always this belief.

Maybe now we need to say a myth that people in federal civil service positions had an amount of safety and security, that you couldn't just be told one day that you're out, that your job has been eliminated, that you're going to be replaced by someone who's deemed to be more suitable or in fact, a loyalist.

And yet, we've seen this happen over the past several months.

And and it's been interesting because it's been following this same playbook of the Trump administration and particularly of his his buddy Elon Musk, initially of sort of running fast and break things, you know, break the law, break what you want to do, break convention, break down norms, and then let the courts deal with it later.

One, two, six, seven months after the destruction has been done.

And this has been really difficult because we've seen the courts having to deal with a lot of these questions.

Sometimes courts are siding with the government, sometimes they're not.

And quite often we're seeing this go up to the Supreme Court, which is really leading to what's going to be a showdown on whether or not they believe that the Constitution and the Founding Fathers actually did want to vest into the president.

Such unilateral, complete powers.

And I think a lot of people would say they did not.

I mean, the Founding fathers did not want a king.

They did not call George Washington a king.

They did not call that position a leader.

They put in checks and balances, but they really had an expectation of following norms and decorum.

but they also had not recognized or appreciated the potential for political parties to introduce this notion of tribe or for a political party to completely ignore and abrogate their responsibility for, for example, the legislative branch.

>> So let's listen to some of what Vice President JD Vance said in an interview with CBS News, explaining why he thinks it's fine for the president to have unlimited power to fire whoever he wants.

Let's listen.

>> Isn't it a little preposterous to say that the president of the United States, the elected president of the United States, working, of course, in concert with Congress, doesn't have the ability to make these determinations.

What people who are saying the president has no authority here, what they're effectively saying is that seven economists and lawyers should be able to make an incredibly critical decision for the American people with no Democratic input.

I thought the people controlled this country.

The people made the determinations in this country through their elected representatives, including the president.

United States.

I don't think that we allow bureaucrats to sit from on high and make decisions about monetary policy and interest rates without any input from the people that were elected to serve the American people.

And I think that's fundamentally what this is about.

Who makes the decisions about this country?

Is it those the American people elect, or is it unelected bureaucrats?

And I feel very strongly that the president of the United States is much better able to make these determinations.

And by the way, if the American people disagree with the president, they, of course, can throw out the president every four years and throw in a new president.

But you can't say that the American people that the Democratic decision making process has no influence over monetary policy, that's really, really, I think, an anti-democratic principle.

>> What do you make of that?

>> It tells us where he stands, doesn't it?

But we certainly didn't hear him say anything like that when Obama was the president or when Biden was the president.

It's very selective.

It's interesting that he's talking about the fed in this case.

Since the Supreme Court itself has, been really doing some contortions to try to make some special space for the fed that we wouldn't see in other independent institutions, trying to say that, well, all of these other institutions, fine, but not the fed, because that's specific.

And that seems to be a bit convenient reasoning, and it will be interesting to see what happens next.

but what he's saying as well would really, I mean, if taken to its logical conclusion, would lead to complete instability in terms of the ability to plan or a consistent playing field, you would have a situation where every four years, if either party was voted out, that a complete beheading of anybody who's skilled or in a position would be ousted and new loyalists would come in, it would mean that it would be possible for, all of these laws and procedures and rules, et cetera., to just sort of be turned on or off, which would make it difficult for businesses to invest for school districts to plan for national parks to plan.

It would take away the consistency that an independent civil service offers, and I think it's useful to remember why there is an independent civil service.

And we saw it.

The first elements of it come into place in the late 19th century, not uncoincidentally when the Gilded Age was demonstrating the massive power concentrations and money concentration and the way that politicians were basically giving away positions of power and influence as spoils to their cronies.

And that's why we saw the introduction of certain civil service tests and different ways to try to measure merit, so that we wouldn't have people who were simply blind loyalists who may either have no experience in an issue, but also might be there just as a rubber stamp.

And again, this has been seen as an effective check and balance on the power of any leader from any party.

>> The monetary policy side of this is where it can get a little for the for the layperson, a little boring, and it's meant to be kind of because, you know, it's easy to hear the vice president go, yeah, wait a second, shouldn't we want a president controlling all the monetary policy as opposed to understanding the ramifications of that, and why we actually don't and why we historically have have sought to insulate from the politicization of of that part of the civil service.

Right.

>> Exactly, exactly.

I mean, there's lots of examples around the world of what happens when you politicize this.

And you can see one in Turkey when you saw a complete politicization of the government and the agencies and economic and monetary policy, which really had a very negative impact on that country.

So, again, these, so many of these issues are things that we've seen happen in other parts of the world.

And rather than learning the lessons that this independence is necessary and actually has, for all its flaws, helped the United States to get to where it is or has been.

we should be recognizing this.

And instead of burning it all down, find ways to improve the independence of these institutions and their function.

>> When it comes to why the president wants loyalists, he often says in his some of his most ardent supporters will say that in his first term, it was characterized by the president wanting to try to do some, sometimes some wild and outlandish things, and often being thwarted by people around him.

Sometimes his cabinet, but also sometimes civil service, sometimes people at various levels who would not go along, whether it was in foreign policy, whether it was domestic policy.

And so this time around, he came in determined from day one to say, yes, the people at the highest levels, the secretary of defense, we can go on, but also the civil service.

And that loyalty does matter.

And if a president doesn't have loyalty, he can't accomplish what he wants to accomplish.

And why can't people understand that?

What do you think?

>> Well, I guess one initial comment would be that, again, it's the president and not a dictator.

It's a president and not an autocrat.

And yes, there are guardrails and there are checks on this power.

And we've seen this with every president of either party.

when we look back to the first administration, we saw that especially he had a number of former generals or current generals who were able to say, no, you can't do that or no, we should not be using the military against peaceful protesters, et cetera.

And a lot of people used that check and balance to say, see, it wasn't as bad the first time around as people might have thought.

but those guardrails were there, and we've seen that he is across the board, learned a lesson that he would rather have incompetent loyalists than competent individuals.

And the purge has been what's so troubling in the military as well as the civilian elements of the government?

and again, I think it's been interesting to see, like from a political science point of view, that he seems to want a combination of like a dictatorship like powers as well as almost parliamentary type powers, that when a new prime minister comes in with a party that they can do everything they want without any checks and balances.

And yet, because we're a presidential system in the United States, it leads to really more of a hacking of the Constitution, a hacking of the system that has created guardrails that, again, are there for civil rights, but also for consistency to make sure that you can have a constant flip flop every four years.

>> One thing we're going to talk about more next week, but something that you already touched on was the courts responding maybe 6 or 7 months later, and it has seemed that in this first year of this new Trump, 2.0, that they have figured out that even if they're going to lose in court, it often takes months.

And so they can do what they want for a while before someone stops it.

Now, one of the early examples where that did not work out was birthright citizenship.

There was a pretty quick move to stop that, although, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, I think, was the lead author on a decision in which the the Supreme Court is now saying that the lower courts don't have the authority to stop some of this stuff.

So now even the courts might not be able to move quick enough to do anything meaningful.

If you have an administration determined to turn some of this stuff on its head, is that how you see it?

>> No, that that decision was quite striking in the sense that it was basically undercutting the courts at every lower level to do their job and be really the ground level of judicial enforcement and oversight and procedure.

and with so many of these court decisions, it's been interesting to see and frustrating to see just how little explanation there has been in terms of why they're making these decisions.

I mean, I think.

>> You're talking about the Supreme Court now.

>> Exactly.

The Supreme Court and the fact that the shadow docket has become used as a tool by the.

>> Can you describe that a.

>> Little bit?

Oh, sure.

I'm a non-lawyer.

And it's and it's.

No, but it's also frustrating that so many non-lawyers have to trouble themselves with what the shadow docket is.

But basically it's it's related to the fact that the Trump administration is claiming that absolutely everything they want to do is an emergency and needs to be done with emergency powers, and therefore they can't afford to wait.

So instead of going into the the regular Supreme Court procedure where it works up all the various levels of the court, and there's argumentation, there's oral argumentation, and there's written written explanation of the decisions and the basis in law, because it's an emergency, it goes on a different track and makes it possible for the Supreme Court to simply say, this is what we're deciding without referring to any body of law, without building a case, without explaining that justification.

Now, with the shadow docket procedure, there is a possibility for justices to dissent and to write something if they want, explaining why they would dissent.

But there's nothing to really nail down the majority opinion.

And this is troubling for a number of different ways.

And there are some legal scholars out there who are doing very good work on this.

But what I think is also extremely worrying is that using this emergency, claiming that absolutely everything is emergency to get it into the shadow docket leads to a speed, which means that you can have so many different elements of the reduction of rights, the reduction of independence, the empowerment of an executive.

that all come together eventually into something when you suddenly see that it's a system that's almost unrecognizable.

And so, if nothing else, I'm glad that there's been more attention being paid to this so that hopefully, if and when the country comes out of this, there can be a response.

But I mean, just as a thought game, can you imagine if a Democratic president came in and said that there's an emergency related to guns, an emergency related to climate change, an emergency related to any number of things to seek to reverse this, I am pretty sure that a lot of Republicans in the government would protest.

>> And probably rightfully so.

Shouldn't.

You should not abuse the notion of an emergency.

>> Exactly, exactly.

And that's exactly why it has been such an ingenious and well planned hacking of the system, whether it's coming through the people immediately around him or from project 2025, which has been in the works for quite some time by people who have wanted to reverse all the gains of a number of decades.

We have seen that they have thought about how there are different entry points at every level of the system that can be exploited for the cumulative effect that we've been seeing.

>> Yeah.

I mean, and this is where I don't know how much the president thinks deeply about our system of government, but but people like Russ Vogt do, who has helped author project 2025 and now he directs OMB and people like Russ Vogt feel like our system of government really should change that.

A lot of what you talked about growing up, studying in school, and all of us got in our civics lessons is is sort of baloney.

And there probably should be a unitary executive.

And this kind of power should be concentrated and it should be reshaped.

And I don't think I mean, they didn't run on that, but certainly they are governing in that way.

whether the president would sort of acknowledge that or not.

And so you seem to think that the checks and balances that were supposed to be, as you said, these vaunted checks and balances have turned out to be pretty easy to crumble.

>> That's what I mean.

That's what we've seen so far.

And this is what's also extremely troubling, is that really the role of project 2025, which was very detailed and which really knew how to be operationalized, it wasn't just an ideological statement, but it was a plan of attack on how to break each one of these different systems and basically hack these legislative processes.

it ended up being a big bait and switch.

I mean, on the campaign trail, Trump was asked point blank what he thought about it, and he claimed to not know anything about it.

And it's because, I mean, whether he knew this or whether others around him knew this, there's a recognition that this is all being done in a surreptitious way, because most people wouldn't agree with it.

Most people don't want to privatize the national parks.

They don't want to privatize the Grand Canyon.

They don't want to privatize the Veterans Administration.

They don't want to privatize the National Weather Service.

And and this is why it had to be done through the back door, because most of the stuff that's in there is very unpopular among the vast majority of the people.

And it needed to be done in a sneaky way.

>> Well, this is where I wonder what you see as the ways that the hacking, in your words, the hacking of the civil service could impact the average American's lives.

Because I was listening to Tim Miller and Tom Nichols on the Bulwark this week talking about civil service firings.

And and Nichols was saying, look at the CDC.

You could fire some very, very talented doctors.

You could have Bobby Kennedy's ideology permeate Health and Human Services and CDC and disease response for a while.

But you can hire the doctors back eventually.

But if you fire lifelong servants in the CIA and the FBI, you may number one, put them at risk.

You may never get them back.

There may be really long term damage that's hard to undo.

Where do you see the damage as being more immediate or harder to undo?

>> Sure.

No.

I mean, one of the issues is, again, as you mentioned before, while waiting for these court cases to play out, I mean, the thousands of people who have lost their jobs, I mean, they have mortgages to pay.

They have lives to live, and a lot of them are going to go and get a different job.

And even if that job opening comes back at some point, they may have moved on.

They may have decided that they can no longer trust working for the federal government, that they can no longer trust in a labor contract that they have, and that it's better to go and try to cash in and use their skills in the private sector in some different way.

So, perversely, this gets to exactly what some of the libertarians are Russell Vought want to see, which is the stripping of capacity and potential of the federal government and pushing everyone into the private sector.

unfortunately, there's a lot of people who don't recognize that many people who go into the civil service are very highly skilled and made a conscious decision that they wanted to work for the government because they actually believed in what they were doing.

They believed in the vision of their community, of their state, of the country, and wanted to contribute that way.

They didn't want to just go and cash in and become a hedge fund manager.

And that idealism, unfortunately, is incomprehensible to people who are motivated only by money and power.

And so we're really seeing a comprehensive human asset stripping, which is going to take a very long time, decades to bring back.

And what's even more troubling for me, and which I've been grappling with, is let's imagine a scenario where in a few months the courts say it was wrong that you fired all of the people from this department or that department.

>> Are they coming back?

>> Well, I fear that the people who had those jobs would not.

But as a part of the project 2025 and some of the associated plans, I remember reading some time ago that there's basically a conservative LinkedIn of candidates willing to that are ready and willing to swear fealty to MAGA.

And so I really don't know.

Would it be better to not have those positions at all, or would it be worse having those positions filled with acolytes and people who are simply willing to do whatever it is they're told without regard to the law, science, civil rights, et cetera.?

>> And to be clear, some of the the civil servants that you described as being idealists, who who believed in the mission of their work and have done it for many years, have served Democrats, Republicans, it we may know nothing about their personal politics, and we may we need not whether you're working in the CDC, a Park service, the FBI, the State Department, wherever you're working, you've probably worked for people with all kinds of different political backgrounds.

And that's what it was meant to be.

If we get to a point where, the next administration is not a Republican administration or it's not Donald Trump himself, or it's not JD Vance or whoever and you have literally loyalty test documents and as you say, MAGA acolytes everywhere, you may not have the next administration want those people in civil service, but they have the conundrum of seeing the civil service differently.

But you also don't want every four years completely flush out hundreds of thousands of jobs.

I mean, you can't function a government that way, can you?

>> No, you can't, you can't.

There's no consistency.

There's there's going to be a break in service delivery.

There's going to be a break in understanding.

I mean, you can also make a distinction between some of the positions that are, you know, nonscientific versus scientific.

But when you see what's been done to the CDC, as you mentioned, I mean, that scientific knowledge builds on previous scientific knowledge and ability.

And if you suddenly have experiments being broken down and destroyed, the plug pulled on them, I mean, you're losing decades of knowledge and opportunity and and I think you're completely right to note that for such a long time, we've had people who have worked under many different administrations.

And and it's another sign that I mean, a well-functioning democratic system based on good governance should be boring and it should be technocratic.

People should not know the names of the people doing this.

You should just want them doing their job.

And instead, what we've gotten is this all or nothing blood, sport of politics where the where parties are thinking that every election is existential, that if you're not with us, you're against us.

If you're not with us, you're the enemy.

And this language that we've heard from many, especially within the Trump administration, I'm focusing on right now, we've heard Stephen Miller, we've heard Vance and others talk about anything that they don't like as radical Marxist, leftist action.

And they frame it in terms of an enemy.

And again, during the campaign trail, we heard Trump talk about the enemy within and all of this together again, leads to some very worrying times for the broader state of the country in terms of good governance.

>> So let me get a little bit of feedback.

We're talking to Dr. Valery Perry.

Valerie is a senior associate for the Democratization Policy Council and goes back next week, goes home to Sarajevo, but is back in Rochester, where she's got some ties.

And it's nice to have Dr. Perry in studio with us.

And if you want to call the program, it's toll free.

8442958442958255263 WXXI.

If you call from Rochester 2639994, you can email the program Connections at wxxi.org.

Let me start with Charles's email.

He says about a year ago, I tripped in the garage and the resulting pain in my foot did not subside and the amount of time I expected since we had a game coming up.

I went to urgent care a week later, who confirmed a bone that I can't pronounce or spell had been broken.

They reported this to the VA, who insisted that I needed another x ray from them, after which the technician who X-rayed my foot dismissively claimed that there was no break.

A day later, an actual doctor at the VA looked at the same x ray and confirmed that yes, there was a break.

Is it not reasonable to expect people who are bad at their job to face consequences for being bad at their job, up to and including termination?

That's from Charles.

>> No, and I'm sorry to hear about his experience with the VA.

I think that if you went out on the street and spoke to anyone about their recent experiences with any health care system, you'd get a combination of good and bad.

But it is interesting to see that for a number of years, satisfaction with people within the Veterans Administration has tended to be higher than that of people who are on other, health insurance schemes.

and nobody is saying that you can never, reprimand or even fire someone who's employed by the federal government.

Again, if they are unable to do their job.

And if there's due process,, used there's a big difference between waking up one morning and finding out out of the blue that you're you've got 24 hours to pack your desk and finding out that there's a process against you that's really is detailed and set and nonpolitical, in which there's a case made that you're not able to do your job or that you should be fired for cause.

And it's interesting to note that these words for cause are exactly what we're going to see being defined by the Supreme Court on the issue related to the fed, because what we have seen is that the the allegations being made against Lisa Cook, again, they have not been detailed and they have not been found to be true.

There has not been a procedure carried out.

It's only been basically saying this in the media to create the notion that she's already guilty, and yet we don't know what for cause means in this case.

And it's quite troubling as well, because when you look at this again, the case being made against her is mortgage fraud.

and again, there has not been a determination if this happened, but what needs to worry people is that if the full power of the federal government is taken against anybody in this country, it is possible to find something.

It's always possible to find out that you filled out a form wrong.

It's possible to find out that you had inconsistencies on two different documents, and that's when power is abused.

And that's the power vertical that needs checks and balances.

>> in Neil Gorsuch.

Justice Gorsuch's book, a really interesting book, by the way, that details his political, his, his judicial philosophy of feeling like we are.

The book is called overruled.

And he thinks that there is too much law and too much law that becomes pernicious in the lives of the average, everyday American.

There's a section where he details the idea that every American has committed felonies in the last year, you know, that they could find something to pin some kind of a charge on you if they so desire.

>> Exactly.

>> And in Gorsuch's view, because of how over litigated we are and, you know, sort of overprescribed to all these different offenses, he thinks that's a problem.

Your point is, if you have an aggressive government that wants to use something against you, Gorsuch is probably right.

They will find something and they will use it against you.

>> And that is why everyone should be able to agree that there needs to be a right to due process, that there needs to be a right to legal representation, and that there needs to be a certain sense of predictability in those processes.

>> Yeah.

And I think I would say to Charles, I mean, Charles is not wrong, that there are times in everyone's life where you're wondering, like, why does this person still have a job?

And it's frustrating when you don't see incompetence penalized or competence rewarded.

I get that 100%.

So I would never downplay Charles's point.

I would simply say, think about wherever you work.

Would you want your boss to be able to say to you, hey, I need to know how you voted in the last election, and I need a statement from you telling me that you're going to vote the way I vote, and you're going to be loyal to what I tell you to do.

And if you don't, then you're out of here.

And for the board of your company to decide, well, we give our CEO the power to decide what just causes.

So cause for your firing isn't that you screwed up a spreadsheet 100 times.

It's.

He asked you how you voted and he didn't like the answer.

And that's what we're looking at.

>> Definitely no.

And it's interesting you frame it that way as well, because a number of times I've thought that a lot of the ideologues involved in this administration want to bring the whole notion of employment at will to the federal government, the whole notion that, it's not an issue of having labor protections, et cetera., but that when you sign a contract for a job that you can be fired at any time for any reason or no reason.

And that's become very common in the private sector since labor has been weakened, and since there has been such a huge advantage being given onto the side of the employers, and it seems like they want to bring that into the government, while at the same time adding a layer of politicization to that.

>> Well, after we take our only break, I've got more of your emails to work through.

And we're going to talk a little bit about places where democratic backsliding has been reversed, or at least arrested.

And some of the places that Dr. Perry looks around the world and says, you know, this is a trend that is actually going back in a more positive direction, in a healthier direction.

Valerie does a lot of work on those kinds of issues.

As a senior associate for the Democratization Policy Council.

And we'll get to that stuff on the other side of our only break.

>> I'm Evan Dawson Thursday on the next Connections, we welcome astrophysicist Adam Frank, who's going to talk about this theory that a Harvard scientist has one of his colleagues that a strange object that was spotted in the sky might be a dangerous UFO sent to surveil us.

Adam, Frank is going to bring some truth to the skies.

And then in our second hour, Gary Craig is not good at retirement.

DNC journalist talking about his recent investigations.

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>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson see why rights to say I thought part of the main benefit, perhaps even the strength of living in a democracy, especially in American democracy, is the right, nay, the duty to dissent peacefully, civilly, politically, ideologically and specifically to express your dissent to those in elected positions of power without fear of retribution or persecution.

And he puts that in all caps.

if you if not have them, actually change their actions to better represent your views.

This is one reason why myself and many others find Trump's actions threatening to our institutions, society, and stability of the nation.

That's from.

>> Sigh no, no.

Sure.

the issue is retribution.

Retribution is based on whim.

It's not based on capability or policy.

And it's it's a way that jobs can be weaponized in the service of an individual.

And this is what's quite troubling of what we're seeing happen at the federal level.

and in terms of another check and balance that we haven't even had time to get to, it's been interesting and troubling to see how even the vaunted notion of American federalism, the fact that the United States is 50 laboratories of democracy, is also under threat.

The fact that we're seeing President Trump wield federal dollars as a tool to try to force behavior changes at the local level.

And this is also quite unique.

I mean, we're seeing this I mean, very blatantly this week in terms of him announcing that Space Command will be moved from Colorado to Alabama just because he's upset that Colorado didn't vote for him.

And it's going to be extremely interesting to see what Republican in particular representatives in Colorado have to say about this.

Are they actually going to stay up and stand up and say something?

And so the next couple of months are going to be very interesting, because we're having Congress come back into session and there's a rising frustration with this.

And there are more and more states that are going to recognize that if the president is willing to withhold funds or send in troops anywhere, that they could do it to them.

And so maybe we'll start to see some politicians waking up and actually fulfilling their duties.

>> Mike in Penfield writes to say, you're saying that President Biden never fired anyone.

What next?

Will you try to get us to believe, Mike, I promise you, I didn't say that President Biden never fired anyone.

I don't know who he fired.

I don't think the Biden administration tried to engage in a purge of the civil service based on loyalty.

>> No, I mean, I think a difference in something that's important to keep in mind is that every time there's a change in administration, in terms of there's always a certain number of political appointees at the top of all of these agencies that do change.

However, it's the I mean, that's like the tip of the iceberg, the vast pyramid of people remains the same.

And that's the continuity.

And so it is a difference in that.

>> Yeah.

>> We should probably make clear again, we're talking about tens of thousands of I mean, I don't know how many civil service jobs are there in this country.

>> Tens of thousands.

>> okay.

>> So we're not talking about the cabinet.

We're not talking about, you know, the people at the very top of these different institutions.

We are talking about the day to day career service workers.

>> Park rangers.

>> Park rangers.

>> Exactly.

>> Doctors.

People who work at state.

People who work.

I mean, all around the world.

This encompasses so much of that.

And we're literally saying administration that wants to micromanage everybody, to say, nope, we need loyalists all the way down to the bottom levels of this thing.

So, so but, Mike, I didn't say President Biden never fired anybody.

I think we're just trying to elucidate the difference.

There.

Bob says it seems like norms just aren't sufficient to protect some of these things.

Maybe it's good that we're breaking things now because it'll give us a chance to eventually make things more robust.

And what is the risk of overcorrecting if and when we address that?

>> No, that's that's a very.

>> Isn't that a good question?

>> That is a good point.

And I think that this is something that we're seeing.

What worries many people is that when many of these norms are broken, like, how do you start to return to regularity and civility?

just thinking about two examples right now, coming from California, it's been interesting to see how Gavin Newsom has been adopting and really, Trump's tone and social media and really trolling him and introducing this use of memes, et cetera.

And on the one hand, I have to be honest, I find it a bit distasteful.

I think.

I think it is reasonable to think that the president of the United States does not swear in public, does not curse, does not say some of these things that you would not want your children to say, or you certainly wouldn't want your child's first grade teacher to say.

So some of those norms of decorum have been frustrating, but it's interesting to see Newsom trolling him because unfortunately, Trump makes it possible to really degrade and bring everyone down to a lower level.

We're also seeing this issue about gerrymandering, which really gives us a vision of how difficult it's going to be to put some of this stuff back together again.

On the one hand, you say some people are saying, well, you know, California needs to fight fire with fire.

We shouldn't unilaterally disarm because if so, it may never be possible to get power again at the national level because of the way the Senate and the Electoral College and the Congress are appointed, and the way these the way the federal system has been constructed.

other people will say, well, wait a minute.

No, you need to keep the moral high road.

You shouldn't do this.

And you know what?

I mean?

I tend to think that I understand the argument about not unilaterally disarming, but I think that that could be done to try to get over this hump at the same time as there would be efforts by all 50 governors in the country to agree to the notion that for the health of the Union, that there needs to be independent redistricting across the board.

So you don't have this asynchronous and asymmetric approach.

>> Brief aside to the point about Gavin Newsom's attempt to to try to ape Donald Trump, I don't know if you heard what Vice President Vance said about that.

He said that what Newsom is doing is distasteful.

It is, you know, it's ugly and it's not going to work because, yes, he's trying to sound like the president, but the president's authentic.

And people like authenticity.

So the vice president simply saying the president may be a bore.

And, you know, he but at least he's being himself.

it's an interesting defense.

>> I mean, but I think it's also tactical.

I mean, Trump can speak in a more normal fashion when he opts to do so.

>> And he's apparently he's allowed to do.

But, Bob's greater point, though, is when you see democratic backsliding, which we are seeing in countries around the world, the the remedy is not always clear.

And the remedy is there's this debate and California is a great example, or gerrymandering is a great example.

Do you say we're not going to do what's wrong just because others are doing what's wrong to try to fight fire with fire?

knowing that you may never get back to the point where you can do anything in the future.

Or do you say we will do whatever it takes, no matter how ugly?

And does that become in its own authoritarian?

You know, sort of.

>> It can I mean, in a case like that, I think the most important, issue is transparency of intent.

And then basically having checks and balance follow this.

What you would want to avoid is have a number of the quote unquote blue states all do this, but then continue doing it in perpetuity as opposed to a short term stopgap.

And so I think there's ways to really sort of say that this is a part of a process and that at the same time as we're pursuing a country wide compact, committed to independent redistricting for everyone that we're doing this right now in part of a tit for tat exchange, which sounds childish, but that's where we are.

>> Bob, thank you.

I mean, it really gives you a lot to think about.

in terms of how we get back to a better direction.

And before we ask what countries are going in a better direction, how they're doing it, let me just ask you a little bit about what you think happens next in this country.

What are some of the things that are happening or could happen that that you see?

>> Sure.

No, I mean, I think that it's the fact that the next congressional term is underway is going to have an opportunity to keep up the pressure.

while we've seen a number of different institutions across the board fold to Trump, either fully or partially, whether we're thinking about some of the law firms, some of the deals being made to pressure and shake down universities.

whether we're looking at Silicon Valley and either the aims to control or even take government stock in some of these companies, which is stunning.

at this, the way it's happening without any public discussion.

We're seeing that a lot of these different actors are willing to make these deals, to try to go ahead and get along without really, in my opinion, looking at the longer term picture universities that are striking a deal, thinking it's going to protect them, need to recognize that in a situation of shakedown like this, you're never safe.

That can always be turned on and opened up at the whims of the person in charge.

Because, again, it's not procedure.

It's very idiosyncratic and targeted at an individual or an individual institution in a way that can be naturally arbitrary.

It's been heartening, though, to see that, whether through a lot of different organization of civil society groups, the fact that there have been more protests going on, the fact that we are still seeing courts at lower levels of jurisdiction weigh in on.

And note without ambiguity, their interpretation of the law that is sort of keeping things together.

And we can see that it's working because The White House has been so irritated.

it was quite interesting.

I was speaking with a friend of mine yesterday who's in Pennsylvania and had participated in a zoom of nearly 200 Mennonites in Pennsylvania who are organizing specifically against authoritarianism and talking about what needs to be done and how to get business, media, religious organizations, civil society, educators all together on the same page.

If this is happening in Pennsylvania, it's happening in other places.

Driving here, there were a couple dozen people out on the street.

People are out on the street.

I think what can be worrying is that it's not easy.

It's not quick and it's not linear.

You can take two steps forward and one step back.

And that's something that we've seen.

And so unfortunately you need to be in on this for the long haul.

I think it's also important for people to keep an eye on what's coming next.

I think that we can expect that there's going to be a strong push to break as much as possible before the midterms, really begin.

In terms of the campaign and then before those elections happen.

And again, I think that all you need to do is look at the project 2025 plan to see that this can include privatization of resources, natural parks, national parks, post office, weather service, et cetera.

that's coming next.

And so being ready for this is important.

Whether you're a lawyer getting ready to sort of file suit or people who can be calling their representatives to basically ask them to stand up and do something, it's been very interesting to see the frustration growing in the great state of Maine against Susan Collins.

I mean, there are a number of people running against her because they're saying, we're tired of hearing you say that you're concerned when your decisions have been aiding and abetting this administration for some time.

So continuing with this type of activity is extremely important.

and I think that the one issue that's close to your heart, obviously, too, is just awareness of what's going on.

And this is where it's always so troubling that local and regional media coverage has been so so broken over the years with the the demise of local newspapers and reporting, as well as what we've seen is some of the bigger picture pressure against media outlets, whether that's ABC, CBS, Paramount, et cetera.

as we're seeing an effort by the Trump administration to pressure the media, how can local media do an even better job of getting these issues out there and demonstrating to people why it's important to them?

How can I mean, your show, public radio shows, et cetera.

are extremely important, but I also often wonder about the evening news that you can see.

Five 536 where you've got about 22 minutes, where people are watching what's being covered and what's not, and who's making that decision.

is, I mean, is enough time being spent on issues related to labor, related to health care, related to corruption and white collar crime?

Or are we seeing more issues focused on sort of a street crime focused on sort of narrower issues, divorced from the broader context?

And how can those 22 minutes be made in a way that people actually recognize that the changes at the federal level are linked to what's going on at the local level, and that some of these systemic problems really do need some systemic solutions.

>> You're getting that, you know, a past life of mine working in local commercial television news and somebody sometime will write a book about the decision that local news made.

There's some of the best journalism in the country, happens at the local level, and some of it happens in local TV newsrooms.

and commercial TV news.

And some of it still is.

At the same time, there was a decision made to chase house fires, car accidents you know, press releases as opposed to going deeper.

And that has hurt this country.

>> And you know what?

You need both.

But it's an issue of what's being averaged, how you're doing and how much time is being spent.

And it does.

It's it's been a long time since I've turned on the news here and really heard a lot going on about white collar crime, white collar corruption.

How many people have been denied coverage by their insurance for a life saving health care procedure?

That kind of coverage could really change things.

>> Well, now let's pivot as we get ready to close here with something a little bit more optimistic.

Here.

You look around the world at democracy trends, and it's not all backsliding.

It's not all going in the wrong direction.

Where are some examples of where things are going in the direction that you think is healthy?

>> Sure.

No, I mean, it is quite often quite worrying.

And what we saw in China over the past several days in terms of their 80 year marking of the end of World War two, has been extremely troubling, because it sure does seem like the authoritarians, the autocrats are very self-confident right now and are recognizing that they can move full steam ahead.

But there are some bright spots that you can see.

And again you never really know what momentum is possible until you start seeing some of these bright spots.

Spots come together.

South Korea is quite interesting.

In December 2024, we saw then president declare martial law, which really angered the population, and he ended up being ousted, impeached, and the opposition leader won election.

And so that's one process.

Right now we're seeing a trial go on in Brazil of Jair Bolsonaro related to his attempted coup in 2020 23, where his supporters claimed that the election had been stolen and stormed some of the government buildings in something that should have sound familiar.

And the court process is going on right now, and no matter what you think about it, people should be troubled by the fact that the U.S. government under President Trump has been jumping in on the side of Bolsonaro, the autocrat, claiming that he's being unfairly persecuted and prosecuted, which which is not helpful in in any way, but is also not surprising.

Poland is another example, even though in May and June, a new right wing president was elected.

there have been a number of years where Poland has been able to reverse some of the backsliding that they had experienced over the past decade or so.

People got frustrated with this and even this election in June was extremely close, like 50.9 to 49.1 showing again how so many societies are very evenly divided and that the reason for that would be another show.

We can look at the case in Serbia, where for nearly ten months, students have been on the streets, often at great personal risk, protesting at what they see as a corrupt and unaccountable government, and the fact that they've been out there for such a long time, again, also shows that these things don't change quickly.

and all of these cases have a certain number of things in common, whether that's undermining trust in elections, leading to a situation where people don't trust anything, whether it's because of misinformation, fake news, generated slop, et cetera.

it's about destroying and challenging independent institutions so that a vertical of power is possible, whether that's by someone like Putin or what Trump, under the unitary executive theory, seems to want.

And then also using the culture wars using sensationalism and often using outright misinformation to try to get a population to think that maybe authoritarianism is better, maybe it's better if the trains run on time to use the old Mussolini quote.

Maybe it's better to give up our rights if the streets are clean and things are safe.

But the problem is, as soon as you're in a one party state, that one party is going to find ways to abuse power and is going to apt and corrupt and self-interested ways.

>> Let me close with this email from Dell, who says, what concerns me is how quickly, how we're quickly learning that the safeguards we all thought were there don't actually exist.

We just assume those in power will use it fairly and judiciously.

And we always assume that if they don't, there is some system in place to stop them or hold them accountable.

The courts have been either unwilling or unable to curb it.

Congress has been absolutely stagnant.

So what is the remedy?

When the administration just decides it does not want to follow the law anymore?

Where is the limit?

And this last minute I'll just say, I don't know that anybody has a perfect answer to what Dell is asking.

but did you think the courts would be stronger?

>> it's.

I had hoped that they would be stronger.

I had not anticipated how completely the the Supreme Court would be willing to consistently take the side of the Trump administration without regard to the bigger picture law and challenges.

And I had been surprised at how quickly they would be to dismiss lower court judges.

However, this is also something that did not happen.

spontaneously.

This has been part of a generation long effort to put people in the court system and ultimately to the Supreme Court, who had a view of democracy that would be anathema to most people who grew up with civics lessons, checks and balances and schoolhouse Rock.

>> I asked about the courts because I wasn't surprised about Congress's capitulation.

It was the courts I thought might be a bit more of a bulwark.

But we'll see.

It's not a it's not a finished story.

And in the meantime, there will be much more to talk about with Dr. Valery Perry.

Valerie is senior associate for the Democratization Policy Council.

Again, it's just nice to have you in studio, although I'm sure the next time we talk you might be over an ocean and we'll be happy to do that too.

>> Possibly.

Thanks and good luck.

>> Thank you very much.

And from all of us at Connections.

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Thank you for listening.

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