We Can Defeat Trump's Lawlessness. We've Done It Before.

[Passages]

Donald Trump’s intimidation tactics are not new. At the height of the civil rights movement, segregationists harassed our civil rights lawyers.

Janai Nelson

4/17/2025

In our collective imagination, there’s a common nightmare about how democracies fall. Tanks rolling in. War breaking out. Blood spilled.

But history tells a different story—less dramatic, but no less devastating. Most democracies don’t die by gunfire. They die gradually. Quietly. Passively. A right revoked. A freedom restricted. A norm shattered. A collective silence. Before long, you look around and realize that the scaffolding of democracy has been dismantled in plain sight.

It’s why the rule of law must be protected at all costs. Encroachments on it are not mere policy disputes. They are the canaries in the coal mine. And today, those canaries are gasping for air.

SNIP
At the Legal Defense Fund, we know this tactic better than any other legal organization in the country, sadly—we’ve lived it before. At the height of the civil rights movement, segregationists across the South weaponized state power to harass and intimidate our civil rights lawyers in an effort to prevent us from engaging in advocacy. Alabama demanded that the NAACP, of which we were a part until 1957, disclose its membership lists. Texas falsely accused and sued the NAACP and LDF over a “medley of charges,” including allegedly generating profit while claiming nonprofit status. Georgia tax authorities jailed the NAACP’s Atlanta chapter president. And Arkansas dissolved the state NAACP by executive order.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/trump-lawlessness-ldf/


They are tough, an understatement actually.