The Resistance Lawyers Up

 

Lisa Lerer, in the NYTimes:

Democracy Forward, a liberal-leaning legal organization that frequently battled the first Trump administration in court, on Thursday unveiled a large-scale new effort aimed at thwarting President-elect Donald J. Trump’s second-term agenda from his first day in office.

More than 800 lawyers at 280 organizations have begun developing cases and workshopping specific challenges to what the group has identified as 600 “priority legal threats” — potential regulations, laws and other administrative actions that could require a legal response, its leaders said. The project, called Democracy 2025, aims to be a hub of opposition to the new Trump administration.

Unlike in 2017, when Democratic lawyers were unprepared for the onslaught of conservative policies, the intent is to be ready to unleash a flurry of lawsuits immediately.

“We’re leveling up and lawyering up,” Skye Perryman, the chief executive of the organization, said. “This wasn’t something that just everybody woke up the day after the election and started to plan.”

 

Will Josh Stein Join the Resistance?

Reid J. Epstein, in the NYTimes:

In the first of what is likely to be several groups that sprout to resist the next Trump administration, two Democratic governors announced on Wednesday that they were forming a group to help protect state-level institutions of democracy.

The group, Governors Safeguarding Democracy, is meant to serve as a mechanism for Democratic states to coordinate efforts to oppose the right-wing policies of President-elect Donald J. Trump.

Its leaders, Govs. JB Pritzker of Illinois and Jared Polis of Colorado, are among a group of ambitious Democrats likely to try to fill a party-wide leadership void once President Biden leaves office.

“Donald Trump is going to bring people into his administration who are absolute loyalists to his cult of personality and not necessarily to the law,” Mr. Pritzker said. “Last time, he didn’t really know where the levers of government were. I think he probably does now. And so I think that the threat remains great.” ...

...the group’s top staff member, did not say how many governors had agreed to join the organization.