Posted April 24, 2025
About a week after the November election, as dread of a new Trump administration took hold throughout much of the country, the launch of an interstate initiative to protect democracy and the rule of law offered a message of optimism amid an otherwise bleak run of news. The initiative, an alliance called Governors Safeguarding Democracy, would be chaired by Govs. Jared Polis of Colorado and JB Pritzker of Illinois.
“We founded GSD because we know that simple hope alone won’t save our democracy. We need to work together, especially at the state level, to protect and strengthen it,” Polis said at the time.
Five months on, it’s not clear that the alliance has done much of anything to protect democracy or the rule of law. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has rapidly transformed the federal government into a terrorizing instrument of authoritarian rule, wherein democratic principles are ignored and the rule of law is mocked. America by some measures has ceased even to qualify as a democracy, and armed agents of the state now snatch people from neighborhood streets and deliver them to brutal prisons in other countries.
Any optimism inspired by the GSD initiative has proved misplaced, and Polis appears to be unprepared for the historic emergency that faces the country.
But he’s not alone. Other leading Democrats in Colorado similarly seem blind to the acute dangers ahead. They have little to offer Coloradans beyond simple hope.
Newsline recently sent Polis’ office a set of questions about GSD’s activities. Which governors had joined the alliance? What actions has Polis taken as co-chair?
A spokesperson for the governor responded that “this nonpartisan organization continues to bring together think tanks, legal experts, and democracy advocates to inform policy that protects the rule of law and serves the people of our states.” She provided no specifics, and she gave no indication that Polis had taken any single specific action to advance GSD goals.
A spokesperson for GSD provided a little more information when asked similar questions, writing in an email that “GSD provides legal and policy tools and resources and hosts briefings on a range of issues” and that governors’ offices have “issued executive orders to create taskforces on immigration matters, hiring practices, and efforts to recruit federal workers laid off or fired by the federal government.”
Polis has issued no executive orders related to GSD’s work.
The spokesperson also said that much of the work is “behind-the-scenes.” She provided virtually no specifics.
It might be the case that GSD’s work occurs out of view, but if the outcome of that work is also invisible, it’s meaningless, and if its work were at all effective, democracy and the rule of law wouldn’t be vanishing.
Federal authorities have rounded up an untold number of Colorado residents under questionable legal authority and with almost no transparency. At least two of those people are at risk of being disappeared into the CECOT prison in El Salvador. If Polis wants to protect the rule of law, he should say something about their case.
On the contrary, Polis has helped legitimize parts of Trump’s agenda. He cheered the appointment of conspiracist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services and has welcomed major elements of Trump’s mass deportation plan.
Other top Colorado Democrats, such U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, have also failed to offer a persuasive check to MAGA threats.
Bennet stands out for particular reproof. His votes in the Senate, like Hickenlooper’s, have aligned with Trump’s agenda at an alarming rate, but now he wants to ditch D.C. and serve as Colorado’s next governor. In a speech at Denver’s City Park to announce his campaign, Bennet acknowledged that “everything we care about now is at stake in our country,” but the line lands like a focus group-tested talking point when weighed against the balance of Bennet’s pick-your-battles posture toward Trumpist fascism.
In an interview on 9News last week, Bennet bizarrely framed the 2024 election, in which an aspiring autocrat and convicted felon baited the electorate’s id and poisoned the national conversation with prolific lies, as a good faith contest that Democrats deserved to lose. Challenged by host Kyle Clark to specify how support for Trump Cabinet members has helped Colorado, Bennet all but acknowledged it does not.
“I think that’s a fair question,” Bennet said. “And we’ll have to look two years from now to really answer it.”
Does Bennet actually think we have two years to find out?
Other Democrats — though frighteningly few — understand that we don’t, and they have begun to model what real resistance to a fledgling dictatorship looks like.
Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, speaking on threats to American democracy, recently delivered the longest floor speech in U.S. Senate history. “These are not normal times in our nation, and they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate,” Booker said.
These are not normal times. They call for extraordinary action.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York recently visited cities, including Denver and Greeley, around the country as part of their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. Their events drew tens of thousands of people who were eager to show up in person as a form of rebuke against anti-democracy forces.
Polis’ GSD partner Pritzker has been frank and outspoken in describing what Trump is doing to the country, comparing Trump’s vision for America to Nazi Germany.
Phil Weiser, Colorado’s attorney general, is at the vanguard of the legal fight against Trump.
Such instances of resistance might not result in immediate change, but they are welcome alternatives to the shoulder-shrugging and rank complicity practiced by other Democrats, who appear to equate minority status in Washington with helplessness.
Booker is right. These are not normal times. They call for extraordinary action. They call for elected leaders to do everything in their power to protect democracy and the rule of law. Simple hope alone won’t cut it.
Quentin Young is the editor of Colorado Newsline. This commentary is republished from Colorado Newsline under a Creative Commons license. Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
