Six Things for Democracy Supporters to Be Grateful for this Thanksgiving

At Thanksgiving tables across America this Thursday, the turkey carver will sneak a taste and the kids will fight over who gets a drumstick. At some point, someone — perhaps a grandparent or an aunt or a particularly earnest friend — will ask everyone gathered to say what they are thankful for this year. 

In that spirit, we — your particularly earnest friends here at Democracy Docket — are giving our answer. It’s easy to forget that, amid all the Trump administration’s attacks on democracy this year, there are ample reasons to be grateful — and even hopeful — as we begin to bring 2025 to a close. 

Here are six things we’re feeling thankful for this year:

Resistance is not futile

There’s no other way to say it: From the minute President Donald Trump returned to the White House, we’ve been on a speed run toward authoritarianism. We’ve seen political prosecutions targeting Trump’s enemies; schemes to undermine fair elections; and ICE thugs snatching people off the street with glee. 

But there’s a silver lining: People across the country keep showing up to push back. Millions attended No Kings protests against Trump, which clearly got under his skin as evidenced by several videos of AI slop the president posted in response. Meanwhile, the resistance to ICE raids and to Trump’s military deployment to blue cities have brought communities together to protect their most vulnerable. 

The onslaught of bad news from the Trump administration feels like a lot some days. But that people keep pushing back — nearly a year in — gives us hope that it won’t always be this way.

The judges who are committed to the rule of law

It’s no secret that we got to where we are today because of the Trump administration playing fast and loose with the rule of law. Take steps that might not be legal and let the courts sort it out — with the hope that all those Trump-appointed judges from the president’s first term will prove loyal. 

So far, it’s been a mixed bag, but we’d be remiss not to give thanks to all the judges who upheld the rule of law to keep Trump in check. Courts — including Trump-appointed judges, in some cases — have ruled to block the president’s sweeping tariffs; to stop the administration from and using of a wartime law to target Venezuelan immigrants; to declare the president’s military takeover of Portland, Ore. unconstitutional; to block Texas’ extreme GOP gerrymander; and to dismiss the revenge-driven prosecutions of two prominent Trump critics.

Many of these cases aren’t over yet, of course, and the U.S. Supreme Court could come to Trump’s rescue in several of them. But whatever happens, the willingness of some federal judges to resist Trump’s power grab is heartening.

The Department of … just plain incompetence 

At the forefront of this assault on the rule of law are Trump’s appointees at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Thankfully for us, the DOJ — once the finest law enforcement agency in the nation — is now being led by the Keystone Cops. And their bumbling is as self-defeating as it is darkly entertaining. 

At the DOJ, the obsession with performing for cameras and social media clicks seems to take precedence over actual lawyering. Just look at Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who tweets upwards of 100 times a day between her personal and DOJ accounts — often posting information about cases that the department is currently pursuing. And Ed Martin, pardon attorney and head of the department’s weaponization working group, sometimes posts bizarre, vague updates of cases he’s investigating. 

But DOJ also is making major errors in legal filings that are compromising some of its biggest cases. Consider the gerrymandering case in Texas, where a letter sent by Dhillon to state officials, urging them to dismantle minority coalition districts, was held up by a court as the prime evidence that Texas had acted with illegal racial motives in doing the redraw. In other words, a major self-own.

“It’s challenging to unpack the DOJ Letter because it contains so many factual, legal, and typographical errors,” the judges wrote. “Indeed, even attorneys employed by the Texas Attorney General — who professes to be a political ally of the Trump Administration — describe the DOJ Letter as ‘legally unsound,’ ‘baseless,’ ‘erroneous,’ ‘ham-fisted,’ and ‘a mess.’”

Dhillon is far from the only official at the decimated DOJ to shoot herself in the foot while trying to do Trump’s bidding. Lindsey Halligan, the former insurance lawyer with no prosecutorial experience, is just one of four Trump sycophants courts say the department unlawfully tried to appoint as a U.S. Attorney. Trump handpicked Halligan to bring bogus charges against James and former FBI director James Comey, because no one else in the department would.  

On Monday, a federal judge dismissed the charges Halligan brought against Comey and James after determining Trump and Bondi circumvented the law to appoint Halligan. Had the judge not acted for that reason, he might well have for the numerous missteps Halligan took in handling the case — including making what he called “fundamental misstatements of the law” and neglecting to hand Comey’s final indictment to the grand jury.

The elected officials standing up to the Trump regime

A handful of elected officials have consistently stood up to the administration’s thuggish tactics — sometimes even at the expense of their own safety. 

Both California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) have stood up to the Trump regime, through resisting Trump’s National Guard takeover in their respective states and just generally trolling the president. And Newsom has led the charge on redistricting his state to counter the GOP’s Trump-driven gerrymanders.

Meanwhile, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) was handcuffed and forcibly removed at a press conference in June for simply trying to ask Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem questions about the administration’s barbaric immigration tactics. Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) was indicted on felony charges stemming from efforts to stop ICE agents from arresting Newark Mayor Ras Baraka during a congressional oversight visit in May. And the handful of Democratic New York officials— including Comptroller Brad Lander — were arrested in September for demanding access to an alleged ICE detention facility at 26 Federal Plaza. 

And amid DOJ’s ongoing effort to collect private voter data from every state, a handful of secretaries of state have defied the department’s demands to fork over their state’s voter rolls, even amid lawsuits. 

Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read (D) did not mince words in his response to DOJ’s demand for voter data: “I have no interest in sharing data with an administration that is willfully violating judicial orders and trampling on constitutional rights and responsibilities,” he responded.

While Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’ (D) response to DOJ was more pointed: “Go jump in the Gulf of Maine,” she said.

Democracy prevailed at the polls

We were all pretty grateful for the soundest sleep we’ve had in some time, on the night of November 4th. Voters rejected Trumpism across the country. 

In California, voters authorized the state’s countervailing redistricting in response to the Trump-ordered gerrymander in Republican-controlled states.  In Virginia, Democrats went from controlling the House of Delegates by the tiniest margin — 51 to 49 — to absolute dominance, winning 64 seats. In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger cruised to a commanding win in the gubernatorial race, running on a pro-democracy message.

In Pennsylvania, the GOP’s attempt to oust the state Supreme Court justices who blocked President Donald Trump’s multiple attempts to overturn his election loss in 2020, struck down a Republican gerrymander in 2018, and upheld the state’s no-excuse mail-in voting law in 2022 fell way short. And across the Delaware River, Mikie Sherill emerged victorious against Trump-backed Jack Ciattarelli. And Maine voters rejected a GOP-backed ballot measure that would have dramatically tightened voting rules in the state, especially targeting mail ballots.

… And speaking of polls, Trump’s are in the dumps

In fact, it’s voters across the country who have soured on Trump and the GOP’s attempts to undermine fair elections. In poll after poll, Trump’s numbers are at historic lows.

Looking at recent numbers from YouGov, pollster G. Elliot Morris found Trump hit a record low with independents in every single state in November. At the same time, Democrats’ lead in polls of the U.S. House generic ballot has grown, with the NPR/PBS poll conducted by Marist College showing a 14 point advantage. 

A Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll in early November showed that nearly two- thirds of Americans believed Trump has gone too far in expanding the powers of the presidency. A Blueprint survey earlier this month found 64% of voters opposed how Trump abused his position for personal enrichment. 

The poll we here at Democracy Docket are perhaps most thankful for came from NBC News. Though some pundits claim voters care only about kitchen table issues, not those that concern the political process, the poll found that, around a quarter of voters named protecting democracy or constitutional rights as their top issue — more than the cost of living (16%) or health care costs (10%).