August 5, 2025

Whenever someone tries to give me credit for saving democracy, I correct them. The litigation I bring is not saving democracy. Even when successful, that isn’t its aim. My goal, I explain, is simply to buy time for democracy to be saved through the political process.

For every voter suppression law I help strike down, there are dozens more that hostile legislatures can enact. For every election I help protect from being stolen, there are now thousands of election deniers embedded in election offices, ready to subvert the next one.

Only a culture shift within the GOP can save democracy. Free and fair elections will not be safe so long as Trump is in the White House. The rule of law will not prevail until MAGA is defeated, discredited and abandoned.

To be perfectly honest, even a year ago, this felt like an achievable goal. Now it feels like a Sisyphean task.

There are times I start to lose hope — days I feel overwhelmed by the task in front of me, moments of despair when I look at all the damage Trump is doing and realize what a small part I can play, even if I am entirely successful.

I begin each day by reading the comments from people who subscribe to Democracy Docket. Most of them are uplifting. Nearly all are appreciative. But I can sense that many of you are just as worried as I am. You experience the same moments of doubt — and the same hopes that things will get better.

This week, we received some good news in the effort to buy time for democracy. At great personal risk and sacrifice, dozens of Democratic legislators from Texas left the state to deny Republicans the quorum needed to pass a severely gerrymandered congressional map.

These legislators stand to receive no benefit and reap no reward for their act of bravery. The map they are opposing affects only congressional districts; it has no impact on their own elections.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has threatened to have them arrested, prosecuted and fined. He has said he will take steps to try to strip the legislators of their seats by declaring them vacant.

These men and women are paid only $7,200 per year to represent the nearly 200,000 people in their districts. Their decision to leave the state means being away from their homes and families and risking losing their full-time jobs, which remain in Texas.

Though they are currently safe in blue states like Illinois – where Gov. Pritzker has made it clear they are welcome – their future remains uncertain. No one knows how long they will have to stay, or how this will end.

The Texas legislators are heroes precisely because of this uncertainty. They are not promising that their actions will ultimately succeed in halting a new round of redistricting in Texas. They cannot predict what havoc Abbott and his lawless Attorney General, Ken Paxton, will wreak.

It is entirely possible that Texas will find a way to pass a new map – perhaps even a worse one. It’s possible this will set off a chain reaction that leads other Republican-controlled states to follow suit. If there’s one thing we’ve learned in recent years, it’s that when it comes to Republican deceit and depravity, anything is possible.

All the brave Texas legislators can do is buy time for democracy to be saved through the political process. They can create the conditions for Democrats to rally behind them and chart their own courageous path forward. They can cause Republicans to have second thoughts and pressure their party to retreat.

If that sounds overly optimistic, consider this: when Democrats and the pro-voting community proposed nonpartisan redistricting reform legislation in 2021, not a single House Republican supported it. Yesterday, two Congressional Republicans said they would support legislation banning partisan gerrymandering. One even introduced a bill that would nullify any new maps — including the one proposed in Texas.

I understand that these are likely insincere deathbed conversions born of political convenience. I know these Republicans do not speak for their party, and that leadership has no intention of even bringing such legislation to a vote. But it has only been two days since the Texas legislators decamped, and already the political landscape is shifting — however slightly.

We all have a role to play in this fight for democracy, and too often, we overlook the value of buying time. Calling your representative’s office can buy time. Attending a town hall can buy time. Peaceful protests are often designed precisely to disrupt the status quo — to momentarily alter the course of events and allow space for a new dynamic to emerge.

Of course, litigation and the courts can also be powerful tools. I recently spoke with ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero on my podcast, where he explained it well. Speaking about a case involving fired workers that the ACLU ultimately lost, he noted that the litigation “bought a lot of time” for those workers to prepare for their future and made it more difficult for the administration “to run even more aggressively as they had to fight to defend their policy.”

Democracy won’t be saved in one dramatic moment. To succeed, we must defend it every day in a thousand small ways. Whether through protest, litigation or the courage of lawmakers willing to risk everything for what’s right, we are all working to buy time for democracy to heal, strengthen and endure. The fight may feel endless, but every action matters. Even if we can’t yet see the finish line, we can take solace in knowing that we are pushing it forward together, step by step.