Eric Lutz writes:

It had been a tough week for democracy when I got Senator Adam Schiff on the phone.

Donald Trump—who has spent the first three months of his presidency decimating the federal government and trampling over the separation of powers at the heart of the American system—was now flouting a unanimous Supreme Court decision directing officials to facilitate the return of a Maryland man who’d gotten swept up in the president’s immigration crackdown and deported to a hellish gulag in El Salvador, with the administration itself having acknowledged the error.

However, the California Democrat—who led Trump’s first impeachment trial, served on the House’s January 6 committee, and has been a frequent target of the president’s attacks—seemed optimistic. “We’re going to get through this,” he told me, “and we will get through it as a democracy.”

Which isn’t to say he’s not worried. If Trump has his way, the country could bear “little resemblance to the America that we’ve known for the last 250 years,” Schiff said. However, the senator said he’s been heartened to see in recent weeks that more lawmakers, institutions, and members of the public are fighting back. In a conversation, which has been edited for clarity and length, Schiff said shoring up democracy will require some courage and “an all-the-above strategy.” “There is no appeasing someone,” he said, “who has authoritarian ambitions.”

Vanity Fair: I want to ask you about Senator Lisa Murkowski’s comments this week. She said “we are all afraid” of what Trump has been doing here in his second term and that she is “very anxious” about using her voice because “retaliation is real.” What’s your reaction to that?

Adam Schiff: I applaud her for speaking out, and I think she’s speaking for a lot of others who aren’t ready to be as public about their concerns. Certainly, many of us in the Democratic Party have had to experience not just the political attacks, but the degree to which it bleeds over into threats directed at our personal security. So many of us have had to take steps—whether it’s hiring private security or hardening our homes—that were unthinkable, really, in the pre-Trump era, but that are now a reality. Part of what Trump has done within the Republican Party is cultivate an ethic of fear and intimidation politically, that anyone who stands up to him will face a primary challenge. But I think the fear is now broader than that. And indeed, one of the most notable aspects of the Trump 2.0 administration is the climate of fear he’s been able to cultivate across the country. Fear at universities and fear at law firms and fear throughout our society, which I hear all the time—people worried about what they can say. It’s ironic for an administration that claims to be against censorship, how many people are being forced to self-censor now by their campaign of threats and intimidation. [Continue reading…]