Retired conservative judge details game plan for fighting Trump’s 'corruption'

Like attorney George Conway, retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig is a prominent figure in the conservative legal movement who became an outspoken Never Trumper and rooted for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the United States' 2024 presidential election. Luttig repeatedly warned that if Donald Trump won, he would do everything he could to undermine the rule of law and push the U.S. in an authoritarian direction.

Trump is now almost 11 months into his second presidency, and Luttig is still sounding the alarm. During a "How to Fix It" vodcast posted on the conservative website The Bulwark on December 14, Luttig discussed his worries about Trump with host John Avlon (formerly of CNN) and former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson but also offered some solutions. Luttig and Johnson are now co-chairs of the American Bar Association's bipartisan Task Force on American Democracy.

Luttig warned that 2025's Republicans "almost universally favor more limited access to voting because they believe that the political demographics have moved away from them."

Luttig told Avlon and Johnson, "The president of the United States has literally corrupted America's democracy and its rule of law. For the first time in American history, John — in almost 250 years, America has never experienced anything like this at all. Not a single time in American history."

One of the solutions Luttig offered was "civics education."

The retired conservative judge told Avlon and Johnson, "For years now, there has been a decline in the civics knowledge of American citizens…. You cannot have a democracy that is enforced by partisans at the election booth. That, of course, is what has occurred over the past several cycles. We must fix this if we fix nothing else."

Johnson laid out some ideas to combat Americans' "distrust of government."

The former DHS secretary told Avlon and Luttig, "We talk about how Americans distrust their government…. Trust in government has spiraled downward. Americans are drowning in conspiracy theories; they're deeply suspicious of the institutions of government. I believe — we believe — that elected politicians today have had a lot to do with that. They have pandered to that level of suspicion with extreme rhetoric, appealing to the extreme right and extreme left. And so, a big part of what we believe needs to be done to restore our democracy is reincentivize political behavior."

Johnson continued, "The way you reincentivize political behavior is you get politicians incentivized to appeal to the political center as opposed to the political extremes. Open nonpartisan primaries is a big step in that direction."

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