Democratic governors form a group to oppose the Trump administration

Washington: In the first of what is likely to be several groups that sprout to resist the next Trump administration, two Democratic governors announced Wednesday that they were forming a group to help protect state-level institutions of democracy.

The group, Governors Safeguarding Democracy, is meant to serve as a mechanism for Democratic states to coordinate efforts to oppose the right-wing policies of President-elect Donald Trump.

Its leaders, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, are among a group of ambitious Democrats likely to try to fill a party-wide leadership void once President Joe Biden leaves office.

"Donald Trump is going to bring people into his administration who are absolute loyalists to his cult of personality and not necessarily to the law," Pritzker said. "Last time, he didn't really know where the levers of government were. I think he probably does now. And so I think that the threat remains great."

What exactly the organization will do is not entirely clear. In interviews, Pritzker, Polis and Julia Spiegel, a former top legal adviser to California Gov. Gavin Newsom who will serve as the group's top staff member, did not say how many governors had agreed to join the organization. Also unclear is the funding mechanism beyond "philanthropic support," though Pritzker, a billionaire, said he was not underwriting the group himself.

Pritzker has had conversations with Republican governors about joining the organization, he said, but he declined to add whom he had spoken with.

The two Democratic governors and Spiegel spoke in broad strokes about the group's ambitions to coordinate resources across state lines to protect state courts, elections and laws against encroachment from what they expect to be a hostile federal government.

Regardless of how effective the organization becomes, it is likely to give Pritzker and Polis a platform to speak on behalf of blue-state officials.

Polis said he did not expect his state's democratic functions to be under immediate threat starting on Trump's Inauguration Day. Instead, he said, Trump's presence in office will create a growing danger that requires vigilance.

"There's not an overnight erosion that occurs on Jan. 20," he said. "There's a threat of an ongoing erosion over the future administration, and we want to prevent that from occurring."

The group is modeled after an abortion rights organization that Spiegel helped Newsom form after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. That group, the Reproductive Freedom Alliance, includes 22 Democratic governors and helped organize efforts to stockpile abortion pills before this year's presidential election.