On Meeting the Autocratic Moment

Why Jen Rubin and I launched The Contrarian, Why we need it now, and Who will be joining us for this thrilling new venture

Welcome!

Today, Jen Rubin and I, along with an all-star list of contributors (whom I will introduce to you below) launched The Contrarian to counteract democratic backsliding—and to entertain you while we’re at it. Together, we are energized to meet the autocratic moment and call it out with clarity and vigor.

Take the Bizarro World scene that has been playing out in the Florida courtroom of Judge Aileen Cannon. She was a last-minute Donald Trump-appointee at the end of his first term, who appears to be auditioning for greater things in his second. Despite being repeatedly slapped down previously by the uber-conservative 11th Circuit, she has not slowed down a bit. Her latest shenanigans involved temporarily freezing the release of the first volume of Jack Smith’s report on his investigation of the attempted coup following the 2020 election—then, just this morning, seemingly clearing way for its release. I say ‘seemingly’ because she has prolonged her illegal injunction to now allow Trump to go to the US Supreme Court.

I fully expect he will stampede to the Supreme Court to make a desperate bid for delay. This stratagem just failed in his effort to stall sentencing on his 34 New York criminal convictions on a 5-4 majority. Although Trump lost that case, it was a damned close-run thing (to paraphrase the Duke of Wellington’s description of Waterloo). Even that minimum degree of accountability would have been blocked had Trump managed to finagle away one or two more votes, as he succeeded in doing in the execrable Trump v. United States immunity decision.

All of this has the surreal quality that characterized the writing of one of my mentors, the Czechoslovak dissident, playwright, and eventual president, Václav Havel. His “Theatre of the Absurd” movement has been taken to new heights by judges like Cannon, Alito and Thomas. The madness of this moment is showing no signs of abating. We are not at the beginning of the end—or even the end of the beginning. That is why we need The Contrarian, and why we need it now.

Among the many things that Jen Rubin will do in her daily columns, and I will do in slightly less frequent but equally unremitting pieces, is chart the vicissitudes of this complicit, captured, and corrupt Supreme Court.

With great delight, however, I can assure you that The Contrarian will cover far more than legal cases or our contentious political climate. Which is why we are by no means doing this alone. Instead, the more than two dozen phenomenal contributors (and counting) will help us lay the foundation of this already-burgeoning community.

Just as autocracy has multiple fronts, so too must the push-back against it. The need for multiple perspectives and varied expertise from all ages and every region of the country is reflected in this astonishing group of Contrarian contributors. Other than me and Jen, everyone on the following list will continue their own Substacks and other media pursuits, while also contributing to us on a regular basis.

Allegra Lawrence-Hardy is a leading trial lawyer who, as a resident of Georgia, will (among other things) help us see legal issues and ideals through a distinctly Southern lens.

Andrew Weissmann is one of the great criminal lawyers of our generation and will continue offering the kind of sharp commentary on the rule of law that has made him so well-known.

The inimitable Andy Borowitz will contribute a humor column, because laughter is one of the most powerful weapons against autocracy.

Asha Rangappa is a former FBI agent, and with Kash Patel penciled in for that agency it is going to require a lot of our attention and vigilance. She also has a sharp eye on pop culture, and will be sharing her irreverent views there too.

Barb McQuade is best known as a razor-sharp former US Attorney, but has also emerged as a leading scholar of disinformation, and will contribute to fighting that tool of Trump, Musk et. al.

The brilliant Bob Kagan is one of our nation’s leading foreign policy scholars who, among other things, advised candidate John McCain on that topic, and will offer us his essential insights.

My former colleague from the Obama administration, author David Litt, is one of the wittiest democracy experts I know. He will enlighten and entertain us in equal parts.

Esosa Osa, the CEO of Onyx Impact, is also a brilliant disinformation expert. With disinformation at the cutting edge of autocracy, we wanted a deep bench… and we got one!

George Conway is one of the stars of the pro-democracy media ecosystem because he’s so funny and scabrous. He will be helping lead our effort to experiment with fast and creative content across all of our platforms.

Harry Litman has been a dear friend and fellow contrarian for three decades. He has emerged in his columns, podcasts, and videos as one of the most distinctive legal voices in America.

Ilan Goldenberg was Kamala Harris’s Middle East advisor. He represents the next generation of wisdom and will write for us on Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East.

John Dean is The Dean of whistleblowers and a leading scholar of and witness to autocracy. He will cover that topic in depth for us.

So will two of our very finest authorities and scholars of autocracy nationwide: Kim Lane Scheppele and Ruth Ben-Ghiat. Kim is a Princeton professor who is an expert on European autocracies such as Hungary (which serves as a model for Trump). Ruth is an NYU professor and the author of New York Times bestseller Strongman, and is widely-recognized as one of the first voices in academia to warn the public of the coming autocratic crisis.

Jonathan Alter is, among other things, a leading journalist covering the presidency. (We first met when he interviewed me for his book about the Obama administration.) He will be studying Trump’s moves through the prism of his profound knowledge of prior presidents.

Joyce Vance, a former US Attorney, is among the country’s most trusted, lucid voices on law, politics, the South, and—of course—poultry. We will call on her to write on everything related to coups, coops, and democracy.

Justin Nelson, a brilliant trial lawyer, is perhaps best known for his successful libel representation of Dominion against Fox. With libel suits, another leading autocratic method, he will help us understand this area of the law.

Karen Friedman Agnifilo, like me, is a practicing criminal defense lawyer as well as a former government one. We’re thrilled that she will be offering that unique bifocal lens to legal and cultural moments.

Katie Phang is one of the most outspoken and vibrant legal analysts on cable television. She will offer The Contrarian her unfettered views.

Laurence Tribe is our nation’s leading constitutional lawyer. With the fate of our founding document under such dire threat, who better to call us to action?

Lavora Barnes will soon complete a term as one of our nation’s most innovative and successful political party chairs, based in Michigan. She brings a warm, clever Midwestern perspective on our nation’s political dynamics.

Marissa Rothkopf Bates will contribute on cooking and democracy for us. Her separate substack on The Secret Life of Cookies already stirs some pro-democracy spice into the cookie batter.

Michael Podhorzer, the longtime Political Director of the AFL-CIO, is one of the titans of polling research and data, and will offer an evidence-based lens on where our country is and what can be done to bring us where we need to be.

Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge, is now a distinguished Harvard professor and frequent essayist who will reflect on the pressures the judiciary is coming under—another signal aspect of autocracy.

Renato Mariotti is a star trial lawyer who was one of the first to write about attacks on the rule of law from that perspective. We are fortunate that he will do the same for us.

Sherrilyn Ifill is the visionary former President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), and has continued sharing her wisdom and experience through her expert writing while also serving as a Civil Rights professor at Howard University.

Stephen Richer is a libertarian who has just concluded his service as the Maricopa County Recorder and who is a champion of democracy. He will cover elections for us, with wisdom gleaned from the front lines of that experience.

Stephen Vladeck, professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, joins our team of legal scholars with his sharp eye trained on the federal courts, national security law, and military justice.

Tom Joscelyn is a long-time analyst of counter-extremism who has been invited to testify by Republicans in Congress more than twenty times. He was the principal drafter of the January 6th Committee’s report, and will cover the far-right for us—among other topics.

Olivia Julianna, an undergraduate political science student, has emerged as a TikTok star and leading voice of her generation. She will share her personal journey with us in tomorrow’s newsletter.

As you can see from the depth and scope of these names, we’re bringing you foremost voices of expertise in law, politics, and policy. But we place equal emphasis on the crucial role that culture plays in driving the zeitgeist and furthering our larger mission.

That is another lesson I learned from Havel: if you’re seeking to restore a deteriorating democracy, culture has to be at the spearhead—or the tip of the quill. Which is why, in addition to hard-hitting analysis, it is so important for us to have a humor column from Andy Borowitz and a cooking column by Marissa Rothkopf Bates. And it’s why you’ll get an abundance of content from us on our contributors’ pets, whether it’s George Conway’s Corgis or Joyce Vance’s chickens.

We also recognize how essential it is to be multi-generational, which is why we’re all the more galvanized to be joined, educated, and enlightened by powerful, next-generation leaders like Olivia Julianna, Ilan Goldenberg, Esosa Osa, and many others to come.

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Returning to Cannon’s kangaroo court, I began with Havel and I will end with another Czech satirist with an even more surreal vision: Franz Kafka. He addressed the autocracy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire through works like The Trial. He would have felt right at home in Judge Cannon's courtroom and in Trump’s America.

That’s why he wrote—to deal with it. So must we all do what we can, whether it is writing or reading, voting or litigating, marching or laughing. Above all, you can do what you can by being Contrarian.

Please join us.