Senate Standing Committee on Judiciary

Welcome everyone to the Judiciary Committee this Thursday morning, September 18th. My name is Karl Rhodes. I'm the Chair of the Committee. This Zoom meeting and YouTube live stream event covers the following agenda. It's the 10 a.m. JDC informational briefing about the erosion of democratic norms in the United States and the effect on Hawaii residents.

As noted, this briefing is being streamed live on YouTube. You can find links to viewing options for all Senate hearings and meetings on the Live and on Demand video page of the Legislature's website, www.capital.hawaii.gov.

in the unlikely event that we must abruptly end this briefing due to major technical difficulties, the Committee will reconvene at a later date if we can agree on one with the Professor and a public notice will be posted on the Legislature's website. Okay. Today we have with us Professor Colin Moore. Welcome to the to the Judiciary Committee.

Happy to be here.

I've invited respected academic Colin Moore to brief the Committee on what is termed democratic norms and the erosion of these norms. Democratic norms are the unwritten rules and expectations that help guide political behavior and facilitate the functioning of a peaceful, respectful and well running Democratic government.

An example of disregarding norms is President Trump accepting a luxury jet from a foreign government. Another is his refusal to attend the inauguration of the successor, President Biden, in January 2021. Professor Moore is a political scientist whose work explores how American institutions of government are built, how they function, and how they are understood in various communities.

He received his undergraduate degree with high honors from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where he studied political science. He earned both a Master's degree and a PhD in government from Harvard University.

Later, he was a research fellow at Yale University Center for the Study of American Politics and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Fellow in Health Policy Research at the University of Cal, Berkeley. For more than a decade, he's been a Professor here in Hawaii.

Professor Moore is the author of the book American Imperialism in the state, 1893-1921, which examined the United States governance of overseas territories during the height of US Imperial expansion. He's working on a second book entitled Service and Scandal, the Political Development of Veterans Health Care, which explores the history of the Federal Veterans Affairs Administration.

He has written numerous journal articles, book chapters and research reports. He is perhaps best known to this audience by his political essays and regular public appearances as a political analyst and commentator in our local media. Before I turn it over to you, I'd like to introduce my colleague, Senator Awa, also a Member of the Judiciary Committee.

The floor is yours.

All right, thank you. Senator Rhodes Senator Awa, happy to be here today. Well, as Senator Rhodes said, the subject of my presentation today is going to be democratic norms, the unwritten rules that sustain our political system. I'll be talking about what these norms are, how they might be eroding nationally, and what that erosion might mean for Hawaii.

A lot of the discussion, of course, is centered on Washington, D.C. but I want to highlight also what it means for us here at home with our dependence on federal resources, our unique vulnerabilities, and maybe even the advantages we have in protecting our democracy. So let me walk you through what I'm going to talk about today.

I'll begin by defining democratic norms, explaining why written rules like the Constitution, aren't always enough on their own. Next, I'll show how democracies tend to erode, usually gradually, not suddenly. Then I'll focus on why the United States is particularly vulnerable to what political scientists call democr. Democratic backsliding, given our constitutional design and today, high levels of polarization.

From there, I'll connect the discussion directly to Hawaii, showing the risks we face if federal institutions become unstable. And finally, I'll close with what I hope are some practical steps the state can take to safeguard its own institutions and ensure stability.

I'm sorry, before you continue, do you mind just pulling the mic a little closer to you? I'm sorry.

How's that? Better.

Except for. Yeah. Spilled water. Napkins. Hang on. Or something. Clean eggs.

So I wanted to start with this painting because it captures a pivotal moment in American history. December 231783 when George Washington resigned his Commission as commander in chief of the Continental Army. There's a reason it hangs in the capital of Rotunda, because this represents important democratic norm.

The handing over by a victorious revolutionary general back to civil society. And it was put there in the 19th century, partly with James Madison's endorsement, so everyone would be reminded of this important norm. When we think about democracy, we often think about written constitutions. And of course, we have an excellent written constitution. We think about elections.

We think about formal institutions. These are critical, but they're not sufficient. Democracy only survives when there are unwritten guardrails. Habits of restraint, mutual respect, and a willingness to play fair that gives life to the written rules. Without these guardrails, even our strongest constitution can be undermined.

And history shows that rules on paper cannot always prevent leaders from abusing power unless norms and institutions reinforce them. Now, political scientists really talk about two core norms, and I'm drawing particularly from the work of Steven Levitsky and Daniel Z. Blatt. At Harvard, the way they describe the two core norms are mutual toleration.

And mutual toleration means accepting that your political opponents are legitimate rivals, that they're not existential enemies. The British sometimes talk about the loyal opposition.

In other words, that your political opponents are an important part of the democratic process, and that while you may disagree, and you may disagree with them, sometimes furiously, they have a right to be there. And it's a violation of the norms to suggest that they're somehow illegitimate or that their presence is somehow itself undermines the system.

The other is institutional forbearance. And this is the idea that leaders should exercise restraint and not push legal powers to their absolute maximum. Just because something could be technically done by the President or a Senator does not mean it's legitimate or wise to do so.

In other words, for democratic institutions to function well, it requires a certain amount of wisdom from leaders to know when to push and when to hold back, when the institution, the preservation of these norms, are more important than whatever their particular political agenda is at that moment. That's what allows our Constitutions to work in practice.

And so, of course, our Constitution, impressive as it is, can't sustain democracy on its own. It provides a framework, separation of powers, checks and balances, elections. It's a system that's designed to channel ambition. As James Madison famously said, ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

So part of the structure of the Constitution is indeed it assumes a certain amount of ambition from politicians, from political leaders, to try to get their agendas passed. But these rules work in part because the norms that accompany them, and the United States learned this painfully in its early history. Right.

Norms were relatively weak in the early Republic. This was the first mass democracy. No one was quite sure how it was going to work. And of course, the Constitution didn't anticipate, as I'll talk about in a few minutes, some of the institutions that became very important to democracy.

This cartoon shows from 1798, shows Members of Congress coming to blows over the Alien Sedition Act. These, as you might recall from your high school history, were passed under John Adams, although they recently have been in the news. And they were framed as a national security measure during a time of period of tension with France.

But they also had a clear partisan edge. The Sedition Act criminalized false, scandalous, and malicious writings against the government. This was Adams's attempt to censor criticism from criticism about the Federal Government from his party, the Federalists. They violated the spirit of free speech and free press, and they represented a rejection of mutual Toleration.

The election of 1800 was the presidential contest between Adams and Jefferson and one of the nastiest in American history. The Federalists claimed that Jefferson was an atheist who would unleash mob rule. Jefferson Portrayed Adams as a monarchist who wanted to crown himself king.

If you think our politics are vicious, you can look at the politics and read the newspapers. In the early Republic, it was no holds barred. Eventually this worked itself out, as anyone who's seen the musical Hamilton knows, and it marked the first peaceful transfer of power between rival parties in American history.

But the takeaway is from these two episodes of the suppression of dissent through the Alien and Sedition Acts and the near breakdown of our Democracy in the 1800 election illustrated that democratic norms had to be learned and built. Just the rules of the Constitution alone were not enough.

Another famous example comes from 1937 from a Democratic President Roosevelt's attempt to pack the courts. He tried to expand the size of the Supreme Court to secure rulings in favor of his New Deal programs that the courts kept rejecting. Congress, including many of his own Members, resisted.

They recognized that court packing, while technically legal, would weaken a fundamental democratic institution. And so this episode to me again demonstrates the importance of these informal guidelines. Roosevelt's plan was rejected not just because of law, but because leaders understood that norms of judicial Independence mattered.

In the post war era, which I see today really as the golden age of American democracy, we entered a period of very strong norms and very low polarization.

If you consider Watergate, which I see as a victory of norms in US democracy, Richard Nixon was forced to resign in part because political leaders, including many Republicans, decided that the rule of law had to prevail over partisan loyalty.

And for decades after this, this era was remembered as one where institutions worked not just because of the written rules, but because people respected the spirit of democracy. Now I want to shift gears and talk a little bit about how modern democracies erode.

And I begin with the picture of the two gentlemen here, Viktor Orban of Hungary and President Erdogan of Turkey, because they're often cited as examples, places that were more Democratic and have become much less Democratic in recent years, they didn't collapse overnight.

This erosion has been gradual and often has resulted and been the result of democratic norm violations. Just to give you a sense of how regimes are ranked today, this is from the Economist intelligence unit from 2024. And you can see, of course, the authoritarian regimes, the full democracies.

The US is now classified as a flawed democracy, but there's also many of these hybrid regimes, places that do retain some of the institutions of democracy, they often have elections. Some political scientists call this competitive authoritarianism. So they're not North Korea.

They're not the kind of despotic regimes you necessarily think of from the 40s, the 30s, 40s and 50s, but they're not what we would call true liberal democracy. And they often lack most of the democratic norms that we value. And so in the 21st century, most democracies have not collapsed through sudden coups, through emergencies.

You know, as you all saw, when the President of South Korea attempted to declare emergency, which really was a farcical attempt to overthrow South Korean democracy, that has not been a very effective way. Usually, elected leaders undermine them gradually. They chip away at checks and balances while maintaining the appearance of legality.

They might pack courts, they might harass the media, they might manipulate electoral rules, they might try to silence opponents. But usually while claiming to follow the law, there's not usually a dramatic break. And like I said earlier, Hungary is probably the classic example of this.

You can look at the slow erosion of democratic norms that is translated into restrictions on the media, attempts to change the makeup of the court to make life extremely difficult for the opposition party. But Viktor Orban himself was a democratically elected leader. This happens slowly and over time.

And of course, this slow erosion makes it harder for citizens and even some legislators to recognize the danger of what's going on. Now, political scientists sometimes point up 4 warning signs. There could be more, but these are the four that I think are the most important. First, leaders who reject the rules of the Democratic game.

Second, leaders who deny the legitimacy of their opponents. And that, I think, is one of the most important. Third, leaders who tolerate or even encourage political violence. And fourth, those who restrict civil liberties and begin to attack the press. When multiple signs appear together, the risk of democratic erosion becomes severe, in my view.

And when citizens or institutions fail to push back, then that erosion accelerates. Now, the US arguably is quite vulnerable to this form of erosion, and you might think of that as a curious statement. This is the world's oldest mass democracy. We have the world's longest operating constitution. Why would the US be vulnerable?

And of course, for much of our history, much of academic political science did not think that was the case. But I plan this picture of Mount Rushmore in part, not just because it shows four of our most celebrated presidents. It's also a powerful reminder of the central role the presidency plays in American democracy.

The U.S. constitution was designed at a time when the example the founders could draw from was what they knew best, which was Britain. And so you needed a strong Executive, you needed energy in the Executive is what they often said.

And so they created an extremely strong Executive, someone who has in many cases, kingly powers like the power to pardon. That is not a power that most executives and most democracies have today, but it is a power our President has.

And so because we put so much power in a single office, unlike parliamentary systems that you might see in Western Europe, where power can shift more easily between leaders, we really concentrate a lot of authority in the President. And so without strong norms, the US is vulnerable. Why do I say this?

Well, first, as I mentioned before, because the Constitution is the oldest still in use. It was written for an 18th century society. It didn't anticipate things that we think of as fundamental to democracy today. Political parties. The oldest mass political party is the U.S. Democratic Party. It was invented, but it didn't exist before.

So this isn't a criticism of the founders. There could have been no way they could anticipate something like a mass political party in the way we think of it emerging. But it's not something the Constitution speaks to in the same way we think of as a competent, neutral civil service as being fundamental to democracy.

But that's not something that existed in the 18th century. It's something that had to be created. And it was created in this country through a relatively painful process in the late 19th century. So around the world, though, countries that have copied our system, the US Constitutional system, have been themselves very vulnerable to sliding into authoritarianism.

There is a famous political scientist named Juan Linz who made a career out of studying this in Latin America and other places. You can look at Latin American constitutions early in the 20th century. Many of them are almost verbatim copies of the US Constitution. The 1935 Philippines Constitution Constitution is almost a verbatim copy of the US Constitution.

But that didn't stop the Philippines from sliding into authoritarian authoritarianism under Ferdinand Marcos. And so the idea here, or the argument that Juan Linz has made, is that Democratic systems that have a very strong President are themselves very vulnerable to backsliding into authoritarianism.

Now, the US hasn't had this problem in part because we have had these deeply strong norms that have prevented this, because we've often had wise people in charge of the Senate or the House and certainly the presidency, who've known and believed in the Democratic values of mutual tolerance and forbearance.

But we're beginning to see this value of forbearance decline. And this isn't just due to Donald Trump. And I want to make that clear in some of my remarks today. I do think that there's been an erosion of democratic norms under President Trump, but I don't think that it started with him.

This erosion started before he took office. And one thing that many political scientists and legal scholars have pointed to is a concept called constitutional Hardball. And what this means, refers to is pushing legal authority to the maximum to gain partisan advantage, even if it undermines trust in institutions.

Examples might include abuse of the filibuster, the manipulation of electoral rules for partisan gain. And some of this has always happened through American history, but I, I think it has reached a more extreme form in the last 30 years. Now, these tactics might be technically legal, but they also corrode the shared assumptions that keep our democracy stable.

When each side adopts Hardball tactics, the result is escalating retaliation and a collapse of forbearance. You enter this vicious cycle. The US as I mentioned before, is now classified as a flawed democracy. These are the scores from Freedom House, which has been scoring and raiding regimes since the 1970s. This shows you from 2002 to 2024.

And there's been a marked decline in the United States. Of course, we are still a democracy. Freedom House still considers us a democracy.

But there has been a decline in the Freedom House score compared to, for example, Canada and Japan, along with Australia and New Zealand and the UK and a few other places that really are today get scores in the high 90s. And I mentioned Viktor Orban in Hungary before.

And you can see the slide of Hungary from 2008 when, according to Freedom House, it ranked a democracy at least or more robust than Japan. And that slide has begun to happen quite precipitously in 2014, down to Hungary rating 65 as a hybrid regime today. I mentioned mutual tolerance has also been a central democratic norm.

And I want to talk a little bit about polarization today, because one thing that's happened, one thing that's allowed, I believe, for the further erosion of democratic norms, is hyperpolarization in the United States. And the word political scientists use to describe this hyperpolarization is something called effective polarization.

And what effective polarization means is you can imagine people on different sides of the aisle disagreeing over policy positions. That's what democracy is all about, people, Republicans and Democrats, disagreeing on tax policy, on social services policy.

But when I use the term effective polarization, what that means is that these disagreements have shifted from policy differences to personal Hostility. Increasingly, Republicans and Democrats dislike and distrust each other. That's a relatively new phenomenon. Many are unwilling to socialize together. That is a relatively new phenomenon.

The percentage of people who would be unhappy if their child married a Member of the opposing party has increased 35 percentage points in the last 50 years. That, you know, that is, that's remarkable. It, of course, exceeds many other things that people used to be upset about. And now it is one of the chief concerns.

Families tend to be partisan enclaves. Spousal agreement on party ID is now greater than 80%, the largest since the 1960s. You know, I grew up in a bipartisan household. My father was a deeply conservative Republican. My mother was a teachers union activist. But that those differences never managed to spill over into our household.

That is increasingly rare today.

Let me just interrupt to say that the, the agenda says 30 minutes, but if it takes a little longer, that's fine. Don't worry about it.

So don't feel like you're going to get dunked into a cold water one on 30 minutes early.

Zero, okay.

All right? All right. And of course, as we know, sadly, these norm erosions lead to more threats and violence, as we have seen so tragically recently with the assassination of Charlie Kirk, with the assassination of the legislators in Minnesota. We also see increasing threats to federal judges.

This is from the U.S. marshals Service from 2022 to 2025 today. So this is data just through September 2nd. The red, the total threat to judges. The blue, the unique judges already in 2025. It's only September. We have already exceeded the number of threats in 2024. And you can see that this is, this has grown.

The other thing I want to point out, and this is a very troubling finding, and I say this because not all of this erosion is coming from the top. Some of it is coming from below as well. That's due, I believe, to hyperpolarization. When you ask Americans, do you believe in democracy, do you love a democracy?

This is a classic question of American public opin. Been asking this question since the 50s after there were concerns in the post war era about potential slide to authoritarianism in this country. And one of the things that was always very heartening was that almost all Americans believe in democracy. This is a fundamental principle.

And if you ask people, they will say yes.

But there's a troubling recent survey experiment that has been done that, that found that only a small fraction of people were willing to punish candidates from their own party who engaged in undemocratic behavior in Other words, when faced with a choice, someone who pretty much supports all of the policy positions I support, but says things that would be considered violations of Democratic norms if I have to make that choice.

And this is what the survey experiment tried to show. A surprising number of people were willing to forgive what seemed to be anti Democratic statements because that candidate was supporting the policies they supported. And so what this suggests is that perhaps citizens can't be relied upon to enforce guardrails against Democratic erosion as much as we thought.

Now, this is only one paper, it's one suggestion, but it was a very troubling finding to me that when faced with a choice in a hyperpolarized environment, people are willing to support a candidate.

And this was true on the left and the right support willing to support a candidate who was going to advance the policies they agree with, even though they said things that on the survey experiment seemed to be major violations of what we would call Democratic norms.

And I think this is in part due to the level of polarization we've reached in this country. So I said I didn't want this to all be all about the Trump Administration, but I do think it's important to mention that it is testing long standing norms with relatively little pushback.

This happened to some degree during President Trump's first term. I think it is happening and accelerating greatly since he's taken office recently. I think it's hard to deny that these norms are being violated.

Perhaps some people believe that this is necessary or they approve it, but that norms like threatening to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a neutral Federal bureaucrat threatening to fire a Fed Governor, deploying the National Guard to LA and D.C. suggesting the FCC should remove broadcast licenses for NBC and Abc.

These are not things that presidents in the past have done or suggested. Now, some may argue that this is in part just due to President Trump's style. I think I would have been more inclined to agree with that argument during his first term, when people often would say, look at what he does and not what he says.

There were many norm violations just based on rhetoric. It wasn't traditional in the past for the President of the United States to get in arguments with people on the Internet. That, of course, is a norm that was violated by President Trump in the first term.

But this time, and these norm violations that I've listed here, among which, with many others that we could list, I think are troubling.

It has moved from being just violations of ceremony and rhetoric to violations of government practice that I think begin to illustrate how you're seeing the core democratic norms of mutual toleration and institutional forbearance begin to be eroded. Now, one question I often get is why has there been no resistance from Congress?

Remember, one of the things the Constitution is supposed to do is for the branches to balance themselves out. In other words, the legislative branch is supposed to be jealous of the power of the Executive branch, and the same with the judicial branch.

They're supposed to push back not just based on partisan fights, but based on a sense that their own power is being infringed upon. And so often that has been a check, an important check on presidential power.

Of course, Congress has the power of the purse, but I think there was also an assumption in the founding document that Congress wanted to protect its own power. It's only rational. It wouldn't want to see its power eroded by a strong Executive. We're not seeing that. And to be frank, we haven't seen.

We didn't see that from Democrats either, when there was unified control of party government. Increasingly, what we've seen is that co partisans are willing to concede a great deal of power to the Executive.

In other words, I think this has taken an extreme form under the current speaker, but it has been true before and under Democratic administrations that Democrats were willing to concede a great deal of power to the Executive because they were Members of the same party.

So there is something that is breaking down in the constitutional system that's supposed to regulate itself because the branches are supposed to be jealous of each other's power that is not working in the way it should anymore. And so I think polarization is broken, some of those checks and balances.

So at the same time, we're seeing polarization begin to break down our norms. We're also seeing it begin to break down the system of checks and balances that is supposed to help the Constitution become this beautiful machine that regulates itself.

I want to talk now a little bit about federalism and Hawaii's exposure, and I think I'd want to pose this question about what if Washington is no longer a reliable partner for this state and perhaps for other states? I hope that will not be the case, but I think it's a question that's probably worth asking. Now.

Federalism has often been thought of, and I think rightfully so, as one of the best defenses American democracy has, because authority is divided between federal and state governments. And this, of course, so many of our institutions are set up precisely to prevent the concentration of power. Remember the thing the.

The founders were most worried about of all was the use of arbitrary power, the concentration of power in a single branch or single person. And so they created arguably the most complex system of government in the world. That's what we have in this country. You go to Europe, you go to other places they don't have.

I mean, we have it a little less here in Hawaii, where we're a little more centralized than many states on the mainland, where they have school boards and cities, city councils and borough councils and this proliferation of governments.

And that one of the reasons they did that was not just to keep government close to the people, but to make it very, very difficult to concentrate power in any one institution or under any one person.

So federalism, although it's created an incredibly complicated system of government, the great virtue of this always with thought to be that it would make it very difficult for anyone to monopolize power in the United States. And I think that's still largely true.

I mean, federalism, because authority is divided between federal and state governments, States can act as a check on federal overreach. So you have checks across branches, checks from states to the Federal Government. They also, as often said, can serve as laboratories for democracy.

But this protection also assumes that Washington itself is operating predictably and respectively these norms of mutual tolerance and institutional forbearance. When these norms break down, federalism becomes a much less effective shield and states are now quite vulnerable.

In the post war era, the states and Federal Government had become deeply intertwined, but the Federal Government holds most of the cards. You might remember back from your civics textbook, sometimes people would talk about layer cake federalism and marble cake federalism.

Layer cake federalism was what was considered the sort of federalism we had really pre new deal, where there were very separate roles for the states and for the Federal Government, and they didn't really interfere with each other very much. Marble cake federalism is what we have now, where everything is intertwined.

You know, it would have been inconceivable in the late 19th century for the Federal Government to be involved, with the exception of veterans pensions and social services of the state or community level. But that's no longer the case.

And so as a result of this marble cake federalism, the states have been granted great financial capacity to do many great things. But it also means they're much more dependent on the Federal Government. States do have some sovereign authority, but the Federal Government holds most of the cards. It prints the money and it controls the military.

And when federal norms begin to erode the predictability and security for states declines and that can bring chaos to things like social services, nonprofits, educational institutions, all of these what we think of as local institutions that are fundamentally dependent on federal authority or federal funding breakdown.

And this, of course, is absolutely true here in Hawaii, as we all know. Certainly I don't need to remind the Senators that Hawaii relies on federal dollars for health care, for Medicaid, for school, schools, for housing programs, through HUD, through infrastructure, Department of Transportation, highway funds.

And it's not so much that I think the concern is particularly about what could happen is less about a violation of a law by the Executive.

But there are lots of things that could be done to delay payments, to throw sand in the gears, to create a lot of pain for local institutions that rely on the timely delivery of that, of that funding. Disaster recovery might be one. Federal grants for UH research.

We've already began to see some of this play out, and maybe the courts would roll some of this back. But the thing is, the thing the Executive always has the advantage of is speed.

The US President can move very, very quickly, and that means slowing down, delaying payments, or a variety of other examples I'll mention, that can create a great deal of pain, even if it's eventually rolled back through the courts.

Our economy is very dependent, of course, on the Federal Government, from air travel routes, airport funding, aviation safety, visa and customs policies. Even the unpredictability or partisanship of federal actions could disrupt Hawaii's largest industry. I think you're probably beginning to see some of this if you look at the most recent VSAT report from hta.

One of the things that really stuck out to me is Canadian visitors for the first time ever. I mean, you can see the difference just between quarter 1-2024 and quarter 1-2025 named the political climate as a reason they don't want to visit Hawaii. They also mentioned travel restrictions or political relations. And so.

So this could have real effects on our most important industry. Of course, we have some other unique vulnerabilities, strategic and institutional vulnerabilities. We're very dependent on military spending, bases, defense contracts. None of these things, I think, are going to be removed.

But it just goes to show that if it wanted to, the Federal Government could enact a great deal of pain on this state, more than perhaps many states. Of course, there's a long history of that here.

No state, I think, has experienced the raw form of federal power more directly than this state, not just from annexation, but also from martial law during World War II. So I think we're quite familiar with that. But I don't think it will come in that form.

I think it will come in the form of delayed payments or other, other ways that make us particularly vulnerable. So what can Hawaii do? I think we have some unique advantages. We don't hold a lot of cards, but we do have some. One is that we have, in my opinion, very low effective polarization in the states.

Unlike most mainland states, I don't think Hawaii divides neatly into two hostile partisan camps. I think this is what makes people who observe our politics for the first time puzzle over it because it's not always clear who's a conservative and who's a liberal.

And the Legislature, yes, it's dominated by Democrats, but for the most part relatively moderate Democrats. It's more of a pragmatic than ideological political culture. The other thing is our strategic importance.

Yes, that makes us vulnerable, but I also think federal dependence on Hawaii's stability and support for national security gives us some leverage to insist on fair treatment and the adherence to norms. I also think we have a certain amount of soft power that we often don't talk about. Hawaii is America's favorite state.

68% of Americans view us favorably. Our reputation for multiculturalism and aloha give us credibility beyond our size. This is one of the most famous places in the world. And I think you saw that with the outpouring of support after the Lahaina fires. But we still have to prepare for instability.

And so I hope the Federal Government remains a reliable partner. But if it's not, I think that there are some ways, some practical ways we can begin to strengthen our own guardrails.

One might be, and I'm sure the Senate and the House are already thinking about these, establishing Reserve funds to backfill lapses in FEMA, health or education funding. I think the trouble will come from delay rather than outright denial from federal funding.

And I think if we're prepared to fill some of those gaps, we can reduce a lot of the potential pain that might involve creating some sort of rapid response budget procedures. The Senators know much more than me about how that might be done. And then of course, support for nonprofits that depend on federal dollars.

That might begin with simply a better understanding of which nonprofits are likely to be most vulnerable. And then a way to, to create some bridge funding or technical assistance to help them manage a gap.

And then of course, doing things that I think we're already doing, like joining multi state litigation and advocacy to resist what might be arbitrary federal actions. The last thing I wanted to end with is adapted from Timothy Snyder's principles, but adapted for legislators. So Timothy Snyder is a political historian mainly known for his work on Eastern Europe.

But he also has some advice for people who are trying to resist creeping authoritarianism. And I think that advice can apply to the Legislature as well. And Snyder's advice is don't obey in advance, require. And from a legislative perspective, I would say require explicit procedures, documentation, state oversight. When federal directives affect local institutions, institutions defend institutions.

Protect our civil service, protect our election administrators. Remember professional ethics. I think leaders can model strong democratic norms. One of the moments that sticks most in my mind was a moment in 2008 when John McCain was running against Barack Obama.

He was at a town hall meeting and one of his supporters came up and said, we're afraid of Barack Obama. And he looked at her and said, ma', am, you don't need to be afraid. He's a good man. We disagree on politics, but you don't need to be afraid. That's the kind of modeling we need more of.

Believe in truth, maintain an open government and resist disinformation. Learn with peers. I think that we're already doing this, but there are many opportunities to partner with other states to share strategies and be a patriot. Place the long term health of our democracy above any sort of short term political gain. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Professor. Really appreciate it. I see why your Professor, you managed to cram a whole bunch into a very short period of time and still make it all make sense. So that's, that's a very good characteristic to have as someone who teaches for a living.

Well, I had originally thought we would do five minutes per person, but since we were just, just Senator W and me, why don't we do. Why don't we stop at 11 and we'll split up five minute chunks of time for questions and answers. And I'm just here for the conversation. That's, that's fine. Yeah, just go ahead.

Okay, I, I will start and we'll, we'll plan to stop no later than 11. Okay. You know, you're talking about this, the issue of overthrowing norms and how democracy depends on norms, not just the written words of the Constitution, the statutes.

You know, my impression has become, and I don't know, it probably started a few years ago now, probably during the first Trump Administration, that it didn't. It seemed to me, you know, with a caveat, that I understand what you're saying about the, you know, the.

Both parties are willing to look the other way on certain things sometimes depending on what it Is. I mean, I think of Al Franken, and, I don't know, we didn't look the other way very far on that one. But, but it seems to me that there. There are. There's a real strong sentiment at the grassroots level now.

Two, they don't want to keep the norms anymore. They like the fact that Trump in particular, but that the norms are being overthrown and they're. They're tired of the way things are. Can you, can you comment on that a little bit?

Yes, I think you're right. And I think that what President Trump has tapped into most effectively is a frustration and fury that the government is only ever about procedures anymore, that it's not delivering on its promises. And, and so I think that there is a sense that it needs to be smashed.

I mean, I think that is a strong sense from many, and we know this from the research from many MAGA supporters.

And I think if you have to dig a little bit deeper to ask yourself why that, you know, it's not productive to call people, you know, that they're just misinformed or that they, you know, don't believe in democracy. I don't necessarily believe that's always true.

I think it's that there's a sense, a visceral sense among people who supported President Trump's agenda to, I think, to change these norms or destroy these norms, that they were ways to insulate people who are benefiting from the status quo. Now, I don't think that happens to be true.

I think we can make a distinction between norms and maybe some changes to the layers of procedure, American adversarial legalism, that makes it difficult for the government to respond to people's concerns. But I agree that. That what you're saying is correct, that there is a sense from. From the grassroots that things needed to be shaken up.

I'm not sure that I would agree, though, that it. That what. What most folks wanted was for these norms to be upended.

In fact, I think if you look at a lot of the polling where even Trump's supporters are quite critical of the President is on some of his norm violations, you'll often hear in focus groups what even Trump supporters will say is, you know, I like some of his policies. I agree with what he's doing.

I just wish he could dial it back. You know, some of what comes out of the Administration makes me nervous. And so when I hear that, what I hear is that what. What they agree with is a sense that someone is listening to them.

Someone is not willing to fall back on institutional procedures to explain why change can't happen. But I don't hear that what, what is desired is an upending of democratic norms, a fundamental shift in American institutions, the aggrandizement of Executive power.

For years now, at least, a wing of the Republican Party has been very much into the unitary theory of the Executive. But that seems to me like a fairly fundamental assault on checks and balances. Is that not the way you read that?

Oh, unitary theory of the Executive? Well, I mean, so first I'd say that comes from a, I mean, that comes from conservative legal scholars. I mean, I think that's, you know, you have to make a difference between what right wing intellectuals are advocating for and what the popular base sees and wants.

So, yes, I think that there is a. There that has been a conservative project that dates back to the Reagan Administration. I mean, the thought being that we have tied the Executive up with.

You conceded too much power to bureaucrats, tied the Executive up with procedural requirements and made it difficult for, you know, the Executive who's elected and bureaucrats who are not to act. I do think that's a project, but again, I, that is not.

I think a normal. Having that play out in normal terms would not be something I would necessarily object to. You can have a conversation through democratic norms, through legal means, through Congress, to say, you know, and, and push back and, and, and find ways for the Executive to operate more nimbly.

I think we're talking about the, the violation of democratic norms, which means the summary firing of federal officials, the threats to media organizations. I think that's a different matter altogether. I think that goes well beyond unitary theory of the Executive.

It might be that the modest version of unitary theory of the Executive is, like I said, that we have taken away too much of the President's powers.

And of course, one of the troubles with that is that, as I mentioned when I started, is that the Constitution is such an old document that there are some legal claims that might be that you could make by pushing unitary theory of the Executive theory.

You mentioned some polling about the sense was that people don't really, they still want to live in a democracy, but they would like to see things shaken up. Is there any sense of what it is that people. I mean, is it just a function of the fact that right now we're very evenly divided country?

I mean, if you look at the last three presidential elections, you know, the first one, of course, Trump didn't get, lost the popular vote. The second one he lost the popular vote, and the third one, he won it, but they were all close margins.

And, and, and, and as a result, Congress, especially the Senate, is, I don't know, gridlock may be too strong a word, but it's pretty close sometimes. Is that what people are concerned about? They just wish that something would happen, or is it.

There's something broader than that, that, you know, we just need to do things differently or we just need to. I don't know. I'm, I'm just kind of grasping around for what it is that people are looking for in the wake of smashing up things the way they are.

Oh, I don't think, I don't think people necessarily know.

It's just a visceral reaction, I think.

I mean, from the public, from certain groups, from the grassroots. I think it's primarily a visceral reaction. I mean, I think different people will give you different answers to that question if you ask them what is your ultimate goal? I think some of this is related to conspiracy theories.

I think some of it is genuine frustration with how difficult it is to get things done. I think there's, I, you know, people have said that racism has part of, part to do with it. I mean, that the increasing diversification, diversity of this country makes certain segments of the population uncomfortable.

I mean, I think economic decline in some communities has something to do with it, that some communities have really declined under globalization. They have. There's a sense that the, you know, the government has not taken care of it. And so, you know, why. Why defend institutions that are failing us? I don't think there's one answer.

I think you can ask a hundred different people who support an agenda that would be tearing large parts of our procedural and institutional processes down. But I think what. What is the end goal? I think they would give you different answers.

Oh, sure, I can keep going for quite some time. Okay, so I guess that that line of questioning sort of goes a little far.

Let's take that line of question a little farther and say, you know, there is part of me looks at what's happening right now and says, you know, really on a course for some sort of war, a civil war. And, you know, we've had assassinations recently on for both Democrats and Republicans.

I have read recently that the acade academic literature says we're not really there yet and there's certain prerequisites to civil war that we don't have. But I'd like to hear what your thoughts on our. Whether we're going down that track or. And if we are, you know, what do we do to not go down it any farther?

Because at least I was a history major too, at the undergraduate level, and I. There's a couple of things in life that I would like to avoid, and one of them is a civil war, because they're always the nastiest and just unpleasant things. Anyway, what are your thoughts on that?

Well, one, no, I don't think that civil war is in any way imminent, although there are things that are. That are very troubling to me.

We, we have an example, of course, to draw from, which was we've had a civil war in this country, and one of the things that led to it is the fact that our institutions became frozen.

I mean, there were famously violence broke out in Congress itself with the beating of Charles Sumner and the sense that there was no way for the institutions to process the level of polarization in that case over the issue of slavery primarily.

I, I don't think, I don't think that, you know, I've talked about hyperpolarization, but there's a lot of issues that. Where political elites are far more polarized than the American public is that you.

Think that's true, that the elites are more polarized.

Elites are definitely more polarized than the General public. And more educated, more politically involved people are more polarized than most average Americans. Being divided into these ideological camps is a particular affliction of politicians and the most politically involved Americans. And what we know from contemporary history. I talked about Democratic backsliding in these other cases.

There's probably unlikely to be some sort of a break. I think it's, you know, the fear to me is further erosion of civil liberties, further, the further increase of power in the presidency, the further erosion of power from, from the US States.

But I don't think there's any, any interest or tolerance in, in, in the sort of mass violence you would see from a civil war. Well, let me go off on a different tangent.

So Hawaii is one of the, I think it's fair to say one of the relatively few blue states that actually nets tax revenue from the, from the Federal Government, probably largely a function of the military, the large military presence here. But can you just walk us through, you know, what, what the process.

I mean, when we start, when we talk about erosion of democratic norms at the federal level, how does it, let's talk about the funding stream. How does that affect the funding stream to Hawaii?

Sure. Well, the, I mean, a strong norm would be that all states are treated equally and fairly. You know, that if you qualify for a program, Medicaid, for example, through the kinds of neutral criteria laid out by the Federal Government, then that money, those funds will be delivered in a timely way.

I think the erosion of democratic norms means that there are ways that you could extract a huge amount of punishment potentially on states that are perceived to be part of the political opposition without actually violating the law.

I think that's the key here, that Hawaii, for example, for most of the programs that are federally funded, education programs, social service programs, health programs, it doesn't have much capacity to backfill that federal spending if it's delayed.

And so, I mean, just if you want to imagine how the scenario might play itself out, you can see what the Administration has done, I think, to Columbia or to Harvard or to the universities. They brought them to heel by denying, delaying funding. And I think you could do the same thing with the states.

The states would, I think, quickly lose their ability to resist some of this because they're so dependent on that federal stream of funding coming regularly.

So, I mean, you focused a lot on the, on the delay part of it. But I mean, and of the 27 lawsuits that the Attorney General here in Hawaii has joined with other states, many of them are about delays or potentially about delays where grants are held up or.

But that delay itself can rise to the level of being, I mean, let me back up. So, I mean, when we, most of us spend more of our, our income tax, we pay more income tax to the feds than we do to the state pretty universally.

So the rules that apply at the federal level have a big effect on what comes back. But if the, I guess, I guess it's hard to believe that we actually have 27 lawsuits out there that are based only on the lays.

It seems to me like there's, you know, the fact that we're, we've won most of them at the lower court levels indicates that the Federal Government is doing things that the, the, the statutes and the rules, the rules of the game at the federal level are not being followed.

And so what is, what is the question?

Well, the question is. So why, why is the, I mean, is, is it.

Well, I guess the question is, it seems, do you really believe it's only the delay part of it that's the issue or is, is that you just feel that that's the main, that's the, that's the part that they can do without really breaking the law.

That's the part they can do without really breaking the law.

Okay.

And so I think that at some.

Point a delay is long enough that it does break the law.

Right? Yes, yes. I mean, and you could, you could game out different scenarios where, you know, the, the courts support the Administration that they've done in, in some recent cases.

But I think that, you know, if you, you can, what, what I'm trying to say is that you can go very far to bring states or institutions to heal just without, without violating the law through delay, through, through slow rolling things to, to throwing up more administrative barriers and procedures.

There's a lot that can be done without violating the law at all. Okay. I mean, I think that's. If there's one lesson you can draw from comparatively, it's that that has been used very effectively in other regimes.

In your eyes, how could Hawaii change that? Go ahead, Got four minutes. Go ahead. Yeah, how can, how can we change that? You mentioned, you know, polarization.

Well, we, we don't have that problem. I mean, I really, I mean, polarization here.

I think, like I said, I'm talking about the fear, the fear of, hey, we're going to be cut off because. Overrepresented, essentially.

Yeah. I think, I don't think we can necessarily stop it. I think we can Plan for it if it were to happen. If you have, if you plan for, to a certain extent, reserves, if you're ready to backfill some of the funding that might not come through delays.

Do you think, do you think that and, and your political analysts and so you'll see where I'm coming from here. But do you think that had we have, we not have, we had a little more balance representing the state, maybe we'd have some talking points when it comes to the decision of funds being cut off.

So is the argument that if we had Republican representation balance.

Yeah, you know, when it, when we look at our congressional delegation, most of them have taken a hard line like, like everybody does. Pretty much everybody does in Congress. And then I hear this whole talk about, you know, the Administration up there.

But on the flip side, Senator Rhodes, this is kind of how it feels to be in the minority because that's what we deal with on a state level. When we try to pass bills and good ideas, we're totally shut down because, hey, you know, they, they, they mud sling us everything.

What you guys feel on the federal level is what we feel coming on the state level. Arguments are aside, how do we bridge that gap on both levels at the.

State level and the federal level? I think that in the past, I mean, Hawaii has had a reputation for working across the aisle. I mean our representative Danny Noe famously had a strong relationship with Ted Stevens. Some of that may have shifted in recent years.

I think that here in our own democracy, I have always been a champion of having strong opposition party. I was very concerned what it looked like there was not going to be any Republicans in the State Senate. I thought that was bad for local democracy. It's the issue of not feeling like your ideas are heard.

I mean that's.

It'S the same concept if on the state side the majority here is saying, hey, we're being cut off, but they're doing it on a lower level on the state side to, to the, say it's just a cycle. So.

Well, I have a, I have a follow up question that you have about 30 seconds to answer. So what's happening in red states? Are they, I mean, they've, they're facing the same problems like on, on Medicaid. Right. So their, their delegations aren't saving them in that regard.

This is, this is how I'm interested to see how this plays out. I mean I, I thought in some ways Hawaii's strong on some issues. Hawaii's strong relationship with Alaska on issues that affect Native Alaskans and Native Hawaiians that have often been considered together. I thought that would protect a lot of our funding for those programs.

I think what you're hearing from what my understanding is the red state Senators, what they're saying in public and what they're saying in private are different things. I think that many of them are quite concerned. I think some of them tried to get carve outs for their states.

I think that was particularly true with Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins in Maine. But they're going to face these same challenges unless you see a move by the Federal Government to just start making some of these decisions based on politics alone, which I don't, I don't think we're here at yet. I'll give you the last word.

You can go extra time, two minutes actually. Yeah, go ahead. And this is just a side note, but you're in media, I was in media. And so I think you understand this. And this is not to back what the President does.

But I do agree a lot of the times when I first got elected to office, there was a station that said I lost the election. There is nothing I can do to change that of, of what the viewers and my constituents heard. So I had to go door too, again, hey, I'm actually representing you.

Don't listen to what they said. So when, and that, you know, that's just one example. But misinformation has happened since then. I had a lawsuit, you know, over, over that. And so when he's going after these, these NBC, CBS, whatever it may be for whatever the cause back here, the same thing happens on the lower level.

And so if we, if I was to one day sue a station, but then it was spun to, oh look, he's trying to limit the press. Well, no, I'm just trying to make sure that information is factual and journalists are down the line.

I just want to throw that out and, and get your opinion on that topic because it is sensitive when somebody does challenge, just like it's looked at right now.

And I know it's a different case and it'll be case by case, but I just want understanding that, hey, it's not gospel that's coming out of the TV and that's if you believe in gospel.

But first, I mean, I would say that there's a difference between misinformation and mistakes. Right? I mean, you know that very well.

And there's a difference between a candidate like yourself asking for a correction or even going to a lawsuit and the President of the United States using the, you know his platform and the awesome power of the federal state to take on a media organization.

The other thing I would say is that we just, we live in such a different media environment. The, the idea that the network news dominates the conversation, I think is no longer true. I mean you, you know this as well as anybody, right? I mean a robust social media presence.

It has become a much more democratic environment, which in some ways is good. I think in some ways makes it more difficult to, to, to stop misinformation when it goes viral. So I think it's, it's, it's complicated. In some ways.

I think social media has been, has allowed for some ideas to flourish that never would have made it through the traditional gatekeepers, but like democratic norms. I mean this, that technology would have been better if we had exercised more, I think responsibility and, and, and, and policed ourselves a little bit better.

I mean, you know, one of the best ways to stop misinformation spreading is for people to call out their friends on their social media accounts who are spreading things that they know to be, to be false or untrue. But you know, this is not to say that the world before social media was perfect.

I mean media organizations could exercise too much power to keep ideas off the agenda, you know, to, you know, it didn't have the sort of, you know, in the case you raised, I mean it could, it would be very hard to get your voice out there in the pre social media age if, you know, if there was a mistake or misinformation spread on national media.

Okay, thanks.

Well, thank you Professor. We really appreciate your time and your answers and your manao and everyone here who came and everyone who watched on YouTube, our YouTube channel. Thank you very much, much for being here and for listening to what Professor Moore had to say. And thank you to Senator for being here. Thank you.

Concluded. Thank you.

Sam. Sa.