Profiles in Constitutional Courage and Cowardice
Edition #5
Editor’s note: At moments when democratic institutions are under strain, the choices of individuals and organizations reveal the true strength of the American rule of law. Some summon the courage to uphold constitutional values in the face of pressure or threats. Others, fearing retaliation or seeking short-term gain, choose complicity and silence.
Issue One’s monthly series, Profiles in Constitutional Courage and Cowardice, seeks to document both. Inspired by generations of Americans who met the test of democracy with conscience and conviction, this series highlights civic bravery — public officials, business leaders, and institutions that refuse to bow to intimidation — and contrasts it with instances of capitulation and complicity that erode the norms and guardrails of a free society.
Our democratic rule of law is not guaranteed. It depends on people willing to defend it when power is abused and to model the kind of integrity our system requires to survive. It requires us to stand up for each other and to band together in the face of unlawfulness.
These profiles are a reminder that courage is contagious, but so too is cowardice. What we choose makes all the difference.
Courage Profile: Republicans Holding the Line on the Nationalization of Elections
During his second term in office, President Donald Trump has pursued a multi-pronged effort to take control of elections. This month, he publicly laid his intentions out by repeatedly calling to “nationalize” elections.
This is a direct challenge to the Constitution’s design. Under Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution, the “times, places, and manner” of elections are set by the states, and Congress is given authority to “make or alter” those rules. The executive branch has no role.
That division of power is not an accident of history, but a deliberate design choice. Decentralization of our elections is a structural safeguard: it prevents any single party, president, or administration from capturing the machinery of democracy itself. It is a core reason U.S. elections remain resilient even when U.S. politics are not.
Trump’s call to nationalize elections does not stand in isolation. It’s part of a broader effort to centralize authority over voter registration, voter rolls, and election administration through pressure campaigns, executive-branch action, and hounding GOP members of Congress to pass legislation such as the SAVE, SAVE America, and MEGA Acts. The pattern is familiar across many parts of the administration’s agenda: concentrate power first, justify it later.
Against that backdrop, a small but significant group of Republicans recently did something that has been rare among GOP legislators. They said no to President Trump, out loud, and on constitutional grounds.
Here’s what they said:
“... I’m not in favor of federalizing elections. I mean, I think that’s a constitutional issue… I’m a big believer in decentralized and distributed power, and I think it’s harder to hack 50 elections systems than it is to hack one.”
— Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD)“That’s not what the Constitution says about elections... as far as the time, place and manner of elections, that, under the Constitution, is a state activity. So, I’m not for nationalizing it.”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)“I do not want to see us nationalizing elections.”
— Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI)“I opposed nationalizing elections when Speaker Pelosi wanted major changes to elections in all 50 states. I’ll oppose this now as well… This is what the Constitution calls for.”
— Rep. Don Bacon (R-NB)“... I do not support these efforts. Not only does the U.S. Constitution clearly provide states the authority to regulate the ‘times, places, and manner’ of holding federal elections, but one-size-fits-all mandates from Washington, D.C. seldom work in places like Alaska.”
— Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
None of this is radical. This is basic constitutional literacy: disperse power so that it cannot be abused. Once you hand control of elections to a single national executive authority, the guardrails of our democracy are gone.
In today’s GOP, contradicting President Trump — especially on something he has made central to his political project — comes with a real political cost. These lawmakers knew that and drew the line anyway.
That matters, because only Republicans in Congress can realistically stop President Trump’s push to nationalize elections. When they speak, they are not just dissenting. They are preserving one of the safeguards that keeps American democracy from becoming purely the tool of whoever is in power at the moment
There is also a colder, strategic truth here – one that serious institutionalists understand. Power you centralize for your side will eventually be used by the other side. A 2028 Democratic administration could leverage a nationalized election system to advance progressive priorities, such as sweeping away state voter ID laws and dictating uniform election procedures nationwide in the name of access and equity.
Still, we should not minimize what it takes to say this out loud. Speaking against a major executive priority inside your own party is not cost-free. This is what constitutional courage looks like: defending the system when it is your own side testing how far it can bend.
Cowardice Profile: Lawmakers Enabling the Nationalization of Elections
Courage is saying no when your own side goes too far. Cowardice is helping them do it — or finding a reason to look the other way. This month, we saw both.
Start with Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), the lone Democrat to vote for the SAVE America Act. In isolation, that vote could be written off as an outlier, a bit of political freelancing in a closely divided Congress. But put into context, it provided bipartisan cover for a broader effort to pull election administration away from the states and toward Washington.
The SAVE America Act is not a modest adjustment to election law. It would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and update registration after routine life changes. It would impose a national voter ID requirement that only allows limited types of IDs. It would push states to use a notoriously error-prone federal database to purge voter rolls. It would let voters sue election officials for minor technicalities. And it would pressure states to hand sensitive voter data to the federal government.
No “right” paperwork? You may not get registered.
No “right” ID? Your ballot may not count.
This is not happening in a vacuum. As Issue One’s Michael McNulty has noted, the SAVE America Act and similar bills are advancing “amid federal pressure on states for private voter data, President Trump’s call for Republicans to ‘nationalize’ elections, and the FBI’s raid of the Fulton County election office.” By voting for the bill, Cuellar gave the attempted federal takeover of elections what it badly needed: a veneer of bipartisan legitimacy rather than a partisan attempt to nationalize the system.
But the deeper act of cowardice belongs to the Republicans who used to understand this problem perfectly — at least when it was Democrats proposing national standards.
For years, they warned that federalizing elections was a constitutional overreach. They called it a power grab by Democrats. They said Washington had no business dictating how states run their elections. They argued that writing the rules nationally was a way to rig the game. They insisted that decentralization was a feature, not a flaw.
They said this out clearly and on the record.
“... We shouldn’t federalize our elections. We have state legislators and our secretary of state and our attorney general and other state officials to pass our laws here in Arkansas. We have county officials who administer our elections.”
— Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR)“These bills are really a power grab that would circumvent and federalize our entire elections process, stripping states of their constitutional authorities.”
— Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID)“… states don’t need Washington, D.C. to strip them of their authority and impose burdensome requirements to fix problems that do not exist.”
— Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)“[The bill] takes all sorts of decisions that the federal government really has no business making [away from the states].”
— Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)“The federal government’s role is not to tell every single state how to do their voting rights.”
— Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK)
At the time, they were right.
Now a president of their own party is openly calling to nationalize elections. Now the pressure is coming from their side. Now centralization is packaged as “integrity” and “security.” And many of those same voices have gone conspicuously quiet.
The dangers of centralized elections are still there. The risk of partisan abuse is still there. The text of the Constitution is still there.
What has changed is the political incentive.
This is more than hypocrisy. It treats constitutional principle as a situational argument — useful when it blocks the other party, disposable when it inconveniences your own. The result is a steady erosion of the system that prevents any one faction from taking over American elections wholesale. That is what constitutional cowardice looks like in practice: not a single betrayal, but the quiet normalization of abuse.