Noah Feldman, Columnist

Prospect of a Second Trump Term Demands Preparation, Not Panic

The former president’s four years in office were a stress test for democracy. Let’s use what we learned to protect the Constitution if he's reelected.

December 26, 2023 at 11:30 AM UTC

By Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Hoping for another shot.
Photographer: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

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A new season of Trump-presidency panic is upon us. And for good reason: Donald Trump could be re-elected in 2024 despite an unprecedented year in which the former president was criminally indicted in three separate jurisdictions, lost a civil defamation suit, and is losing a civil fraud suit against the Trump organization.

Critics worry that if he regains the Oval Office all bets are off; the man who twice survived impeachment in his first term would be unrestrained in his future efforts to break our democracy. Yet this picture of Trump as a Leviathan overwhelming all constitutional restraints is a misleading fantasy, one improbably shared by his detractors and some of his most dedicated supporters.