U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) told an audience at the University of Chicago that she wants future investigations of Trump administration officials to send a deterrent message. Young people considering jobs in a Republican administration, she said, should wonder whether joining it might buy them “a ton of problems.”
Slotkin describes her proposal as accountability for corruption. But listen to the threat embedded in her political strategy: Make public service under the wrong president so frightening that talented young conservatives never enter government. She said the quiet part out loud, and conservatives would be fools to ignore it.
If the system is fraying, the worst response is to abandon every position of legitimate authority while the other side organizes.
The peaceful transfer of power depends on losers believing they can survive defeat and return to fight another election. That assumption is eroding.
From the Bush-Gore recount to birtherism, Russiagate, and the battles over COVID-era voting rules, every disputed election has taught Americans to question the legitimacy of the next result. A political system cannot endure indefinitely when losing means permanent exclusion, financial ruin, or the threat of prosecution.
Eventually, the incentive to win at any cost overwhelms the willingness to accept defeat. The ballot is supposed to decide who holds office, not which faction gets to use the state to erase its rivals.
Donald Trump accelerated that deterioration because he inspires a peculiar derangement in his enemies. Progressives convinced themselves that Trump was a fascist dictator preparing a thousand-year Reich. They portrayed ordinary political disagreements as existential emergencies and justified extraordinary tactics as necessary resistance.
The campaign to stop Trump continued after he left office. His opponents pursued lawsuits, criminal cases, and ballot challenges designed to prevent his return. Conservatives watched the machinery of politics become an instrument for destroying the opposition. The law may permit a particular lawsuit or prosecution. That does not mean Americans should be comfortable watching every political contest turn into a criminal investigation.
Trump also survived two assassination attempts in 2024. The atmosphere of political hatred should disturb anyone who expects elections to settle disputes without bloodshed. Instead, much of the left treats Trump's second administration as an even more terrifying prospect because he has learned something from the first: Personnel determine whether a president can govern. The specter of Cheeto Hitler now excuses an endless war against anyone who might help him.
Trump entered Washington in 2017 without understanding how thoroughly permanent bureaucracies could frustrate his agenda. Officials who considered themselves guardians of the government against its elected leader resisted him from within. This time he has pursued loyal appointments and executive action aggressively.
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Progressives understand that a Republican administration staffed by people committed to its program is harder to neutralize than one staffed by its enemies. So the fight has shifted from Trump himself to the Americans willing to serve him.
That is what makes Slotkin's remarks so revealing. Young graduates already face a difficult choice between a prosperous private career and the headaches of federal service. Now imagine telling them that four years at the Department of Justice or Homeland Security could lead to crippling legal bills once Democrats regain power. You need not imprison every conservative official. Ruin a few careers, and the next generation will learn to stay away. An opposition that cannot recruit competent personnel cannot govern, however many elections it wins.
Trump's greatest failure may be his refusal to impose meaningful costs on those who abused power against his movement. Anthony Fauci is not in prison. Officials who conservatives believe weaponized investigations have escaped accountability. Radical activists continue to operate, while prosecutions of political violence remain uneven at best. In repeated games, cooperation survives only when defection carries a price. Tit for tat is not a pleasant rule, but one side cannot endlessly punish the other while expecting restraint in return. Without consequences, bad conduct becomes a winning strategy.
The danger reaches beyond staffing.
Researcher Jennica Pounds, known online as DataRepublican, has published recordings and documents she says reveal preparations for a constitutional crisis involving a network called the United Democracy Alliance. According to her account, former military, intelligence, and diplomatic figures have discussed scenarios in which contested elections, executive branch action against protests, and defiance by Democrat governors could trigger a challenge to federal authority.
DataRepublican interprets those preparations as the groundwork for a seizure of power. Her account describes proposed political red lines, including a federal response to mass protests, that could become triggers for a confrontation between governors and Washington.
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One can chalk up the recordings as contingency planning, but the distinction grows thin when political operatives begin gaming out how governors might seize power amid a constitutional crisis. Elections are supposed to settle who governs. Planning to declare Washington illegitimate when an election or federal response goes the wrong way raises the stakes beyond ordinary opposition politics. Conservatives cannot afford to treat that possibility as an abstraction. They should examine the recordings, demand public answers, and prepare to defend their institutions.
No sane person should welcome domestic unrest. A country in which each election threatens imprisonment, confiscation, and violence would become unrecognizable. Americans have spent generations assuming that partisan combat ends when the ballots are counted. That bargain cannot survive if each party views the other as an enemy to be destroyed. Conservatives should demand lawful accountability for genuine wrongdoing, defend constitutional procedures, and refuse the comforting fantasy that decorum alone will restore the old rules.
None of this is permission to withdraw from politics. It is a reason to become harder to exclude. Vote. Recruit candidates. Build institutions. Win local offices. Know your sheriff, your neighbors, and the people responsible for keeping order. Cultivate lawyers, administrators, and young professionals willing to serve despite intimidation.
If the system is fraying, the worst response is to abandon every position of legitimate authority while the other side organizes. Democracy may not survive in the form Americans remember. The power conservatives build now will determine whether they have any say in what follows.