Remarks Of D21 President Fred Wertheimer, Recipient Of The Paul H. Douglas Award For Ethics In Government

On Wednesday, April 30, 2025, Democracy 21 President Wertheimer received the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government for 2025. Previous recipients of the nonpartisan award include President Barack Obama, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Senator John McCain, and Representatives John Lewis and Liz Cheney.

The following are Wertheimer’s remarks at the award ceremony held in Washington, DC:

 

I want to thank University of Illinois President Tim Killeen, Senator Dick Durbin, and Matthew Douglas for their kind words and very generous introductions.

I also want to thank Senator Durbin for his national leadership on government integrity and many other issues.

Senator Durbin has been a leader in Congress for more than four decades fighting the good fight. As he prepares for retirement next year, we all thank him for a remarkable career and for all that he has done to hold our government to the highest standards.

I am honored and deeply grateful to receive the Paul H. Douglas award.

Senator Douglas was known as the conscience of the Senate in his day and an extraordinary public servant. He fought for civil rights and environmental protections and was one of the first to recognize and work to reform the outsized and unfair influence of money in our political system.

I was struck to learn that in 1942, at the age of 50, Douglas enlisted in the Marines. He became the oldest recruit ever to go through the Marines’ Parris Island Boot Camp, insisted on being transferred from a desk job to the battlefield, fought in World War II battles in the Pacific, and came out of the War as a twice-wounded Lieutenant Colonel.

In this time of deep division in the country, it is especially meaningful that this award is not based on partisanship. Its recipients include President Obama, the late Senator John McCain, former Representative Liz Cheney, and the late Representative John Lewis.

Those who have received this award are way above my pay grade and I am humbled to join them.

I would like to first give a little background on my work. Since my career spans from Watergate to the present, I would then like to make a few observations on how the two periods compare.

From the 1970s through the 2000s, there was bipartisan leadership and bipartisan support in Congress for government integrity legislation.

On behalf of Common Cause and Democracy 21, I worked with reform leaders in Congress and congressional staff and lobbied for a number of reform bills that were ultimately enacted.

These included the Federal Election Campaign Act and the Ethics in Government Act in the 1970s, the Ethics Reform Act in the 1980s, the Lobby Disclosure Act in the 1990s, and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act and the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act in the 2000s.

Much of this success was due to bipartisanship, something that was lost as this century unfolded.

Mentors can play an important role in your life, and I had three exceptional ones.

I worked in the 1960s for Representative Silvio Conte, a Republican from Massachusetts, and learned what it takes to get things done in Congress.

I next worked at Common Cause, becoming president in 1981, where I had the privilege of learning from two towering figures of fearless integrity and extraordinary character.

John Gardner was Common Cause’s Founder and a one-of-a-kind national citizens leader. Archibald Cox was Common Cause’s Chairman who had become a national hero following his role as Watergate Special Prosecutor.

They were men of great wisdom and integrity.

They were cut from the same cloth as Senator Douglas.

Gardner and Cox taught by example and believed deeply that it was the job of groups like Common Cause to give citizens a voice, to speak truth to power, and to stay true to one’s moral compass.

Those are valued lessons I have carried with me during my 24 years with Common Cause and my 28 years with Democracy 21, which I founded in 1997.

In 1972, Watergate burst on the national scene and eventually became the 20th century’s biggest political scandal.

Forty-eight individuals were convicted of Watergate-related crimes, 20 corporations pled guilty to making illegal campaign contributions, and, for the first time, a President resigned from office.

The Watergate Special Prosecutor, the Senate Watergate Committee, the courts and Members of Congress – including those of President Nixon’s own party – did their part to bring the Watergate scandal to an end and provide accountability for the participants.

In a pivotal decision that set the stage for Nixon’s resignation, the Supreme Court unanimously held that Nixon had to turn his secret White House tapes over to the Special Prosecutor’s office.

The decisive factor in addressing the Watergate scandal, however, was citizens rising up in massive protest.

The firing of Archibald Cox by Nixon, known as the Saturday Night Massacre, ignited the country. The public uproar provided the spark that ended the Nixon presidency.

The Watergate scandal led to numerous historic reforms.

These included campaign finance laws, ethics and conflict of interest laws, open government laws, and the creation of oversight and enforcement bodies to prevent wrongdoing by public officials.

The circumstances we are living in today are very different from Watergate. And, they appear even more serious.

Today, as many have noted, we are facing a democracy under threat and a constitutional crisis.

I want to briefly focus on three areas of concern:

• The unprecedented use of executive orders.
• The unprecedented refusal of the Trump Administration to comply with court orders.
• And the unprecedented use of the presidency to carry out retribution for personal grievances.

First, executive orders.[1]

Since January 20, the President has issued 143 Executive Orders.  They have the force of law.

This unprecedented explosion of executive orders is bypassing Congress – just five bills have been signed into law since January 20.

The executive orders have resulted in challenges to the rule of law, to the Constitution’s separation of powers, and to Congress’s power of the purse.

These executive orders have resulted in 222 legal challenges and at least 123 court rulings enjoining Administration actions, with preliminary injunctions and temporary restraining orders  issued based on serious doubts about the legality of the Administration’s actions.

The response of Trump and his Administration to the lawsuits has been to attack plaintiffs, attack judges and call for their impeachment, and ignore or violate court orders.

This is not the way our democracy is supposed to work.

Second, court orders.

Since the Supreme Court’s 1803 decision in Marbury v. Madison, it has been accepted that in our constitutional system the courts have the final word on the legality and constitutionality of actions by the executive branch, by Congress, or by their public officials or officeholders.

When the Supreme Court ruled that President Nixon had to turn over his secret White House tapes, Nixon complied.

Despite this history, President Trump and his Administration have been ignoring or violating federal court orders.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, for example, was arrested by mistake, as admitted by the Administration, and sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador without due process.

The Administration was ordered by lower federal courts to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States to receive due process.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the district court order properly requires the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.

Yet to this day, the Administration has refused to do anything to bring Abrego Garcia back. Yesterday, President Trump said he could get Abrego Garcia back, but he won’t.

This is a dangerous act of defiance by the President and previews a constitutional crisis on the horizon.

Ignoring federal court orders by the Administration is anything but an isolated case.

This is not the way our constitutional system of government is supposed to work.

Finally, the President has made no secret of his personal grievances and his retribution campaign.

Media outlets, academic institutions, law firms, lawyers, nonprofit groups, and political adversaries have been targeted by the President for punishment. Trump is using executive orders for retribution. The Justice Department and FBI have been enlisted as enforcers of the President’s personal revenge campaign.

Security protections and security clearances for adversaries have been revoked, prosecutors who worked on Trump investigations have been fired, criminal investigations have been ordered for individuals who challenged Trump’s positions in his first Administration.

An NPR report has found that the Trump Administration has already used its government powers to target more than 100 individuals and organizations perceived to be enemies of the President.

This is absolutely not the way presidential powers are supposed to be used and not the way our democracy is supposed to work.

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Watergate and the present moment, however, do have a common thread.

Just as citizens rose up to end the Watergate scandals, citizens have been rising up again today to protest and challenge the threats they see to our democracy and our Constitution.

History also tells us that threats to our democracy can lead to fundamental reforms as they did in the years following Watergate.

After the attack on our election system in 2020, historic reforms came very close to being enacted.

After sweeping voting rights, campaign finance, and other democracy reforms passed the House in 2021, the Senate in 2022 came within two votes of enacting the legislation. The fight to enact this legislation will continue.

Representative John Sarbanes who led the fight in Congress for this legislation is here. I want to recognize him for the absolutely terrific job he did in leading the battle.

When I was at Common Cause in the 1970s, John Gardner used to tell us that “reform is not for the short winded.” He never mentioned to me, however, that in my case it would take 54 years. Fifty-four years … and counting.

Representative John Lewis, the great civil rights icon, would always say “never give up, never give in.” I like to add “and never go away.”

We are not going away, and we are certainly not going to bend the knee.

Citizens have always come forward in our country and will continue to rise up, speak out, and stand strong in the tough battles ahead.

I want to recognize and thank my colleagues over the years at Common Cause and Democracy 21 who made our successes possible and who continue the fight for democracy reforms; our colleagues in the wider reform community with whom we joined to fight for democracy reforms; and the reform leaders in Congress and the congressional staff who made democracy reforms a legislative reality and continue that work today.

Let me close with this:

We are a resilient country.

Our history has proven that.

We will not yield to the threats of autocracy.

Our democracy, our Constitution, and the rule of law will survive – as they have for 237 years.

We will survive.

Thank you.

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[1] Data is through 4/29/2025.