Giving up Is Unforgivable

Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney who served twenty-five years at the Justice Department before resigning the night before Donald Trump's first inauguration in 2017, writes as both a legal analyst and a civics educator. She opens by acknowledging the seeming poor timing of writing a book about saving democracy during the early weeks of Trump's second term in January 2025. She distinguishes between a president making lawful policy choices and one who exceeds constitutional limits, arguing the latter demands functioning checks from Congress, the courts, and a free press. She catalogs the administration's early actions: firing inspectors general, the internal government watchdogs who oversee federal agencies, without legally required notice to Congress; attempting to eliminate birthright citizenship by executive order; creating the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE); and conducting deportations without due process. About a month in, she shifts from chronicling democratic weaknesses to asking whether democracy's fundamental values can withstand these challenges, recalling Benjamin Franklin's famous reply about the new government: "A republic . . . if you can keep it" (5).

In her first chapter, Vance introduces the metaphor of a frog in slowly heated water that fails to notice the rising danger, applying it to the public's response to democratic erosion. Despite escaping the "boiling pot" in 2020 when voters chose Joe Biden, many Americans ignored warning signs during the 2024 campaign, including Trump's open plans to punish critics and implement Project 2025, a conservative blueprint developed by the Heritage Foundation. Trump signed more than 140 executive orders in his first hundred days, yet the crisis carried a veneer of normalcy. Vance traces the constitutional framework for resisting overreach through the Federalist Papers, the eighty-five essays Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison wrote to advocate ratifying the Constitution. She emphasizes the founders' debt to French philosopher Montesquieu's theory of separating government into legislative, executive, and judicial branches, and quotes Madison's warning that concentrating all powers in the same hands "may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny" (15). She details how plaintiffs filed more than one hundred lawsuits in the administration's first two months, challenging actions on birthright citizenship, funding freezes, and DOGE access to Treasury Department information, and analyzes landmark cases including Marbury v. Madison (1803), which established judicial review. The chapter closes with German pastor Martin Niemöller's reflection on the incremental targeting of groups under Hitler, drawing a parallel to the administration's targeting of judges, law firms, immigrants, and others.

In her second chapter, Vance challenges the narrative that institutions are irreparably broken, contending the country retains structural advantages including a committed career civil service, decentralized voting infrastructure, and nearly 250 years of democratic history. She introduces the unitary executive theory, which holds that Article II of the Constitution vests all executive power solely in the president, and argues its current application has been inverted to justify a president who controls the entire executive apparatus while demanding unquestioning allegiance. She connects the theory to consequences including the elimination of programs run by USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, that left vulnerable populations without food and medical care, and the dissolution of agencies Congress established. She draws a parallel to Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán used executive control as a gateway to dominating broader institutions. Vance addresses declining confidence in the Supreme Court but distinguishes between flawed individuals and the institutional framework itself, urging citizens to demand better rather than abandon the courts.

Vance's third chapter makes the affirmative case for democracy. She addresses post-2024 malaise and argues that American democracy, though marred at birth by slavery, misogyny, and classism, has demonstrated a capacity to advance beyond those flaws. She uses climate policy as a case study, tracing the Paris Agreement through successive administrations to show how elections allow voters to redirect priorities. She turns to civil rights history, recounting how Black students James Hood and Vivian Malone Jones integrated the University of Alabama in 1963 after President John F. Kennedy federalized National Guardsmen to force aside segregationist Governor George Wallace. She examines the Supreme Court's failure in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) and traces how Congress remedied it through constitutional amendments, demonstrating that when one branch fails, others can rise. She recounts the 1965 events at Selma, Alabama, where state troopers attacked peaceful marchers on Bloody Sunday, and closes with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s characterization of the Constitution as "a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir" (79).

In her fourth chapter, Vance draws parallels between the post-Civil War failure to hold Confederate leaders accountable and the post-January 6 failure to hold Trump accountable; the impeachment vote fell 57-43, short of the required two-thirds majority. She introduces the "Lost Cause," a mythology coined by Virginian Edward Alfred Pollard in 1866 that recast Confederate treason as principled resistance, and argues the absence of accountability after January 6 allowed Trump to construct his own version, rebranding insurrectionists as patriots. She analyzes Madison's Federalist 10, which theorized that the Republic's representative structure would prevent any single faction from seizing control, and juxtaposes a passage from Thomas Paine's 1776 pamphlet Common Sense calling kings "most ignorant and unfit" (106) with Trump's social media post declaring "LONG LIVE THE KING!" (105). The chapter closes with McCarthyism, when Senator Joseph McCarthy's baseless accusations ruined lives until attorney Joseph Welch's televised confrontation broke his hold on the country.

Vance's fifth chapter argues that voting is the most essential mechanism for preserving democracy. She tells the story of George Sallie, a man in his nineties beaten on Bloody Sunday who had voted in every election since but was being blocked by Alabama's new Voter ID law. She traces the Voting Rights Act's history and explains how the Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder ended the preclearance requirement, which had required jurisdictions with histories of discrimination to submit voting changes for federal review. She quotes Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissent comparing the decision to "throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet" (119). She dismantles the voter fraud narrative, citing research finding only thirty-one credible claims out of one billion ballots cast, and provides practical guidance on registering, staying registered, voting, and ensuring ballots are counted.

In her sixth and final chapter, Vance asserts that citizens are the ultimate institution capable of defending democracy: "The cavalry isn't coming. . . . It's us. We're the cavalry" (138). She outlines practical guidelines, including resisting disinformation, building community, and deciding personal red lines. She tells the story of Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York who resigned rather than dismiss a case she believed was being dropped for political reasons, and argues for reinvigorating civics education. She recounts a candid exchange with her youngest child, a college senior, who said that for as long as they had been alive there had not been a real democracy, a perspective she believes many younger Americans share.

In her conclusion, Vance expresses growing confidence that democracy has become a central political issue, citing mass demonstrations including the No Kings marches. She recounts President Barack Obama telling assembled U.S. attorneys, "I appointed you, but you don't serve me. You serve the American people" (164), presenting this as the model for democratic service. A postscript addresses developments from June 2025, including the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision in Trump v. CASA stalling nationwide injunctions and the physical removal of Democratic Senator Alex Padilla of California at a press conference. She closes by reaffirming that the antidote to a dictator's most dangerous weapon, the ability to overwhelm citizens with helplessness, is refusing to feel powerless: "We must persist until we succeed" (173).