Trump threatened the Center for American Progress (CAP) with a $5 billion defamation lawsuit last month. Why? Because CAP reported on the efficacy of Trump’s National Guard deployments and found that they failed to meet their purpose of reducing urban crime.
Trump’s recent attempts to ban media organizations from the White House press pool highlight that this Administration is only ramping up its efforts to censor speech it finds unfavorable.
President and CEO of CAP Neera Tanden joins Norm to unpack CAP’s reactions to the lawsuit threat, while explaining why the outpouring of support that CAP received from think tanks and civil society organizations is crucial in defending their First Amendment rights.
Neera Tanden is the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress and the CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Norman Eisen
Hey friends, welcome back to “The Contrarian” with one of our favorite contrarians, Neera Tanden, the head of CAP, the Center for American Progress. We’re gonna talk with Neera today about the ongoing attacks on the First Amendment, the free press, and the targets of the Trump administration, because they’re scared of them, including Neera and CAP. Neera, welcome back.
Neera Tanden
Thanks for having me, Norm. It’s always great to be with you.
Norman Eisen
Neera, Donald Trump threatened CAP with a $5 billion defamation lawsuit for telling the truth. Tell us what happened, and how you dealt with it.
Neera Tanden
Well, it is an interesting and new front on the attack on free speech, free thought. free debate in the country, because essentially, we put forward a report, we published a report in July, that analyzed the impact of the National Guard deployments, and that analysis really looked at cities that had the National Guard deployments, and compared them to their crime rates before the National Guard deployments, and during the National Guard deployments, and then it also compared them to Compared those cities, crime rates to places that didn’t have National Guard deployments and, you know, shocker, we found that you couldn’t. tell of any impact on the rate of violent crime? Well, We published this very sober report. It looked… had the models and analysis in it, and one of our… the author of the piece, Chandler Hall, who, works at CAP, was on C-SPAN, of all places, and apparently the president saw his comments about the National Guard deployment and lost it. Now, I think there are lots of interesting elements of this story, but one of the most interesting elements was that the president of the United States. Watches C-SPAN Journal, something I did not expect to see happen.
Norman Eisen
He should be spending more time governing and less time watching television.
Neera Tanden
I mean, I guess maybe we should be happy he’s like watching C-Span and Journal instead of, you know, I don’t know, like the Blaze or something, but it’s, but anyway, what happened is he, his lawyers. Threatened us, with a $5 billion lawsuit if they did… if we did not retract the report. We sent, we sent a letter back saying, you know, really articulating. why we had the right to do what we did, but also walking through the models and analysis of Heather Wright. And, you know, throughout all of this, we… we have maintained the position. that we’re a think tank, and we’re open to facts and evidence, and if you have different evidence that, you know, points to some different conclusion, like, we welcome it. And of course, they’ve never done that. Instead, they really have just worked to silence us. But I want to say. What’s really why this is matters so much is what the president was arguing and what he was threatening is that He would in his personal capacity sue us for $5 billion for an analysis of a federal policy, you know, it wasn’t really we weren’t we didn’t talk about Trump that much. We actually talked about the Trump administration policies and just to step back. If… Like think tanks, research organizations, advocacy organizations can be threatened with defamation for analyzing federal policy? It’s hard to imagine, at least from my perspective, what the First Amendment would protect if that isn’t protected, because obviously it’s core to the free debate. Discussion in a democracy to be able to substantively analyze what the federal government’s doing and whether it’s working or not. So, I will say, as of this moment, he has not actually sued us. So, we’re hoping that our clear and cogent arguments deterred them.
Norman Eisen
Neera. Part of the reason that it’s so important that you stood up for the First Amendment is because we’re seeing other attacks. You made a very strong statement about the White House’s latest attack on Politico, CNN, MS Now. Will you share what your reaction was to that, and how it relates to the assault on CAP?
Neera Tanden
I mean, I think what is actually happening here is that the president of the United States is trying to silence critics and You know, honestly, if the, if this happened in another country, you know, we would say that is an authoritarian country and you know we’re not really surprised when we see state media and only state media in other countries, but essentially the president is saying he wants to restrict access. to news out of the White House, to media outlets. That kind of… You know, toe the party line and I think what’s really genuinely surprising to me is that the number of people who’ve lectured us over the last several years about the importance of free speech, you know, particularly on the right, who’ve Worried about a federal government trampling on free speech rights have been awfully silent when the White House itself is really trying to. Punish media outlets that… Don’t, again, basically don’t do what the president wants and I, I mean, this is like, there’s no reason for, there’s no rationale for, for a First Amendment if the president can. Silence people who he doesn’t like. You know, their coverage of him.
Norman Eisen
Neera, there was such solidarity. When those three orgs were banned. The White House press pool said, well, if you’re gonna ban press orgs, we’re not gonna do pool coverage. And, of course, the organizations went to court, they got a order. that they be admitted back to the White House. Then the White House excluded one of the orgs, CNN, from the pool, but the pool went on. Do you agree with the decision, of the other pool members to continue even without CNN?
Neera Tanden
Well, I think the way I’d answer that is to step back, just to say, you know, the president attacked the Associated Press. I, I, you know, there’s so many attacks, it’s kind of hard to remember, but I believe they attacked the Associated Press for.
Norman Eisen
They did.
Neera Tanden
Using the term, Gulf of America or some other weirdo thing that the White House had done.
Norman Eisen
That was it.
Neera Tanden
And, and, and I, you know, I. Really surprised that when they, you know, were booting the AP out of its ability to cover To cover the White House, or, you know, basically. you know. harming their ability to do that, hampering their ability to do that. You know, we didn’t see as much solidarity, and I said this at the time, I said this when he went after Politico and CNN. It’s, you know, what we’ve learned from authoritarians is, you know, in other countries, and what we’re learning about this authoritarian in our country, is that when you give an inch, when you can… when you… when you… when you choose to… You know, adhere or perhaps cower instead of fight, like they just get worse and worse. So it’s not like there’s a reasonable negotiating posture. If you try to reasonably negotiate, they, you know, this president will go farther and so.
Norman Eisen
Well.
Neera Tanden
What I’d say is to the extent that it’s really important for media institutions to actually Work together collaboratively, defend each other’s rights, and if they had done that on MP, maybe this wouldn’t have happened, but that’s in the past. I do think If it were me, I would show continuing solidarity in the press pools and everywhere else for anyone who’s sanctioned, anyone who is. Kind of pushed out for their speech and that goes on the left and the right and, you know, that should be a universal principle that basically the administration shouldn’t be able. to use the access to the White House as a vehicle to silence critics.
Norman Eisen
How did you feel about the solidarity of the think tank community? Of civil society in general when you were attacked?
Neera Tanden
So I really want to thank you for raising that because I have to say it really meant a lot to us. And I think an important issue here is. You know, when somebody is attacked, when an organization is attacked. You know, you’re facing, for in our case, we were thinking we were facing a $5 billion lawsuit, just in case anyone’s wondering, our insurance doesn’t cover $5 billion. Like it’s a kind of existential attack. But I think part of what these attacks do is. They’re intimidating. They’re even more intimidating when people feel alone. And I really want to express my gratitude to other organizations across the spectrum who who stood up. There was a letter that came out that defended CAP’s right to publish. From, you know, over, well over a hundred organizations.
Norman Eisen
Wow.
Neera Tanden
Organizations, but I would also say, you know, kind of right-leaning organizations, Cato, a conservative, a libertarian think tank. The fire, like fire organization, which is a more right-leaning free speech organization, you know, they spoke up, and I think this is a really crucial issue for all of us, which is. I think they recognize that when, you know, you have such a clear violation of what’s right and what’s principled, that it’s important to stand up, and I really appreciated that, and I think it gives more strength to people, and I think that’s a really important lesson. You know, you and I have talked In the past about the lessons of the law firms that caved, the universities that caved. The series of organizations that have been targeted and cowered, businesses that have caved. And it’s you know, I think the most important thing is that when someone is speaking up and standing up, that we shore them, we all shore them up because Otherwise, we’re kind of… quietly… You know, allowing the bully to win and that is really what this is all about. It’s bullying and we need more people to stand up and I was really grateful for your and other organizations. Defense of our right to speak out when the time came, when they came for us.
Norman Eisen
Well, we were outspoken about it at the Contrarian and in other civil society venues and privileged to be among the many, many who stood up in Neera. It’s not just the law firms and businesses and universities that cave. There’s the ones who stood strong as well.
Neera Tanden
Yeah.
Norman Eisen
Law firms that litigated, and the law firms that represented them. They won. The universities that refused, to, crawl. Harvard is still fighting. They’re. model, for us all, and the businesses who are speaking out now. And, of course, the job of CAP is to speak out, that’s what you do. We have, we’re so lucky to have you. One last question before I let you go. There’s widespread anticipation that one or both houses of Congress may change hands. That provides a, springboard for policy solutions. Do we need additional legal protections to serve as a guardrail around the First Amendment. And, what are the policy solutions that might be helpful?
Neera Tanden
Yeah, I think this is a really, important issue. I think we do, I think we do need to think more. broadly about what has happened over the last year. I mean, obviously, the level of corruption is very high, the ignorance of… or just willful, Focus on raising costs for people is really high, and that’s animating a lot of voters, thankfully, but, I think the fact that we have an administration that feels so. Unbounded to target its political enemies or what they perceives to be their political enemies. Requires not just… Courts to defend in a First Amendment, but it requires more, more of a legal architecture to limit the power of the president to do what he’s been doing over the last year and a half. And these are very complicated issues, particularly with the Supreme Court that has become you know, kind of a political handmaiden of the administration, of the Trump administration in so many areas. But I think it requires all of us to think creatively about ways in which we can ensure that this never happens again. I mean. You know these issues better than I do, but when Trump first came into the White House, he had a lot of courts. Backing up everything he did, despite the valiant, valiant efforts. Not everything, you won a lot of cases, but many, many heretofore insane things were sanctioned by courts, and it’s really over the last year. Perhaps as the courts have seen a political opposition to the president develop, that you’ve seen more and more vocal you know, basically court opinions. But I guess the thing that I’m a little anxious about is that we can’t just rely on the courts. I mean, we do need… the courts ultimately have to enforce anything we do, but we need more… Congressional, you know, statement of how… This kind of targeting, this kind of fear-mongering, this kind of attacking institutions is not a proper role of the president, and I hope we can work together and think creatively about these issues together.
Norman Eisen
I’m… I’m looking forward to it. We have to put in more protections, including legal protections, for these kinds of meritless, assaults. We can do that, assaults on reporters, we can limit, by law. the ability to subpoena reporters. There’s a variety of things that we are able to do, and nobody better to work with on thinking through those policies than Neera Tanden and her colleagues at CAP Neera. thanks for being a fighter, not just for yourself and your organization, but for all of us. We’re all very proud to stand side by side with you in pushing back on this bullying and intimidation. Clearly it’s not working. And above all, we’re grateful to you for being such a good friend of the Contrarian. Thanks for joining us.
Neera Tanden
Well, as I always say, stronger together, my friend. Stronger together.
Norman Eisen
Thanks Neera. Thanks Contrarians. We’ll see you soon.
