Donald Trump’s presidency has always been about breaking institutions. Democrats’ response is changing.
Last Friday, the White House announced that it would be turning the traditionally bipartisan gathering of the National Governors Association into an all-Republican affair. The NGA, a bipartisan organization largely focused on non-controversial initiatives and cross-party collaboration, has been holding the gathering for years, and it’s been the kind of sleepy, good-for-all-participants affair D.C. thrives on.
This year, Trump split the event in two, one for just Republicans, one for both parties, and specifically banned two Democrats he’s had battles with: Maryland’s Wes Moore and Colorado’s Jared Polis. On one level, the decision was just another example of the kind of pettiness and spite that has become typical in this White House. But the whole saga is underscoring a larger evolution in Democrats’ thinking: During Trump’s second term, less and less patience is being extended to the institutions whose protection the party once prized.
The battle
The drama between Trump and the NGA began almost immediately after he took office. It was at last year’s February White House meeting that the president publicly threatened that Maine would not receive “any federal funding” if it did not ban transgender girls and women from sex-segregated sports. The state ultimately prevailed in court, but the exchange — which included Trump’s memorable declaration that "we are the federal law” — set the stage for a broader conflict.
That came to a head last summer, when two Democratic governors, Kansas’s Laura Kelly and Minnesota’s Tim Walz, announced they were ceasing to pay NGA dues. Two others, Illinois's JB Pritzker and California’s Gavin Newsom, later threatened to do the same. All of them cited the NGA’s lack of pushback on the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard in blue states. Those deployments happened against governors’ will, violating longstanding precedent and alarming experts. Current NGA Chair Kevin Stitt, the Republican governor of Oklahoma, ultimately did condemn the deployments, though it took months.
The asymmetry
Part of what’s going on here: Republicans largely quit on institutions like the NGA a long time ago. During President Obama’s first term, Republican-led states like Florida, Texas, and Maine all ceased paying dues to the NGA — the former two never to return. In 2023, only three out of the nation’s 26 Republican governors attended the NGA’s annual meeting. Democrats have, by contrast, remained involved, part of the implicit alliance between the party and civic institutions since Trump’s first election.
That mirrors a broader dynamic we’ve seen over the past twenty years — conservatives giving up on traditional journalism, medical authorities, universities, NPR, the Super Bowl halftime show. Typically, that’s created a bit of a doom loop: The absence of conservatives tilts these institutions further left, thereby pushing away even more conservatives, and so on. When it comes to the NGA, though, that second part hasn’t happened. Instead, the organization has become disproportionately populated by Democrats, who pay most of its dues, while not becoming more driven by them.
In the background of all of this is Moore, the rising Democratic star, potential 2028 candidate, and current NGA vice chair in line to become chair later this year (the chairship rotates between the parties). The position could be a boon to Moore’s national ambitions: previous chairs have included figures like Mike Huckabee, Tim Pawlenty, Joe Manchin, Mark Warner, and Steve Bullock, all of whom went on to either wage presidential bids or hold higher office.
In his path, though, is the growing Democratic fury over institutions they perceive as bowing to or coddling the Trump administration, of which now many consider the NGA to be a part. Moore’s team was quick to denounce Trump’s announcement last week — even arguing it held a racist subtext given Moore’s status as the country’s only Black governor — but more broadly defends the association against Democratic attacks that it is not doing enough to push back on the administration.
“The governor takes a lot of pride in the bipartisanship that the NGA facilitates,” said one source close to Gov. Moore. “What do they want this iteration of the NGA to do? What does that look like? The NGA just boycotts everything with the White House?"
The shift
Following Trump’s 2024 victory, much was made of Democrats becoming “the party of institutions” — that, in an effort to defend the legitimacy of experts and government officials, the party had become tarred with all the failures of elites and the political establishment. This is definitely true, but there was always another layer. In the modern era, many conservatives played a double game with institutions, denying their legitimacy when convenient but elevating them when beneficial (the disparate acceptance of the coverage around Trump and Biden’s health being a prime example).
The NGA is, in some ways, a prime example of this. Several people I talked to noted that, even after they stopped paying dues, Republican-led states have continued to be welcome at NGA events and involved in shaping its priorities. This left many Democrats in a position of defending institutions that provided them, as the NGA has, with diminishing benefits in return. That now seems to be altering the party’s behavior. On Tuesday, 18 of the country’s 24 Democratic governors announced that, as long as Trump insisted on a Republicans-only event, they would boycott the other event altogether.
This is, at its core, what seems to be driving Democrats right now — I was struck by how pervasive the sense of unfairness was in conversations I’ve had with Democratic staff, strategists, and governors this winter. And that is where there seems to be a permanent change emerging in how Democrats think. For better or worse, the party’s alliance with civic institutions is changing.
If anyone could be tempted to reconsider their decision to leave the NGA, to make a last-ditch effort at reinvigorating the group, it might be Kansas’s Laura Kelly, the two-term moderate who has made bipartisan cooperation her entire political brand. It’s not happening.
“I don't anticipate any change in the governor's decision,” said a source in Kelly’s office. “I just have a hard time seeing them make the changes they need to make anytime soon.”
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