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Meet the Conservatives Standing Up to Trump
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Meet the Conservatives Standing Up to Trump

“I don’t want to be alarmist, but the situation is quite alarming," says a former Rubio adviser who is helping lead the small, but vocal conservative legal resistance.

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John Harwood
Mar 21, 2025
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Meet the Conservatives Standing Up to Trump
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Trump speaks to reporters at the White House on Feb. 12, 2025. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Like so many young Republicans, Gregg Nunziata walked a conservative career path: top law school, Federalist Society membership, Congressional aide, and corporate legal practice.

It made perfect sense for someone raised on Ronald Reagan and the National Review. But then Donald Trump came along and made him confront his conscience.

He never supported Trump and his lawlessness. Nunziata had two choices: look away and keep quiet, as most of his politically active friends did, or stand up publicly against Trump’s flagrant abuses of power.

After considering the stakes, Nunziata chose the harder option. He stood up – and has remained standing for six years.

“Liberty under law is a rare thing in the scope of human history, and it’s easily lost,” he explains now. “I’m criticizing what’s happening for the same reason I got into politics in the first place. This is a fundamental assault on the rule of law.”

That doesn’t make him a solitary hero. Better-known Republican renegades, such as former members of Congress Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, conservative intellectual Bill Kristol, and former federal judge J. Michael Luttig, have made the same choice.

But all of them stand out because their ranks are so tiny. And they have remained tiny even as Trump 2.0 more aggressively damages our economy, cripples federal agencies, corrupts our judicial system, and trades democratic allies for authoritarian Russia.

Breaking Point

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