Civics: Slotkin Promises Endless Lawfare
Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin presents herself as a moderate Democrat, but there’s nothing moderate about her warning to students last week not to work for the Trump Administration. Do so at your peril, she said, because you might end up in legal trouble.
“I want young people coming out of school to say, should I go work for the Trump administration? Like, that sounds fun, I might get an opportunity. I want them to be like, Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that,” she said at a University of Chicago forum last week. “I want that deterrence message.”
Deterring public service: Now there’s an inspiring message to a young person about American self-government.
Ms. Slotkin, who has presidential ambitions, has been one of the leading Democrats in promising to investigate what she calls the corruption of the Trump Administration. We don’t recall her criticizing Hunter Biden’s attempts to cash in on Joe Biden’s Presidency. But her double standard doesn’t mean she’s wrong about investigating the various Trump family business deals since 2025. They deserve the scrub they will no doubt get in the next Congress.
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The complaint cites the Senate Ethics Manual’sprovision allowing discipline for conduct that “unfavorably reflects on the institution as a whole,” even outside official duties. It also invokes the expectation that senators demonstrate “a proper respect for the principles of ethics and morality.”
CASA argues that threatening legal consequences for accepting employment with a sitting president undermines First Amendment association rights. Those are the group’s allegations, rather than findings by the committee. The request centers on whether her comments damaged the Senate’s reputation and discouraged lawful political participation.
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