America’s CEOs have become reluctant guardians of democracy

With U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche appointed as acting Attorney General, just days after boasting about his purges of dedicated, nonpartisan, patriotic career law enforcement officials, his boss’s apparent orders are to increase the prosecution of President Trump’s campaign of political retribution. Although the “No Kings” rallies last weekend attracted an estimated 8 million to 9 million protesters, additional voices are still needed to join the growing chorus. These are the voices of business leaders with their preeminent public respect and nonpartisan guardrails.

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At key moments of inflection, business leaders have often, if selectively, and even reluctantly, risen as a unified voice of patriotic purpose and moral authority. When Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political philosopher and statesman, visited America and published his 1835–1840 classic Democracy in America, he was surprised by the adaptive, intentional looseness of the laws written during the first century of the United States. He showcased community leaders and especially business leaders as essential forces to verify the truth, fortifying what he called “social capital,” which is as vital as financial capital in strengthening our democracy.

In fact, shortly thereafter, business leaders nationwide rallied behind Abraham Lincoln’s growing effort to preserve a united America and combat slavery. They established Union League Clubs in Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, New Haven, and Boston to promote loyalty to the U.S. government, support Abraham Lincoln’s leadership, and oppose anti-war sentiments. Founded by prominent citizens, these elite clubs financed Union troops, promoted financial support for freed slaves, and supported voter registration, political voice for Black Americans, as well as aid for Black soldiers.

A century later, Martin Luther King Jr. recognized the societal power of business leadership to enhance the Civil Rights Movement, diverting his key lieutenant, Andrew Young, to skip the historic 1963 March on Washington and instead direct Young’s intellect, diplomatic skills, and religious grounding toward meeting with business leaders in Birmingham, Alabama, and Jackson, Mississippi. Dr. King advised Reverend Young, who would later become Atlanta’s first Black mayor and the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, that his ability to engage with business leaders was too important to be diminished as just one of many in large political rallies.

Reverend Young reflected on Dr. King’s wisdom at our 2018 Yale CEO Summit, highlighting the influence of business and explaining that once he gained the support of business leaders, communities were catalyzed into constructive action. He told the 200 corporate leaders present that, in today’s political climate, “I almost trust business more than the church, politics, or anything else I do…There is more freedom, and there is more courage in our free enterprise system, and there is a capacity to rise from all kinds of need.”

Accordingly, in 1962, Ivan Allen, a business leader who served as mayor of Atlanta, ended Jim Crow segregation at City Hall on his first day in office. In 1964, he became the only southern elected official to endorse the Civil Rights Act. That same year, when MLK Jr. accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, business leaders such as Allen, Coca-Cola patriarch Robert Woodruff, and Ralph McGill, publisher of The Atlanta Constitution, organized a banquet to celebrate MLK, to the shock of the white business community. This led to a sellout MLK tribute banquet of 1,500 prominent Georgia business leaders and the labelling of Atlanta as “a city too busy to hate.”

This courageous voice of Atlanta business leadership was in open defiance of the efforts of the director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, to subvert and discredit MLK. This foreshadowed Mr. Blanche’s recent politicization of the FBI as he bragged at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) of purging FBI agents who did their jobs following court orders to investigate President Trump’s theft of classified government documents and his threat to use ICE agents at polling places this fall.

In a striking departure from the Justice Department’s traditional posture of neutrality, Mr. Blanche used a speech at CPAC to defend the possible deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at polling stations during the 2026 midterms. The remarks underscored a fundamental shift in the department’s priorities and signaled a new readiness to wield federal law enforcement in ways critics warn could intimidate voters and undermine electoral independence.

Mr. Blanche’s remarks were remarkable not for their content alone but for their controversial venue — the latest marker in both political parties’ long march toward the extremes, at least at the federal level. Three weeks ago, we hosted 60 mayors of large and medium-sized cities to discuss how they are navigating the major issue