Josh Shapiro Declares Midterms A 'Referendum On The Cruelty Of Trump' At MS NOW Event

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Speaking with MS NOW host Jen Psaki at the networks We the People: America 250 live event, Shapiro framed the midterms as a defining test of the nations constitutional order and civic resolve, according to Mediaite. The sold-out program at the Academy of Music, part of MS NOWs rebranded live-event series under parent company Versant, drew nearly 2,000 attendees to hear from Psaki, Rachel Maddow, Ali Velshi, and constitutional scholar Sherrilyn Ifill.

Shapiro anchored his remarks in the Founders warnings, invoking Benjamin Franklins famous admonition that the United States would remain a republic, if you can keep it. He argued that the durability of American self-government has always rested less on Washington elites than on ordinary citizens willing to defend their liberties.

June 26, 2026

The reason I am hopeful, the reason why I am optimistic is because I think we will channel Franklins words again, Shapiro said, insisting that public engagement would blunt what he portrayed as Trump-era abuses. Where folks are going to rise up theyre going to speak out against the corruption of this administration. Theyre going to show up in record numbers in these midterms, and we will have a national referendum on the chaos, the cruelty, and the corruption of Donald Trump.

Throughout the conversation, Shapiro repeatedly accused Trump of hoarding power in ways the Constitution was designed to prevent, while faulting the other branches for failing to restrain him. He painted a picture of an executive branch slipping toward what the Founders most feared: a presidency behaving like a monarchy.

When our founders gathered at Independence Hall and first declared our independence, then wrote our Constitution a decade later, the biggest fear they had was that one individual would accumulate too much power that they would become a tyrant, that they would become what we had already just walked away from, and that is being governed by a king, he said. Our founders, our framers built a system of checks and balances to deny the executive the kind of power that we have seen Trump accumulate, he added.

The governor then turned his fire on Congress, describing the legislative branch as having surrendered its institutional backbone. He charged that lawmakers have effectively abandoned their constitutional responsibilities in the face of executive overreach.

Shapiro said Congress had become profoundly and pathetically weak and told the audience, They have given up on their checks. They have given up on their constitutional obligation. From a conservative vantage point that values separation of powers and limited government, such a critique underscores a bipartisan concern: a Congress too willing to cede authority to the presidency and the bureaucracy.

He also condemned the Supreme Courts recent presidential immunity ruling, calling it the arguably most dangerous development in recent years for dismantling key guardrails. In his telling, the decision risks placing presidents above the law, a position that many conservatives would argue contradicts the Founders insistence on accountability and the rule of law.

Its one of the reasons why I think we have got to really think about a 28th Amendment to our Constitution to actually rein in the corruption that were seeing from this executive, he added. We need anti-corruption laws being passed by Congress. And we need to take back our democracy and think back to the fears that [James] Madison and [George] Washington and Franklin and others had, fearing the excesses of an executive.

We got work to do to roll that back, but Im committed to doing that work, the governor said, casting himself as a guardian of institutional limits. Rounding again on the immunity ruling, he argued that reversing it must be the starting point for any serious reform effort.

I think you have to start by overturning the Supreme Court decision that a president is absolutely immune. I think that is foundational to everything we do going forward, he said, suggesting that unchecked immunity would distort every future presidency. His stance aligns with a long-standing conservative insistence that no official, however powerful, should be beyond legal scrutiny.

Shapiro also highlighted his own record of legal confrontation with Trump during his tenure as Pennsylvania attorney general, particularly over the 2020 election. When he tried to throw out your votes back in 2020, he and his enablers sued me 43 times, Shapiro said. And, by the way, he went 0 and 43, and I went 43 and 0.

He pledged to continue litigating to protect ballot access in Pennsylvania, touting what he described as a recent court victory safeguarding mail-in voting. As your governor, I will not be afraid to go back to court to protect your right to vote, he said, noting that state officials were coordinating with law enforcement and the National Guard to ensure voters can cast ballots without interference.

Psaki briefly shifted the conversation to the persistent chatter that Shapiro could seek the Democratic presidential nomination in the future, pointing out that he appears on everybodys 2028 presidential list. The governor brushed aside the speculation with a joke, signaling that he was not prepared to engage in national campaign talk on stage.

Im actually Im afraid to blink, he replied, before trying to redirect attention by calling Maddow from the wings. Ladies and gentlemen, Rachel Maddow, he joked, prompting laughter from the crowd and a lighthearted exchange with the host.

See what he did there? Psaki teased, as Maddow prepared to join them. Get out here, Rachel, the governor urged, leaning into the moment.

Youre our guest. So you dont Psaki began, turning to the audience: He has a lot of power, but not that power. Not that power, Shapiro smiled, closing an evening in which he cast Trump as a threat to constitutional balance while presenting himself as a defender of institutions that, in the conservative tradition, are meant to restrain ambition and preserve the republic.