Former President Joe Biden warned Thursday that the country faces dark days under President Donald Trump™s watch and that the executive branch appears to be doing everything it can to dismantle the Constitution.

At the American Bar Association™s annual Awards Gala in Chicago, Biden said the Trump White House is doing everything it can to undermine the nation™s founding principles and that they™ve been doing it far too often with the help of a Congress that stands by and is supported by the highest court in the land, according to CNN.

The National Bar Association is the oldest network and largest group of African American lawyers, judges, law professors, and law students in the United States.

The speech echoed the “Soul of the Nation” slogan present in Biden’s 2020 and 2024 presidential campaigns.

“Folks, in our lives, in the life of our nation, there are moments so stark that they separate everything that came before from everything that came after. Moments that forced us to confront harsh realities about ourselves, our institutions, and democracy itself,” Biden continued.

“In my view, we are at such a moment in American history, reflected in every cruel executive maneuver, every rollback of fundamental liberties, every erosion of long-held precedent.”

Biden never mentioned Trump by name, instead referring to him as “this guy,” and argued that the American people are beginning to understand the need for judicial checks on the executive branch. “Judges matter. Courts matter. The law matters, and the Constitution matters. I think a lot of Americans are starting to realize that under the pressure we have now with this guy as president,” he said. “Brace yourselves, folks, this is just getting started.” Biden criticized “law firms that cave to pressure, kowtow to abusers,instead of standing firm for justice and the law,” as well as some of the nation’s mainstream media.

He also scorned “the apparent glee expressed by some of our politicians” at the administration’s aggressive approach to immigration enforcement.

Biden said the current administration intends to work to “facilitate all the progress we’ve made in my administration, to erase history, rather than create it, to erase fairness, equality, to erase justice itself.”

“Folks, we can’t sugarcoat this. These are dark days, but everyone is here for the same reason,” he said. “It’s because our future is literally at stake. We must, we must unapologetically fight for the future.”

Biden’s latest speech came the same week that two senior aides appeared for interviews before the House Oversight Committee as part of the Republican-led panel’s intensifying investigation into the former president’s cognitive decline and potential efforts to hide it from the public.

In his Chicago speech, the former president joked about his age.

“I have the dubious distinction of having been elected the youngest senator and the oldest president in American history,” he said. “It’s hell turning 40.” years twice.

The former president, who continues to undergo treatment for an aggressive form of prostate cancer, has kept a relatively low profile since leaving the White House, giving only a handful of speeches.

Biden spends most of his time at his homes in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and is working on an upcoming book.

As his speech concluded, Biden encouraged Americans to muster the courage to stand up for what is right.

It means taking on the client who can't write a big check, but needs to protect their fundamental rights. It means signing that report that may draw the ire of those in power, but you know is the right thing to do, he said. It means standing firm against actions unconstitutional, designed to intimidate them. It means writing the article, giving the speech, leading the protest, defending the ideas on which your country is founded, protecting its institutions, fighting for the soul of the nation.