Transcription
Donald Trump is attacking free and fair elections from every direction. He's had his Department of Justice seize ballots, investigate his political opponents. Now he's even threatening to have Republicans take over the vote counting from the states. But before he did any of that, he tried to rig the House through midcycle redistricting. Remember that? Yeah. He thought it would guarantee him control over Congress for another two years. But now he's so unpopular that he knows it won't be enough. And he also didn't count on Democrats fighting back and winning. Increasingly, it looks like it will all backfire on him and that it may actually be Democrats who benefit and gain seats.
In this episode, I'm going to walk you through point by point where things stand in the battle over redistricting and what happens next. But even more importantly, I'm going to explain how the attack on fair maps connects up to voter suppression, election subversion, Trump's misuse of federal law enforcement, and his most recent threats on the integrity of elections. Look, there's a lot going on here, and it's going to be a journey. So, sit back, grab a drink, and follow along with me. But before we get into any of that, subscribe to this channel to stay informed about how you can defend democracy.
The biggest mistake people make about Donald Trump is thinking that he really cares about policy when really all he cares about is power. He wants to be an authoritarian. He wants to get his way. He wants to benefit financially and personally and his family and his friends from the trappings of government. He wants the powerful to bow down to him. He wants the richest Americans to kneel. He wants corporate America to beg. But the biggest threat to that are you and me, the voters. Yeah, that's right. Free and fair elections are the thing that Donald Trump worries most about. That's why election denialism is so central to who he is and to the MAGA faithful. He needs to deny that he ever lost elections and he needs the pretext to try to overturn them when he does. Remember in 2020 it started with lies. It progressed to court cases. Then eventually it led to violence on January 6th. Well, here we are nine months out from the midterm elections and we've already started to see that progression. It started with redistricting. That's right. Before we got to any of the current craziness about ICE at the polls, about taking over vote counting, about seizing ballots. Donald Trump thought he could rig this election by having Republican states redraw their maps in the middle of the decade and guarantee him a victory.
So, let's go back in time and start with Texas. It all began in Texas when last spring and early summer Donald Trump convinced the governor there to call a special session for the purpose of redrawing the congressional map. Remember, Democrats walked out of the legislature. They tried to delay it. They tried to stop it. But in the end, Donald Trump got what he wanted. He got a redrawn map in the state of Texas. Now, look, my law firm, we went to court. We actually won at the trial court. The US Supreme Court overturned that victory. I still think we were right. But in the end, Donald Trump got what he wanted, which was the new map. And it is described as a plus five map for Republicans. For our purposes, we'll call it a minus five map for democracy. Donald Trump gained five seats. Democracy lost five seats. That was the narrative that the legacy media wanted to pedal to you. That was what the Republicans wanted you to believe because they wanted you to be dispirited. They wanted you to give up. They said they won five seats. Well, let me ask you this. How do those five seats look right now? What are you hearing from Republicans in Texas now? There's a lot of nervousness going on in the Lone Star State on the Republican side because in some recent special elections, including the most recent special election for a state senate seat, all of a sudden the politics of that state look very, very different. And all of a sudden their plus five map or minus five map looks a lot shakier because in that state senate race a Democrat won a seat in a district that Donald Trump had carried in 2024 by 17%. And the Democrat carried it by 14%. Which means the district swung 31 points. This map that Donald Trump had drawn. This map that Greg Abbott called a special session for. This map that Republican state legislators lined up like lemmings to vote for. Well, you know what happens to the lemmings. We're going to see what this map performs as. But my prediction right now is that this is not a five seat pickup for Republicans. I'm not saying it's going to be a dummy mander or whatever phrase people use. I'm not saying it's going to completely backfire. I think we underestimate how much technology and data was used to make this map impervious to these kinds of trends. But no map is impervious to all trends among voters. I'm not ready to say that it won't net Republican seats because it will. Like we need to be realistic, but I don't think it's going to net him five seats.
But what came after Texas, I think surprised them. I think this was the part that the White House was not prepared for, which is that Democrats fought back and specifically they fought back next in the state of California where Gavin Newsom and the Democrats in that state led a ballot initiative effort to draw a new map and Republicans poured in money all over the place to try to defeat that ballot initiative and they failed. And so the people of California adopted its own new plus five map. And I am going to call that a plus five map for democracy. I don't want to hear any of you complain about democratic gerrymandering. First of all, the fate of American democracy hangs in the balance. If we have two more years of Republicans controlling the House of Representatives, I don't know what's going to be left of American democracy. So we need Democrats to take control of the House. Number one. Number two, the congressional map in California was initially passed by a commission. It was a fair map that Democrats have now made a slightly tilted Democratic map. The map in Texas, that was a Republican gerrymander from the get-go. That was drawn by the Republican legislature to begin with. When they added five more Republican seats, that was gerrymandering upon gerrymandering. So, there's no equivalency. Plus, in California, it was done by ballot measure. The people had a say. They didn't in Texas. That was a plus five uh pickup in California. And boy are those five seats looking better than ever. I mean, the same trends that are taking place in Texas in making that map not look quite so Republican, they're they're also taking place in California. And those five seats are looking awfully Democratic right now. So, I think that's a solid plus five. You know who else thinks it's a solid plus five? Republicans. Because they sued and they sued and they sued and they sued and I think I've run out of sued, but I think they sued more than even I even just said they sued in federal court in Texas twice. They sued in state court in California a couple of times. But their big fight, their big shot at trying to block this California map was in federal court in California. And they thought they had an inside track because even though they lost at the trial court, they thought the Supreme Court would have their back. I'm proud of the work my law firm did in defending the California map and we won in the trial court and this week we won in the US Supreme Court. Sorry, Donald Trump, you're zero for five seats in California. So, those two are locked and loaded. Those are in the books. Okay, California's map is now going to be the map. Texas map is going to be the map. There's no more litigation. So that is either five and five or as I think, let's call it five for Democrats and four for Republicans. So that's a net of one for Democrats.
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But Republicans weren't done. They next went to Missouri and North Carolina. And in both states, they gerrymandered already gerrymandered maps. They targeted a district in the eastern part of North Carolina, a seat held by Congressman uh Don Davis, a Democrat, and they targeted the Kansas City seat held by Emanuel Cleaver. And so that is in their book plus two. I wouldn't count both of them out. I wouldn't count Don Davis out from winning that seat in North Carolina. And I'd never vote against Emanuel Cleaver. Plus, there's also litigation in both states. There's litigation in North Carolina. And there is a lot of litigation going on in Missouri. But let's just for simplicity sake, let's give those two to the Republicans and we'll call them minus two for democracy. Right? So remember, we had Texas minus four for democracy, right? Because I'm taking one back. California plus five for democracy. So that nets one. Well, now we take away two more because of North Carolina and Missouri. So now we're at net minus one.
But then came Utah. Who knew? Utah. I knew Democracy Docket subscribers knew. People who subscribed to this channel knew. That's right. If you follow this channel, you knew about Utah. If you subscribed to Democracy Docket, you knew about Utah because I've been talking about Utah. Republicans in Utah overplayed their hands. They violated their state constitution and their state courts, including their state supreme court, was having none of it. And they ordered a new map that creates a Democratic seat in the state around Salt Lake City. So that's a plus one. So now we're back to even.
But then came New York. My law firm, we sued New York for violating the voting rights of minorities in New York City, specifically Black voters on Staten Island. And despite all of the pundits' prognostications and predictions, we won. That's right. Legacy media said we had no chance. The usual naysayers said we had no chance. Well, you know who said we had a chance? We did. And our clients did. And you know who said we won? A judge in that state. Now, that case is going to get litigated up the courts in New York. And I feel pretty good about our chances. So, we're going to call that a plus one for democracy. All right. So, we're going to do this on my fingers. You got Texas minus four. You got North Carolina minus one. You got Missouri minus one. But then to the plus side, you got California plus five. Utah plus one. New York plus one. Which means when you take the seven pluses and the six minuses, we net plus one.
But it's not over. In Virginia, Democrats are poised for another four-seat gain. Now, there's a lot of things that have to go right here and there are moving pieces. There are court cases, there are maps that have to be approved. There is a ballot initiative in Virginia that has to be approved. But if all of those things happen, then Democrats would gain another four seats. And then offsetting at least some of that in Florida, where Ron DeSantis is going to call a special session, they're going to try to gerrymander yet again. Notwithstanding the fact that their state constitution doesn't allow partisan gerrymandering, they're going to partisan gerrymander and we're going to sue and we will see how that shakes out. So, it's hard to know to what to do with Virginia plus four, Florida maybe neg three, negative four. Let's just call that all a wash and leave it that Democrats wind up through all of this gaining one seat.
How do you think Donald Trump feels about that? Who do you think he's yelling at about that is what I want to know. Like whose fault is this? Because Donald Trump will never say it was his fault, right? He'll never say, "I made the mistake." He's going to blame someone in the White House, someone in the Department of Justice, someone someone who he's going to say led them to open Pandora's box of midcycle redistricting only to find out that at the end of the rainbow, it backfired on him. But here's the thing, that's done. But Donald Trump isn't. Donald Trump's got bigger plans. Donald Trump is going through the progression that Donald Trump always goes through. Remember I said to you that in 2020 before the election he badmouthed mail-in voting, tried to influence what election officials did. Then after the election, he escalated that to lawsuits. Then after that came violence in the nation's capital. Donald Trump is going through that escalation process now. He's going through that progression. Start by trying to rig the maps. When rigging the maps doesn't look like it's going to work, what have we seen? Searching and seizing ballots. A dry run using the 2020 election in Fulton County for what he wants to be able to do nationwide. Setting the predicate to take over the vote counting in Democratic states and Democratic cities. You know, I am very mixed on the fact that the media keeps referring to this as nationalizing the election. It's not really that he wants to nationalize it. He wants Republicans to take over vote counting in what he said were 15 places. Now, he didn't tell us 15 places, but you and I can guess what those 15 places are. And by the way, it's not only going to be 15. It'll start with 15, but it will grow to as many as he needs in order to try to rig the outcome. So, it's not like he wants federal standards, a federal bureau of elections that is nonpartisan. No, he doesn't want that. He's not looking to screw with South Carolina's elections. He's looking to take over election administration in places where Democrats are in control and where Democratic voters could vote out Republicans. And this is a very dangerous situation that we're facing now.
The legacy media treats it like it's just another day, you know, of normalcy. Like they are so far in the tank, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Like I'm not here to psychoanalyze them. I'm not here to say whether it's because the corporate bosses call down to the newsroom or because the newsroom is just afraid of Donald Trump or because journalists don't want to be sued. Like, I'm not here to psychoanalyze. What I'm here to say is that the coverage of Donald Trump's escalation from midcycle redistricting to seizing ballots to now saying again that the states are his agents for vote counting, which by the way is completely bonkers. The Constitution says nothing about the president having any power. In fact, in a case that my law firm and I won in federal court in Washington D.C., the judge went out of her way to say the president has no role, no role in federal elections. Yeah. You didn't see that reported, did you? Yeah. You didn't see that lead the news. You didn't see that on the front page of every newspaper that they're not so eager to like, you know, put front and center. But it's true. The president has no role. The Constitution says that the time, place, and manner of federal elections is set by the states. That the only way the states' decisions regarding the time, place, and manner of federal elections, the only way that that doesn't happen is if Congress, Congress through legislation comes to a different conclusion. So, Congress could pass a law that says this is how you vote. In fact, Democrats over the last few years have been advocating laws that make it clear that there are greater voting rights than some states right now provide. The Voting Rights Act itself was an exercise of Congress's authority over the states. The Uniform Election Date, the fact that we vote for federal elections on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November, that is Congress exercising its power. But it does it through legislation. And Congress has not legislated any of the things that Donald Trump now wants. Donald Trump wants him to be able to swoop in and take over control of elections. Actually, what he said is he wants Republicans, Republicans to be able to take over voting in 15 states at, I guess, at his selection. That is not constitutional because Congress gets to decide whether to override the states and it has not done so and is not going to do so. Democrats in the House and the Senate would not let that happen. They would filibuster in the Senate. I don't even think in the House they would get enough Republicans to pass a federal takeover in the House. So that's not going to happen. So when Donald Trump says he wants to nationalize elections, it's really important that we not fall into the trap of thinking that we really want to serve these uniform guidelines. He doesn't. He wants him as a dictator, him as an authoritarian, him working with the Republicans to take over to rig the outcome.
So this progression that I mentioned starts with redistricting, right? We saw that it starts with redistricting and it starts with redistricting because frankly it is more normalized in our system for better or worse that there is partisan gerrymandering. So Donald Trump started with redistricting the things I just listed: Texas, and then North Carolina and Missouri and soon Florida. Remember he tried Indiana to, he tried to get them to do something. He tried to get, um, uh, New Hampshire to do something, right? He started with that because that was like the lowest, most normalized thing he could do. Now, I was still calling it out. You were still complaining. Democracy Docket was running stories about it. We were sounding the alarm, but too few people were listening. The legacy media was treating it as just another day in the office. But then when that didn't work, he had to amp it up. And so we moved from redistricting to, how about we change voting laws? I don't know if you guys saw, but, you know, my law firm, we filed a lawsuit against, uh, the state of North Carolina because they did away with, uh, early voting centers on college campuses, on a couple of college campuses, including the nation's largest historically Black college. Yeah, that's right. They just said, "Yep, done with that." We're suing them. And we're seeing these kinds of voter suppression laws all throughout the country targeting students, targeting minorities, like the stuff you are kind of used to in the past, but which even for Republicans feels icky. Now, they get over the icky really fast and they embrace it and they run with it. So, I don't want to suggest that Republicans are holding back. They're not. But, you know, you go from redistricting, which, you know, people have sort of accepted as partisan motives, to these kinds of voting law changes that we're used to in the past. But then that is not enough still. So they have to go further. So now we go into extra-legal, non-legal things that are outside the law ways of suppressing voting. What did Steve Bannon say? "We're going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We're not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen." If Donald Trump has ICE at the polls, it's not because he's trying to arrest non-citizens. I mean, that lie has come and gone. Look at what's happening in Minneapolis. Alex Py was a U.S. citizen. Renee Good was a U.S. citizen. They were, Roshan killed. Those people blowing whistles who are being harassed, those are all U.S. citizens. They have set the stage to weaponize the paramilitary forces of the federal government against U.S. citizens. And I have been saying that they are deploying these people in these cities because they want them to be there in time for November for elections. And they want you to think it is normal that there are paramilitary forces of the federal government patrolling our cities and harassing U.S. citizens. I'm not saying that they think you're going to ever say it's okay. There's a difference between normal and okay. Like you don't think that what's happening right now in Minneapolis is okay. You're appalled by it. But is there a little part of you that thinks, well, that's just kind of like the new normal? If all of a sudden there were ICE and Border Patrol and these other, you know, federal law enforcement folks in five more cities, you wouldn't approve of it, but you'd start to think, well, yeah, that's just kind of what Donald Trump's doing. They want you to think it's normal even if it's not acceptable. And I don't think that this is about just immigration or just quelling, uh, protests. This is about normalizing the use of force by the federal government against U.S. citizens and having you have to debate with others whether it is right or wrong. But everyone's sort of accepting that that's the way it is. If you think I'm overstating that, go right now to your favorite news, uh, site of choice and see how they're treating it. Many of the general news outlets outside of, you know, the Minneapolis Star Tribune or the ones that are in these states that are affected, like, you know, like is it on the front page of general news sites? Is it being treated as breaking news every time they harass a U.S. citizen? The fact they have a database of U.S. citizens as they seem to be throwing protesters into to punish them. Is that like front-page material every day? Is that viewed as a national scandal? No. Like look, I can criticize legacy media from here to the end of this video. And you know who, any of you who follow me know that I think that they are failing democracy. But the fact is what Donald Trump is doing, which is what I really want to focus on with redistricting and how that's that progresses, is he's gone from something that everyone saw as sort of distasteful but sort of normal midcycle redistricting to things that are more distasteful but also viewed as sort of normal, which is Republicans passing voting laws that that suppress the vote to now these things that would have a year ago been seen as just bonkers, batshit crazy, which is ICE and federal law, federal, uh, officials, you, you know, tear-gassing U.S. citizens and and putting them in databases and harassing them and beating them up and in a couple of tragic instances killing them, shooting them. They want that to be normal because when we get to election day, they want that to all be going on and they want it to be going on in places where they want to suppress the vote.
Now, let me say a word about that because people will say, "But it doesn't suppress the vote if people are U.S. citizens." And I say, "Yes, it does." I mean, if there is tear gas in the streets and you got to go vote, are you going to go through the tear gas? I mean, some of you are going to say, "Yes, yes, yes, Mark, I will." Okay. Well, fine, you will. But how many people just won't vote if there's tear gas? How many people won't vote if traffic, you know, is closed, streets are closed around polling places? How many people are going to leave their car and then walk a mile next November to vote? Some of you will, but honestly, some of you won't. The way in which this ICE thing works, the way in which this federal law enforcement deployment works is not just at the polls itself. It's not just, you know, people with guns preventing you from voting. But it is the low-level and high-level harassment that we are seeing in Minneapolis. It is that woman who was just trying to go to her doctor's appointment and winds up having her window smashed and her seatbelt cut off and dragged out of the car. And think of what that does not just for her ability to go see her doctor or in my hypothetical to go vote, but what does it do for all the people around her? What does it do for the people behind her in traffic? What does it do for the people at home seeing that? Are they then going to go vote or are they just going to say, "You know what? I'll sit this one out." Elections in this country are decided by very small margins. It doesn't take a lot to inconvenience voters or intimidate voters at scale. And that's on Donald Trump's progression list because he'll say, "Look, I didn't do anything. I didn't steal a ballot box. I didn't seize anything. I literally just was sitting in the White House." And we'll say, "Yeah, but what about ICE?" "Oh, well, that was a law enforcement action and blah blah blah blah blah, right?" And and it'll just be normalized away.
But what if even that isn't enough? What if even what I just described isn't enough because enough people brave through it or local law enforcement keep the streets clear or people vote by mail and they have a plan. Like what if that in and of itself is not enough? What if Donald Trump is looking right now at the brave citizens of Minneapolis and saying, "Oh [expletive], it's not working. They're still protesting. They're still videotaping. They're still blowing whistles." What if that's not enough and you're Donald Trump and you see your power slipping through your fingers? You see the prospect of Democrats taking control of the House and maybe the Senate, by the way. You know, the Senate is very much in play. Susan Collins was at in the Oval Office when Donald Trump was lying about elections and you know what she was doing? She was clutching a MAGA hat. She's standing there at the end trying to like blend in with the furniture with a MAGA hat in one hand while this [expletive] Donald Trump is talking and lying about elections. Some moderate she is. She didn't look very concerned. But I'll tell you this, she was not courageous. Shouldn't we expect more from our elected officials? Shouldn't we expect more from all Republicans? But for God's sake, the people who give Susan Collins a free pass and say somehow she's different. How different is she if she's standing there clutching a MAGA hat while he's lying about elections? She's just the same as the rest of them. Don't be fooled. They're all the same. There's proud MAGA, there's scared MAGA. I don't care what's in their head. They're all MAGA. She's holding the hat.
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So the next escalation that he goes to after the ICE stuff doesn't work is ballot seizures, right? I mean like they just seize ballots in in Fulton County. If you're excusing that as somehow different, then you are not paying attention. If the media is convincing you that's just because it's Fulton County, you are not paying attention. First of all, that's bad enough, right? Right. I mean, like, it's bad enough that he's seizing ballots related to the 2020 election because he is trying to convince people that he didn't lose an election that he did. That would be bad enough. That would be disqualifying enough. That would be reason to get this guy out of office, you know, through impeachment or the 25th Amendment or whatever. That would be enough. But, but you're missing it if that's what you think this is. Who sought the warrant in Fulton County? It wasn't the U.S. Attorney from Georgia. It wasn't a prosecutor in Justice. No, it was the U.S. Attorney in Missouri. Why? Because Donald Trump is building an army, building foot soldiers, loyalists, who are willing to do the dirty work. And one of the dirtiest pieces of the work is seizing ballots. And he's got his guy in Missouri who is willing to do it in Georgia. And by the way, that guy in Missouri now has nationwide jurisdiction. Right? This was not a one-and-done deal, guys. He's got nationwide jurisdiction to do this anywhere. And if you think he got his hands dirty just to vindicate Donald Trump's crazy lies from 2020 in Fulton County, you are missing the point. This guy's all in. He'll do what Trump wants. He'll do what Pam Bondi wants. And he knows what they want. And they have proven themselves able to seek a search warrant, obtain a search warrant, and execute a search. Okay, that's not a small thing. That's not like, you know, that's not pitch and catch like that. You know, he, Donald Trump told the New York Times he regretted he didn't seize the ballots or have the National Guard seize the ballots in 2020 and he sort of made a remark that, you know, maybe they weren't up to it. Well, he's now got a team that's up to it because they just pulled it off. And, you know, look, I'm not here to praise them. Obviously, I think it's terrible and I'm not here to denigrate, you know, the efforts of Fulton County to get them back because they, they should and I hope they win. But, let's not, you know, let's not be delusional here. They pulled something off here. I mean, they pulled off a search and a seizure and they got the ballots and they had Tulsi Gabbard standing in an evidence truck doing God knows what. A lot of lying going on about that, by the way. And I'm sure there's more to that story that we're going to learn in the days and weeks to come about what she's doing, what her role in all of this is. Whatever it is, it is not good.
Even that is in and of itself not enough, right? Like Donald Trump still has a fundamental problem, which is it's one thing to seize ballots in an old election. It's another thing to be able to pull it off in real time in an election that is going on. And that will be a lot harder and a lot trickier. And convincing a federal judge or a magistrate judge to sign off that is going to be a lot more difficult. And this prosecutor in Missouri is going to need a lot more, uh, tricks up his sleeve. You know, legal arguments or whatever it is that he had in Fulton County. He's going to need a lot more of that and a lot more skeptical judges, I suspect.
Then you get to taking control over the counting and the certification. There's different ways to do this. One is you seize the ballots and you just have the FBI count them. The other thing is you put election deniers in offices in local election offices and you have them count or refuse to certify Democrats to winner. Does that sound familiar? We were talking a lot about that in the run-up to 2024. Remember in Georgia, the state board of elections, all that litigation about whether or not local election deniers on boards of elections would have discretion not to certify the outcome of elections. You think Donald Trump forgot that part of the playbook? No, he's still doing that. He's obsessed with Tina Peters for a reason, right? Tina Peters is the local election clerk or whatever they call him in Colorado who got indicted and convicted under state law regarding, uh, election material tampering or something like that. And he's like all about getting her freed. And it's not because I don't think because he cares particularly about Tina Peters, but rather he is trying to tell other election deniers in local election offices around the country, I got your back. You don't need to certify Democrats the winner. My law firm and I, we sued the last time Republicans tried to pull this off in 2022 and we won. Sued Cochise County, Arizona, we won. We sued in Pennsylvania and we won. And there's going to be a lot of litigation about this. I mean, look, let's go back. We litigated in the redistricting cases and are still litigating there. We have litigated challenging these voting suppression rules and law changes. We have litigated the, uh, the, the efforts, uh, to disenfranchise voters at scale through mass challenges. We have litigated, uh, in the past not necessarily federal law enforcement but state law enforcement or other efforts to intimidate. Remember the people videotaping, uh, people dropping off, uh, ballots in Arizona wearing, uh, military fatigues and like, like we'll litigate all this. And Lord knows after 2020, you know, my, I was proud to lead part of the effort to defeat Donald Trump more than 60 times in in court on behalf of Joe Biden and the Democrats. So, like we'll litigate all this, but Donald Trump is going through the progression I just, I just listed and he's not done with redistricting because he's still got one more plan about redistricting that I haven't mentioned.
But before I get to that, leave a comment because I read the comments to these things. So, I meant to say earlier, leave a comment. I like to know what you like about these videos, what you don't like, if there are topics you want us to cover. So, leave a comment. Also, share this video with your friends because it's important that this information get out to everyone. And then, as I said at the beginning, make sure you are subscribed to this channel. And if you have not yet, also hit that bell to make sure you are alerted when new videos are posted.
But the thing that Donald Trump is saving that he's not done with is the aftermath of a Supreme Court case that we're all waiting on a decision. This is the Clay case. This is Clay versus Louisiana. This is essentially an effort to undo the Voting Rights Act, section two. The last piece of the Voting Rights Act that protects Black and minority voters around redistricting has been challenged in the Supreme Court. And we are awaiting a decision. And if that decision comes out against the Voting Rights Act, then you may see a new round of redistricting in states with large Black, uh, populations, particularly the Deep South, where they try to redraw maps yet again. In time for 2026. And so that is a big wild card in all of this because, you know, depending on who you believe or who you listen to or how aggressive things go, that could be 12 seats, that could be 18 seats, that could be 19 seats, but it's a lot of seats that are potentially at play. Now, every day that goes by, it makes it harder for that to happen in 2026, but even if it doesn't happen in 2026, it could happen in 2028. But Donald Trump will put a lot of pressure on Republican states if the Clay case comes out the way he wants it to, the way his Department of Justice has briefed it, uh, and the Voting Rights Act either goes away completely or is curtailed, he's going to put a lot of pressure on these Republican-controlled states to target Black Democratic, uh, incumbents in states like Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Florida. You get, you get the idea. And that is one of the big wild cards here that that we at Democracy Docket, that the team at Democracy Docket are paying attention to that I, as a litigator and my law firm, are paying attention to. And you can be sure that'll be litigated as well. And you can also be sure that Democracy Docket will cover that whenever there is a ruling as well as what the outcome of that, uh, looks like.
Now, look, none of this is to get you in a state of paralysis, right? Because look, I started with the fact that we're winning, right? Donald Trump thought he had an easy path to rig this through midcycle redistricting and it turns out it backfired and all of these other things are sort of backfiring as well. Now, we're not out of the woods and he scored some, some victories. I mean, I, I was honest about that. Like, I, I don't, I don't pull punches in these videos. I tell you the good and the bad and I tell you where there's hope and where there's not. And and there is hope. It's not like a lock that it's all going to wind up okay. I'm very worried. Like I'm very concerned about the 2026 midterms and whether they're free and fair. But there is hope there because we are fighting in court and we are winning and others are fighting in court and they are winning and people are paying attention. People are subscribing to Democracy Docket and other independent media. Legacy media is covering this to some extent. So there is public awareness of this, but there's not enough. Like one of the ways that Donald Trump pulls all this off is that it is in darkness. You know, whether democracy dies in darkness or not, it certainly gets set back in darkness. And Donald Trump thrives in darkness. So, the reason why I don't want you to lose hope is because there's actually things you can do to prevent this from happening. And the biggest one is you can pay attention to it and you can scream at the top of your lungs that it's going on because Donald Trump won't be able to do these things if there's a lot of public attention on it. I mean, part of the reason why he has lost the narrative and part of the reason why he is ultimately defeated in the Epstein files is because of how much public outcry there was about this and how much it was lifted up. Part of the reason why, candidly, we are seeing the the him, you know, have to remove federal, uh, official, federal law enforcement from Minneapolis is the same reason he has lost the narrative there because the people on the ground have not been quiet. They have been quite loud and you all have been quite loud in amplifying what they are doing and what they are saying. So I need you to do this between now and election day and maybe even after election day. I need you to pay attention to these efforts and to this progression I described from redistricting midcycle to then the escalation to the escalation to the escalation. God willing, we will not have the ultimate escalation again involving violence like we saw after January 6th. But the way we prevent that is we all lift these stories up and we make sure our friends and our family and our neighbors and our clients and our customers and the people in our bridge club and our coffee group and our book club, they are all aware of what is going on. Because I promise you, if you told your friends right now that the net net of redistricting as we sit here today probably benefits Democrats, they would say, "Huh?" If you told them about Utah, they'd say, "Wow, I didn't know that." If you told them about California and and Texas and Missouri and North Carolina and New York, they wouldn't know it. So spread the word here. Share this video. Share the wisdom that you have learned. Go on social media, post it. Subscribe to Democracy Docket and share those news articles. Go to legacy media, find the articles that they have on these topics and share those. Go to other independent media sources or creators and share that. I don't care where you get it from. Although I do want you to get good accurate information. So don't like get it from, you know, people who are don't know what, who are not experts, don't know what they're talking about. That's why I built Democracy Docket because honestly, I do. I'm a full-time lawyer and litigator in these cases in the back and forth here. So I want to give you, you know, firsthand experience and firsthand knowledge, but there are lots of people who are really smart on these issues. So you can share other people as well. But we need to be flooding the zone, right? That's the word that Steve Bannon uses. That's the phrase he uses for Donald Trump. Flood the zone. I need you to flood the zone with knowledge and information about what Donald Trump is trying to do to attack democracy and free and fair elections and what we are all doing to fight back. So, please do that. Also, make sure you're subscribed to this channel. You're subscribed to Democracy Docket. Leave a comment and share. And I will see you next time.