Transcription
There is a five-alarm fire threatening free and fair elections in 2026. Yet, in the daily swirl of news and Donald Trump's never-ending attacks on democracy, it is all too easy to look past it. No matter the day and regardless of the headlines, the Republican voter suppression and election subversion war machine, it grinds on. And that is the greatest threat to democracy we face today.
In this episode, I will explain what those threats are and why these are so dangerous. They're what you see above the water, just the tip of the iceberg. What's going on below the water, though, is what I'm going to want to talk about more in this video. But before we get into any of that, make sure you subscribe to Democracy Docket to stay informed about what you can do to protect democracy.
All right, look, there is a lot of news. I mean, it's the end of the year and you've got lots of things going on and lots of things trying to capture your attention. And that's been true for, frankly, all of 2025. One of Donald Trump's strategies is to flood the zone. It is to do so many outrageous things at once, to do so many things that capture attention that those of us in the pro-democracy movement, those of us who care about the rule of law, we can't catch our breath. And I get it. A lot of those things are really terrible and they're really important. But here's the deal. Every day, even as those other things dominate the news, the Republican party and its allies, including now the Department of Justice, grinds away at the machinery of our elections. It grinds away at the right to vote. It grinds away at the ability of minorities to get a fair shake. It grinds away at the hardworking election officials who want to certify accurate results. It's almost like a low hum in the background. Something like fluorescent lights might make. And at first you hear it and you find it really annoying. But over time what the Republican party wants is for it to sort of disappear. It's normalized. That slow hum in the background becomes something you don't even notice. Well, here's the thing. I notice and I'm here to make sure that you notice because if we let that slow hum, that voter suppression and election subversion war machine, if we allow that to go on without any of us paying attention, I promise you, we will wake up in late October in a panic.
Donald Trump needs this election suppression, voter suppression, election denialism. It he needs all of these efforts because frankly, he's incredibly unpopular. I mean, you've seen the polls. I've seen the polls. And make no mistake, Donald Trump has seen the polls. He knows how unpopular he is. He knows that he is staring down the real possibility, actually the real probability that he will lose control of Congress in 2026. And if that happens, it will fundamentally alter the trajectory of his effort to be an authoritarian and a dictator because Donald Trump is counting on a plant Congress. And if that doesn't come to pass, all bets are off. All bets are off on his agenda. All bets are off on his ability to do things without there being oversight. All bets are off on the Epstein files, which is the thing that seems to worry him more than anything else. We have already seen Donald Trump take the first steps in panic to try to prevent these things from happening. And these steps, which have been very public from him, are just the tip of the iceberg.
But before we start talking about either what's above the water or below the water, I want to tell you about the team at Democracy Docket. You know, it's 22 people at this point working for an organization that I started in 2020 to keep you informed about what is happening to democracy in court. So, please do me a favor right now. Click on the link in the description below to become a democracy docket subscriber. It is free and you'll get its daily newsletters or for $10 a month you become a premium member and help make sure they have the resources necessary to do their job.
All right, I told you that there was an iceberg part of which is visible, part of which is not. Let's talk about the most obvious part that is visible. Redistricting, right? What is his redistricting plan? His redistricting plan is nothing other than a voter suppression election subversion war machine. Right? It is a very visible part of that. wants to use midcycle redistricting to rig maps to prevent the Republicans from losing control of Congress. When we talk about voter suppression, what are we really talking about? We're talking about changing the rules. We're talking about changing practices. We're talking about dirty tricks to prevent people from voting. But why are Republicans trying to prevent people from voting? They're trying to prevent people from voting because they want to affect the outcome of the elections. Well, that is no different with redistricting than it is with any other tactic. And we have watched as Donald Trump tried to institute a nationwide plan that he thought was going to really benefit him. He thought that he could steal five seats in Texas and maybe that would be the end of it. Or even better, he thought he could steal five seats in Texas, maybe a few other seats here and there, another chunk in Florida. Maybe he'd get 10, 15 seats out of this, and that that would be enough to keep Republicans in control of Congress. What he didn't count on was that Democrats would fight back. What he didn't count on was that Gavin Newsome in California would say, "If you're going to do five seats in Texas, we're going to do five seats in California." And boy did they pull it off. And as we sit here right now, the even money is that the changes in California are more likely to yield five Democratic seats than the changes in Texas.
I mean, ask yourself this. Why did Donald Trump freak out? I mean, completely freak out after he gave Congressman Henry Quayar a pardon? Now, Congressman Quayar is a Texas Democrat, a very conservative Texas Democrat, but a very popular Texas Democrat in a Republican leaning district and he found himself under criminal investigation and Donald Trump pardoned him. And it was a little curious why Donald Trump pardoned a Democrat. I mean, after all, Donald Trump, when he pardoned him, said he didn't know the congressman. I don't think he I think he said he may never even spoken to him. But then a few days later, after the pardon went through, Congressman Quaar said he's going to run for reelection, and he's going to run for re-election as a Democrat. And what was Donald Trump's reaction? It was to freak out. It was to say, "Oh my god, I cannot believe I pardoned this guy, and now he's still going to run. And even worse, he's going to run as a Democrat." Now, why do I use that as an example? I use that as an example because it goes to show that the Republicans are not so confident about how this is going to work out for them in Texas. If they were confident about how this is going to work out in Texas, Donald Trump would be freelancing pardons to Democratic members who he's never met. He wouldn't be posting on social media freakouts that that that Democrat is still going to run. And he wouldn't be so worried that Henry Quayar is going to continue to win that seat as a Democrat. Okay, but that's just Texas. As I said in California, Democrats met Republicans with five seats of their own. And then there was a report which, you know, I don't know how much credence to put in it, and I don't think it's going to happen, that actually one of the Republicans in in California whose seat was targeted is actually considering moving to Texas. Okay? So, the Republicans in California don't have any of the same confidence that you see Democrats starting to develop in Texas. So, I'm not sure that wound up being an even 55 exchange.
Now, look, don't get me wrong. My law firm, we sued Texas. We won at the trial court. The Supreme Court overturned it. We are currently defending the uh the map in California from a Republican attack. We represent the Democratic Party in that case. We're suing Missouri. We sued North Carolina, both states that did midcycle redistricting. We're watching really carefully what's happening in Indiana. We're watching carefully what's almost certainly going to happen in Florida. But you know what is else is happening? Virginia. That's right. Democrats in Virginia have said they are also going to do midcycle redistricting. Now, it's got a lot of moving pieces and that's a video for another day. But suffice to say, they have said that if they're able to do this, they will move from a 65 map to a 10-1 map. That's a four seat gain. I'll tell you what, Donald Trump didn't count on that when he started this gambit. But again, the redistricting part is the part of the iceberg above the water. This is the part where you can see the Republican voter suppression and election subversion war machine grinding on. It's not so quiet. It's not just a background hum. It's a loud noise. It's not going to be enough. And Donald Trump knows it. and the Republican sickopans who work for him know it. And the Department of Justice that is shamefully carrying out his every wish, they know it, too.
So, what does that mean? That means that we're seeing a lot of things that are not as quite as obvious. Like, let me give you a couple. The Supreme Court heard a case earlier this term already, you know, back in u uh in October involving an effort by a Republican right-wing congressman to bring a lawsuit to challenge certain mail-in ballots. I'm going to spare you the details on it, but suffice to say, this Republican member of Congress does not want mail-in ballots to count under some circumstances. He wants to disenfranchise otherwise lawful votes. There's another case out of Mississippi. Now, this is a case that my law firm and I are involved in. The Republican National Committee sued the state of Mississippi in order to force Mississippi to throw in the trash otherwise lawful votes that were cast before election day that came in a couple of days a day or two afterwards. Yeah, that's right. Mississippi they sued. That's how extreme their position is. If they were successful in this lawsuit, it would actually wipe out laws in almost half the country, disenfranchise tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of voters. Like I said, my law firm, we intervened. Not that I don't trust the RNC in Mississippi. I feel better, though, and I do feel better that we're in the courtroom as well. That case is going to be argued before the Supreme Court later this spring. But these cases attacking mail-in voting continue to go on day in day out. Not just in the Supreme Court like the two cases I mentioned, but in federal district courts, in federal courts of appeals, in state courts, the the battle over mail-in voting, whether it's accessible or not, whether mail-in votes are counted or not, whether there are dropboxes or not, all of these things continue to be heavily litigated in court with the Republican party and its allies on one side firmly. They want as few people to be able to vote and therefore they are as opposed to mail-in voting as they possibly can be. If you vote by mail, they don't want you to be able to do it. If you by vote by mail, they want your vote disqualified. And ultimately, if you vote by mail, they don't want it counted in the certified results. That is the Republican voter suppression and election subversion war machine grinding on. Because most of you don't know all the details, the litigation, the administrative actions, the jawbon of legislatores, Donald Trump's social media posts that are threats that are going on to try to achieve that. That's part that is just under the surface.
But there's more. Probably the most disturbing thing going on right now in the entire area of voting rights. And therefore, frankly, one of the most under reportported stories of democracy itself is what's going on with the Republican party and the Department of Justice's effort to purge voters and collect sensitive voter data. Part of it is to force states to engage in voter purchase. They want states to remove voters from the roles. States that are controlled by Republicans, well, they're just going ahead and doing it. But in states that are not controlled by Republicans, they're trying to they're suing and trying to force states to do that. Okay, that's one piece. Most of you probably know about voter purges, you may not know which ones are going on right now. Another good reason to subscribe to Democracy Docket because you'll be kept informed about everything we're talking about today, including these things below the surface, these things at the bottom of the iceberg as I call them.
But the real action here, the real danger, the real reason why I started by saying there is a five alarm fire threatening free and fair elections in 2026 is because it's not a rag tag group, a mly crew of election and I are lawyers representing right-wing organizations and Republican party committees. I don't worry about them. You know me. I litigate them. I beat them. I don't worry about them. No. What I'm worried about is that the Department of Justice. That's right. the people who you're paying with your tax money to represent you and the American people in court, the Department of Justice, the Voting Rights Section, the people who are supposed to be protecting the right to vote. Well, they are involved in 30 lawsuits. Actually, a few more than 30 lawsuits, but 30 lawsuits. the overwhelming majority of which, 22 of which involve either trying to access sensitive voter data or trying to support voter purges. Now, let's talk about the accessing data cases because these are the ones that I think pose the greatest risk. These are the ones that we're all going to wake up in late October or in early November like I promised in the introduction and everyone's going to be like, "Holy when did that happen?" Well, because you were watching this video, you knew when it happened. It happened in 2025. Legacy Media didn't cover it that well. There are articles here and there, but you know who covered Democracy Docket. Day in day out, you can see Democracy Docket covers this. And I write about this constantly. And here's the deal. Whenever you register to vote, the state has a record of that. Everything you put down on that form, they have a record of your name, your address, your party registration. In some states, you your your race, your signature, your full social security number. Then whenever you do something like vote, they track that also, right? They know that you voted in the Democratic primary or the Republican primary. They know you skipped voting in an off-year election for, say, mayor. They know you voted for president. Now, they don't know who you voted for, right? But you can start to see a picture emerging once you start to get all of these data fields. They know if you moved. They know if you voted by mail, you voted in person. They know where you voted, which precinct. They know if you voted early or on election day. They know if your ballot was challenged, rejected, or otherwise had any issue with it. Now, isn't that interesting? They know all of this information. And not just about you, but over 175 million Americans. That's right. Anyone who has registered to vote, anyone who has altered their voter registration, and anyone who has voted has a voter file record. Okay, that record exists. Now, normally we don't worry about this because it exists at the local level in most states, counties, some places towns, and then at the statewide level, right? the Secretary of State's office or the or the uh election division of elections and they have this information to make sure that you're able to vote, right? That you're in the poll books that that they are tracking all of this information so that if you apply for a mail-in ballot, they know to send you a mail-in ballot, right? They have good reasons to want to know this information.
Well, one of the big themes of 2025, one of the real oddities of the current Department of Justice is that this DOJ wants access to all those files. That's right. All 50 states, as far as we can tell, they want access to that information. And they are currently suing 14 states that have turn refused to turn it over. Now, to be clear, we don't know if all of the other states have turned it over. I suspect the answer to that is no. But we know they have sued 14 states to get access to this very very sensitive information. Again, it includes your social security number. It includes your signature. It includes your date of birth, right? Just on the identity theft front, it's very sensitive data. But then it has all of this other information about who you are and who you what party you you affiliate with and whether you're a frequent voter or an infrequent voter and someone who votes by mail or votes in person, right? They got all all of this information. They want that and they're suing 14 states to get access to it. Now, here's something that's not a coincidence. Of the 14 states, 12 of them have Democratic governors. the two that don't, Vermont and New Hampshire. Now, most of you are probably surprised Vermont doesn't have a Democratic governor. It has a Republican uh governor, but it's a very uh liberal Republican. The state legislature is very Democratic. It's a very Democratic state. It's one of the most Democratic states in the country. So, the fact that they're they're suing Vermont, even though it's a Republican governor, doesn't mean anything. And then you get to New Hampshire. Not nearly as liberal as Vermont is, but a pretty liberal state. Also a Republican governor, but again, this is a state that has a history of voting for Democrats for president and Democrats for Senate. So, you know, I don't really think of those quite as outliers. In fact, another way to think about the 14 states is that they are all states that vote consistently Democratic. They're all blue states with the exception of two, Michigan and Pennsylvania, which as I pointed out, both have Democratic governors. Both have at least one Democratic senator. Michigan has two, Pennsylvania has one. They're kind of purple states at the presidential level, but again, you could see the overall pattern. Of the 14 states, 12 are Democratic governors, 12 are are not battleground states. For president or in federal elections, two have Republican governors, two are battleground states. So, this is obviously targeted at Democratic constituencies, right? They're not so much interested in getting all of this sensit sensitive information in Wyoming or Alabama or South Dakota or North Dakota, right? You get you get the drill, right? They're they're looking in Democratic states. Now, why do you think that is? Do you think that's be just by chance? Do you think that's just uh because, you know, they they picked those out of hat? No. Because that's where Democratic voters are. And if you're going to steal an election and you're the Republicans, you can't do that by going to North Dakota. You can't do that by going to Wyoming, right? You got to go a place that elects Democrats. Because if you're not going to a place that has Democrats, where are the seats going to come from? where are the House seats going to come from, where the Senate seats going to come from, in a presidential election, where the electoral college uh electors going to come from. So, they're targeting the places that have large numbers of Democratic electors, large number of Democratic House members have two Democratic senators. That's quite a bit further below the surface in our iceberg analogy. The fact that the Department of Justice wants this, and it's not just the Republican party, right? the Republican party was doing this or some right-wing group were doing this, it would not be a low hum. It wouldn't be background noise. If all of a sudden the RNC was suing your state for access to your social security number, your date of birth, your address, all the stuff we went through, that would cause a stir. But by having the Department of Justice do it, by having the patina of career, DOJ officials, First of all, if you're a DOJ right now and you're involved in these cases, I don't give a crap when you started. I don't care whether you've been there for five minutes or five years. I don't care whether you were hired by Pam Bondi herself or Merrick or you were Merrick Garland's favorite uh prosecutor. If you're working for this Department of Justice and you're collecting this records, you're on the bad guy side. That's what's going on in the Department of Justice. And this is a big problem. This is a big challenge for those of us in the pro-democracy movement because the Department of Justice has almost unlimited resources. They have the the impromater of the federal government and what they could do with this information could be devastating to free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028.
Now, I know you're asking why is that? Like, what is DOJ going to do with this? I'll tell you what DOJ is going to do with it. If you want to challenge the outcome of an election, if you want to say there was fraud, the first thing you need is data, right? I mean, you can't say, well, I mean, Donald Trump can. In 2020, Donald Trump just made up that there was fraud, but it fell flat. He looked like a fool. His lawyers got disbarred. Right? If you want to make a credible claim for voter fraud, what you need to start with is a file of everyone's information about who was voting because now you can cherrypick. Now you can say, "Well, this person voted, but we have this information and we don't think that it all squares up. We have their signature. It doesn't look like it matches the one that they returned in their mail and ballot. We have this. We have them living here, but they moved and they say they live there. Never mind. They may be two different people. Their ballot was rejected last time, so maybe it's suspect this time. Right? You can see why having this data set allows you to engage in voter suppression. It allows you to engage in wholesale voter suppression, spreadsheets of names, not oneoffs. Remember what I was telling you all a year ago? Remember what I was telling you all two years ago, four years ago about right-wing vigilante organizations that were building private voter files in order to challenge voters. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Remember that? I wrote about this for democracy. I litigated cases like this and I talked about this on a lot of podcasts and a lot of videos. right-wing groups were compiling lists of voters that they had never met, they didn't know personally, and then submitting those names on spreadsheets to county offices challenging the eligibility of people to be able to vote. I mean, I don't mean just a few, by the way. I mean tens of thousands. I mean hundreds of thousands. In Georgia, it was in the multiple hundreds of thousands of voters who had their eligibility vote challenged by complete strangers. Based on this, we have been able to defeat those third party vigilantes. It hasn't been easy and it's not cheap and it's a hell of a lot of work. You know, defending these county by county, state by state is not easy. And by the way, we're going to see those right-wing election vigilantes back in 2026. I'm not suggesting that problem of these groups challenging voters is behind us. It's not behind us. It's still with us. But dealing with that is one thing. But what if it's guys who are coming in with the official seal of the United States with.gov email addresses who say that they represent the United States in court. It's a hell of a lot harder. I I'll promise you that it's a lot harder. Doesn't mean we won't fight. Doesn't mean we won't win. But it's one thing to, you know, fight some, you know, right-wing nut job who has a lawyer who doesn't know which way is up. It's another thing when the Department of Justice comes in and spews lies about these voters. When they use the voter file information that they have obtained and they stand up and say, "Look, your honor, we have access to the complete voter files. This is not some, you know, partial thing that these right-wing groups got. We have the whole thing and we've done this and we've had the FBI investigated and blah blah blah blah blah and we think that the that there was fraud here. That's a whole different kettle of fish. And that's what Republicans are planning for 2026. And it's not going to stop with 2026. 2026 will be a mess. They're really setting up for 2028.
Now, I wish I could say that it was just this that I could spend a 100% of my time worried about just this one thing. I don't have that luxury because the fact is that the Republican party is also litigating nearly 60 other cases. Yeah, that's right. Not even Republican party and their allies. I just mean the Republican party. They are literally in 59 cases right now. Now, some of them are vote by mail cases. Some of them are purge cases. Some of them are like cases where they want to just make it harder to register or cases where they don't want people to not have to wait in line or cases where they want the ability to challenge voters or intimidate or harass people who are working the polls or near the polls. I mean, these are just like these are just cat and dog cases, but they're across like, you know, half the country. I mean, my law firm and I, we are involved in 65 cases in 30 states as I record this. 65 cases in 30 states. It is December of the off year and we are in 65 cases in 30 states. And we're just one little offer, right? I mean, we punch above our weight, don't get me wrong, but we're like 60 plus lawyers and this is what we're taking on. And I'm talking about the Republican party and all their lawyers on the other side. I'm talking about the Department of Justice and God knows how many lawyers they have. Now look, we're not the only ones doing this work. There are other organizations doing this work. There are other nonprofits doing this. There are other law firms doing this. I don't want to make it sound like we're we're the only one. We may be the biggest we may be the law firm carrying the biggest load. That's almost certainly now true because frankly the cowardice of big law. You know, we talk about the cowardice of big law in what the deal is they made with Donald Trump. What we don't talk about is what it has meant for those of us on the front lines trying to litigate against the administration. Because if you're a big law firm, whether you capitulated, whether you cooperated, whether you collaborated, I mean, pick your word, are you really going to take on a pro bono voting case against this Department of Justice, or you just going to lay low? A lot of them just want to lay low. And so, this has put a lot of pressure on the groups like the ACLU, like a lot of our clients, like the Democratic Party, which I have the privilege of representing in a number of these cases. It puts a lot of pressure on on [snorts] us. And that is part of the low hum. That is part of that background noise that the Republican party doesn't want you to pay attention to when they file the next case about the next county or the next state where they're trying to intimidate election workers or the next state where they're trying to make it a little bit harder for people to vote by mail or the next state where they want to make it just that much longer for minorities to wait in line or even something big like undermining the Voting Rights Act. or taking a mail and voting case to the US Supreme Court. They want you to be desensitized to these things. They want you to not think about these things because they want you to only be focused on the headlines of the day, on Donald Trump's latest outrage, on his latest attack on democracy that does not involve the voting process. They want your attention elsewhere.
Please don't oblige. For the next 11 months, I need you to wake up each and every day with the first question being, what can we do to protect free and fair elections? How can we counter what the Republicans are doing? How can we advance voting rights of every eligible citizen and ensure their ballots are accurately counted and elections are properly certified? I need you to do that every day between now and next election day. Every day that you're not asking one of those questions. Every day that instead you are chasing some other headline. Every day that you are distracted by whatever Donald Trump wants to distract you about. The slow hum of the voter suppression and election subversion war machine becomes a little harder for you to hear the next day. But it doesn't mean that it stops. That war machine's going to keep going. It's going to keep grinding away. It's going to keep grinding up another right for another voter. It's going to keep grinding up the ability for election officials to certify election results. It's not stopping just because you're not hearing it anymore. It's not stopping just because you're not paying attention to it anymore. In fact, it can accelerate a little bit. It can tolerate that hum getting a little bit louder because you're hearing it less and less. The fight for democracy is the fight of our generation. And we are not going to protect any aspect of democracy if we do not protect free and fair elections. And that starts right now. And it does not end until at least the midterms in 2026. But I'll be honest with you, I'm not going to lie and say at that point we can all celebrate and it's over. This is going to be a fight for a very long time. It probably doesn't even end after 2028. We have an entire party that is built around the big lie that celebrates election annihilism that makes voter suppression and election subversion the coin of the realm and it's not going away quickly. And they are counting, Donald Trump is counting on you getting tired of it, of you not wanting to pay attention when the Department of Justice increases the number of lawsuits they filed from 14 states to 18 states. When the Republican Party has gone from 59 active cases to 69 active cases, when the US Supreme Court takes another voting rights case and rules for or against us in the last one. As I said, Donald Trump is very unpopular. There's going to be an endless stream of news that is going to illustrate that. There's going to be an endless effort by him and his supporters to distract you from it. I'm not saying don't pay attention to those things. You can pay attention to more than one thing at a time, but you need to pay attention to free and fair elections first. You need to be paying attention to the voting process in your state and your county and in your town. What's changing? What's staying the same? And I need you to call it out. I need you to help me raise the profile of these voter suppression efforts. The Republicans can only get away with this stuff if no one's paying attention. As soon as people start paying attention, they go say, "What the Why is someone trying to take away my right to vote? Why is someone trying to do away with my dropbox? Why is someone trying to make me wait longer in line?" These are not popular things they're trying to do. They're counting on them being able to do it when no one's paying attention. they are counting on them that they can they can engage in 59 cases and you all won't be able to name any of them. Donald Trump thought he could get away with the redistricting and Democrats would be paralyzed once they stood up and started fighting back. Now they're panicked. So I need you to pay attention in your community. Educate yourself in your community, in your state. And then I need you to post on this in social media. Talk about it in your bridge club. Talk about it to your friends. Talk about it at holiday parties. Do not avoid politics. Engage people in politics. Engage people in the fight for free and fair elections. Tell them that this is the most important thing and that you are watching it and you are here to help educate them so that they can watch it and educate someone else. We need people not to view this as the background hum. If we do that, it will become impossible for Republicans to pull off what they're trying to. That's why I do these videos. That's why I write for Democracy Docket. That's why I founded Democracy Docket. You know, I'm a lawyer. I like litigate cases. I just argued a case in the US Supreme Court. Like, I got a lot of going on. But I do these videos and I post on social media and I founded Democracy Docket and I write for Democracy Docket because of how important it is to educate other people. Because I know that me knowing this stuff alone won't solve the problem. Me litigating it alone won't solve the problem. I need all of your help. And I need all of your networks and friends help. And if we all do that, we'll be able to lift this up.
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