It’s Election Day. I’m watching.

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A few days ago, I wrote about the storm before the storm: how free and fair elections have become a full-scale war between a president seeking to undermine and those of us fighting to protect them. So far, we have battled back the storm as we have won case after case in court.

If there is a pause, an eye in the storm, it will be today.

Election Day is as close to a sacred day as a secular democracy can have. The Supreme Court has described polling places as “an island of calm in which voters can peacefully contemplate their choices.”

As a lawyer, my job on Election Day is to watch that island and make sure that the tens of millions of voters who travel to the polls today can cast their ballots. Traditionally, this has meant ensuring polls open on time, voting lines do not grow too long, and addressing any problems that occur.

But this year is very different.

The federal government has turned into a voter suppression war machine. The Department of Justice is running a vast voter suppression effort. The Department of Homeland Security is creating faulty lists and intimidating voters. Even the U.S. Postal Service tried to join the voter suppression effort.

The Republican Party and its allies are filing litigation aimed at making voting more difficult. Their Election Day plans will undoubtedly follow a similar path.

While Democratic-controlled states will do their best to facilitate voting, their GOP counterparts make casting ballots more difficult and potentially threaten to refuse to certify Democrats who prevail.

The magic of Election Day is that it is impossible to know in advance what will happen. We can read polls, but we cannot know who will win or lose. We can predict turnout, but cannot know who will show up.

This year, we have the added uncertainty of what Donald Trump will do. Whatever it is, it will not be helpful. 

That’s why my eyes are keener than ever. I am watching even more closely. My law firm has worked overtime to prepare for one single day. Here is what I will be watching for.

1. Do the DOJ monitors stay in their lanes?

The DOJ has been vocal about its ramped-up poll monitoring effort, which includes about 1,000 DOJ officials dispatched as poll monitors. In defense of its monitoring effort, the DOJ told a federal judge that the officers would not be acting in their law enforcement capacity. The judge was skeptical, warning the DOJ lawyers that there would be “hell to pay” if it turns out they were lying to the court. 

We will find out today if the DOJ was telling the truth. If they were not, we will quickly hear reports of officers intimidating voters, acting aggressively toward poll workers, and blocking access to polling locations. Court action will follow. I hope that is not the case. 

2. Does federal law enforcement violate criminal law?

That leads to the next thing I will be watching for: whether federal law enforcement — such as ICE agents or the FBI — interferes with voting. Legally, these agents cannot be stationed at polling locations, intimidate voters or interfere with voting.  

We have been worried about this for some time. The Trump administration has been banging the drum of alleged noncitizen voting; they may use this pretext to send ICE near the polls even if not directly at them. 

3. Does DOJ try any last-minute litigation?

The DOJ is 1-29 in voting and election cases — including the huge defeat they suffered yesterday in the Supreme Court. As the GOP’s loss becomes clear from exit polls, we will watch to see if DOJ goes to court again.

If the department tries to sue, my law firm is prepared to fight back. I have faith that we will beat them once again. 

4. Does Trump try to seize ballots or election machines?

Donald Trump has had a circus of election deniers in his ear telling him one thing: seize the ballots and the election machines. He considered this in 2020 but did not follow through. This time there will be no one in the White House telling him no. 

Should the election results go in Democrats’ favor, I would not put it past Trump to launch an effort to seize ballots. 

5. Does Trump blame Democratic fraud or GOP candidates for their defeats?

I am almost certain Trump will cry fraud if the GOP loses the midterms. He will claim Democrats cheated and promote outlandish conspiracy theories. 

However, I am interested to see if Trump places any blame on the Republicans who failed to turn out voters or run competitive races. Trump will never take accountability for his own losses, and self-reflection is beyond him. 

But will he place any blame on his own party, or will he just say Democrats ran another rigged election? Only time will tell. 

We are now in the eye of the storm. As you read this, voters are making their way to their polling locations. Ballots are being cast.

By this evening, we will have answers to almost — if not all — of these questions. I am watching closely today, and I am sure you are watching, too. 

I will check back in with you tomorrow. 

Trump’s DOJ is 1-29. I’m not done

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The last several days have shown once again how deeply Donald Trump hates me. In the span of 24 hours, he suggested three times that I am a criminal who should be investigated and prosecuted.

His rage clearly stems from the humiliation I continue to inflict on him and his lawyers in court.

Trump knows well that, in the aftermath of the 2020 election, I helped defeat him and his allies in more than 60 cases challenging the outcome.

In the conventional telling of that period, I led a team of highly skilled lawyers, while Trump had a ragtag team of misfits. While that is certainly true, it obscures a fundamental weakness in the way Trump and Republicans frame their election litigation: they almost always ask courts to take votes away, not to protect them.

I am not claiming that the current crop of DOJ lawyers are all-stars. Many are no better than Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell, the Trump allies who pushed his false 2020 fraud claims and later pleaded guilty in the Georgia election case. But some are experienced litigators who have competently handled government litigation for years.

Yet they continue to show up before judges and lose at an astonishingly high rate.

Since Trump took office, his DOJ has filed 35 election-related lawsuits. It has lost 29 and won one; five are still awaiting a ruling.

In some respects, the DOJ’s 29 losses are more astounding than the 60-plus suffered by Trump’s 2020 team. After all, in 2020, Trump’s lawyers were litigating from behind and under enormous time pressure.

The DOJ, by contrast, is not trying to overcome a nearly impossible deficit. It has had nearly two years to develop a coherent litigation strategy and to bring and sequence its cases to maximize success.

Yet it has almost nothing to show for it.

Its embarrassing record isn’t limited to the cases it files. Nearly every major effort Trump has advanced to undermine elections has been blocked by the courts.

His first anti-voting executive order, which sought to require documentary proof of citizenship to register, was halted in 2025 and permanently blocked this June. His second, issued in March, directed federal agencies to compile “state citizenship lists” and ordered the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to voters on said lists. It was blocked as well.

In October, another judge ruled that the DOJ’s scheme to collect state voter rolls and run them through the SAVE database was unlawful. Most recently, courts have barred the administration from threatening California election workers with prosecution and from sending armed federal agents door to door to question voters about noncitizen voting.

Indeed, it is difficult to find any area of voting and elections where the Trump administration has consistently prevailed.

Of the cases the DOJ filed, its only victory came in North Carolina, and it comes with an asterisk. The department sued the state over a voter registration form that did not require applicants to provide a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number. According to the DOJ, this violated federal law. Rather than fight, the Republican-controlled State Board of Elections chose to settle.

Trump is not interested in protecting voters. He wants the DOJ to file suits that make voting more difficult and subvert election results. That’s why he keeps losing. Most successful voting litigation does the opposite.

Throughout Trump’s second term, the DOJ has adopted his ethos. In nearly every case, it focuses on the rare unlawful voter while showing no regard for the rights of those whose lawful votes might be cast aside.

In Alaska, for example, the DOJ sued to delay certification of the U.S. Senate race and to force the state to segregate ballots, claiming voters might confuse Sen. Dan Sullivan with a candidate who shares his name. That remedy would necessarily compromise ballot secrecy, leaving voters vulnerable to questioning from federal agents about why they supported the candidates they chose.

In California, the DOJ sued to force election officials to set aside roughly 20,000 ballots cast by voters on a Homeland Security list of alleged noncitizens. The DOJ was callously indifferent to evidence that the list swept in U.S. citizens, including people born in the United States. Indeed, even the department’s acting deputy attorney general publicly conceded that the list could contain errors.

It is no wonder the DOJ lost both Alaska and California. But Trump wants these cases filed, and the DOJ under Attorney General Todd Blanche is simply there to file them.

For my part, I look forward to the day when the DOJ returns to its core mission of protecting voting rights. Until then, I will continue to fight against these attacks on voters in court. If history is any guide, that will earn me Trump’s enmity. That’s a price I am willing to pay.

‘That lawyer is me’: Why Trump’s threats won’t stop me

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On Saturday, President Donald Trump said Sen. Chuck Schumer and the lawyer who regularly defeats his voter suppression and election subversion schemes should be “held criminally responsible” over Alaska’s U.S. Senate race.

That lawyer is me.

The cause of his latest ire is the fact that his party is poised to lose control of Congress.

Acting at his direction, the Justice Department has been intimidating election officials and threatening voters. It has sued to obtain state voter rolls and to block states from counting ballots.

In Alaska, Trump ordered the department to sue to block certification of the Senate race if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses to Democrat Mary Peltola. It was a frivolous case, and on Sunday, a federal judge in Alaska threw it out.

But Trump is not deterred. As always, he is escalating his attacks by insisting that the department abuse its criminal investigative powers to do his political bidding.

After the DOJ lost today’s case, he took to social media to attack me again by name. He included me in a short list of people who he considers “CRIMINALS who totally abuse the Laws of our Land, and are destructive to our Country at levels never thought possible before.”

On Friday, the U.S. attorney for Alaska held a press conference in Anchorage loudly announcing a vast criminal investigation while conceding, “I’m not making any assumptions on whether a crime has been committed or not.”

From Trump’s vantage point, this was likely not enough. And with his power slipping away, he is becoming more desperate. So, I expect his attacks on me and others who are standing up to him will increase.

He will try to pressure us to back away from protecting voting rights. He will try to force us to stay silent.

Trump’s many attacks on me are well known.

In 2018, he called me the Democratic Party’s “best Election stealing lawyer.” Two years later, I helped lead the effort to defeat his attempts to overturn the 2020 election in more than 60 court cases, election contests and recounts.

In 2024, he posted an article titled “Marc Elias Is Scared … And He Should Be” and twice posted that, if elected, he intended to investigate and prosecute “Lawyers” he saw as helping political opponents.

He has followed through. In a March 2025 speech at the Justice Department, he called me and another lawyer “radicals” trying to turn America into a “corrupt, communist, third-world country.”

About a week later, he issued a presidential memorandum targeting me and my law firm by name. By then, he had already tried to sanction my prior law firm, citing work I did there in 2016.

Earlier this year, as my firm was defeating the department in dozens of cases around the country, he called me “a terrible lawyer with a horrible track record.”

I could go on. I could list the times his allies have attacked me with lies, the civil lawsuit he filed against me that was dismissed, and his weaponization of government, including the criminal investigation by special counsel John Durham launched during his first term.

But the point is simple. As he posted in 2024, he wants me to be scared. He wants all of us to be afraid to stand up to him.

He wants us to stop speaking out. He wants us to believe that he is so powerful that there is simply no point in fighting back.

To be honest, in too many places, his strategy of fear and intimidation has worked.

Large law firms have sat idly by as Trump and his cronies violate the Constitution and make a mockery of the rule of law. Too afraid to offend Trump, they sit in their fancy offices while small law firms like mine litigate scores of cases.

Large media outlets are in full both-sides mode, with occasional obsessions reminiscent of the “but her emails” craze of 2016. They, too, are hoping to keep their access to the White House and avoid unduly offending its current occupant.

Business leaders are not just silent but complicit. They shower Trump with false praise, lavish gifts and business opportunities for his family.

With the Justice Department losing in court nearly every day, I expect further escalations from Trump and his allies.

Trump wants his Justice Department to be more brazen not only in its words but in its actions. Indeed, he complained to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi — in a now-famous September 2025 Truth Social post — that people saw her department as “all talk, no action” and that “nothing is being done.”

Election Day is Tuesday, but the fight against Trump’s attacks on democracy will continue. Trump can try to intimidate me. He can try to scare. But I have never backed down before — and I will not start now. 

The storm before the storm

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The weekend before Election Day is usually one of my favorite times.

The last campaign ads have shipped, field plans are finalized and Election Day preparations are in place. The fury of last-minute charges and countercharges subsides as candidates try to deliver a positive closing message.

A seriousness settles over the electorate as election officials make final preparations for voting and vote counting.

For a few quiet days, the fate of the election lies solely in the voters’ hands. 

I normally use the time to get organized and catch up on tasks I’ve set aside. I get some sleep, knowing that Tuesday will be a long night. 

It is the proverbial calm before the storm that is sure to come once the polls close and states begin the process of counting ballots and certifying results.

This year, however, has been different. The weekend before Election Day has been anything but quiet. It has been the storm before the storm.

Even with the warnings that Donald Trump would try to rig the election, and even knowing that Attorney General Todd Blanche would carry out Trump’s every whim, I did not expect it to be this bad.

Over the last few weeks, we have witnessed a daily escalation in the government’s assault on free and fair elections. In the last few days, it has reached a level never before seen in this country.

Trump’s Department of Justice is trying to force election officials to set aside, or segregate, ballots it claims are suspect, and it is threatening officials who refuse to comply. It is now using the threat of criminal investigation to intimidate political opponents and their supporters.

On Friday, the DOJ admitted that federal agencies had contacted officials in five states, California, Nevada, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Washington, about voters it claims are ineligible to vote in the midterms. 

The DOJ also revealed that it had sent letters to election officials in all 50 states, warning that they could face prison time if they do not preserve voting records for 22 months after the election.

In Alaska, the DOJ has asked a federal judge to order election officials to segregate ballots based on which candidate a voter cast their ballot for. This is a lawsuit Donald Trump has said he ordered filed. 

It asserts powers the federal government does not possess. It tramples on the right of states to run their own elections and makes a mockery of the Constitution.

Yet Trump’s loyal foot soldiers filed it, and they have been bobbing and weaving ever since to avoid a ruling on motions to dismiss their frivolous case. 

Now they have loudly announced a criminal investigation in the days leading up to the election.

I am not going to bother pointing out the DOJ’s policy against this type of action. Nor will I dwell on the fact that the U.S. attorney seemed unable to articulate what the potential crime would be.

Instead, I will only ask why so few are willing to speak out about what they know is happening.

In the depths of the struggle for civil rights, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that “the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

Now, as we head into Election Day, the question is not whether good people remain. It is whether they will ever speak out.

Instead, they prefer to act like nothing is really that different. This is just another election.

Acknowledging the depth of the crisis would require large law firms to defend the rule of law instead of sitting on the sidelines. It would force corporate titans to speak out instead of cutting deals with Trump. It would make the legacy media confront how their fixation on both-sides coverage has damaged their reputation and failed their profession.

Instead, they all pretend this is a normal election when it is anything but. Better to feign ignorance than to confirm their complicity.

In the coming days, the storm will grow. Donald Trump will escalate his attacks even further. That is what he has done before.

He may disrupt voting or demand more meritless lawsuits and baseless prosecutions. He might insist that ballots be seized and election certifications set aside. He might even try to declare some sort of national emergency.

What he won’t be able to do is change people’s hearts and minds. He can try to rig the maps, suppress the vote and subvert the results, but he cannot change the fact that he and his party are deeply unpopular and that they will lose this election.

I don’t know how big the blue wave will be or how many Republicans will be washed out when this storm finally breaks. 

What I am certain of is that once the election is over, we must stop the DOJ from being used as a tool of naked partisan aggression. And we must insist that more people who claim to be good speak out before the next storm arrives.

At noon today, DOJ must reveal which states it pressured

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We know the Department of Justice is threatening California. We know it is targeting Washington State. We’ve seen its outrageous lawsuit in Alaska.

But what about the states that have not revealed the harassment and threats? What about the red states that are gleefully going along with DOJ’s demands to kick voters off the rolls and subvert elections?

We are about to find out.

After a hearing yesterday, Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to disclose every state where they have demanded that election officials remove voters from the rolls, withhold ballots, or set ballots aside.

They have until noon today to comply.

The order stems from a lawsuit my law firm and I filed against Donald Trump, DOJ, and DHS on behalf of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, the Nevada State Democratic Party, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

The suit seeks to stop the administration’s efforts to coerce election officials into removing voters from the rolls or refusing to count their ballots. The fights in California, Washington and Alaska each involve a single state. Our goal is to stop this illegal behavior nationwide.

As part of this case, we sought emergency discovery into where DOJ and DHS are using these strong-arm tactics. Specifically, we asked the court to require the agencies to:

Identify all States where Defendants have sent state or local election officials communications demanding or requesting that they (i) remove specific registered voters from their statewide voter registration lists; (ii) refuse to issue ballots to specific registered voters; or (iii) segregate, or otherwise not count and tabulate, any ballots returned by specific registered voters for the upcoming November 3, 2026 General Election.

Yesterday, over DOJ’s objection, the court agreed.

Among DOJ’s objections was that the request covered communications from July 1 to the present. DOJ wanted to limit it to the last 30 days. That would have hidden what the agencies did in July, August and September.

The question is why. What are they hiding? What threats have they made? What deals have they cut?

I am not naive enough to think that one court order requiring an answer to one question will end Trump’s assault on free and fair elections. I know that even after this disclosure, much of this pressure campaign will remain secret.

But it is an important step toward understanding the scope and scale of this scheme to corrupt the midterm vote count.

Interestingly, in his order, Judge Boasberg offered DOJ and DHS a way out of answering this question, and out of the entire lawsuit. “Defendants may moot this process at any time,” he wrote, “by filing a notice indicating that they will not engage in the conduct sought to be enjoined in connection with the upcoming election.”

In other words, if Trump and his cronies simply agree to stop threatening and coercing election officials and workers into not counting votes, the entire case will go away. Yet they will never accept this simple resolution.

Trump wants the threats to continue. Indeed, he wants them to escalate. And they are escalating.

According to The New York Times, DOJ has now served grand jury subpoenas on election workers in Los Angeles County, ordering them to appear with records on Nov. 4, the day after the election.

The next step could well be search warrants and threats of indictment.

We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis in which the federal government has weaponized itself against free and fair elections. It is using its vast array of tools and hiding the full extent of its actions from public view.

We will have many more fights in the days and weeks ahead. I have no illusions about how hard this will be. A weaponized federal government is a dangerous adversary.

But at noon today, at least part of that veil of secrecy will lift. We will learn which states DOJ and DHS have been pressuring in the dark, and I will share what we learn as soon as we can.

We have to stand tall and fight back.

Make no mistake about what the DOJ is doing

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The Department of Justice keeps filing lawsuits to undermine our elections. The pro-democracy movement keeps fighting back. So far, we are winning, and the DOJ is losing. But make no mistake: this is unsustainable.

Democracy will not survive a system in which the federal government is constantly trying to rig the rules. Nor can it survive one in which lawyers like me cannot lose a single case without catastrophic consequences.

Last night, a federal district court judge rejected the DOJ’s lawsuit seeking to force California to set aside the ballots of 20,000 voters based on little more than faulty data of unknown origin and unsubstantiated claims of fraud.

This is the second time the DOJ has lost in this case.

The first loss came earlier this week at the Ninth Circuit, where, in an unorthodox move, the DOJ tried to skip the trial court altogether by asking the appeals court to intervene before the trial judge had ruled. It did not work.

Last night’s defeat comes on the heels of a string of voting cases the DOJ has lost.

In 2025, the DOJ lost its bid to defend Donald Trump’s anti-voting executive order, including its proof-of-citizenship requirement.

It has lost 27 straight cases seeking sensitive voter data.

It lost a case over sharing SAVE, a federal database used to verify citizenship and immigration status, with states to check their voter rolls.

It failed to defend the U.S. Postal Service rule that would have restricted mail-in voting.

Nor is the DOJ done losing.

It is nearly certain to lose its frivolous case against Alaska over certification of the Senate election. And it is threatening to sue Washington State (and lose) in a copycat of the case it just lost in California.

All this losing has not deterred the administration from escalating its attacks on our elections. To the contrary, each wave of defeats encourages Trump to propose an even more authoritarian response.

It is this escalation in its war on voting that is so troubling.

At no point in any of these cases have the DOJ or the White House reexamined their stance. Neither has even entertained the possibility that what they seek to do is illegal, unconstitutional and undemocratic.

In the California ruling, the judge observed: “Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch.”

Instead of reflecting on these sobering words, the DOJ immediately filed an appeal.

When I shared the news of this latest decision and the subsequent appeal, several allies assured me it would be fine because my legal team would prevail. While I appreciate the confidence, a democracy that counts on the federal government losing all of its election cases will not remain a democracy for long.

It was one thing to defeat the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell in the aftermath of the 2020 election. It is quite another to pull off the same winning percentage when the Department of Justice is on the other side.

Yet that is where we are once again for the 2026 midterm elections. And those willing to stand up and fight are largely on their own.

Sadly, the legal profession, corporate leaders and legacy media have all failed us. They will risk nothing to ensure free and fair elections.

The largest law firms stand on the sidelines and look the other way as these court fights play out. Corporate leaders are silent about the attacks on our elections. The legacy media is consumed with both-sides coverage and sanctimonious self-congratulation.

The next few weeks are going to be difficult. The lies and threats will intensify.

Trump will grow more desperate. DOJ will be further weaponized against Democrats and anyone else standing in Trump’s way.

More cases will be filed. The DOJ will lose and appeal. All eyes will turn to the U.S. Supreme Court.

I am used to this rhythm. It is my job and my obligation to do my part.

But I am warning you now: this is unsustainable.

Once this election is over, we must do more to protect democracy and free and fair elections.

That means real reforms to how we protect voting rights and how we staff and run elections. The fate of our elections can no longer depend on pro-democracy forces winning every single case in court.

We cannot afford to relive this in 2028 and beyond.

Trump hates me personally. Now he’s taking it to the Supreme Court

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When I tell people that Donald Trump hates me, they often assume I mean it in a generic sense — that he hates Democrats and people who fight him in court. No, I correct them: he hates me personally.

On Friday, he took that hatred to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2022, Trump sued me, along with Hillary Clinton and several others, for racketeering. A federal judge dismissed the case and sanctioned Trump and his lawyers, ultimately ordering Trump and his lead attorney to pay nearly $1 million.

On appeal, a unanimous panel of the conservative 11th Circuit, including a judge appointed by Trump, upheld both the dismissal and the sanctions.

Now Trump wants the Supreme Court to revive his suit and throw out the sanctions.

His lawyers argue that he deserves extra time to sue because he set the case aside while serving as president. They also claim the Court must step in to protect the presidency from judges who punish its lawyers.

That is nonsense.

Trump filed this suit as a private citizen, between his two terms. The 11th Circuit found his claims not only too late but “otherwise meritless,” and it agreed that many of the legal arguments he and his lawyer made were frivolous.

I became a defendant in this lawsuit because, in 2016, I represented Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. 

When Russia hacked the Democratic Party and the campaign, my role as general counsel required me to understand what happened. That required assessing Russia’s interest in interfering in the campaign, weighing legal options and risks.

At a news conference in July 2016, Trump said: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

On that point, Trump was right.

The legacy media basked in every email leak. The fact that they were the product of a foreign government’s effort to swing the election did not matter to them or their corporate bosses.

“But her emails” became shorthand for that coverage, and the legacy media has never reckoned with it.

That failure, like its coverage of the Iraq War in 2003, is part of the reason Democrats’ confidence in the legacy media has eroded. I believe it is also why independent outlets like Democracy Docket have grown while the legacy media struggles.

Once he became president, Trump waged a multi-year war against me and others who worked for the Clinton campaign. During his first term, his supporters spread lies and misinformation. Ultimately, his Department of Justice appointed a special counsel to pursue us.

Anyone who thinks weaponization started in Trump’s second term has forgotten John Durham’s appointment and the partisan witch hunt that followed.

After three and a half years of nonstop investigation, Durham charged just three people. One was an FBI lawyer with no connection to the campaign. He pleaded guilty to altering an email and was sentenced to probation.

The other two were charged with lying to the FBI, went to trial and were quickly acquitted. One of them was a former law partner of mine.

Durham clearly hoped to dig up dirt on me, but in the end, he failed. I was never charged.

The experience left me with a keen understanding of how Trump can turn his army of supporters against someone while casting himself as the victim.

In the years that followed, Trump found new reasons to despise me. In 2018, during Florida’s Senate recount, he called me the Democrats’ “best Election stealing lawyer.”

After the 2020 election, I helped lead the legal effort that defeated him and his allies in court more than 60 times. Yet once again, he managed to paint himself as the victim.

In the years since, Trump and I have fallen into a familiar pattern. He attacks me and sics his MAGA allies on me. I beat them in court.

Since retaking the Oval Office, Trump has not let up. He targeted me in a speech at the Department of Justice. He also named me in a presidential memorandum and an executive order aimed at my former law firm. His legions of supporters spread lies and make threats.

But I refuse to cower. Unlike too many big law firms, I did not back down or cut a deal when Trump came after me. I stood tall and fought back.

Now Trump is back before the Supreme Court, trying to salvage a case he never should have brought. I don’t expect the justices to agree to hear it. For this lawsuit, it is the end of the road.

But Trump never gives up, and he has shown he is willing to weaponize the government against his political enemies. I am one of them, and I will always be on his list.

I worry about what that may mean for the future. I would be insane not to.

But I wear his scorn like a badge of honor, because I know where it comes from.

He hates that I won’t be intimidated. He hates that I speak out without fear. Most of all, he hates that I win.

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Justice Jackson found a bright side. I am not sure I see one

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I am not an optimist by nature. When it comes to Republicans’ willingness to skirt the law, violate norms and disregard precedent, I don’t dwell on what might go right. I obsess over what can go wrong.

So when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Trump administration can resume using its voter suppression database to help Republicans remove voters from the rolls, I called it what it is: a terrible decision that will empower election deniers at a time when our elections are already under attack.

Since then, some lawyers and pundits have argued that the decision’s impact will be quite limited. They point to a passage in the dissent suggesting there might be “a bright side to today’s opinion.”

Because federal law bars mass removals of voters in the 90 days before Election Day, Justice Jackson argues, the ruling “will likely have minimal short-term impact, as States will at most conduct individualized voter-roll maintenance using the modified SAVE system.”

Let me begin by saying that I agree with Justice Jackson: federal law prohibits mass voter purges close to an election, and only individualized removals are permitted. I also agree with her that even these individual removals pose concrete harm to lawful voters and undermine free and fair elections.

But Justice Jackson was writing in dissent. The majority opinion is far cagier on this question. Indeed, the Court has agreed to hear a case later this year that could test exactly this interpretation of federal law.

Justice Jackson’s optimism rests on the majority’s acknowledgment that the quiet period “limits the potential impact” of its ruling. But read the rest of the passage, and the bright side dims considerably.

The majority went on to say that the lower court’s order prevented “the Federal Government from using the modified SAVE program to conduct individualized inquiries, which are permitted under federal law during this period.”

Then, in a footnote, the conservative justices added that they will consider the scope of the quiet period in a separate case scheduled for argument later this year, and that “we do not need to decide it here.”

In that case, Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, which the Court will hear in December, the RNC, backed by the Trump Justice Department, argues that Arizona may cancel the registrations of voters it deems noncitizens during the 90-day quiet period.

Put simply, Justice Jackson’s “bright side” depends on Republican state and local election officials following federal law, and on the Supreme Court holding firm if election deniers try to purge voters.

If the past is prologue, the signs are not hopeful. 

In 2024, the Supreme Court let Virginia resume a noncitizen removal program launched on the first day of the quiet period, over the objections of the district court and the 4th Circuit. It never explained why.

For its part, the Trump Justice Department has already told a federal appeals court that it does not read the quiet period the way Justice Jackson does. In March, it argued that the quiet period “does not apply to efforts by a State to remove noncitizens who could never have qualified as ‘voters.'”

Under that theory, systematic purges of alleged noncitizens could continue right up to Election Day. 

This is exactly what the DOJ is arguing in Mi Familia Vota. It asserts that federal law does not protect people “who were ineligible and improperly registered to vote in the first place.” and it insists that “systematic checks within the 90-day window are the only way” for states to keep noncitizens off the rolls.

Admittedly, when this case was before the D.C. Circuit, the DOJ conceded that the “90-day limitation was ‘fatal'” to a claim of imminent harm premised on systematic voter-roll maintenance. But this DOJ is shameless, and it will reverse course whenever it believes doing so will help Trump suppress the vote. 

It already has. 

In its Mi Familia Vota brief, the DOJ admits that it “previously construed the NVRA the same way” that Justice Jackson and I do. But after Trump came back into power, the DOJ says that now it  “has reached the opposite conclusion.”

Justice Jackson is right about the law. If I had confidence in Republican election officials, the Justice Department and the conservative Supreme Court majority, I would be less worried.

But I don’t.

With little more than a month to go until Election Day, my job is to worry. I am paid to look around corners and see what might go wrong, not simply to assume that everything will go right.

Donald Trump knows his party is going to lose this election. He has escalated his attacks on our elections at every stage. Last-minute voter purges and mass voter challenges are not out of the question.

I am confident we have the legal tools to fight back, but I don’t accept that these threats won’t materialize.

That is why I don’t see the bright side. The quiet period is only as strong as the officials who obey it and the courts that enforce it. I trust neither.

Hoping for the best is not a strategy. Being ready to fight is.

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Here is Trump’s blueprint to rig the 2026 midterms

This piece was originally written for Democracy Docket members. We’re sharing this one with everyone because the stakes for this election are too high not to. Become a member to get Marc’s exclusive analysis first.

We are less than two months until Election Day for the most important midterms of our lifetime. Ballots have already started to be sent out. The threats to free and fair elections are real and growing more serious by the day. 

What once seemed like an abstract threat has now become concrete. The risk of a rigged election is no longer unthinkable. The need for action can no longer be delayed or denied.

I have often said that Donald Trump’s plan is to make it harder for you to vote and easier for him to cheat. Now we know what that will look like in 2026.

Donald Trump issued an executive order claiming powers over federal elections that he does not have. In response, the U.S. Postal Service is trying to ram through a rule that will make voting by mail more difficult while requiring states to turn over sensitive voter data.

The Postal Service has not been shy in making clear that it is taking these steps to allow federal law enforcement to conduct criminal investigations of alleged voter fraud.

That is not all the USPS has done to make voting more difficult. A series of smaller changes have resulted in slower mail service and delayed postmarks on envelopes. While these are not limited to returned ballots, the results have been devastating for those trying to vote by mail.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice continues to sue for access to states’ complete voter files, while the head of its Civil Rights Division is threatening to deploy 1,000 federal agents to “monitor” polling places in the midterm elections.

The Department of Homeland Security is readying so-called state citizenship lists to send to states, a thinly veiled threat to state officials to purge voters… or else. And things are escalating quickly. Now word has come that the DHS will launch a massive witch hunt to investigate evidence of nonexistent, widespread voter fraud.

The weaponization of government against Trump’s political enemies is in full swing and out in the open. Under Trump’s direction, the DOJ will now target state election officials under the guise that they have permitted illegal voting.

Republicans and their allies are litigating to make voting more difficult and election subversion easier. Recently, the Republican National Committee joined the Trump administration in asking the Supreme Court to gut a federal law that limits last-minute voter purges. 

Election offices, which in the past served to protect the integrity of elections from attacks by bad actors, are now being overrun and infiltrated by election deniers trying to sow doubt from the inside.

Individually, each of these developments is troubling. Collectively, they paint a damning picture of an authoritarian president trying to rig the vote before it happens. This government-sponsored voter suppression is on a scale we have not seen in our nation’s history.

While nearly all of what I describe above is undisputed fact, it has been normalized by a legacy media intent on not taking sides. That must end now.

In the past, some have called me an alarmist. Critics have accused me of being too aggressive in fighting back. They suggest I find more room for compromise and seek bipartisan solutions.

There is no virtue in turning a blind eye to voter suppression to meet Republicans halfway. There is no vice in remaining firm against election subversion, even if it requires standing alone.

It is not spreading conspiracy theories to draw the obvious connections between the individual efforts of this administration and their GOP allies to obstruct free and fair elections.

Donald Trump is the unquestioned originator and leader of the election denier movement. But he is not its only adherent.

The plan to subvert the midterm elections may have originated in the White House,  but it is being carried out by dozens of federal agencies, outside groups, and Republican officials.

Defeating it in the short time remaining will require a similarly focused effort by the pro-democracy community. That means recognizing the strengths that we all bring to this fight.

As Election Day nears, Democratic candidates and parties will necessarily step to the forefront in the courtrooms. As I often point out, it is no coincidence that the 2000 election was decided in a case captioned Bush v. Gore. Nor was it by chance that I represented Joe Biden and the Democratic Party in more than 60 cases in the 2020 post-election litigation.

The role of candidates in litigation has become more important. The Supreme Court recently granted them unique standing to challenge nearly all election rules and laws. According to the Chief Justice John Roberts, unlike other potential parties to litigation, “candidates suffer when the process departs from the law.”

That does not mean there is not an important role for other pro-democracy organizations to play in the courtroom and out. On the contrary, providing nonpartisan information to voters, organizing direct action and supporting election officials who do the right thing are vital to our system of elections.

The most important work, however, belongs to the citizens of this country. Each of us must make sure we understand the rules for registering to vote and casting a ballot. We must share that information with those in our circles of trust.

We must also call out the efforts to suppress the vote for what they are — an assault on democracy. We must insist that our election officials, regardless of party, stand up against those barriers. And, after the ballots are cast, we must remain engaged until the accurate results are certified and the rightful winners take their seats.

The next few months will be long and hard. But democracy is worth the fight.

DOJ is 0-23 in court, so now it’s sending 1,000 monitors to the polls

This piece was originally published for Democracy Docket members only. We’re sharing it more widely because it felt too timely to keep behind the paywall. Become a member to get Marc’s exclusive notes first.

Donald Trump’s Justice Department took a major step toward subverting elections this fall. On Monday, it quietly announced that it will deploy 1,000 election monitors at polling places during this year’s midterm elections.

The news came a day after Attorney General Todd Blanche floated taking the DOJ’s fight for state voter data to the Supreme Court. These two events are surely connected, and how they are resolved will directly impact how free and fair the midterm elections end up being.

The last few months have been a series of humiliating defeats for Trump and his hand-picked DOJ. The Department has seen high-profile criminal cases collapse and has suffered embarrassing reversals in court.

Blanche was forced to abandon the bogus slush fund he negotiated to secure the votes necessary to be confirmed as attorney general. The DOJ lost in the Supreme Court on the president’s signature issue — birthright citizenship.

Then there are the repeated failures to enact the SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. Trump has not only staked his political credibility on its passage but clearly sees it as essential to Republican victories.

Against that backdrop, the DOJ’s signature election litigation initiative has turned into a complete debacle. By the time Blanche told Kristen Welker that the Department might bring the voter file cases to the Supreme Court, the DOJ was 0-22. By the end of Monday, it was 0-23.

It is into this maelstrom that Harmeet Dhillon announced the DOJ would deploy 1,000 election monitors. While the DOJ has historically sent election monitors to places where minority voters and the disabled have suffered discrimination, the proposed deployment is much larger — and far more ominous.

At one level, this can be explained as a needed diversion from the narrative that Trump is losing in the courts. But to dismiss it as simply a short-term PR stunt ignores how it fits into Trump’s broader plan to subvert elections he is nearly certain to lose.

In making the announcement, Dhillon directly referenced deploying monitors to “places where there might be voter fraud issues that we have seen.” Such places, of course, do not exist, because voter fraud is virtually nonexistent. More importantly, when it does happen, it is opportunistic and scattershot — not concentrated and predictable in a way that lends itself to monitoring.

In reality, this is nothing but a smokescreen to justify the widespread deployment of federal agents at polling places. The Civil Rights Division doesn’t even have the number of employees necessary to meet Dhillon’s commitment.

To deploy 1,000 monitors, the DOJ will necessarily need to rely on untrained personnel from other parts of the federal government. While these may come from other sections of the DOJ, there is no guarantee that the Trump administration will follow the law and regular practice.

Instead, we should assume they will assert powers they do not have in order to achieve Trump’s political goals. That is what we have seen time and again from this administration and this Department. With control of Congress in the balance, it is what we should expect here.

Even if most or all of the monitors are DOJ employees, we should assume they will be drawn from the ranks of the most eager Trump loyalists. Whether political appointees or simply employees seeking to curry favor with Blanche and his leadership team, the result will be the same.

Either way, these monitors will not be judged on honest reports of what is happening at the polls. Rather, they will be expected to generate information that can be weaponized against voters and election officials, so that results can be cast in doubt and certifications challenged.

Already, Dhillon is falsely claiming that some election officials are “knowingly allowing noncitizens to stay on the voter rolls” — noting, ominously, that “this is a federal crime.” I wish I could say this intimidation won’t work. In many places it won’t. But in some communities, it may.

In response to this announcement, some former DOJ officials will no doubt revert to the norms of an era that no longer exists. They will explain that the DOJ has been monitoring elections for decades. They will assure the public that good civil servants still remain in the Department.

We simply cannot entrust the future of our elections to nostalgia for a Department that no longer exists. There was no doubt a time when lawyers at the DOJ were unquestionably the good guys — protecting minority voters from racial discrimination at the polls. But that is not the case today.

Today, the DOJ is run by the president’s former defense lawyer. It is staffed in the senior ranks by election deniers and Trump sycophants. Its Voting Section is no longer working to aid voters but to undermine the franchise.

That is why the DOJ wants your voter data. It is why Blanche will no doubt take that fight to the Supreme Court. And it is why Dhillon announced the deployment of 1,000 election monitors.

Analysis like this from Marc always lands exclusively in members’ inboxes. If this one resonated, become a member so you don’t miss the next one — and support our mission as a pro-democracy newsroom that never pulls punches.