Trump, Five Lawyers and Their Conspiracy Against Our Democracy
There is no question that Trump is the ultimate villain of the Jan. 6 insurrection. But he didn’t act alone.

Read in-depth op-eds on voting rights and democracy from our contributors, guest authors and Democracy Docket's founder, Marc Elias. Use the drop-down menu to organize by topic.
There is no question that Trump is the ultimate villain of the Jan. 6 insurrection. But he didn’t act alone.
Ten years ago, in his landmark opinion in Shelby County v. Holder, Chief Justice John Roberts promised that “our country has changed.”
This vestige of Mississippi’s 1890 retrenchment of the doctrine of white supremacy remains in place over 130 years later.
It appears that Ohio Republicans will get away with having defied seven prior state Supreme Court decisions entirely unscathed.
Unable to attract the support of a majority of eligible voters, Republicans are left to try to rig the voting rules and exploit election loopholes.
We cannot let the focus on this one case, as important as it was, obscure the fact that threats to our democracy come in many forms.
As a voting rights lawyer, I babysit Republican lawsuits because democracy deserves the best defense of voting rights.
I believed that Roberts knew better until I read his last words of the term in which he blamed the dissent for the Court’s current predicament.
As the final decisions of the term dropped, it was clear this Court is as extreme as ever.
Writing for a six-justice majority, Chief Justice John Roberts firmly rejected the so-called independent state legislature theory.