Greetings all. Have a really good one for you today – a new interview recorded late yesterday with Democratic super lawyer and great American patriot Marc Elias. A video recording is above, and a rough transcript can be found here.
This is a wonderful and compelling discussion with one of the true heroes of the moment, and I encourage everyone here to take the time to watch, listen or read the transcript. It’s one of the most important and challenging conversations I’ve hosted this year, and it will help you gain a much greater understanding of what Trump can and cannot do to illicitly try to keep Republicans in power this year.
At the beginning of our conversation I ask Marc the question many of you ask me when we get together – how do we make sure there is a free and fair election this fall, and a peaceful of transfer of power in January?
Here’s his initial response:
Yeah, so the first thing I tell folks is that we’re going to have elections, okay? So anyone who says Donald Trump can cancel the elections, that’s not true. Presidents don’t have the power to cancel elections, and so we’re going to have elections. The question is how free and fair they’re going to be, and that is always a continuum. It’s a continuum even in the best of times. There are friction points in the election process, sometimes intentional voter suppression in the election process that make elections less free and fair than they should be. But we’re not in the best of times. And so Donald Trump is going to try to make the voting process harder, particularly for voters he doesn’t want to participate, namely Democrats.
And he’s going to do that by making voter registration more difficult, by making in-person voting harder, by trying to ban mail-in voting. But he’ll also attack the post-election results. And like you said, we saw that in 2020. We actually saw instances of it in 2022 when, you know, in Arizona, there was a county, Cochise County, Arizona, that refused to certify the election results after 2022. And, you know, my law firm and I, we [had] to sue them and win and get them certified. We had to sue counties in Pennsylvania to get them certified.
The other reason why we didn’t see this flare up in 2024 is really because Donald Trump won the presidential election. But we did see it in a judicial election in North Carolina, where for month upon months upon months, Republicans attacked the results, not just through the normal recount process, which is fine, not just the normal election contest process, which is fine, but by trying to disenfranchise over 100,000 voters who had followed the rules and done everything they were told to by the state to cast their ballots out after the election. Now, ultimately, as a result of litigation that I was involved in and others and the candidate was involved in, we kept that from happening, but we’re going to see that in 2026. So we all need to be prepared for it. We all need to understand the threats that we’re under, but we can’t lose hope, you know, to use your central thesis… Hopium is important because if we give in to despair, we are doing Donald Trump’s work. If we assign him powers he does not have, the power to do anything he wants, that he’s impervious to any court decision, then we are giving him the power that he wants.
And so we can’t do that. We have to every day stand up and stiffen our spine and say we’re going to fight him. In the court of public opinion, we’re going to show up at those No Kings rallies. We’re going to support Democratic candidates and we’re going to make sure they have the resources they need. We’re also going to make sure that we get out and vote for them. And then, you know, the legal process, we’re going to believe in the idea that we can hold bad actors to account and that when we have righteous causes in court, we’ll win.
Amen to all that!
Perhaps the most significant part of our conversation comes near the end when we talk about the need to take this essential work of defending our democracy out of the legal domain and make it central to our politics and our big conversation with the American people. For as I wrote this morning, we should view all these things Trump is attempting and will attempt to do to illicitly stay in power as part of a new, evolving 2026 electoral and political battlefield; and work together to understand, demystify, counter, and win:
Our job now is do what you do when you have new challenges - study, analyze, understand, and come up with a plan to make sure that we win and they lose. That is what politics is about every two years. The battlefield always changes. New issues emerge, new tactics are deployed. Trump changed the battlefield in 2016 by accepting Russia’s massive intervention in the campaign. He changed it again in 2020 through his many failed challenges to the integrity of the election and his failed insurrection. He has tried to change the battlefield this time with his failed mid-district redistricting ploy; through his failed SAVE Act; through his seizing of ballots, his capture of media, his new E/O and god knows what else is to come.
This is our politics now, how they are going to play the game this year. And we need to be ready for it; to talk it out in settings like this so more understand and are prepared; and at some point start talking to the American people directly about what Trump and his allies are likely to do so they too can understand what is attempting to be done to them.
In that vein here’s a new Democracy Docket article on the President’s new Executive Order released last night ; a new, more detailed statement from the Elias law group; and Marc’s statement:
"This is a massive and unconstitutional voter suppression effort aimed at giving Trump the power to create a list of who is allowed to vote by mail. We know where this will go — the targeting of Democrats for mass disenfranchisement."
To stay in touch with Marc’s work be sure to become a subscriber to his excellent site, Democracy Docket.
This memorable conversation is the fourth in a new series of discussions I’ve hosted with leading experts and practitioners on how we can defend and strengthen our democracy, and ensure there is both a free and fair election this fall and a peaceful transfer of power in January.
You can find the first three here:
Enjoy this conversation, and keep working hard all. We have a country to save, and an election to win this November! - Simon
Bio - Marc Elias, attorney and independent journalist
Marc Elias is the Firm Chair of Elias Law Group, a mission-driven firm committed to helping Democrats win, citizens vote, and progressives make change. Marc is a nationally recognized authority and expert in campaign finance, voting rights, redistricting law, and litigation.
As a litigator, Marc has handled hundreds of cases involving politics, voting rights, and redistricting. He has successfully argued and won four cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as dozens of cases in state supreme courts and U.S. courts of appeal.
He has represented the Democratic Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees, several presidential campaigns, as well as dozens of U.S. senators, governors, representatives, campaigns, and other Democratic and progressive organizations.
When Trump contested the outcome of the 2020 election, Marc met every futile challenge at the courthouse, notching over 60 legal victories against the former president and his allies during the post-election period, alone. He has also successfully represented several House and Senate candidates in post-election litigation, recounts and challenges. In 2024, Marc was named to Forbes’ inaugural list of America’s top 200 lawyers.
Marc is also the founder of Democracy Docket, the leading digital news platform dedicated to information, analysis and opinion about voting rights and elections in the courts.
Marc is an alumnus of Hamilton College, Duke Law School and Duke Graduate School. He is a proud owner of a Portuguese Water Dog named Bode.
