Advertise on podcast: Defending Democracy with Marc Elias

With less than a week before the final midterm election ballots are cast, Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias has been inundated with questions about what issues are putting him on alert. In this episode Marc outlines his top five concerns, from most immediate to most dire - including meddling by the Trump administration and the servile red state officials that seem willing to do anything to keep hold of power in Congress.

When reporters asked Attorney General Todd Blanche if the Justice Department might try to block states from certifying midterm results, he didn’t say no. “Of course there are scenarios that we could all come up with hypothetically — some doomsday scenario,” he said. The federal government has no power over state certification. But this administration keeps leaving the door open to interfering with elections. Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias breaks down what Blanche said and why it’s a warning sign for what's to come.

On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, hours before the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton took the stage at Donald Trump’s rally and told the crowd, “We will not quit fighting.” Now he’s running for the U.S. Senate.Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias walks through Paxton’s record of attacking free and fair elections. He sued to throw out the results in four states at the U.S. Supreme Court. His office spent more than 22,000 hours hunting for voter fraud and produced 16 prosecutions. He went after election officials, campaign volunteers and Beto O’Rourke. With Senate control on the line and Election Day less than two weeks away, Marc explains what’s at stake in Texas and why we all need to be paying attention if the race is close.

Michigan GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers was caught on leaked audio telling county Republicans he wants the Republican National Committee to send retired or off-duty police officers to polling places in Detroit — and only Detroit — as poll watchers. “All you got to do is open your jacket and you see the badge on the belt,” he said. As Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias explains, this isn't a new tactic. In 1981, the RNC sent armed off-duty police officers to polling places in Black and Latino neighborhoods in New Jersey. The lawsuit that followed put the RNC under a court order that barred these programs for more than three decades. That order ended in 2017 as Donald Trump began his first term.

On the first day of early voting in Texas, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney stood next to a Bible and a framed photo of Donald Trump and warned election officials: “I will hunt you down and prosecute you.” Days earlier, the Justice Department’s No. 2 official told California election officials they could face criminal charges for counting about 20,000 ballots the administration calls “likely non-citizens.” The same official later admitted, “We’re not perfect.” Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias explains how Trump left election officials with no good options and why it’s part of a larger plan to challenge the results after Election Day.

With two weeks until the midterms, Donald Trump’s attacks on our elections have reached a dangerous new stage. Last week, the Department of Justice demanded that California and Los Angeles County review about 20,000 voters it claims may not be citizens. It gave officials 48 hours, then sued. By Friday, the DOJ’s No. 2 official was warning that election workers who count those ballots could face criminal prosecution. Over the weekend, Trump said California election officials will “all go to jail for a long period of time.” In this episode, Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias explains why the administration’s numbers keep collapsing under scrutiny, why California is likely only the beginning and why the legacy media and big law firms are staying silent.

The Trump Justice Department is threatening California election officials with criminal prosecution over how they handle ballots. Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias breaks down the DOJ’s latest threats, what they mean for election officials and the potential implications for the 2026 midterms.

In a major escalation three weeks before Election Day, Trump’s DOJ is in court trying to stop 20,000 votes from being counted. But where did this list come from, and what does DOJ plan to do with it? The answers are in DOJ’s own lawsuit, and they’re more alarming than you’d think. Democrats are already warning in court that this could be a first step toward federal agents seizing ballots. Meanwhile, a federal judge who struck down DOJ’s voter roll scheme wants answers by Monday, and Trump’s allies are openly talking about martial law.Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias breaks down what’s really going on and what comes next.

Early voting has already started, but that hasn't stopped the Trump administration from meddling in elections and continuing to suppress the vote. DOJ just dropped a list of voters it wants disqualified and has threatened legal action against a key state in the midterms if they don't comply with their ridiculous demands. Join Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias LIVE as he breaks it down. Trump defied a judge's order to stop putting out self-aggrandizing political ads, and once they stopped airing on TV, he took them to YouTube – further placing himself on the wrong side of the law. Republicans in Georgia want to appoint election deniers to the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, but the Georgia Supreme Court doesn't seem very eager to overrule the Board of Commissioners that rejected the nominees last year.

Over the weekend, a federal judge issued an injunction barring Trump's self-aggrandizing, illegally taxpayer-funded ads from being aired, but they continued to play anyway. The Trump administration has made a habit of ignoring court orders and blowing through deadlines and giving lame excuses. The reason they are able to continue doing so is because the federal judiciary has yet to hold them to account for their flagrant disregard for the law. Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias explains why federal judges need to stop extending the Trump administration any benefit of the doubt in order to protect our elections and the rule of law, and discusses why using your individual voice to spread news of Trump's defeats is essential.

Donald Trump has attacked Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias personally for years, because he knows Marc is a bulwark against his illegitimate claims of election fraud. The truth is Trump has racked up losses in court, including in his 2022 lawsuit against Marc and Hilary Clinton, who he accused of racketeering. A federal judge not only dismissed that case, but sanctioned Trump and his legal team, ordering them to pay nearly $1M. Last week, Trump revived that baseless grievance by taking his hatred for Marc Elias all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.In this week's episode of Election Watch, Marc Elias explains why he keeps fighting and winning against the corrupt Trump legal apparatus in defense of free and fair elections – and why our obligation as pro-democracy citizens is so important to upkeep.

Trump's most fervent election denier allies are begging him to take over voting machines and ballots just weeks before the midterms. Join Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias LIVE as he breaks it down. Tina Peters’ lawyer says her plan is to grab ballots “as soon as the machine spits them through.” In 2020, Trump’s own lawyers stopped a plan to seize machines. But who is stopping them this time? Marc also covers a MASSIVE court win: A federal judge just shut down the Trump DOJ’s nationwide voter data program, which handed millions of voters’ records to ICE. But ICE isn’t done. It investigated hundreds of voter registration groups and won’t say whether agents will show up at the polls.

ICE never wanted you to see these: internal government documents obtained by legal nonprofit Democracy Forward show that Homeland Security Investigations has been probing nonpartisan groups that help register citizens to vote in battleground states. They even went so far as to outline a plan to use undercover agents to target these nonprofits for registering "illegal alien" voters, though no evidence of such activity appears to have been found. ICE also collected tens of millions of voter records and considered feeding state election data into a system used to locate people for deportation. Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias details the explosive findings and explains how deeply ICE has become involved in elections.

Less than 30 days before the midterms, Trump told a reporter that anyone looking for mail voting fraud should "start off by taking a look at California." Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias explains the real reason Trump is targeting the state: its 52 congressional seats could decide control of the House. Because California counts mail ballots for days after the election, Trump will have a window to lie about the results and try to interfere.

When asked earlier this year if he regretted not seizing voting machines and ballots after the 2020 election, Donald Trump said, "Well, I should have." Now he's telling us exactly what he plans to do in this year's midterms, and this time, we should believe him. Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias explains why the biggest threat may come after the polls close and what you can do to stop it.