"The past month has seen a barrage of election subversion stories that, taken individually, were alarming, but viewed together reveal a deeply disturbing new playbook emanating from the Trump administration ahead of the midterms. On this week's Amicus podcast, Dahlia Lithwick talked with election law gladiator Marc Elias, chair of Elias Law Group and founder of Democracy Docket. Their discussion, edited and condensed for clarity here, highlights a very clear pattern when it comes to Trump and voting: a project that seeks to normalize violence and to test drive the shattering of how elections are typically run. The work of the coming nine months? Keep a close eye on the encroaching lawlessness, don't normalize election subversion, and organize now to protect your friends and neighbors."
"When Steve Bannon pledged last week that ICE is going to "surround the polls"So I guess the follow-up is just my lawyerly question, which is: Of course it's not lawful to deploy federal troops or armed federal law enforcement to polling places. The Brennan Center is very clear-it's a crime for anyone in the military to interfere with elections. So doesn't this discussion begin and end with the fact that you just can't? -that the federal government is going to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to patrol polling stations during the midterms-is he trolling, or something we should be taking literally and seriously? Marc Elias: I don't think he's trolling us, I think he's quite serious. I think Donald Trump wants to maintain optionality here. Trump has put federal paramilitary forces in a number of American cities. Everyone's focused on Minneapolis, but let's be clear, it's not only Minneapolis. Part of it is because he obviously has an anti-immigrant agenda he wants to pursue, but he also wants to normalize the idea of seein"
A surge of election-subversion incidents over the past month forms a coordinated playbook tied to the Trump administration aimed at altering how elections are run. The plan includes normalizing violence, testing paramilitary presence, and using federal law enforcement to intimidate at polling places. Legal authorities state military or armed federal interference with elections is unlawful. Public statements about surrounding polls with ICE raise the prospect of voter intimidation and unlawful deployment. The coming months require vigilance, refusal to normalize subversion, legal challenges, and community organizing to protect voters and election administration.
Read at Slate Magazine
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]