Set for Tuesday, November 3, the United States’ 2026 midterms are a little over four months away. And Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias has a warning: expect President Donald Trump to do everything he can to make the midterms as chaotic and stressful as possible.
Elias, publisher of Democracy Docket and a frequent guest on MS NOW, warned voters to expect the worst from Trump in an interview with The New Republic’s Win McCormack and his wife Carol Butler.
“What we’ve seen from Donald Trump in the past is that he starts with lies; then, he increases the rhetoric behind the lies,” Elias warned. “Then, you see the legal process. And then, when he fails in the legal process, we have violence. And I think that we are on that progression. He has lied about voting, he has now upped the rhetoric for all of the SAVE Act — which began as a proof-of-citizenship law. It’s now become a voter suppression, voter purge, ban on mail-in voting, trans-targeting law, right?”
The Democratic election lawyer added, “So, when he loses in court in the cases I referenced, and he’s not able to pass this law through Congress, as we’ve discussed, I think he’s going to escalate further.”
Elias said of the midterms, “It’s just gonna be a knife fight from here to the end.”
The attorney warned that in November, Trump might send U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to polling places in a blatant effort to intimidate voters. On his “War Room” vodcast earlier this year, MAGA Republican Steve Bannon urged Trump to do exactly that.
Elias told McCormack and Butler, “Let’s assume that they’re not at the polling place, but rather, they are occupying all the parking lots, and they are closing off the streets.… You’re now being told you’re going to have to park a mile away and walk to the polls, right? So, don’t underestimate the amount of voter suppression they can impose, simply through their chaos and contrived inconvenience.”
But the elections lawyer laid out a variety of ways in which Trump opponents can protect the midterms and fight back.
“There are things that lawyers can do which are unique to lawyers,” Elias explained. “There are things that elected officials can do that are unique to elected officials. There are things that philanthropy can do that are unique to philanthropy. But everyone — no matter who they are, no matter what their job, no matter how much they have or don’t have — they do have a town square that they can stand out in and speak out.”
The Democracy Docket founder continued, “Now, some people have really big town squares. You know, they own major media publications. Other people have smaller town squares. It may be just their social media feed, it may be their dinner table, it may be their bridge club or the bowling league they belong to. But everybody’s got some place where they can speak out and be heard. And what everyone needs to do is to use that town square to call out what Donald Trump is up to and what is happening to our democracy.”