Marc Elias, Democracy Docket TELLS IT ON GOP ELECTION FRAUD

Democracy Docket is the leading digital news platform covering voting rights and elections in the courts — from an unapologetically pro-democracy and independent standpoint.

Covering election and voting litigation is central to our mission.

But today’s battles over democracy — access to voting, gerrymandering, executive overreach, the rule of law and more — also play out in Congress, in the Trump administration and in states around the country.

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MARC ELIAS: We have important breaking news out of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, where a federal judge has blocked the U.S. Postal Service's latest effort to impose a rule in line with Donald Trump's anti-voting executive order.

Now, there is a lot going on here, and it is unfolding in real time, so you got to bear with me because it's going to be a bit of a journey.

All right, so here's what's happened. The Supreme Court, on Monday, issued an order basically throwing out lower-court rulings that had blocked the U.S. Postal Service from moving forward with an anti-voting rule implementing Donald Trump's anti-voting executive order.

You may remember that in March Donald Trump issued this executive order that, among other things, directed the U.S.

Postal Service to change its rules so that it would not deliver mail-in ballots to any voter who is not on a pre-approved list submitted to the federal government.

Now, this rule did a bunch of other stuff in terms of mandating what kind of ballot envelopes are used, imposing a tracking barcode requirement.

So this was kind of a sweeping rewrite of the postal rules as it relates to mail-in ballots.

Some of you know from prior episodes that one of the ways that the Postal Service justified treating mail-in ballots with such suspicion was by equating them to human cremated remains and fake explosives. I'm not making that up.

They literally treated mail-in ballots, pieces of paper, you know, which voters mark, as somehow running the same risk that a box of human cremated remains or a fake bomb would pose in the U.S. postal system.

In any event, that rule was moved through the system.

The Supreme Court said that the efforts to block that rule before it became final were premature.

This is a doctrine known as ripeness.

So essentially, the Supreme Court said, look, you don't know that the rule that the Postal Service will ultimately adopt will be the same as what Donald Trump wants.

You don't know that it will, in fact, issue any final rule.

Well, as soon as the ink dried on that opinion by the Supreme Court, the final rule was put in place, and new lawsuits were filed.

I filed one on behalf of the Democratic Party and congressional leadership.

There were other lawsuits filed on behalf of various nonprofit organizations, and also on behalf of Democratic state AGs.

It was two of those cases, one involving Democratic state AGs and one involving a group of nonprofits, that just hours ago a federal judge ruled in an emergency posture and said that the Postal Service rule needs to be put on hold.

Now, let me tell you first what that means, then I'm going to walk you through some of her reasoning, and then we'll talk about where we go from here.

So we are used to lawsuits being filed and them taking months or years to be resolved.

Sometimes the resolution is faster on what is referred to as a preliminary injunction.

Now, a preliminary injunction, think of it as there is a rush, but it's not an absolute emergency, right?

It's not something that the court has to rule on in a matter of hours or a day or two, but it's something that the court has to rule on in a matter of days or a week or two.

And that's oftentimes, in election litigation, the posture of these cases.

You know, a rule comes out, or Donald Trump issues an executive order, or a state passes a new law, and everybody runs to court and says, Your Honor, it's really important that you move this to the front of your docket, but that means over the next few days or the next week or two.

This case was slightly different.

The parties in Massachusetts told the federal judge that it actually couldn't wait that long, that there couldn't be a rule in place, unblocked, even for the matter of days necessary for the resolution on a preliminary injunction.

So instead, what they sought is a temporary restraining order.

Now, this is a truly emergency motion.

In fact, in some instances, judges can issue these without even hearing from the other party.

That wasn't the case here.

The judge did, in fact, give the government an opportunity to review that motion and to file a response.

That response came in, and then the judge promptly issued the order that we now have in front of us.

The reason why I am going into this procedural posture is because, technically, temporary restraining orders are non-appealable.

They only last for a short time until the court can resolve the preliminary injunction.

So technically, right now, there is a 14-day hold on this rule from the U.S.

Postal Service, and that is supposed to not be appealable.

Again, this is very technical, but it's very important because if, in fact, this Postal Service rule is put on hold for 14 days until it can be finally heard and decided as part of a preliminary injunction, well, that may bring us too far towards the election for, frankly, the Supreme Court or any higher court to restore this rule in time for the 2026 election.

Now, the government, the Trump Department of Justice, they will make the very point I just made in the last point, which is they will say, Your Honor, this is not really a temporary restraining order.

This is really a preliminary injunction, and you cannot allow this to sit in place for 14 days while the preliminary injunction hearing is held because, essentially, if you get 14 days down the road and the Postal Service cannot implement this rule, then that's kind of the end of the story for the 2026 midterm elections.

So that is all playing out on a procedural basis.

But let's talk about the substance.

So, in essence, what the trial court said here is what I have been arguing for months.

It is what, frankly, makes common sense and any first-year law student could tell you, which is that the states, not the federal government, set the time, place, and manner of federal elections.

Let me say this again. The Constitution makes clear that it is the states, not the federal government, that sets the time, place, and manner of federal elections.

Now, Congress can, by statute, override those state determinations, but only by federal law, and the President himself is given no role in the administration of federal elections.

Donald Trump keeps claiming powers that he simply does not have.

So this rule that came out of the Postal Service is out of the executive branch, and Congress has not given the Postal Service the authority to treat mail-in ballots with suspicion.

Congress has not told the Postal Service to treat a category of mail-in ballots as if they are somehow dangerous and need to have these special procedures like, and I'm going to point out again, human cremated remains and fake bombs. Okay?

Like, Congress has not said, treat these law, treat ballots the same way.

In fact, the only person for whom mail-in ballots is dangerous is an authoritarian who does not want people to vote.

And that, my friends, would be Donald J. Trump.

So that is essentially what the court ruled.

Now, I want to walk you through a little bit of the texture of that ruling, to hear it in kind of the judge's own words.

And bear with me here, because we are dealing with this literally on a breaking news basis.

But here is what the judge wrote.

Plaintiff states have neither the time nor funds to design new mail ballots, seek approval of the new designs, order production of mail ballots, update their own election management systems, train election officials to use the USPS portal, and upload citizen data to the portal, all before the midterms.

So that is essentially the basis of this theorem, right?

The judge is saying, look, the federal government doesn't have any authority here, and the burden this will put on the states is so enormous, and since they are the ones charged with running federal elections, they shouldn't have to bear this burden of this last-minute rule.

And then the court holds out the prospect of what I think Donald Trump really wants.

So let me read this to you.

In light of the state election officials' unrebutted declarations that compliance with the final rule at this late date is impossible, the risk of irreparable harm to voters in those jurisdictions is grave.

Now, what the judge is saying is, what if this rule is allowed to go into effect?

What if the states simply cannot comply with it?

For example, what if North Carolina, a state that starts sending out its mail-in ballots on September 4th, what if they can't pull together all of the steps that you just heard they have to pull together in time?

Does that mean that North Carolina can't accept any mail-in ballots?

Does that mean that the U.S. Postal Service won't deliver any mail-in ballots?

What becomes of the hundreds of thousands or millions of voters in North Carolina that are expecting to vote by mail?

What happens to the North Carolina Election Code that has integrated into it mail-in ballots?

Now, I'm just picking one state, North Carolina.

Its Attorney General was one of the plaintiffs in this, but we could talk about other states like California, or states that vote almost entirely vote by mail, like Washington or Oregon or Colorado, right?

What are they to do, according to the judge, if they cannot meet the strict requirements of this rule?

Does that mean, for example, there would be no elections in those all vote-by-mail states?

Because the U.S. Postal Service wouldn't deliver their mail-in ballots to their voters.

And so what the judge is saying is, like, look, we cannot take this risk.

We cannot set up a system where the Postal Service changes these rules at the last minute without any clear direction from Congress, usurping the states' powers, and then just assume that it will all kind of work out.

Because what you may wind up with is failed elections in a number of states, and that violates not just the constitutional prerogative of states to run their elections, but, of course, it violates constitutional provisions about the term of U.S. members of Congress, and, of course, the right to vote in its entirety.

So that's essentially what the judge said in granting this.

Now, I want to point to one other portion, though, of this opinion that I feel like we cannot let get lost.

The record continues to lack any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting.

In any event, the U.S. Postal Service's interest in correcting an unsubstantiated problem through likely unconstitutional means is dwarfed by the overwhelming risk of pervasive disenfranchisement of citizens who need access to ballots in order to vote.

Now, I wanted to read that to you because, of course, fundamentally underpinning the entirety of this effort, all of this litigation, all of the time and the money and the heartbreak that has been spent going back and forth in various courts, all these lawsuits, going to the Supreme Court, coming back, all the hundreds and thousands of comments that were submitted to the Postal Service telling them not to do this.

All of this is because of Donald Trump's lies.

We are being paralyzed on the eve of elections.

We are being subjected to having to bring this kind of litigation because one man continues to tell the same lie day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.

And the truth is, in too many quarters, including in parts of the legacy media, this has just become baked in.

Like, this has become an accepted portion of the debate.

Now, I'm not here to say the legacy media agrees with Donald Trump. In fact, they don't.

But what's happened is we have become desensitized to the absolute lie that is holding America's elections and democracy hostage.

There is no reason why a federal judge should have to be deciding this on an emergency basis.

And the only reason she is, is because Donald Trump cannot accept that he lost the 2020 election and that he is going to lose the 2026 midterms, and that Republicans are going to lose those midterms because he is a terrible president who has betrayed the trust of the people who voted for him and has betrayed his oath to the U.S. Constitution.

And that that profound unpopularity has led him to a position in leading a party that can no longer try to persuade voters, can no longer try to turn out voters, but is left only to try to make it harder for you to vote and easier for them to cheat.

And it is that effort to make it harder for you to vote and easier for them to cheat that leads us in a straight line through courtroom after courtroom after courtroom to this episode right now, in which I am having to explain something that in an American democracy in 2026 would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, but now is all too predictable.

So, look, this judge has done the right thing.

There are still other court cases going on and other judges that will have the opportunity to also do the right thing.

The Department of Justice is going to appeal this.

I started with the procedure here because it is going to drive so much of what happens next.

And I feel like if you are not sort of aware of the questions of, like, what gets appealed and what can't be appealed and where we are in the stages, then, frankly, you're not going to have the full picture.

So the Department of Justice is going to say, look, even though temporary restraining orders are not usually appealable, this is a preliminary injunction masquerading as a temporary restraining order, and we're suffering an irreparable harm.

They're going to have to go through the First Circuit.

Now, they may try to shorten that process to be just a drive-by on their way to the U.S. Supreme Court because here's my analysis.

They're going to lose in the First Circuit.

The First Circuit upheld this judge the first time when she ruled on the merits when the Supreme Court found it was not right.

And I suspect the First Circuit will do that again, and the Department of Justice knows that.

So I suspect what you're going to see now is they are going to quickly try to get this to the First Circuit.

The First Circuit will either say it's non-justiciable because it's a temporary restraining order, or that they want briefing, and DOJ will go to the Supreme Court and say this is all taking too long, and you, justices, need to jump in now.

And then the question is, well, what does the Supreme Court do?

What does the Chief Justice of the United States do?

What does Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote the opinion defending mail-in voting from a Republican National Committee attack, a case that I defended in the Supreme Court and won?

What does she do? What do all of the conservative justices do here?

Do they really want to be remembered as the court that, on the eve of a midterm election, allowed the U.S. Postal Service to do the bidding of a president for the purpose of making it harder for people to vote and easier for him to cheat?

To create a circumstance in which states simply cannot meet the deadlines, and to create chaos and allow Donald Trump to use that chaos to deploy the National Guard, send ICE, seize ballots, and potentially even inspire a violent mob to storm the counting of ballots.

If this sounds fanciful, it sounds alarmist.

Well, look, I'm used to that. I was called an alarmist in 2020, and it turns out I was right.

I've been called an alarmist in 2021, in 2022, in 2023.

Like, I'm used to that. I'm here to tell you that we are in the first innings of efforts to subvert this election.

This Postal Service gambit is just that. It is one gambit among many.

And we are going to see many, many more in the days and weeks to come.

And we are going to have to count on the courts.

We're going to have to count on the legal system.

But we're also going to have to count on state officials and on voters themselves.

So I want you to do me a favor.

I need you to share good information about what is happening.

I need you to sound the alarm.

I need you to use your town square to go out and tell people what is happening, what Donald Trump is trying to do, what the U.S. Postal Service has been willing to do, what the courts need to do next.

So that's what you have to do.

Like, you can start by sharing this video.

You can go to democracy dot gov dot com.

You can share their content.

But whatever you do, make sure you are talking to your friends, your families, your clients, your customers, your bridge club, your mahjong league, your bowling group, whoever it is that you are in touch with.

Because if we do not save free and fair elections in 2026, then our democracy is going to be in peril for decades to come.

I'm Mark Elias, founder of Democracy Docket.

We are committed to keeping you informed about what is happening to voting and elections and democracy in court every single day.

404,056 Views - Aug 27, 2026

In a major win for free and fair elections, a federal judge blocked the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing key parts of Donald Trump’s anti-mail voting order.

In this episode, Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias breaks down Judge Indira Talwani’s critical ruling and reveals how it will impact the midterm elections.

Plus, Marc explains why Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 election results is at the heart of the battles we’re fighting today.

Subscribe to our free newsletters or upgrade to support our work: https://demdock.com/4cc2YMT

00:00 Breaking News: Judge Blocks Anti-Mail Voting Rule

03:00 Understanding the Court's Rulings

08:51 New Lawsuits Filed After Final Rule

12:10 The Lie Holding Elections Hostage

15:04 Looking Ahead: Future Legal Challenges and Responsibilities

Democracy Docket is the leading digital news platform covering voting rights and elections in the courts — from an unapologetically pro-democracy and independent standpoint.

Covering election and voting litigation is central to our mission.

But today’s battles over democracy — access to voting, gerrymandering, executive overreach, the rule of law and more — also play out in Congress, in the Trump administration and in states around the country.

As Trump and his GOP allies work to dismantle our democracy, we’re committed to exposing the threats through in-depth reporting and expert analysis you won't find anywhere else.

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JULY 27, 2026

BREAKING: Trump's DOJ asks Supreme Court to Let Him Block Your Mail Ballot

MARC ELIAS: We have breaking news from the United States Supreme Court: the Department of Justice has just sought an emergency appeal in the case they lost in the First Circuit out of Massachusetts over Donald Trump's executive order trying to take control of mail-in voting.

Hi, this is Mark Elias, founder of Democracy Docket, and for those of you who've been paying attention, you know that in March of this year President Donald Trump signed an executive order, 14399, which he titled—wait for it—"Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections."

Now, that's a propaganda title; what it was really about is trying to take control of voting.

Donald Trump trying to decide, for states, who gets a mail-in ballot and who doesn't, who gets kicked off their voter rolls and who doesn't.

It was a sweeping executive order and a breathtaking, uh, unconstitutional action infringing on the rights of the states.

Now, you may remember there were a series of lawsuits filed against this particular executive order.

My law firm and I, we filed one immediately on behalf of the Democratic Party in Washington, D.C.

The state AGs from the Democratic states that have Democratic AGs, they filed one in the district court in Massachusetts. Various other lawsuits were filed by var- by other nonprofit organizations.

But the one we're going to talk about today is that case out of Massachusetts where the state attorney general from the Democratic states won a critical injunction, and then the Department of Justice appealed, and the states won again.

Well, now, facing the prospect of Donald Trump's executive order going down and not being in place, the Department of Justice has filed this emergency shadow docket appeal.

So, look, I'm going to break down for you what's in this executive order, why Donald Trump issued it, what DOJ is arguing, and where we go from here.

But before I get into any of that, I need you to do me one favor: subscribe to Democracy Docket.

It is the platform that I created in 2020 to keep you informed on everything happening to democracy in court.

It's part of the reason why we're able to bring you breaking news like this on video on this YouTube channel and this podcast, but also on our website and through our free newsletter.

So I'm going to put the link to subscribe in the description of this episode, or go to democracy docket dot com slash YouTube and sign up right now.

All right.

So I mentioned that this executive order comes out—came out in March of this year—and it did five things.

The first, it directed the Department of Homeland Security to work with the Social Security Administration to create a list of U.S. citizens that they believe are eligible to vote in each state.

So, you know, notwithstanding the fact that the Department of Justice has been suing 30 states to get access to their voter files—yeah, you probably know about that if you're a subscriber to Democracy Docket or if you've watched previous videos that we've done—that the Department of Justice has been scrambling to get their hands on the most sensitive voter information that states maintain.

It's a 360-degree picture of you as a voter. It's your name, your Social Security number, your date of birth, a signature specimen in many places.

Whether you're a registered Democrat or Republican, whether you vote in every election or only in presidential years, whether you vote in primaries or not, it's a complete picture, as I said, of you as a voter, and the Department of Justice has been suing to get this information.

Now, that's not the only way they've been trying to get their hands on this data.

And it's not the only database they are using to try to build what is unquestionably a national voter file.

And the reason why they want that national voter file, the reason why they want this data so clearly, is because they then want to dictate to the states who doesn't get to vote.

Which U.S. citizens, they decide, get kicked off.

Sure, it will be an error that they claim after the election, or maybe they'll never admit that it was a mistake.

But in the meantime, they'll be able to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands, if not more, Democratic voters and try to use that to win the midterm elections.

And if you don't believe they're going to be partisan-targeting who they remove, then you aren't paying attention to what's happening to democracy today.

All right.

But this executive order fits into that overall plan, but it sort of also stands on its own two feet.

It directs, in addition to the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Postal Service to only send absentee ballots to voters on approved lists, and requires the states to send those lists to the U.S.

Postal Service 60 days before a federal election. Well, isn't that convenient?

They haven't been able to get this data from the states, right? They're suing them.

So now they've got this new way that they're going to try to get it, which is say, "Hey, New York would be a terrible thing if no one in your state could vote by mail, so why don't you send us a list of all of the people who you want to send mail-in ballots to, 60 days in advance of the election?"

I wonder what they're going to use that list for.

I mean, we know what they're going to use that list for.

They're going to use that list to then say, "Hey, New York, no, no, no, based on these other lists we got, these people don't—can't get absentee ballots. This 10,000, this 20,000, this 100,000, they're ineligible."

And we're going to tell the Postal Service not to send them ballots.

And by the way, New York, if you don't agree with us, maybe we'll criminally prosecute you.

We've seen exactly that rhetoric from this White House, from this administration, in the weeks leading up to the moment we are in right now where the government is at the U.S.

Supreme Court trying to effectuate what they have not been able to get through Congress, what they have not been able to get through the courts. But here we are.

The attorney general is in this executive order directed to prioritize investigations and prosecutions into cases involving ballots sent to ineligible voters, sent to ineligible voters.

Remember, I just mentioned that a few weeks ago, Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen, he was talking about how they might have to prosecute election officials.

We saw letters from the Department of Justice to those election officials, threatening them with potential criminal investigation prosecution.

That didn't come out of nowhere. That's part of this executive order, where they want to prioritize investigation into the people who send ballots to, quote, "ineligible voters."

And finally, states that don't comply with this whole regime don't give up their constitutional power to set the time, place, and manner of elections, which is the power of the states.

It is not the power of Donald Trump. It is not the power of Mark Wayne Mullen's.

It is not the power of the Department of Homeland Security or the Social Security Administration.

And it is not the power of the U.S. Postal Service.

It's the power of the states to set the time, place, and manner of elections.

And states that won't do that, well, they're told they could lose federal funding.

If that sounds familiar, because we've also been hearing that in the last few weeks, notwithstanding the litigation that's going on.

This is an all-out assault on free and fair elections.

This all-on assault has been going on for some time now.

And if it feels like there are different angles and repetitive efforts that Donald Trump is trying, it is because there are different angles and repetitive efforts.

But this particular executive order that was sued over and blocked by a Massachusetts federal district court judge, and blocked by the First Circuit Court of Appeals, and is now on the shadow docket of the U.S.

Supreme Court, well, this is one of the big ones, which is why you need to be paying attention.

It is also the reason why I'm doing this emergency episode, and it is why I founded Democracy Docket in 2020, to keep you informed on what's going on with democracy in court.

We don't do both sides.

We don't do, you know, make nice with the Trump administration, maybe have dinner with them.

I wouldn't eat dinner with Donald Trump for anything.

I wouldn't shake his hand.

I wouldn't chuckle at his jokes.

Legacy media does all those things.

So I started Democracy Docket to be an authoritative source of truth, but pro-democracy information that you need about what this administration is up to.

So please, do me a favor and subscribe to it right now.

The link to do so is in the description of this episode.

It is also available by going to democracy docket dot com slash YouTube and signing up right now.

All right.

So having lost at the trial court, having lost in the Court of Appeals, here we are now in the U.S. Supreme Court in a brief just filed by the Department of Justice.

And they are asking the justices, who are scattered around the globe, right, they are on recess, they're on break, God knows where they are and who's paying for it, but they are not in the Supreme Court building.

They're off doing whatever they do for the summer.

And the Department of Justice is saying, "Hey, justices, we have an emergency. We need you to, right now, reverse this decision by the First Circuit and let this executive order move forward."

And they lay out a couple of arguments for why they think that needs to happen.

First, they argue that the states don't have standing.

I know you may be scratching your head and thinking, "How could the states not have standing?"

I mean, after all, this is a power grab from the states.

It is telling the states that they're not going to be able to get their absentee ballots sent to voters that they—unless they do certain things with the Postal Service.

It is prioritizing investigations, criminal investigations of state officials.

And it is threatening them with, with federal funding.

So you might ask yourself, like, how possibly could there not be standing here?

I am asking myself, how could there possibly not be standing here?

But what the Department of Justice argues is that we—well, you know, it's too early.

I mean, we don't know if anything—things are actually going to happen.

I mean, after all, all we've done is told the Department of Homeland Security to work with the Social Security Administration, but we don't know what they're actually going to do.

We told the U.S. Postal Service to pass a rule to implement this, but gee whiz, maybe they won't listen to us.

I mean, these agencies can be quite independent.

That's a bunch of shit, and you know it and I know it.

These agencies are doing Donald Trump's bidding.

And this idea that it is too early to know whether anything is going to come from it—I mean, that is a level of cynicism.

That is a level of bad faith that is even at the outer margins of this Department of Justice.

I won't say they haven't gone further than that in other cases, but boy, to somehow suggest that the, you know, the Department of Homeland Security might just not do the thing that Donald Trump wants them to do.

That the U.S. Postal Service that has already instituted the rule-making to issue the very rule that this court had to block from being issued, that somehow they might not do it, is crazy.

It's gaslighting. It's lying.

But that's what the administration is trying to sell the Supreme Court and sell the American public.

What else do they say?

Well, you know, we said in the executive order that they should only do these things in accordance with law, right?

So that's like their theory. Their theory is, if we just add "in accordance with law" at the end, everything's okay.

Because after all, the agencies were told, "Don't do anything that's not—that's not lawful."

It's like something you do in a schoolyard when you're, like, in elementary school.

You know, it's ridiculous.

This idea that the administration's argument is we can pass any—we can promulgate any unconstitutional executive order we want, we can force these administration officials to do these things.

But don't worry, we cautioned them, Mark Wayne Mullen, "Don't do anything that might break the law."

We have watched this administration break the law with impunity.

We have watched Cabinet officials justify breaking the law seemingly for sport.

And just putting that phrase at the end does not save this.

It's not some magic trick. And that's not me saying that.

That's actually what the courts have said, is that you cannot save an unconstitutional or illegal action by just adding that phrase at the end.

So that's what they're arguing in court.

They're saying, "Look, there's no standing because it's too early.

And after all, we told them to just be lawful." Note that they're not going out of their way in these filings to explain how, if this thing were implemented, it's constitutional. No.

What they want to do is say it's too early now, allow it to go forward, then after they've gone forward and the states sue again, or my law firm and I, we sue, and say, "Okay, now they're doing the thing," then they're going to be like, "Oh, jeez, it's too late."

"Oh, I mean, it's just too late now."

I mean, we've already implemented this rule. It's too late now. We're too close to the election.

How many times have you heard that before? Remember the Purcell Doctrine?

Doesn't exactly apply here because that deals with legislation at the state level, but that same concept, right?

You know that just as they are saying today, "It's too soon," because nothing has happened yet.

As soon as it happens, they'll say, "It's too late because the thing has happened and it would be disruptive to the elections."

To try to unwind it, having already done the thing that we said that we were going to do and told you was too late to block.

So this is just a shell game.

This is the usual shell game that we get from this administration.

It's a lot of nothing. It's a lot of bad faith.

It's a lot of arguments with a lot of, you know, legalese and case citations that amounts to an authoritarian takeover of elections, justifying what Donald Trump wants to do.

So what happens next?

Well, the Supreme Court will give us a schedule in which to respond.

And when I say "we," I mean the states that are at issue will directly respond, but those of us who represent other parties that may have an interest in this, we can file amicus briefs, right, our own briefs to explain why they're wrong, but the states will have a time to respond.

Others can file, like I said, our own briefs. And then we wait for a decision.

I don't know how much time that will take.

If I had to guess, it'll be a few days, maybe a week, to respond to this.

Then the Department of Justice will file another brief, a reply brief, and then we will get a decision, probably, if I had to guess, sometime in the first week of August.

Now, don't hold me to that. It could be sooner. It could be a little later.

But I think that's what we're looking at in terms of timing.

This is not the first trip that we have had to the Supreme Court this year on something that could be outcome-determinative in elections. You may remember we won a big case, the Watson case, in which the Republican Party was trying to force states to throw away hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots cast by lawful voters simply because the U.S. Postal Service delivered them too late, even though they were postmarked for the election day.

We won that case. The RNC lost that case.

But there's a lot of other cases percolating up through the system, including those 17 losses that DOJ has racked up so far.

My law firm and I, we've intervened, we've been fighting, we're undefeated, they haven't won yet.

But you know that as those cases move up through the Court of Appeals, the Department of Justice will undoubtedly, after they lose, try to get those before the Supreme Court. We're in that season where there's going to be a lot of back and forth in these cases between trial courts and Court of Appeals and even, yes, the Supreme Court.

There's one thing I can't have you do, and there's one thing I need you to do.

The thing I can't have you do is to say, "All is lost."

Donald Trump and this Department of Justice, they want you to say, "All is lost."

They want you to say, "You know what, Elias, he'll never win."

"You know what, these state AGs, no chance. It's rigged before the Supreme Court."

Don't give them that. Hopelessness and cynicism is Donald Trump's friend.

We need to be realistic about the fight ahead.

We need to be realistic about what the Supreme Court is like.

But we also need to insist that the courts do their job.

And in this case, that means restraining a president who is out of control, exerting powers he does not have, and letting the states run elections.

Now, the thing I need you to do is I need you to pay attention.

I need you to share this information.

I need you to share it as broadly and as widely as you possibly can.

You can start by sharing this video. There is a button that says "Share."

How much simpler could that be?

But I also need you to subscribe to Democracy Docket and share its content.

It is putting out news, information, and analysis all throughout the day about what is happening, what Donald Trump is trying to do, what the good guys are doing, what you can do to protect free and fair elections.

We all need to be purveyors of the news, the good news, the bad news, the action items.

We all need to be sharing it with everyone we know, our friends, our families, our clients, our customers, our bridge club, our diner get-together, and yes, even our bowling league.

We need to stand out in our own town square, whether that is with people they know we know on social media or people we meet to play mahjong with.

We need to stand out in that town square and share this information and say that we're not going to let Donald Trump steal the midterm elections.

We are once again going to stop him.

And yeah, the lawyers are going to do their part.

Elias, he's going to do his part, but we're going to do our part as well.

So we, like I said, we can start by sharing this video.

Leave me a comment, because I love reading your comments to find out what we're doing well and what we can do better.

Subscribe to this channel and hit the bell to make sure you are alerted when there's new content.

But really, most importantly, make sure you are subscribed to Democracy Docket by clicking on the link in the description of this episode or going to democracy docket.com/youtube.

When we have more updates, we will bring them to you. Thanks. I'll see you next time.

Trump's DOJ has filed an emergency appeal asking the Supreme Court to let his mail voting executive order take effect before the midterms — a move that could let the administration decide who gets a mail ballot and who doesn't, just months before voters head to the polls for the 2026 midterms.

Marc Elias, founder of Democracy Docket, breaks down what the executive order actually does, why the DOJ claims the states don't have standing to challenge it, and why that argument falls apart.

BREAKING NEWS FROM ELECTION ATTORNEY MARC ELIAS (Democracy Docket) AUG. 27, 2026

TRANSCRIPT: JULY 27, 2026 ALERT: TRUMP'S DOJ ASKS SUPREME COURT TO LET TRUMP BLOCK YOUR MAIL-IN BALLOT

Overview: The Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court concerning an executive order by Donald Trump aimed at controlling mail-in voting and voter rolls.

This appeal follows previous losses for the DOJ in the First Circuit Court of Appeals and a district court in Massachusetts, which had blocked the executive order.

Key Points

• Donald Trump's executive order 14399, titled "Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections," is described as an attempt to control voting by dictating mail-in ballot eligibility and voter roll removals.

• The executive order directed the Department of Homeland Security to work with the Social Security Administration to create a list of U.S. citizens eligible to vote, and the U.S. Postal Service to only send absentee ballots to voters on approved lists.

• The order also prioritized investigations and prosecutions into cases involving ballots sent to ineligible voters and threatened states with loss of federal funding if they did not comply.

• The DOJ's emergency appeal to the Supreme Court argues that the states lack standing to sue and that it is too early to determine the executive order's impact.

• The speaker criticizes the DOJ's arguments as disingenuous and a "shell game" to circumvent legal challenges.

• The Supreme Court is expected to set a schedule for responses, with a decision potentially arriving in the first week of August.

Takeaways

• The DOJ is pursuing aggressive legal avenues to implement President Trump's executive order on election integrity, despite judicial setbacks.

• The legal strategy involves arguing that challenges are premature and that states do not have the standing to contest the order.

• The outcome of this Supreme Court appeal is considered critical for the administration of upcoming elections and the balance of power between federal and state authority over election processes.

• There is an emphasis on public awareness and information sharing to counter what is perceived as an "all-out assault on free and fair elections."

TRANSCRIPT: AUGUST 28, 2026 ALERT: This is a MAJOR WIN for democracy

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