This article is written by Marc Elias. Elias is an attorney whose work has focused on protecting our right to vote. Elias has filed and won several cases against Trump’s attempts to take over our elections — he continues this work.
To understand American politics in 2026, it is important to remember that most events are explainable, at least in part, by Donald Trump’s insatiable appetite for power — and that the greatest threat to that power lies in the midterm elections. Other issues like tariffs and immigration may motivate some of his actions, but election denialism and its twin manifestations — voter suppression and election subversion — are always at the heart of his decision-making.
Once you start looking for the signs, it is something you cannot easily unsee or ignore. For example, shortly after launching a military assault on Iran, Donald Trump posted on social media that “Iran tried to interfere in the 2020 and 2024 elections to stop Trump and now faces renewed war with the United States.”
False claims that foreign government interference caused him to lose in 2020 have been a staple of the diet of lies Trump feeds to his faithful. The countries may change — Venezuela, China, Italy, Cuba, Iran — but the purpose of the lies remains the same.
Since taking office last year, another consistent theme has been his administration’s quest for data on American citizens — in particular, those who might vote in 2026. I have written before about the demands made on states to turn over their most sensitive voter data to the Department of Justice.
As states have refused those requests, the DOJ has sued them, and my law firm has fought back. We have intervened to protect voters from having their personal information and voting history turned over to a DOJ that has proven itself to be nothing more than an extension of Trump’s political will.
So far, we are 3-0 in cases that have been decided. On Wednesday, the DOJ filed its first court notices that it will appeal those losses.
The following day, a frustrated Department of Justice filed five new lawsuits seeking access to this sensitive voter data. The cases filed against Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia and New Jersey are the first to target red states.
These five new cases bring the total number of DOJ lawsuits seeking this data to 30. My law firm intends to seek to intervene in these cases as well. Altogether, we are litigating 86 voting and election cases in 41 states. With these five added, our 60-lawyer firm’s caseload will swell to more than 90. And it’s only March.
Friday saw a dramatic escalation in Trump’s efforts to collect data on U.S. citizens. Sandwiched between the new voter data lawsuits and the military action in Iran, Trump attacked Anthropic, one of the leading artificial intelligence companies.
The dispute centers on Anthropic’s refusal to allow the Pentagon to use the company’s AI product, Claude, to conduct mass surveillance on American citizens.. Denouncing Anthropic as “woke,” “radical left,” and “left-wing nutjobs,” Trump threatened to cut off their government contracts and prohibit federal agencies from using their product.
It has never been clear what legitimate use the Department of Justice has for collecting sensitive voter data — including partisan vote history — on every American who has ever registered or voted. It is even more alarming to learn that the Department of Defense rejected a request to refrain from using powerful AI tools to conduct mass surveillance on American citizens.
As we head toward the 2026 midterms, Donald Trump is seeking to have his government collect massive amounts of information — including personal and partisan voter data — at an unprecedented scale. He is trying to pressure AI companies into allowing unrestricted use of their powerful models and tools against American citizens. And he continues to spread lies about why he lost the 2020 election.
All of this is happening on the heels of his DOJ raiding and seizing ballots from Fulton County, Georgia. And make no mistake: Trump’s suggestion that Republicans should take over voting in at least 15 unspecified places was no slip of the tongue. Meanwhile, reports indicate that he is preparing to issue a new executive order that could ban voting equipment and mail-in voting, while imposing new burdens on voter registration and in-person voting.
I do not traffic in or promote conspiracy theories. But I also refuse to turn a blind eye to what is plainly happening to our democracy.
As the news cycle turns from one crisis to another — from Epstein to a partial government shutdown to war in the Middle East — Donald Trump’s election subversion efforts continue to grind forward ahead of November.
Trump wants us to be distracted — not by one scandal or another — but from the groundwork he is laying to undermine free and fair elections this fall. Data collection is a major part of it. Spreading election lies is another. Making voting harder for those who oppose him is critical, as is positioning himself to seize ballots and take over vote-counting if he deems it necessary.
Those of us in the pro-democracy movement must not allow ourselves to ignore what is happening or delay preparing for the fights ahead. I am engaged in that fight every day — in court and in these newsletters. I hope you will join the effort in the best ways you can: by paying attention, connecting the dots, and calling it out as loudly as possible.