Can the Courts Stop Trump’s Power Grab? (Feat. Marc Elias)
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Who is Marc Elias and why is he significant in the fight for democracy?
Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Jessica Tarlow, and I have a great guest today, attorney Mark Elias. If you care about voting rights, you probably know his name. With his firm Elias Law Group and his platform, Democracy Docket, which I visit constantly, Mark has been at the forefront of legal battles in campaign finance, voting rights, and redistricting law. Just recently, his firm helped strike down an Arizona law that would have forced voters to show documentary proof of citizenship in presidential elections. And let's not forget, Mark has also been making headlines for his open letter to Elon Musk, firing back after Musk took a swing at him on X. We'll get into all of that, but first, Mark, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here.
Thanks for having me. I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan, too. Yay. I wanted to start... With a general question, we're, I don't know what the actual count is, 44 days or something into Trump 2.0. However many days it is, it feels long.
How is Trump attempting to expand executive power and what are the legal implications?
Yeah, I'm very proud of the fact that I don't have any gray hairs yet. And my husband is bracing for impact because he's like, if anything is going to do it, it is going to be Trump again. So what do you think of the first couple of months of the new Trump administration, you know, writ large, but also from the legal perspective, what's been going on and what's really standing out to you? Yeah, I mean, so first of all, let's go back to last summer when everyone was focused on Project 2025 and Donald Trump said he didn't know anything about Project 2025. Totally ignorant of Project 2025. I believed him at the time when he said he never read it because I don't think he's read 900 pages in his entire life cumulatively.
But it turned out that that was just another in a litany of lies because what we've seen over the course of the first few weeks of the Trump administration has been, frankly, the implementation of much of what was in Project 2025. All the things that Republicans said they were not going to do, he is now doing, right?
What is Project 2025 and how is it affecting the Trump administration's actions?
And he's trying to do it through decree, through executive order, through bullying, through posting on social media. Interestingly, Jessica, not going to Congress, you know, you wouldn't know that his party actually controls Congress because he's doing it all. And it's, you know, it is in some sense worse than we expected, but it's more or less, you know, kind of what an aspiring authoritarian would do. Yeah, it's... I mean, you went right for one of the sore points from an electoral strategist point of view because Project 2025 was resonating with the American electorate. Tony Fabrizio and Chris LaCivita have even talked about it in the aftermath of the election where they said basically we were scared because Project 2025 was permeating. the ether.
People knew about it and it had something like an 83% disapproval rate. I want to talk to you about legal matters, but do you feel like that was a place that Democrats really dropped the ball and we should have continued to hammer away at that? or it was kind of a lost cause.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
Who is Marc Elias and why is he significant in the fight for democracy?
1:13–2:05
2
How is Trump attempting to expand executive power and what are the legal implications?
2:05–2:59
3
What is Project 2025 and how is it affecting the Trump administration's actions?
2:59–6:11
4
Why are large law firms hesitant to oppose Trump's legal maneuvers?
6:11–11:05
5
Can the courts effectively check Trump's power and what challenges do they face?
11:05–13:14
6
What are the potential outcomes if the Trump administration ignores court rulings?
13:14–33:53
Speakers
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