In the chaos of Donald Trump's administration, it is easy to lose sight of the one thing it remains laser-focused on: undermining free and fair elections. On this, Trump has insisted on an all-of-government approach.

The Department of Justice attacks voting rights in court. The White House issues executive orders purporting to take over election administration and bar agencies from providing voter registration materials. Congressional Republicans amplify Trump's lies while casting a series of performative votes for the SAVE Act — a voter suppression bill that has failed to pass nearly a dozen times.

Even Trump's judicial appointees have been drawn into the effort. One after another, at their confirmation hearings, they refuse to acknowledge that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

In my role as a voting rights and election lawyer, I have had a front-row seat to what Trump is doing for years. And unlike far too many others, I refuse to be distracted and I refuse to calm down.

Before the 2020 election, I tried to warn everyone about what Trump was up to. When I helped defeat Trump in more than 60 cases after the election, I continued to sound the alarm that he would not leave power peacefully.

By 2023, some in the Biden White House wanted to move on, believing a return to norms would save democracy. When I urged a more aggressive approach, they made clear it was unwelcome. According to Axios, "the president's team wants to be more selective in picking legal fights" than I did.

Here we are in 2026. The norms of the Biden era stand as a relic of the failure of that approach. Trump's disregard for the rule of law mocks the Biden White House's blind adherence to unwritten rules.

The handful of powerful voices that once criticized me for my aggressive approach to protecting voting rights and elections have grown silent. They have been replaced by a far larger number who now plead for me to do even more.

In court, my law firm and I are litigating more than 80 voting and election cases in nearly every state. As the founder of Democracy Docket, I have grown the team to more than 30.

With five months until the 2026 midterms, I am again sounding the alarm.

The administration is deploying various tools to disrupt elections — disinformation, federal officials at polling locations, and rewards for rogue election officials. But the crown jewel of this effort is the creation of a federal, nationwide list of eligible voters.

Once such a list exists, it would be used to block anyone not on it from obtaining a ballot or casting a vote. States would be told not to allow anyone not on the list to vote. The Postal Service would be instructed not to process any election mail from persons not on the list. The Department of Justice would criminally investigate anyone who tries to vote without appearing on the list, as well as any organization or election worker deemed to be aiding or abetting their efforts.

The list would be controlled by Trump's closest allies — Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, with the assistance of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. We all know that, in reality, it would be a tool of the White House.

Donald Trump knows that too.

On Friday evening, DOJ lawyers alerted a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit against Trump's latest anti-voting executive order that development of this list is ongoing.

Even more ominously, the DOJ indicated that "DHS contemplates working with the United States Postal Service … to monitor mail-in and absentee ballot flows, identify anomalies that may suggest voter fraud or misuse, and generate authorized investigative leads."

So far, the biggest impediment to Trump's plan has been the unwillingness of 30 states to turn over their voter rolls to the federal government. My law firm and I have been litigating against the DOJ in those cases and remain undefeated — the DOJ has lost nine cases and won none.

But this fight is not over.

On Friday, the DOJ filed its latest appeals of those defeats, in Maine and Wisconsin. My team and I will continue to defend against this attempted power grab, and I expect we will prevail in the remaining 20 cases.

However, the DOJ is rushing to get at least one of these to the Supreme Court, where it hopes the conservative majority will do what no lower court has been willing to do.

Then there are the states that have voluntarily turned over their voter rolls.

These are Republican-controlled states, but they are also places where Democrats must win House and Senate seats to retake control of Congress. They contain governors' mansions and state legislative chambers that Democrats can win in 2026 — but only if we have a level playing field, or at least one where Trump does not control who can participate and who must remain on the sidelines.

The solution to this crisis cannot be found in any one place. We must organize, but marches and protests won't singlehandedly ensure free and fair elections. We must educate ourselves and our neighbors about these threats — and then be willing to act on that knowledge in productive ways.

And while important, legal fight alone will not be enough. Courts are an essential tool to block the worst actions of the administration, but litigation alone cannot build the political power needed to protect democracy.

Most importantly, we must make sure we are registered to vote, and vote for pro-democracy candidates. Right now, that means voting for Democrats up and down the ballot.

The impediments, the voter suppression, and the election subversion risks are real. But they can be overcome if we do all of these things. My critics in the Biden White House disagreed with my message that Democrats should be fighting on every possible front in 2024.

I hope that today, even they agree that this is the correct strategy for 2026.