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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom. Happy Friday, everybody. I'm filling in for Brian today. Coming up on today's show, New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin will be my guest. There's plenty of news to talk about, including her plan to relaunch year-round outdoor dining, help the city's most vulnerable stay warm in this extreme cold, and more. Plus, later in the show, how Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, is partnering with tech companies to gather private data on citizens, and how the Trump administration has supercharged the agency's surveillance operations.

We'll wrap today's show with a conversation about what kind of activism we expect of professional athletes. We've got the Winter Olympics starting and the Super Bowl happening this weekend. What do athletes owe us? Should they feel compelled to share their political views? When they do, is it enough? Is it welcome? We'll chat with all of that with New Yorker staff writer and sports columnist Louisa Thomas.

First, there were more troubling signs this week that President Trump is bringing the weight of the federal government to meddle in the upcoming midterm elections. Perhaps you heard about Trump's appearance on Dan Bongino's podcast, where he said Republicans should nationalize voting. That's not even the most worrisome part of it. There was also the FBI search of the Fulton County, Georgia, election office. Of course, Georgia is a swing state that Trump has insisted falsely that he won in the 2020 election, even calling the Republican secretary of state there, asking him to find votes.

Now, Trump is getting organized even earlier, sending in his director of national intelligence to be part of that recent search and even briefing the president afterwards, along with some of the FBI officers who were there. For anyone who cares about free and fair elections, your blood pressure might be rising. I haven't even mentioned how the Justice Department has tried to tie together its immigration crackdown in Minnesota with demands for access to voter rolls.

Now, this is what we know is already happening, but my next guest warns it's the seemingly unimaginable that we need to be thinking about. David Graham is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he writes The Atlantic Daily newsletter. Last October, he wrote a lengthy piece that became the cover of the December issue headlined Donald Trump's Plan to Subvert the Midterms is Already Underway. This week, for the newsletter, he wrote about these latest events: Trump's New Threats to American Elections. He's also the author of the book The Project: How Project 2025 is Reshaping America. David, welcome back to WNYC.

David Graham: Thank you for having me.

Brigid Bergin: David, I think it's pretty clear from that introduction that you see an election integrity under very serious threat. We're going to talk about the reasons why. I also want to say up front, these are not foregone conclusions. There are still reasons to believe the system will hold.

David Graham: I think that's right. I think the actions that voters take and that politicians take between now and November also can have a real effect on how that goes. There are a lot of strengths to our election system. The decentralization means it's harder to subvert. There are a lot of election workers in this country who are just among the most devoted public servants I've encountered. I think there are a lot of people who stand against these things, including in both parties. I don't think it is cause for despair, but it is cause for alarm.

Brigid Bergin: All right, so let's dive into some of the potential nightmare scenarios. Your piece from back in October paints a particularly chilling picture for the midterms. It opens with a kind of worst-case hypothetical. Can you walk us through this sort of situation you lay out as a possibility in the worst case?

David Graham: Yes. I was trying to give a picture of how things could all go wrong. I imagine we've got some close districts, let's say, in Maricopa County, Arizona, which, of course, we saw was a major battleground in the 2020 election. When we get to Election Day, the National Guard and ICE agents have been in the streets in Phoenix since the summer, ostensibly there to deal with immigration, but in fact, doing some things to intimidate voters and to create chaos, kind of in the way we've seen in Minneapolis. When the polls close on election night, it's a close election. We don't know who the winner is. Many votes are still counted.

Trump announces that the Republicans have held the House and says the Democrats will try to steal the election. By the next morning, he sends in Republican lawyers who are trying to stop counting. We've got the Justice Department sending letters to local and state officials threatening them with repercussions if they don't cooperate. The FBI director talks about fraud without any evidence, announces that he's sending agents to Phoenix. You can see this spiraling well on, to the government even seizing ballot boxes and resulting in a House race where we don't know who actually won, but Trump has forced his way to a Republican majority.

Brigid Bergin: Okay, listeners, if you're just joining us, you're listening to The Brian Lehrer Show. I'm Brigid Bergin, filling in for Brian today. My guest, Atlantic staff writer David Graham, was just painting a hypothetical worst-case scenario. He was laying out something that he wrote about for The Atlantic in an October article that became the December cover story, as we talk about the threats to the midterm elections.

Just to be clear, if you just were tuning in, none of that has happened. That was all just a potential. In your reporting, David, you do mention some of the most recent comments Trump has made about nationalizing elections. You reminded me of something he said last summer at a rally in West Palm Beach. Can you talk a little bit about what he said there and why, if you take those comments together, things feel particularly worrisome?

David Graham: I'm sorry, which comments are these?

Brigid Bergin: He made the comments at that rally in West Palm beach where he was talking to voters, specifically saying we are going to get this fixed. Christian voters [crosstalk]-- Yes, go ahead.

David Graham: Yes, it wasn't exactly. That was in summer of 2024. He told Christians, "If you vote this time, we'll have it fixed. You won't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote." It's one of these strange comments where you don't know quite what to take from the surface. If you take that in concert with many of the other things he's done and things he said about the election system, it sounds like a suggestion of sidestepping popular democracy and making elections irrelevant.

Brigid Bergin: Absolutely. Listeners, we want to know what your questions are about how Trump's actions could impact our elections. If you're listening, maybe here in New York or New Jersey, are you rethinking mail voting? Are you concerned about getting your ballot submitted early because of Trump's threats to disqualify ballots that arrive after Election Day? Do you have another question for my guest, Atlantic staff writer David Graham, who wrote a cover story headlined Donald Trump's Plan to Subvert the Midterms is Already Underway? This week, for the newsletter, Trump's New Threats to American Elections.

You can call us at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. David, this is relatively simple, but I think, good question that a listener texted, and it was simply, what does nationalizing the elections mean?

David Graham: It's a very good question, and I think it's a little hard to tell. Trump makes these comments, and he often doesn't give a lot of detail. He's sort of affirmed this. His press secretary said, "Well, he didn't mean that. He meant passing a bill that requires a photo ID to vote nationally and proof of citizenship." Trump said, "No, no, I mean nationalize." He said, "The people behind me, Republican members of Congress, should be running elections."

It's hard to say. There's not a way in which the federal government does control elections. We know that Congress can pass laws that affect the way voter registration works. The NRVA or HAVA are major laws passed in the '90s, and then after the 2000 election, that sort of set baseline standards for how all states have to conduct elections. Otherwise, elections are run at the state level. Certainly, the president doesn't have any constitutional or statutory role over the way elections work. We don't know quite what he means by this, and whether he means simply that blue states should have their elections taken over by the federal government, or who in the federal government would possibly run such a thing.

Brigid Bergin: You spoke to election administrators and legal analysts for your story. I think it's fair to say they sounded like their hair was on fire.

David Graham: [laughs] That's right.

Brigid Bergin: Yes. In one of the quotes, they warned of some really wild stuff. Would you say that this recent raid on the Fulton County election office in Georgia qualifies as an example of that kind of really wild stuff?

David Graham: Yes, this is very wild. This is not something we've seen before, to see FBI agents raiding a local election authority. It's both unprecedented on its own, but also, there's no obvious justification for it. It appears to be premised on fake claims made up claims about fraud in the 2020 election. It's dangerous on both of those levels. You hear reaction not just from legal experts, not just from Democratic folks, but from Republican election officials in many states who are really concerned about this sort of thing as well, and see it as an assault on the way voting works.

Brigid Bergin: We're having this conversation this morning, just a day after a special election primary in New Jersey for that congressional seat formerly held by now Governor Mikie Sherrill. The race is too close to call with the Bernie Sanders and AOC-backed Analilia Mejia and former Representative Tom Malinowski just within a few hundred votes of each other. How did these close elections make for some of the nightmare scenarios you were predicting even worse?

David Graham: Voters want election results immediately, and that's understandable, especially in a presidential election. Even in a midterm election, we invest so much energy and attention, and we want to know who won. The fact is, we don't always know. It takes time to count votes. It takes time to figure these things out, especially in a close election. A close election creates time and an opening both for the federal government to intervene if they have ill intentions, but also for people to spread conspiracy theories or to gin up ideas that something is wrong, when in fact, it's simply normal for elections to take time to vote. There is no such thing as an official result on election night.

Although election experts say you need to give the officials time to count, I think this is a worry for them. Something I've heard consistently is that close elections are where you need to worry. Elections that aren't close are really fine.

Brigid Bergin: Sure. Let's go to George in Manhattan. George, thanks for joining us on WNYC.

George: Yes, good morning. What you describe as hypothetical could actually become a reality because Steve Bannon, from his first term, has unequivocally stated yesterday that come November, the Trump administration, although this hasn't been verified fully, but he wants these mercenary thugs, otherwise known as ICE agents, to surround the polling stations. You know that they wanted to trade the voting rolls from Minnesota, asking the Minnesota governor to trade voting rolls in return for reduction in the ICE agents.

Don't forget, they could limit the amount of polling boxes for early voting in places like Atlanta. They could restrict them. They could get rid of them and restrict giving water to people who are standing in line for hours. These types of very sneaky ways is to limit the amount of people who want to express their constitutional right to vote.

Brigid Bergin: George, thanks for the several different points that you raised there. David, I want to start with the first point George made, which was these comments that Steve Bannon made, essentially calling for Trump to use the military in elections. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page even cited them today, but in a way suggesting that that was a losing proposition for Trump and pointing to how his poll numbers and political favorability have been declining because of how troops have been used in places like Minneapolis.

I'm wondering what your thoughts are on both the fact that you see something like The Wall Street Journal editorial page weighing in on this issue, this idea of nationalizing the elections, and essentially dismissing Bannon's suggestion, but some of the other concerns that George also raised.

David Graham: I should say off the bat, there is a federal law that prevents the deployment of armed men, in the language of the law, from the federal government to polling places, except in the event of an active rebellion, which is obviously not a situation we have now, and it's hard to imagine that we have one. We're not active rebellion, but active war. We have that by November.

The question is what workarounds the administration might use and whether they would follow the law. We've certainly seen cases where they have not followed the law and forced judges or dared judges to tell them not to. If you're trying to influence an election, it's sometimes hard for the judicial system to work that quickly. Bannon said he wanted to send ICE to the polls. That's a little bit of Bannon bluster. There are 22,000 ICE agents, and there are roughly 100,000 polling places every cycle. Even if they wanted to do that, they couldn't possibly do it, but it's a consistent theme we've heard.

Bannon says that Cleta Mitchell, who's an election lawyer, who's close to the White House and was deeply involved in 2020 fraud theories, has suggested that there's a way, under emergency authority, that Trump could send forces out and seize control of elections. Experts tell me there's no legal basis for it, but it is something that they're talking about, and I think we need to pay attention to those things because of that.

I would just say, finally, even if you don't have, for example, Marines or soldiers at polling places, having troops in the street is the sort of thing that creates intimidation, it creates inconvenience, and it can be used to try to depress turnout. As the caller said, there are many ways in which Trump and MAGA seem to be trying to depress turnout in places, especially in places where there are a lot of Democratic votes, in order to boost their own chances in the election.

Brigid Bergin: One of the ways we might see some pushback against Trump, of course, is if leaders within his own party suggest that they don't stand by this approach. That Wall Street Journal editorial I mentioned this morning essentially slams the idea of nationalizing voting. It also quotes Republican lawmakers who consider it a bad idea. They quote Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who said he's "a big believer in decentralized distributed power." Then there was Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who was on MS NOW. Here's what he said when he was asked about the idea of nationalizing elections.

Senator Rand Paul: That's not what the Constitution says about elections. There is some dispute that has gone to the Supreme Court about whether federal elections are different than state elections. The Supreme Court did rule that, for example, Washington state can't set term limits on federal officials if Georgia does it. It has to be uniform election law. As far as the time, place, and manner of the elections that under the Constitution is a state activity. I'm not for nationalizing. I was against Nancy Pelosi's bill, which would have nationalized it, but I would also be against any bill coming from this administration that would nationalize elections.

Brigid Bergin: David, just if you could, can you remind us the bill he's talking about there when he refers to Nancy Pelosi's bill and any other legislation that is being considered that might take steps towards "nationalizing elections"?

David Graham: I believe he's referring to HR1, which was a major Democratic voting bill that was brought forward at the start of the Biden administration. It would have been a big overhaul of a lot of the way the voting system works. It was very divisive, even within the Democratic caucus. It wasn't really, truly a nationalization of elections, but it would have set some uniform standards across the country. You saw infighting on the left. That bill ultimately never made it out of Congress.

What they're talking about now, I mean, we don't know. On the one hand, there's the SAVE Act, which requires proof of citizenship to vote. That's something Republicans have been pushing for a while. We also see the president trying to assert authority through executive orders, telling states when they can count votes or telling them when they have to stop counting votes or what kind of ID they might have to use, what kind of voting machines they can use. That's not something that the executive branch has any authority to do without a law being passed.

Brigid Bergin: You made the point already, David, that the president doesn't have any discrete power over elections from the Constitution. We have seen Trump start to use executive orders to project power he does not actually have. Can you talk about some of what he's done so far?

David Graham: Yes. For example, there was an order saying that, because he believes that elections should stop on Election Day, he wants to ban states from counting votes that come in after Election Day. Many states allow the counting of votes for a few days. The time depends on the state. If a vote is postmarked by Election Day, it can still be counted as it comes in.

He wants to ban that. He wants to instruct the Election Assistance Commission, which is a relatively little-known body, to decertify the voting machines that are being used, which would basically prevent any voting machine on the market from being used. That would presumably very much slow down the counting of votes, which seems against the goals that he has laid out in other places.

Then, also, we've seen the Justice Department demanding voter rolls, I think you mentioned this earlier, from many states. It's not clear exactly what they want to do with that. It appears to be an attempt to find evidence of illegal voters on the rolls. Experts say there's a lot of problems with using voter rolls in that way. It's a sort of snapshot. Voter rolls are constantly changing. When we've seen previous efforts to do that, there are a lot of false matches and a lot of errors in the automated systems that some people on the right have tried to use to prove fraud.

Brigid Bergin: David, in that podcast that we've talked about, where Trump made the nationalize elections comments, another part of what he said there was calling for Republicans to just take over voting in 15 places. Do you have any sense of where he is talking about, or do you think that's just a number he's using, or is that referring to specific states or--

David Graham: I'm not--

Brigid Bergin: Go ahead.

David Graham: I'm not sure all 15 states. From things he said, we can get a sense of some of them. For example, Georgia is a great example of one where he has taken some swipes, not only at Democrats, but also at the Republicans who are in charge of the state election apparatus. We saw him say just the other day that he believed he won Minnesota three times and that they were counting the votes and corrupt-- He did not win Minnesota three times. I believe no Republican has won Minnesota since Richard Nixon, which maybe should be assigned to him.

He has attacked elections in California for being slow and being liberal dominated. There's a long line of states he's attacked, most of them led by Democrats, where he's alleged fraud, again, without providing any evidence, because there isn't any.

Brigid Bergin: David, just to go back to that nightmare scenario you laid out in your piece, there's a potential that when he says those 15 places, he's not even necessarily talking states. He could be talking Maricopa County, a place where a particular election could be decided that could decide the balance of power in the House, or in a very close race. Do you see that as possible?

David Graham: Yes, that's exactly right.

Brigid Bergin: Let's go to Terry in Guilford, Connecticut. Terry, you're on WNYC.

Terry: Hello. I'm afraid that they're going to-- unless they stop using these so-called Kavanaugh stops, where they're basically asking for papers of people, mostly looking dark-skinned or even Black people, and Hispanic people, and Asian people. They could be doing that, conceivably near polling sites. Like you said, they couldn't do it everywhere. Certain places, like in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and a couple other, maybe North Carolina, they could actually be pivotal, and they might strategically try to do that and harass people near bus stops or outside of certain polling locations.

Also, they're trying to push the SAVE Act, too. Not only photo ID, but bring your papers. That might screw up people that change their name. It could also screw up people that might have been born overseas. If you have people looking at these papers that aren't familiar with all the nuances of birth certificates, which are all over the place, a lot of them are very old, and they're delicate documents. You shouldn't just be carrying willy-nilly all over the place.

Brigid Bergin: Terry, thank you. I want to let David respond because I think the general theme of what we're hearing there are the types of voter suppression tactics that could keep people away from the polls. David, do you think that some of those types of examples that Terry laid out, there are things that people should be concerned about?

David Graham: Yes, I think they should. The SAVE Act is, I would say, a solution in search of a problem. Although we've heard figures in the Republican Party saying for years that there are widespread problems of non-citizen voting, there's no evidence for that. There are, of course, cases where non-citizens vote, but nothing on a scale that would flip certainly presidential election and not even a House election, not even local elections. What they do do is they interfere with systems that are already in place to ensure that people who vote are citizens, and every state has some methods for ensuring the integrity of the vote.

I think he's right to worry about some of these things, for example, intimidation at polling places, people being stopped. When we see even US citizens often being stopped, sometimes detained for a long time, this sort of if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear argument does not even hold. I will say that in a midterm election, it's a lot harder to affect the number of races you need in a midterm election.

You don't know in a close House election which races will be pivotal, how many will be pivotal. It's a lot harder to subvert that than it is a national presidential election. You don't know which precincts to go to. It's a little bit tougher now, but I think that's something we need to be thinking about for 2028 as well.

Brigid Bergin: Sure. Listeners, we need to take a short break. We're going to have much more with David Graham, staff writer at The Atlantic, where he writes The Atlantic Daily newsletter, and we're talking about the looming threat Trump poses to our midterm elections. Plus, more of your calls coming up right after this. Stick around.

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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, filling in for Brian today. My guest is David Graham, a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he writes The Atlantic Daily newsletter. We're talking about the looming threat Trump poses to our midterm elections. David, we have heard Trump say in the past that if Democrats regain control, he believes he'll be impeached again. Back to that margins issue, we are talking very small numbers in both the House and Senate. The House, it's a three-seat margin, the Senate a four-seat. You have written about how Trump is laying the groundwork to subvert the midterms. Just to be totally clear, you do not think he is going to try to cancel the election? Why not?

David Graham: When I put this question to experts, what I heard without fail, even from the people who are most concerned, was there will be elections in November. Part of that is we have seen Trump taking a lot of steps toward altering the elections. His push last year to get Texas, Indiana, Missouri, and some other conservative states to redistrict was a sign that he knew the election would be close, but he was also planning to have an election. You don't use that kind of political capital if you don't expect there to be an election.

Second, another thing I heard from democracy experts was dictators and authoritarians love elections. It's really important to have that kind of impression of a real public vote, even if elections are not free and they're not fair. We see that in drastic cases in a place like Russia. We see that in Turkey. When we see Trump following some of these modern-day authoritarians, it would make sense he would follow the same kind of pattern. He needs that election. He knows canceling it would create a huge public outcry. Simply trying to tilt the playing board a little bit, you maybe can get away with.

Brigid Bergin: Well, let's go to Laura in the Bronx, who has a question about something that she is wondering if governors can do to prevent tilting that playing field. Laura, you're on WNYC.

Laura: Hi, thank you. Thank you very much for taking my call. At every election at my local polling site, I always see one or two police officers just standing there, just being protective. What I was wondering was, would it be possible, to the best of your knowledge, for governors to call up the National Guard, say, a week in advance of the elections, to begin protecting polling sites and polling equipment and ensuring an atmosphere of safety, and obviously in designated uniforms that people could recognize and perceive as safe. Do you think that's realistic? Could we do that?

David Graham: To be honest, I don't know what the laws would be like around National Guard troops, which are a little bit of a state level and a little bit of a national level. There have been discussions from local election officials about how to work with local police departments, local sheriff's offices, so that everyone knows the rules and so that they can be kept safe. I think where you get tricky situations are echoes of what we've seen in Minneapolis, where you have both federal agents armed on the ground and then local police who are often working across purposes to them. It's very hard for local police to challenge federal law enforcement.

I talked to experts who are very concerned that we might see clashes, even if they're not violent, to see really clashes between these agents and these agencies that could create more chaos or could help keep the voting places safe.

Brigid Bergin: David, given some of what we have seen Trump already do, you wrote in October, "By the time voting starts, the opposition party will already be at a steep disadvantage." Seeing how Trump's poll numbers have been plummeting this year related to his handling of immigration and the economy, do you still think that's true?

David Graham: I think there are a lot of structural factors that put the opposition at a disadvantage. We see Trump using, for example, the Justice Department to go after both Democrats and also other political opponents. That's a method of chilling opposition. We see them going after, for example, ActBlue, which is a major Democratic fundraising platform. We see them pushing the media, whether that's the kind of pressure that we've seen against ABC or against CBS News, but also the threat of regulatory action, for example, from the Federal Communications Commission. All of these things make it maybe a less-than-fair setup.

Now, in terms of politics, I think you're right. The midterm election, as Trump has said in the last few days, presidents' parties usually do poorly in midterm elections. Furthermore, Trump is deeply unpopular. We see growing backlash in many polls to his policies and to his economic handling. All of those things do make it much harder for Republicans to simply run the table or to try to subvert these elections.

Brigid Bergin: I want to go to Steve in Newtown, Pennsylvania. Steve, you're on WNYC.

Steve: Thanks for taking my call. I appreciate WNYC for raising this issue. I wish more media outlets would raise this outrageous thing that the Trump administration is pushing. This is our democracy, and I'm very disappointed with some of our Democratic leaders who don't make this more of a critical priority. I do want to also say power. It's up to you to do everything you can to make this election be free and fair.

Register to vote, do it by mail-in ballot in the case that he brings troops out to the polling places. Be a judge of elections. Go inside the polling place. There are paid positions in some places where you can be inside, making sure that the rule of law is being administered. This is a time for the people to step up and save their democracy.

Brigid Bergin: Steve, I apologize because you dropped out for one moment there, but I think you also told our screener that you are actively involved in the politics of your hometown. Can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing there?

Steve: Yes. I'm a committee person in Newtown Democrats. Just recently, as soon as the president made these comments, I conveyed to our entire mailing list the fact that this is really up to all of us to do to participate. Make sure you vote. Make sure you're registered. Make sure that you are at the polls, handing out literature, and making sure everything's going smoothly on the outside. Also, go to the paid positions inside the polling place so that you can actually witness and ensure that it's a free and fair election. Be a judge of elections, be an inspector, be a clerk. That way, we can make sure there are no shenanigans going on at the polls.

Brigid Bergin: Steve, thanks so much for your call. We appreciate you listening. Let's go to Elle in Nassau County. Elle, you're on WNYC.

Elle: Yes. Hi, good morning. Thank you for this hair-on-fire segment. My question is, and it ties into what you were just saying, is it best to do mail-in voting, or is it best to go in person? Like, what is the safest, least able to be hacked method to cast a vote?

Brigid Bergin: Elle, thanks for the question. David, we have heard Trump long bemoan voting by mail to the detriment of his own party, frankly. We saw a special election play out in potentially Elle's backyard over in Nassau County in Queens recently, about a year or so ago, to replace former Congressman George Santos. Democrat Tom Suozzi was running against Republican Mazi Pilip. On the day of the special election in February, there was a massive snowstorm that severely depressed the turnout. The lack of early voting really was the final straw for the Republican candidate. Tom Suozzi was elected.

Do you sense that Trump is getting any pushback on his anti-early voting rhetoric? What would you say to someone like Elle who's asking that question?

David Graham: You do see Republicans pushing back on that because they see the results. There are many places where early voters are not more Republican. That is, before Trump's rhetorical onslaught about early voting in 2020, it was used roughly evenly. It's become a much more Democratic thing. That is a problem for Republicans in many places. What voting experts say is you want to ensure that your vote is counted. Often, the easiest way to do that is to mail it in ahead of time. You should do it early. You should make sure that it's well ahead of time so you're not worried about a postmark coming late, you're not worried about it being received late.

In a lot of jurisdictions, you can check and make sure that your ballot has been received. If it hasn't, you can always get another ballot, or you can go in on Election Day. The best way to ensure your vote is counted is to do it as early as you can, check on it, make sure everything goes through. To the previous caller's point, it's exactly right. Like getting involved in whatever way, whether that's voting or being involved as a volunteer with a local party, or being involved in elections themselves, because the actual polling places run on volunteers who are patriots who want to make these things happen. That's really essential to making sure our elections work and that they're free and fair.

Brigid Bergin: Let's go to Bob in Forest Hills. Bob, you're on WNYC.

Bob: Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. I've been a poll worker for the city of New York for a couple of years now, and I can tell you that the process and the procedures that we follow are complicated but very, very secure. I volunteered to do this work out of concern from what I was hearing across the country about elections not being secure. I'm very satisfied with the way that New York City runs it.

Brigid Bergin: Bob, thanks so much for what you do for volunteering and working those elections and for the call. Some good news from the ground, David, there for voters here in New York City. I'm wondering from your perspective, you looked at and spoke to so many election experts and went through the entire life cycle of the election, leading up to it, right before it, day of, and afterwards. In terms of some of what we're seeing now, do you feel like what is happening is Trump simply laying groundwork to claim fraud after ballots have been cast if he doesn't like the results?

David Graham: I do think there's a lot of that. When you see, for example, these executive orders that assert powers that Trump doesn't have, I think they're very much not-- there's an expectation that they will not succeed. Then, after the election, the administration can say, "Look, we tried to warn you, we tried to take care of these things. Instead, there was fraud, and now we need to take drastic action," who knows what, "to somehow deal with this fraud that we are claiming, whether or not there is evidence."

I love Bob's call. This is an experience I've heard from individuals, I've heard it from election workers. Elections are very complicated. The way that we count votes, the way all this works, it's not immediately intuitive, and there's been new focus on this since 2020, or even since 2016. When people get a chance to go to their election officials, ask how things work, or get involved themselves, often they come away with much more faith in the system because they see that there are really strong safeguards.

Brigid Bergin: We have talked about some of what has happened leading up to the election, and we've started to hear some concerns from listeners about potential voter suppression tactics. What are some of the things that elections officials told you they were concerned about as voter suppression tactics on Election Day?

David Graham: They're concerned about ICE or the National Guard or other folks who are out in the streets who might intimidate or inconvenience. They're concerned about cybersecurity. This is an issue that we've had instances of strange hacking involving some local poll authorities around the country for the last few years. The federal government has traditionally provided a great deal of assistance both on Election Day and also ahead of Election Day, helping with physical security and cybersecurity.

The Trump administration has cut much of the funding that we have from CISA, which was the agency dealing with this, and so a lot of these places are on their own now. They're worried about lone individuals who might try to disrupt polls, and they're worried about pressure from the federal government on polling days, calls or threats from the Justice Department that might disrupt the counting of votes.

Brigid Bergin: Let's go to Lauren in the Bronx. Lauren, you're on WNYC.

Lauren: Hi. Thank you. I've been hearing a lot about the possibility of getting Pam Bondi disbarred by submitting an ethics complaint. I did call the Florida bar and they did confirm to me that any person or any group that makes-- if they make a bar complaint about Pam Bondi, they will entertain it, they will read it, and they will come to a decision. I think for an individual, it's pretty much out of the question because they're not anonymous. I just want to put that out there. They're not protected or sealed, but any group could do it. It seems to me that there are a number of groups who might have an interest in doing it, including The Atlantic magazine, and I wanted to know what you think about that as a possibility.

My other question was, in this time, it seems to me that Chuck Schumer is the worst possible minority leader. Has the Democratic Party considered having an emergency meeting and replacing him? No, we need a leader. We really don't have one.

Brigid Bergin: Lauren, thanks for those questions. I want to give David a chance to respond. I think it gets to the question where I think we wanted to end things, David, which is what are things that people can do personally, in this case, Lauren's proposing something, I think, more systemic, challenging Pam Bondi at the Florida bar. What are your thoughts on that?

David Graham: I think those are individual actions that people can take. The most important things are pay attention to these elections, pay attention to what's happening in your county, what the preparations are, and at the state level, pay attention to what the federal government is doing and vote. Make sure your vote is counted. Vote early if you can, make sure that the vote has been tallied, support local election officials. Simply being aware of this, I think, is the big thing.

The most fundamental thing is this is about democracy. More than anything else, what we've seen is authoritarianism when it's defeated, whether it's in this country and other countries, is defeated at the ballot box. The people who are listening are the people who have the most power, more than Chuck Schumer or anybody else. It is the voters.

Brigid Bergin: I want to thank our very attentive listeners who caught that I misspoke. As someone who covers elections regularly, I know well that poll workers in New York City are paid. I apologize for referring to our previous caller as a volunteer. Poll workers are paid. It's a great opportunity. If people are interested here in New York City, you can go to vote.nyc and get more information. Thank you to the many listeners who have texted us, noting that I misspoke there.

I want to thank David Graham, staff writer at The Atlantic, where he writes The Atlantic Daily newsletter. He also wrote the December cover story, Donald Trump's Plan to Subvert the Midterms is Already Underway, and this week for the newsletter, Trump's New Threats to American Elections. He's also the author of the book The Project: How Project 2025 is Reshaping America. David, thanks so much for joining me this morning.

David Graham: Thank you for having me.

 

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