On May 11, 2026, Marc Elias posted a video entitled "Something Dangerous Just Shifted for Democracy — And Trump Allies Noticed" on his Democracy Docket YouTube channel.
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Here are a few key excerpts from the video (bold added for emphasis):
Now, what I am concerned about is that the foundation of democracy is on fire. The Republican Party are a coalition of arsonists, and the courts in particular, the US Supreme Court is sending cultural cues to the broader public that what the Republicans are up to is the new normal in America moving forward.
Supreme court decisions decide not just what is lawful and unlawful. The High Court doesn't only decide what is constitutional and not constitutional. It also sends cues as to what is right and what is wrong. What is moral and what is immoral. What the shape of the field of debate is - what the Overton Window of acceptable and unacceptable are.
Plessy versus Ferguson was a terrible decision. It was one of the most abominable decisions in our nation's history. It is a stain and a black mark that will never be erased. But if it had just been a court case, there could still have been social disapproval of what became Jim Crow. Instead, because the Supreme Court had ruled the way they did in Plessy versus Ferguson, it gave a permission structure to the adherents of the Lost Cause, the former defeated armies of the Confederacy, to act as if they were the moral ones, they were the righteous ones, that what they were advocating, what they were implementing in the horrors of Jim Crow, was consistent with the rule of law.
When the Supreme Court granted him [Trump] immunity, it didn't just shut down Jack Smith's criminal investigation. It didn't just mean that he could escape without any legal consequences. No, what it did is it built a permission structure for his supporters.
What Citizens United did was not just decide a legal principle, it set a cultural norm. It created, again, a permission structure for wealthy people to put endless amounts of money into the political system. And that had itself a catapulting effect forward in loosening up and ultimately leading to the campaign finance system that we have today, which is, frankly, barely a system at all.
Regarding the recent Supreme Court Callais decision, Elias says:
The narrow holding of the opinion was that the Voting Rights Act is constitutional, that race can be used to draw districts under certain circumstances. That's what Sam Alito wrote in his opinion. Now, I thought it was disingenuous. I said that I thought it was cynical. I said that I thought it was an effort to mislead and to obfuscate what they were really doing, which was gutting the Voting Rights Act. And I stand by that today.
What the Supreme Court did in Callais is the same thing it did in those other cases [Plessy versus Ferguson, Trump immunity, and Citizens United v. FEC]. It gave a permission structure to those people who want to destroy democratic norms, democratic institutions, and take a sledgehammer to free and fair elections.
Source:
Elias, Marc. (May 11, 2026). "Something Dangerous Just Shifted for Democracy — And Trump Allies Noticed". Democracy Docket. Retrieved 2026-05-12.
Commentary:
Marc's in depth analysis is spot on.
Marc, along with Brian Tyler Cohen and Glenn Kirschner, are true democracy fighters. If you haven't already subscribed to their YouTube channels, I highly recommend you do so now, so you can stay up to date on the Trump/MAGA/Republican efforts to destroy American democracy as we know it.