New Haven Democracy Project

"Corruption hates democracy. Corruption loves autocracy."

Bill Kristol sits down with his good friend James Carville, election analyst and practitioner extraordinaire, five weeks out from the 2026 midterms. Carville says that if they try to steal this election, the good guys have two advantages. First, they're forewarned: every lawyer, every consultant, every interest group is on high alert. Second, the other side just isn't that competent. "Be vigilant," he says, "but don't overestimate thine enemy."

Kristol lays out his most worrisome scenario: a red-state governor colluding with the Justice Department to go after ballots in the blue areas of red states. Carville expects they will try, particularly in New Orleans, even as he sees real Senate openings in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. His answer to voter suppression comes from human nature. Tell people they can't do something and they'll do it. Turn it into a populist message: They don't want you to vote, so go show them.

The two agree that Democrats don't need a three-point program this fall. "It's him or not him." Catch the ball this November, and sort out 2028 later. They also take up corruption as a democracy issue, from a thousand stock trades to a resort in Albania. It's much more efficient to steal when one person is in charge.

Carville ends optimistic, for one reason: People want things to be better: "Nobody wants to live like this."

• New Haven Democracy Project — https://newhavendemocracy.org
• Politics War Room with James Carville & Al Hunt — https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-2020-politics-war-room-53148064/ — Carville's weekly politics podcast
• Talk Business & Politics–Hendrix College Arkansas poll — https://talkbusiness.net/2026/08/poll-tight-race-for-us-senate-between-cotton-shoffner/ — a poll of 1,217 likely voters showing Shoffner with 47.4% support against incumbent Tom Cotton. Poll cited by James Carville.
• 2026 U.S. Senate election in Arkansas — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_Senate_election_in_Arkansas
• Montana Senate race (NPR) — https://www.npr.org/2026/08/09/nx-s1-5922215/montanas-democratic-candidate-is-facing-pressure-to-drop-out-by-the-deadline — Democratic nominee Alani Bankhead resisted pressure to drop out in favor of independent Seth Bodnar.
• Kushner's Albania resort project (PBS/AP) — https://pbs.org/newshour/world/protests-grow-over-resort-in-albania-linked-to-trump-son-in-law-jared-kushner

• Kristol introduces Carville as an election analyst and practitioner
• How worried to be about free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028
• Two advantages for pro-democracy forces: forewarning and the other side's incompetence
• Election theft would require a multi-front operation
• "Don't overestimate thine enemy."
• Kristol's worst case: a red-state governor coordinating with the Justice Department
• Hypothetical: Abbott sends Texas Rangers into Houston over ballot claims
• Are blue areas inside red states the most vulnerable spots?
• Democratic Senate openings in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi
• The Hendrix College poll and Hallie Shoffner's Arkansas race
• Expected attempts to interfere in New Orleans
• Wave-election psychology: voters who stop listening to negatives
• Great Plains and Rocky Mountain races: Idaho, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska
• Montana's Democratic nominee staying in the race
• Turning voter suppression into motivation ("show them")
• Forbidding something makes people want it more.
• Black voters and the history of being told they couldn't vote
• Debate: Alarm voters or reassure them?
• Republican versus Democratic campaign cultures
• Democracy as voter empowerment
• Turnout, intensity, and knowing where your polling place is
• Why Democrats shouldn't run on a policy agenda in 2026
• Republicans unable to distance themselves from Trump five weeks out
• The deficit and the $5,000 payment idea
• Accountability incentives and resistance to a transfer of power in 2028
• Trump's health and the coming Democratic primary
• The need for an inspiring 2028 candidate
• Corruption as a democracy issue: stock trades, Putin, Kushner's Albania resort
• "Corruption loves autocracy."
• Carville's optimism: The public wants things to get better

"Resistance is not an on-off switch. It is a muscle."

Bill Kristol (Editor-at-Large, The Bulwark) talks with Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of Indivisible, which began when she and her husband Ezra Levin (two young former congressional staffers) took the Tea Party model they had seen used against them, reverse engineered it, and put it out as a guide — minus the bigotry and the violence. Thousands of people organized around it, and in 2025 a new wave came looking for what they could do.

Greenberg lays out the theory behind No Kings: a broad anti-authoritarian front, from the lefty left to the center right, meant to challenge the assumption of inevitable authoritarian consolidation while elites rushed to get in good with the new order. She explains the nonviolent strategic discipline, the de-escalation training, and the dancing unicorns, which use humor to show that what the state fears most is nonviolent protest. Kristol describes the good-natured, speech-free gathering in his own Northern Virginia suburb.

On October 17, No Kings becomes No Kings: Vote Early. Greenberg frames early voting as a way of deterring election sabotage: it turns Election Day into an election season, leaves less room for shenanigans in the final days, and readies people to mobilize if the results are challenged.

Asked about America's elites, Greenberg reaches for the Swedish film Force Majeure, in which a husband flees an avalanche and leaves his family behind. When people said democracy wasn't working, she argues, they meant government wasn't responsive to them, and there is no getting off this merry-go-round without fundamental structural change.

Listen wherever you listen to podcasts, and join the conversation.

Links

• New Haven Democracy Project — https://newhavendemocracy.org
• Indivisible — https://indivisible.org
• No Kings — https://www.nokings.org
• We Are Indivisible: A Blueprint for Democracy After Trump — https://book.indivisible.org/ — the book by Greenberg and Levin. The page includes author bios.
• Indivisible movement (history of the original guide) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indivisible_movement — the guide first went online December 14, 2016. The standalone guide page (IndivisibleGuide.com) still needs a URL check.
• 50501 Movement — https://www.the50501movement.org — the movement behind the Presidents' Day 2025 protests that No Kings grew out of.
• Louisiana v. Callais (2026), National Constitution Center explainer — https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-supreme-courts-callais-decision-sets-new-framework-for-racial-gerrymandering — the April 2026 Voting Rights Act ruling Greenberg references.
• Force Majeure (2014, dir. Ruben Östlund) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Majeure_(film)

• How Indivisible began as a guide to congressional activism written by former Hill staffers
• Reverse engineering the Tea Party model, minus the bigotry and the violence
• The guide going viral and thousands of local groups forming
• The basic nuts and bolts of constituent advocacy: local groups, district offices, town halls, letters to the editor
• The 2025 wave of newcomers asking what they could do
• No Kings' origins in the 50501 Presidents' Day protests of February 2025
• June 14, 2025: No Kings on Trump's birthday and the military parade in Washington
• A broad anti-authoritarian front, from the lefty left to the center right
• The collapse of elites across media, business, Silicon Valley, higher education, and law firms
• Mass defiance as a challenge to the narrative of inevitable consolidation
• Holding open the space to contest the 2026 election
• When grassroots protest works, with Vietnam and the civil rights movement as precedents
• Kristol's local No Kings gathering in Northern Virginia, with no speeches and a good-natured crowd
• The October 2025 No Kings protests amid administration threats against organizers
• Being called violent and America-hating while holding a flag at the Philadelphia rally
• Administration overreach backfiring: Jimmy Kimmel and record turnout
• The moral and practical case for nonviolent strategic discipline
• Safety, de-escalation, and organizer support infrastructure
• Unicorns and humor as exposure of repressive contradictions
• Republican governors threatening to call out state guards
• No Kings as an enormous volunteer group project
• First-time protest hosts who go on to form new Indivisible groups
• October 17: No Kings: Vote Early and the largest early vote in American history
• Early voting as a defense against election sabotage
• Election-eve disruption scenarios and the case for banking votes early
• Social proof and the sense that everyone is voting
• Plugging volunteers into poll monitoring, poll work, and get-out-the-vote
• Preparing to mobilize quickly if the election is challenged
• Supporting longstanding voting-rights groups after Louisiana v. Callais
• Authoritarianism's dependence on fragmenting civil society
• 2027–2028: subpoenas, investigations, and ballroom and crypto donors
• Resistance as a muscle
• Force Majeure as a metaphor for elite behavior
• What people meant when they said democracy wasn't working
• Getting off the authoritarian merry-go-round

Credits

This episode was hosted by Bill Kristol and featured Leah Greenberg. Produced by Evan Rosa. Theme music by Virgil Arles. Opening sequence by Podcast Studios. Follow the show wherever you enjoy your podcasts. For more information, visit https://newhavendemocracy.org

Who protects a free and fair election, and how worried should we be about the 2026 midterms? Bill Kristol talks with Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY-25), ranking member of the House Administration Committee, which oversees federal elections.

Should we be alarmed? Can we trust that this administration will not interfere?

While Morelle is more confident than most, he points to Trumps emotional inability to accept a loss, Trump's willingness to sow chaos at any cost, and Trump's brazen disregard for the rule of law.

But Morelle also cites local election administrators from both parties who know their jobs, to the secretaries of state and attorneys general Congress is working with, and to courts that have blocked the Postal Service executive order and rejected the Justice Department's demands for state voter rolls.

Kristol presses on the risks: federal agents at polling places, Fulton County–style ballot seizures, and interference in close races in red states. Morelle covers the federal ban on armed personnel at the polls, the law requiring officials to keep ballots for 22 months, House election observers, and what happens on January 3 when the Clerk of the House calls the roll.

The most important job in this democracy, Morelle says, isn't president or member of Congress. It's citizen.

Links

• New Haven Democracy Project — https://newhavendemocracy.org
• Rep. Joe Morelle — https://morelle.house.gov
• Committee on House Administration, Democrats — https://democrats-cha.house.gov
• Watson v. Republican National Committee (Supreme Court) — https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-1260_g3cn.pdf
• Supreme Court blocks Trump's mail ballot restrictions (Votebeat) — https://www.votebeat.org/national/2026/09/15/trump-mail-voting-executive-order-supreme-court-decision-2026-election/
• Justice Department voter roll requests tracker (Brennan Center) — https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/tracker-justice-department-requests-voter-information
• Missouri Supreme Court blocks new congressional map (Missouri Independent) — https://missouriindependent.com/2026/09/03/missouri-supreme-court-blocks-gerrymandered-congressional-map-orders-referendum-vote/
• FBI seizes 2020 ballots in Fulton County (NPR) — https://www.npr.org/2026/01/30/nx-s1-5693051/fbi-seizes-thousands-of-2020-ballots-from-fulton-county-georgia
• 18 U.S.C. § 592, troops at polls — https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/592
• 52 U.S.C. § 20701, election records retention — https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/52/20701
• Federal Contested Election Act — https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/381
• Twentieth Amendment — https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/amendment-20/

Topics

• 2026 midterm elections and election security
• Local election administrators and state election law
• Secretaries of state and state attorneys general
• Postal Service executive order and mail voting
• Justice Department lawsuits for state voter rolls
• Missouri redistricting and the Watson case
• Sowing chaos and eroding confidence in elections
• Armed federal agents at polling places (18 U.S.C. § 592)
• Fulton County ballot seizure
• Federal ballot retention law (22 months)
• Voter registration and early voting
• Election interference in red states
• House election observers
• Certificates of election and the Clerk of the House
• January 3 and the new Congress
• Contested elections and the Speaker vote
• Congressional oversight and appropriations
• Citizenship and democracy

Credits

Featuring Rep. Joe Morelle. Produced by Evan Rosa. Theme music by Virgil Arles. Opening sequence by Podcast Studios. Follow the show wherever you enjoy your podcasts. For more information, visit https://newhavendemocracy.org

Who protects a free and fair election, and how worried should we be about the 2026 midterms? Bill Kristol talks with Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY-25), ranking member of the House Administration Committee, which oversees federal elections.

Should we be alarmed? Can we trust that this administration will not interfere?

While Morelle is more confident than most, he points to Trumps emotional inability to accept a loss, Trump's willingness to sow chaos at any cost, and Trump's brazen disregard for the rule of law.

But Morelle also cites local election administrators from both parties who know their jobs, to the secretaries of state and attorneys general Congress is working with, and to courts that have blocked the Postal Service executive order and rejected the Justice Department's demands for state voter rolls.

Kristol presses on the risks: federal agents at polling places, Fulton County–style ballot seizures, and interference in close races in red states. Morelle covers the federal ban on armed personnel at the polls, the law requiring officials to keep ballots for 22 months, House election observers, and what happens on January 3 when the Clerk of the House calls the roll.

The most important job in this democracy, Morelle says, isn't president or member of Congress. It's citizen.

Links

• New Haven Democracy Project — https://newhavendemocracy.org
• Rep. Joe Morelle — https://morelle.house.gov
• Committee on House Administration, Democrats — https://democrats-cha.house.gov
• Watson v. Republican National Committee (Supreme Court) — https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-1260_g3cn.pdf
• Supreme Court blocks Trump's mail ballot restrictions (Votebeat) — https://www.votebeat.org/national/2026/09/15/trump-mail-voting-executive-order-supreme-court-decision-2026-election/
• Justice Department voter roll requests tracker (Brennan Center) — https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/tracker-justice-department-requests-voter-information
• Missouri Supreme Court blocks new congressional map (Missouri Independent) — https://missouriindependent.com/2026/09/03/missouri-supreme-court-blocks-gerrymandered-congressional-map-orders-referendum-vote/
• FBI seizes 2020 ballots in Fulton County (NPR) — https://www.npr.org/2026/01/30/nx-s1-5693051/fbi-seizes-thousands-of-2020-ballots-from-fulton-county-georgia
• 18 U.S.C. § 592, troops at polls — https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/592
• 52 U.S.C. § 20701, election records retention — https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/52/20701
• Federal Contested Election Act — https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/381
• Twentieth Amendment — https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/amendment-20/

Topics

• 2026 midterm elections and election security
• Local election administrators and state election law
• Secretaries of state and state attorneys general
• Postal Service executive order and mail voting
• Justice Department lawsuits for state voter rolls
• Missouri redistricting and the Watson case
• Sowing chaos and eroding confidence in elections
• Armed federal agents at polling places (18 U.S.C. § 592)
• Fulton County ballot seizure
• Federal ballot retention law (22 months)
• Voter registration and early voting
• Election interference in red states
• House election observers
• Certificates of election and the Clerk of the House
• January 3 and the new Congress
• Contested elections and the Speaker vote
• Congressional oversight and appropriations
• Citizenship and democracy

Credits

Featuring Rep. Joe Morelle. Produced by Evan Rosa. Theme music by Virgil Arles. Opening sequence by Podcast Studios. Follow the show wherever you enjoy your podcasts. For more information, visit https://newhavendemocracy.org

What does it actually take to hold an election that everyone can live with — winners and losers alike? In the first full conversation of the New Haven Democracy Project, Bill Kristol sits down with Yale Law professor and constitutional scholar Robert Post to get underneath the headlines and ask what elections are for, and why they're the backbone of a democracy.

The New Haven Democracy Project is a series of conversations about protecting free and fair elections.

Post starts from first principles. A democracy, he argues, is a way for people who disagree — even people who detest each other — to live together in a common country. Elections are the free and fair procedure that lets us do it: a contest whose result the losing side can accept, because losing today comes with the credible promise of a chance to win tomorrow. On this view democracy is less a machine for counting majorities than a shared faith in the future, resting on trust that the government will abide by the law, respect the minority, and honor the next election's outcome.

That trust, Post warns, is what the current administration is straining. He points to an executive branch that treats the rule of law as an obstacle rather than a constraint — a Justice Department reframing prosecution decisions as expressions of the president's politics, a Defense Department purging officers and lawyers, ICE recruited outside normal law-enforcement vetting. What makes the second Trump term different from the first, in his telling, is the absence of the Washington veterans who once internalized the norms and guardrails; what's left is loyalty without restraint. He frames the broader project as a radical, not conservative, assault on the intermediating institutions — universities, courts, the press, the sciences, the military — that have historically checked concentrated federal power.

Turning to 2026, Post lays out the concrete threats that have led him to teach a Yale Law School course on Protecting Elections. The threat of ICE at polling precincts, proof-of-citizenship requirements that could disenfranchise voters who have no passport or birth certificate on hand, DOJ requests for state voter rolls, and the specter of chaos used to throw an election's legitimacy into doubt — a slower-motion version of the January 6th strategy, aimed at the vote before it happens rather than the count after.

The deepest problem, he suggests, isn't Trump alone but the reservoir of anger that makes so many willing to give up on the hard work of living together.

Kristol and Post close on why the election fight is the most immediate and fundamental one — the infection you have to treat before you can address the underlying disease. As Post puts it, Trump is "relentless": frustrated on one front, he simply comes back on another. The task, they agree, is not to give up either.

Links

• New Haven Democracy Project — https://newhavendemocracy.org
• Robert C. Post, Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School — constitutional scholar and former dean — https://law.yale.edu/robert-c-post
• Citizens Divided: Campaign Finance Reform and the Constitution by Robert C. Post — his book on campaign finance and the Constitution — https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/citizens-divided-campaign-finance-reform-and-constitution-book-dean-robert-c-post-77
• Citizens United v. FEC (Oyez) — the campaign-finance decision referenced — https://www.oyez.org/cases/2008/08-205
• Bush v. Gore (Oyez) — the 2000 election case referenced — https://www.oyez.org/cases/2000/00-949
• The Declaration of Independence (National Archives) — the "consent of the governed" passage Kristol reads from — https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
• The Elections Clause, U.S. Constitution, Art. I, §4, cl. 1 — the constitutional basis for state and local authority over the times, places, and manner of elections — https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-4/clause-1/
• Trump's executive orders targeting law firms (NPR) — the "as though the president were a czar" example Post cites — https://www.npr.org/2025/05/02/nx-s1-5385355/perkins-coie-trump-executive-order-law-firms
• Executive order requiring proof of citizenship to vote (NPR) — the requirement Post warns about — https://www.npr.org/2025/03/26/g-s1-55927/trump-voting-citizenship-executive-order
• Tracker: Justice Department requests for voter information (Brennan Center) — the DOJ voter-roll demands discussed — https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/tracker-justice-department-requests-voter-information
• Trump's January 6 pardons of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders (CNN) — the pardons Post references — https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/20/politics/january-6-2021-capitol-riot-pardons-trump/index.html
• Bill Kristol at The Bulwark — the host — https://www.thebulwark.com
• Defending Democracy Together — Kristol's organization — https://www.defendingdemocracytogether.org

Topics

• What elections are for — forming an us, a we, out of people who disagree
• Going from first person singular to first person plural
• Democracy as a way of living together with people you disagree with
• Democracy as a faith in the future
• Elections as fair procedure, not mere majority rule
• Why North Korea has elections but isn't a democracy
• Consent of the governed and securing rights — the Declaration of Independence
• The rule of law vs. the will of one person
• Faith in the Constitution as the source of national unity
• The second Trump term compared to the first
• Loyalty over qualification and the loss of internalized restraint
• Breaking democratic norms and how hard they are to repair
• Politicization of the Department of Justice and prosecutorial independence
• The "deep state" and the war on disinterested civil servants
• Purges at the Department of Defense — firing officers and JAGs
• The dismantling of intermediating institutions — universities, courts, law firms, the sciences, the military
• Attacks on science and expertise
• The intimidation effect on business, tech, media, and universities
• ICE at polling places and voter intimidation
• Proof-of-citizenship requirements and disenfranchisement
• DOJ requests for state voter rolls
• Far-right militias — the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers — and the January 6th pardons
• January 6th and threats to the 2026 midterms
• Kleptocracy, economic stability, and investment
• The Republican Party running without a platform
• The slide from democracy to autocracy
• Why voters are angry enough to give up on cooperation
• Treating the symptom before the cause — why the election fight comes first

Credits

Featuring Robert Post. Produced by Evan Rosa. Theme music by Virgil Arles. Opening sequence by Podcast Studios. Follow the show wherever you enjoy your podcasts. For more information, visit https://newhavendemocracy.org

"We have elections coming up this November. Will they be free and fair? We've sort of taken that for granted for an awful long time, but I'm not sure we can this year."

The New Haven Democracy Project is a series of conversations about protecting free and fair elections.

In this trailer, Bill Kristol lays out the stakes: "I've been in Washington for over four decades. There have been plenty of administrations I haven't agreed with, plenty of presidents I voted against and then took office. But this is the first time I really fear that the administration in power is going to tilt the playing field in our elections."

Elections in this country, per the Constitution, are the responsibility of state and local governments. So when a president who has told a big lie about 2020 starts saying the Justice Department needs to see the voter rolls, or that DHS needs to send ICE agents to the polls, "you should be suspicious. Not because you don't like Trump or you do like Trump, but because the federal government doesn't play that role."

"This is not simply a fight against one administration. It's a fight for democracy."

"I'm not here to tell you exactly what to do. But I do think all of us can probably do more than we realize."

Listen wherever you listen to podcasts, and join the conversation.

Links

• New Haven Democracy Project — https://newhavendemocracy.org
• Bill Kristol at The Bulwark — https://www.thebulwark.com
• Bill Kristol's Substack— https://substack.com/@williamkristol
• Conversations with Bill Kristol (podcast) — https://conversationswithbillkristol.org
• Defending Democracy Together — https://www.defendingdemocracytogether.org
• The Elections Clause, U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 — the constitutional basis for Bill's point that the times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives are prescribed in each state by its legislature — https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-4/clause-1/

Topics

• Free and fair elections
• November 2026 midterm elections — Senate and House
• Election integrity and voter intimidation
• Federal interference in state-run elections
• The Elections Clause and state and local election administration
• ICE agents at polling places
• The U.S. Department of Justice and requests for state voter rolls
• The 2020 election and claims that it was rigged
• Civic culture, political participation, and an informed electorate
• The future of liberal democracy in America
• The Department of Homeland Security and ICE agents at polling places
• The U.S. Constitution's assignment of election administration to states and localities

Credits

Featuring Bill Kristol. Produced by Evan Rosa. Theme music by Virgil Arles. Opening sequence by Podcast Studios. Follow the show wherever you enjoy your podcasts. For more information, visit https://newhavendemocracy.org