U.S. President Donald Trump smiles as he signs energy-related executive orders, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 8, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard REFILE - QUALITY REPEAT
Tuesday marks 28 days until the Nov. 3 election, and Democrats are preparing for a "doomsday scenario," CNN reports.
It's not unheard of for the Democratic Party or presidential campaigns to assemble an army of lawyers ready to file lawsuits or go to judges at a moment's notice. This year, however, something else is brewing, and it's much bigger.
Senior CNN reporter Annie Grayer told Manu Raju that for months Democrats have been working behind the scenes to play out possible scenarios that would have been unheard of even six years ago "because Democrats do not want to leave anything up to chance here."
"Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has been convening groups of senators, lawyers, outside experts to do the sort of role-playing scenarios where they're given very specific scenarios to talk through how they would handle potential intervention from the [Donald] Trump administration, what that intervention could look like."
The Democratic doomsday preppers are crafting plans for what would happen if the National Guard was deployed to polling locations by the Trump administration, or even if the Guard soldiers attempt to seize ballots from those locations. They're planning how to deal with misinformation that comes from deep-fake videos and other AI.
"What I've learned is that the senators in these groups were even role-playing different figures in the Trump administration. So, playing the role of attorney general, playing the role of director of national intelligence, playing the role of director, homeland security secretary to get in the position of what possible interference could happen, and then talk through how they would respond to it as Democrats and in the House," said Grayer.
Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.) is working on his own similar effort to walk through 150 threat possibilities and how he would deal with them. He's also traveling around the country to raise awareness among Democratic voters to watch for specific things and report them as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, the Senate side is "building the largest election observer program," she said.
"The first time that we've seen that in the Senate," Grayer said, describing official staffers around the country to observe and be prepared to act if some kind of skullduggery ensues.
"What lawmakers realize is they couldn't rely on the national party here," she explained. "They had to build something on their own in this off-year election for Democrats. But so they've tapped into the legal community and built this really strong legal apparatus to be ready to respond at a moment's notice. I talked to one lawyer for this story who told me that she's a go-bag ready, just in case she has to be deployed at a moment's notice."
It suggests that while they all believe strongly in the system and in elections, they're not discounting any possible dirty tricks from the White House, Grayer explained. They intend to cast a wide net of possibilities as Nov. 3 approaches and post-election legal battles begin.