S7 Ep21: The Conservative Push to Weaken Our Democracy

What It Covers

Strict Scrutiny covers the Trump administration's military strikes on Iran without congressional authorization or UN Charter justification, the DOJ's 33 anti-voting lawsuits targeting state voter data, the SAVE Act's four provisions that would restrict ballot access for tens of millions of Americans, and Marc Elias's analysis of how all three branches of government are systematically targeting democratic elections ahead of the midterms.

Key Questions Answered

• •UN Charter War Powers: The UN Charter permits military force under only two conditions: a UN Security Council resolution authorizing it, or acting in self-defense against an actual armed attack. The Iran strikes satisfy neither. The administration offered no legal justification referencing the Charter, and the "imminence" argument fails because imminence still requires an identifiable armed attack being repelled — not preemptive regime change operations launched from a private club.
• •Constitutional War Powers Escalation: Executive branch lawyers have historically justified presidential force by weighing factors including operation scope, likelihood of casualties, and whether regime change is the goal. All three factors here point toward requiring congressional authorization. The administration's own Venezuela OLC memo, published publicly, reveals a legal theory that combines every prior permissive precedent simultaneously — a strategy law professor Rebecca Beck Inger identifies as unprecedented in its aggregation of previously separate justifications.
• •Legal Accountability Without Enforcement: International and constitutional law in the national security space has no external enforcement mechanism. Compliance depends entirely on reactions from Congress, allied states, and the public. When violations go unanswered, they become normalized. The practical implication: demanding congressional action and public accountability is not symbolic — it is the actual enforcement mechanism the legal system relies on, making civic and political pressure structurally necessary, not optional.
• •SAVE Act's Four Voter Suppression Mechanisms: The Save America Act imposes strict photo ID requirements that explicitly ban state university IDs, mandates proof of citizenship via passport or certified birth certificate at registration, requires regular voter roll purges using a federally acknowledged flawed database, and — per Trump's State of the Union prepared remarks — would ban mail-in voting except for disabled, sick, or military voters. The birth certificate requirement would disenfranchise tens of millions of women whose married names differ from their birth records.
• •DOJ Voter Data Targeting: The DOJ has filed 33 anti-voting lawsuits, including suits against four Republican-controlled states, seeking access to state voter files. These files contain Social Security numbers, partisan registration data, voting frequency by election type, mail versus in-person voting history, and provisional ballot outcomes. Marc Elias identifies this granular data as precisely what a targeted voter suppression or post-election challenge operation would require, making DOJ's acquisition effort a structural threat to election integrity independent of any individual lawsuit outcome.
• •OLC Memos as Non-Binding Presidential Self-Authorization: Office of Legal Counsel memos are written by the president's own lawyers, are never ratified by courts or Congress, and systematically avoid stating what the president cannot do. Each memo establishes permissibility for a specific combination of factors, allowing the next memo to combine previously separate permissive precedents into broader authorization. This ratchet mechanism means OLC precedent functionally expands executive war powers over time with no counterbalancing red lines ever formally established.
• •Election Escalation Pattern: Marc Elias draws a direct parallel to the pre-January 6 escalation sequence: public lies about elections, followed by litigation to obtain data and search warrants, followed by potential direct interference with election administration. The DOJ has lost every voting-related court case filed so far, but Elias warns that losing in court has not historically stopped the administration from escalating to the next tactic. Monitoring which states receive federal immigration enforcement surges immediately before elections is a concrete indicator of the next escalation phase.