A task force of at least 11 Senate Democrats, convened by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in April, has assembled a list of roughly 100 possible ways President Trump could interfere with November's midterms — from a national election emergency declaration to federal law enforcement at polling sites. [1] Roughly 30 Senate Democratic staff meet weekly to update the list, according to NPR reporting based on interviews with more than a dozen people involved. [1]

Justin Vail of Protect Democracy, who advises the effort, frames Trump's approach as a three-step playbook: "deceive, disrupt and deny." [1] Election litigator Marc Elias, also on the task force, said his firm has filed suit across 87 cases in 43 states challenging administration actions, including efforts to obtain state voter rolls; a tracker cited by NPR shows all 23 federal district courts that have ruled on such data-demand suits have dismissed them. [1]

The reporting also documents the limits of that preparation. Eric Holder, who consults with the task force, said Congress's role is mostly "organizing, consciousness raising" rather than legislating, since Republicans control both chambers and have shown no interest in a bipartisan election-integrity brief. [1] A White House spokeswoman countered that Democrats are the ones obstructing "commonsense election integrity measures" in the stalled SAVE America Act. [1] Whether the task force amounts to concrete machinery or a messaging operation ahead of November may not be testable until the interference it is bracing for either happens or doesn't.

-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington