GEOFF BENNETT: City officials in Washington, D.C., are declaring victory after they say the Trump administration backed away from a plan to appoint the nation's DEA chief as an emergency police commissioner, a move they call an unprecedented federal power grab.

The deal comes after the city sued to block the president's attempt to take control of the Metropolitan Police Department.

In a court filing earlier today, D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith warned -- quote -- "In my nearly three decades in law enforcement, I have never seen a single government action that would cause a greater threat to law and order than this dangerous directive."

For perspective on this and the unfolding redistricting battle in Texas, I spoke earlier today with Marc Elias, the Democratic Party's leading voting rights attorney and founder of Democracy Docket.

Marc, thanks for being with us.

We appreciate it.

MARC ELIAS, Founder, Democracy Docket: Thanks for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: So, as we said, D.C. is now suing the Trump administration for its attempted takeover of the city's police department.

There was an emergency hearing today.

How does this effort by President Trump to deploy the National Guard to federalize the D.C. Police Department, how does it fit into his broader strategy of expanding executive power, especially in Democratic-led jurisdictions?

MARC ELIAS: Yes, so, look, Donald Trump is an authoritarian and he admires authoritarians.

So, I mean, he -- you have to take my word for it.

Look at who he pals around with and look at who he cites with approval.

And one of the things that authoritarians do, one of the things he has tried to do, is to exert police power, whether it's through taking over local police, whether it's through deploying the National Guard, whether it's in L.A., where he actually deployed the military, whether it is dramatically expanding the use of federal law enforcement in roles that they were never contemplated for.

And he is doing this because he wants to show that he is in charge, that he is able to exert power throughout the country, not just in Congress, where Republicans do his bidding, but in blue cities and in blue states.

And it is a very, very dangerous thing.

What started in L.A. has now spread to D.C. And, unfortunately, I suspect we will see it in other cities as well.

GEOFF BENNETT: Let's talk about what's happening in Texas, where, as you well know, Republicans are trying to redraw that state's congressional math at Donald Trump's urging to claim an additional five congressional seats to shore up their GOP majority in Congress.

You have said that Donald Trump is laying the groundwork to steal the 2026 midterm election.

What's your theory of the case?

MARC ELIAS: Yes, I think he's trying to steal the 2026 election, to be clear.

I think that all of us have an obligation to stand up and not let that happen.

But I think that there is kind of a two-prong approach that Donald Trump has here.

And this is, by the way, also something he has, frankly, bragged about.

The first is he wants to make it so that the election is voter-proof.

Now, redistricting five Democratic seats out of existence in Texas is one way to do that, right?

His effort to get Florida, Missouri, Indiana to follow suit is his way of trying to deal with the fact that he is fundamentally unpopular, but he wants to frustrate the ability of voters to vote out Republicans in Congress.

The second thing he wants to do is to make it harder for people who disagree with him to vote.

And so we have seen efforts by him and his supporters to engage in voter suppression activities.

And then, obviously, we should never lose sight of what he did after the 2020 election.

I was proud to have represented President Biden and the Democratic Party in defeating those efforts in court, but he went to court to try to overturn the will of the voters, and then ultimately escalated that through a political process, and then finally with a violent insurrection on the nation's capital on January 6.

So people need to take very seriously the fact that this is not someone who is committed to free and fair elections.

He was prepared after -- in the 2024 elections to pull those tricks out of his bag if he needed to, and I suspect he will be willing to do so in 2026.

GEOFF BENNETT: There will be people I'm sure who will say that gerrymandering, for better or for worse, is politics as usual.

What, in your view, makes this moment fundamentally different from past redistricting battles?

MARC ELIAS: Yes, so two things.

The first is, people say, we have always had gerrymandering.

And in some sense, that is literally true.

But it used to be that you gerrymandered by taking out a physical paper map and looking at counties and towns, and politicians saying, oh, I think those people like me, I think these people don't like me, and drawing physical maps.

What we are seeing now, just as we see A.I.

and technology make it easier to do other things, the ability to use technology to draw maps that are not just favor candidate or don't favor candidate, but really become voter-proof, is much more dramatic.

But the second thing -- and this is something that we have not seen before -- is the willingness to not just redraw districts in the middle of an election cycle, but to re-gerrymander a map.

In other words, the Texas map that he is squeezing five more seats out of by telling Greg Abbott to do his bidding, this is an already gerrymandered map.

This map was gerrymandered in 2021 to benefit Republicans.

And so what's happened now is, they have decided in the middle of the game to now re-gerrymander the map.

And that is, frankly, not something that has any historical precedent.

Even Tom DeLay in the state of Texas that did engage in mid-cycle redistricting in 2006, it did so because the map that had been drawn had not been drawn by Republicans before.

But if we open Pandora's box now, in which the Republican Party can every two years use technology to just squeeze out more and more seats, then, frankly, it's going to look very dystopian very quickly.

GEOFF BENNETT: Taken together, this Pandora's box scenario that you describe and the Trump administration's willingness to deploy the National Guard and to federalize local law enforcement where it sees fit, what proactive steps should election officials, should voting rights groups, civil rights groups, and voters be taking now?

MARC ELIAS: Yes, so the first thing is, we need to all speak out.

There's a lot of fear right now.

There's fear among lawyers.

We have seen big law firms capitulate.

There's fear among everyday citizens.

And lord knows there's fear among those of us in the voting rights and pro-democracy community.

But we all have to set that aside and we all need to be willing to speak out and call out what is happening for what it is and not feel like this is someone else's problem.

So that's number one.

Number two, for election officials and pro-democracy groups, we need to be very, very clear-eyed about the role that everyone plays in our democracy.

The founders gave election administration to state and local officials, not to the president.

In fact, the Constitution doesn't give the president any power over elections.

And we need to insist that the courts do their job, that they stand up for democracy.

One of the assets that Donald Trump or any authoritarian has is cynicism.

He wants us to believe that the courts won't protect us.

He wants to believe the elections will be rigged and therefore your vote doesn't matter.

We have to insist the courts do the right thing.

We have to support our election officials and our pro-democracy advocates.

And we have to tell every voter that it is vitally important that they be registered, that they vote and they ensure their vote is counted.

GEOFF BENNETT: Marc Elias, founder of Democracy Docket.

Marc, thanks again for being with us.

We appreciate it.

MARC ELIAS: Thanks for having me.