More than 8 million Americans took to the streets on Saturday for the No Kings rallies, expressing their opposition to Donald Trump and his administration. This was the third such event — each bigger than the last.

These rallies are more than a show of force. They demonstrate the vast size of the opposition movement. They illustrate how central the question of democracy has become to the broader Democratic coalition. They give people an outlet and a way of connecting with others who share their frustration about the direction of our country.

Yet even as a new week begins, it feels like little has changed. Trump continues to lie about elections. Republicans in Congress stand loyally by his side.

It is often said that Trump's strategy is to overwhelm us by flooding the zone. I think it is more accurate to say his strategy is to grind it out and wear us down.

Flooding the zone may cause distraction and chaos, but it does not diminish our willingness to fight.

What Trump is really after is something deeper: by repeating the same lies and deploying the same tactics over and over, he wants us to believe that our opposition is futile. He wants us to lose hope.

The politicized Department of Justice is one of his primary tools for achieving that goal. Rep. Eric Swalwell is the latest target. The congressman was attacked using the same, familiar strategy that has been utilized against dozens of Democratic politicians, lawyers and officials: distort facts to create uncertainty where none exists, falsely suggest criminality, and regardless of the outcome, claim victory. 

The point is not to obtain convictions. The point is to intimidate, exhaust, and silence.

I experienced this firsthand. Shortly after taking office, Trump singled me out by name in a speech at the Department of Justice. Calling me a "really bad" person and a "radical," he accused me of trying to "turn America into a corrupt, communist, third-world country." He followed up by targeting me and my law firm — as well as my prior law firm — in executive orders and presidential memoranda.

The message to other lawyers was clear: if you want to avoid being targeted by this president and his administration, don't follow Elias’s lead. Don’t criticize the president. Don’t oppose the president. And most importantly, don't stand up to Trump in court. 

I was not the lone victim of these attacks, and I did not receive the worst treatment, but it was clear what Trump was signaling. Trump has relatively little leverage over me. My law firm does not rely on large corporations for clients. We have no government contracts and no need for security clearances.

The news outlet I founded, Democracy Docket, relies on individual subscribers and members. It has no corporate parent and no investors who can be pressured to soften our coverage. Growing Democracy Docket has become a focus of mine because it is so important to stand up when others will not.

Too many law firms and corporate-owned news outlets do not enjoy that freedom. Not a day passes without someone telling me how much they admire my outspokenness while explaining that their own situation does not permit it.

Sometimes there are genuine reasons — an immigration status that leaves someone legally vulnerable, a family situation that makes risk genuinely costly — but mostly it is people unwilling to do hard things that require sacrifice.

There is an important moral distinction between those two groups. The first deserves our solidarity. The second deserves our honest challenge. These encounters often feel like confessions.

I offer neither absolution nor excuses. Instead, I implore them to start by doing whatever they can do and build from there. In my experience, courage begets courage. More importantly, it inspires hope.

Trump wants us to believe he is all-powerful and cannot be stopped. He wants us to believe he will rig the outcome of the next election and that we are powerless to prevent it.

He knows that voters have no reason to brave difficult conditions in order to cast ballots if they believe those ballots will never be counted. There is no reason to vote at all if you are convinced the results are preordained.

The pundits and prognosticators are simply doing Trump’s bidding. They confidently explain how ICE will inevitably block voting, the military will seize ballots, and the courts will side with Trump. Their clever sophistication and cynical wit may sound like clear-eyed realism, but it is the furthest thing from a pro-democracy stance. Despair dressed up as analysis is still despair.

That is why, in addition to fighting in court, I spend so much of my time focused on communicating what is happening to our democracy. I write for Democracy Docket several times a week, I host a podcast, and appear on television because it is important that we not become paralyzed with fear or overcome by bad information.

Of course, we must be clear-eyed about the challenges we face. I think about them every day and write about them often. Awareness is not the enemy. Surrender through inaction is.

Eight million people did not take to the streets on Saturday because they believed the fight was lost. They came because they believe it can be won.

We have been here before. The suffragists were told women would never vote. The civil rights marchers were told segregation could never be dismantled. What made the difference, every time, was not the absence of fear but the refusal to be paralyzed by it.

Trump is counting on our exhaustion. He is counting on the rallies to fade, the outrage to cool, and the movement to splinter before November arrives. Our job is to prove him wrong — not just in the streets, but in courtrooms, in voting booths and in every conversation we have between now and Election Day.

That is why I started Democracy Docket in 2020. That is why 8 million people took to the streets on Saturday. And that is why we must keep speaking out, louder and with greater resolve, until this fight is won.

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