Donald Trump controls the Department of Justice. It prosecutes his political enemies and looks past the transgressions of his friends. It is staffed with election deniers seeking his favor by undermining free and fair elections.

So when Trump says that election officials in California “will all go to jail for a long period of time,” we should take the threat literally and seriously.

For two years, people have speculated about the potential for a constitutional crisis. Let me be clear: we have reached one.

For more than a year, states have fended off the Trump administration’s unconstitutional encroachment on their power to set the time, place and manner of federal elections.

At first, this took the form of demands that states turn over their full, unredacted voter files to the DOJ. Thirty states and the District of Columbia, including California, resisted and were sued. Elias Law Group represented clients in each of those lawsuits.

The DOJ is 0-26 in the cases decided so far, and my firm is undefeated. The rest are pending.

Trump next tried to weaponize the U.S. Postal Service to obtain data on which voters were requesting and casting mail-in ballots. Once again, my law firm sued and won an injunction. In a separate case, the Supreme Court rejected DOJ’s efforts to defend the Postal Service’s scheme.

Interspersed with these attacks have been other data-collection schemes and attempts to intimidate state officials and lawful voters. In recent weeks, they have become so frequent that it has been hard to keep track of them all.

The through line of all of these attacks, however, has been the administration’s insistence that states disenfranchise voters whose ballots it does not want counted in the midterms.

Time and again, the administration has cloaked this scheme in false claims of noncitizen voting and election fraud, only to have the truth exposed on closer examination.

Over the summer, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin asserted without evidence that DHS had identified more than 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote in California, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

DHS told Nevada election officials that as many as 15,903 noncitizens could be registered to vote in their state. By August, DHS had dropped the number to 185. In reality, it was zero.

What happened in Nevada is one example of a familiar pattern: Lies about unlawful voters come with threats of federal action, and under scrutiny, the Trump administration’s claims collapse.

Facing a devastating wave of losses in November, Trump and his cronies abruptly intensified their attacks this week. Unsurprisingly, their target was California.

With 52 congressional districts and a rising blue wave, California is poised to deliver a knockout blow to GOP control of Congress. It is a state that has repeatedly humiliated Trump at the ballot box.

This new attack began on Tuesday, when the DOJ sent letters to California and Los Angeles County election officials demanding that they review a list of approximately 20,000 voters the Trump administration claims to believe are noncitizens. When they did not do so by noon Thursday, the DOJ sued.

The familiar pattern is already visible. That 20,000 figure is roughly a tenth of the as many as 190,832 noncitizen registrants DHS claimed California had this summer, and the lawsuit never explains the difference.

The lawsuit also fails to cite a law that authorizes the federal government to stop a state from counting ballots. Instead, it relies on a federal criminal law barring noncitizens from voting.

As for why the federal government could not confirm the status of the voters it flagged, the DOJ wrote in its lawsuit: “It is not practicable or feasible for the United States to investigate before the 2026 election concludes thousands, let alone tens of thousands, of individuals.”

Then, late Friday, the DOJ raised the stakes again. In a letter to Los Angeles County officials, copied to the secretary of state, Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter warned that election officials who count ballots cast by voters on DOJ’s list could face criminal prosecution:

“If persons knowingly tabulate ballots cast by individuals identified by federal agencies as noncitizens, they risk becoming aiders and abettors to a federal crime.”

Missing from his threat is the word “likely.” That omission is no accident. DOJ’s language has changed dramatically over the last few days.

On Tuesday, DOJ’s letters described people the federal government “believes are likely noncitizens.” On Thursday the DOJ's press release quoted Secretary Mullin calling the work a “preliminary analysis” and saying the review “remain[s] ongoing.”

But by Friday, McCotter’s letter had dropped “likely” altogether and referred to people “identified by federal agencies as noncitizens.” And the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles declared that the 20,000 had been “confirmed” by a review of federal databases.

The DOJ has pointed to no new evidence.

For more than a year, Trump has claimed that states are merely agents of the federal government for tabulating federal election results. This is plainly false.

Rather than correct the president, the sycophants who run his DOJ are attempting to carry out this unconstitutional policy. The result is a standoff in California.

Election workers must choose between following state law at the risk of retributive political prosecution, or caving to the DOJ and betraying their obligations to their state.

The days ahead will be critical, as several developments could make this situation less serious or substantially worse. The federal courts will no doubt shut down the DOJ's civil lawsuit.

When that happens, will the DOJ attempt to seize ballots? Will it initiate grand jury investigations?

Most importantly, will this become a contagion that spreads to other states? The risk that what we are witnessing in California will quickly become a nationwide attack on free and fair elections is not trivial.

We are already in a constitutional crisis. What remains to be seen is how big it is and how it is resolved.

Being prepared for what comes next means insisting state election officials follow the law and standing behind those who do. It also requires us to demand that courts act quickly when the DOJ violates the law and Constitution.

This is Donald Trump’s latest effort to rig the 2026 election. He is betting that it will work. It is up to us to prove him wrong.