House Democrats will hold a hearing on Jan. 6 to shine light on the Trump administration’s threats to free and fair elections — five years to the day after Donald Trump fueled a deadly insurrection attempt seeking to stay in the White House despite his loss in the 2020 election.
In a news release, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the 10 a.m. ET hearing will be hosted by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who served as chairman of the House Jan. 6 committee. Jeffries added:
At the hearing, we will examine ongoing threats to free and fair elections posed by an out-of-control Trump administration, expose the election deniers who hold high-level positions of significance in the executive branch and detail the threats to public safety posed by the hundreds of violent felons who were pardoned on the President’s first day in office. We will also present a panel of Members who wish to share their personal experiences from that horrific day.
Nearly five years after Trump’s assault on democracy, more than 1,000 pardoned rioters are roaming freely, and Trump — a sitting president yet again — is deploying federal agencies to launch renewed attacks on voting rights and electoral processes.
Jeffries’ news release mentions that several people pardoned by Trump have since been “charged with new crimes throughout the country,” including some who have been accused of child molestation, sexual assault and kidnapping. My colleague Steve Benen has done a great job documenting this disturbing trend over on the MaddowBlog.
The Trump administration is presently launching a blatant and multipronged attack designed to marginalize liberals and impose conservative rule nationwide. After right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was killed in September — in a shooting that has not been linked to any liberal groups — White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller vowed to use “every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks.”
But this threat seems like a mere pretext for the administration to ramp up efforts it has already undertaken to put its thumb on the scale for conservatives in future elections. This year, we’ve seen the administration succeed in pressuring multiple GOP-led states — such as Texas and Missouri — to institute racist gerrymanders designed to shore up Republicans’ electoral chances by breaking up districts with largely Black, liberal-leaning communities.
As my colleague Ryan Teague Beckwith recently wrote, Trump wants to alter voting laws in ways that could undermine mail-in ballots. His State Department has moved to deport or bar from entry people who investigate election-related disinformation. And, in perhaps the most brazen attempt to impose its will on electoral processes, Trump’s administration has reportedly pressured states to turn over sensitive voter data to build a national database that my colleague Zeeshan Aleem aptly noted could be used to sow doubt about future elections.
The Trump administration’s list of antidemocratic attacks is long — and the fact that Democrats are raising this issue suggests they want Americans to keep it front of mind as they head into the 2026 midterms.
Election lawyer Marc Elias, who has been targeted by the Trump administration over his work, explained to MS NOW’s Nicolle Wallace how conservatives’ relentless attacks on elections are likely to continue in the year ahead. You can check out his remarks on Wallace’s podcast, “The Best People,” here.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.