Trump Is Building a National Voter List — And It's Worse Than You Think | Sen. Alex Padilla
Defending Democracy with Marc Elias
Democracy Docket
4.9 • 702 Ratings
🗓️ 4 April 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Senator Alex Padilla joins Marc Elias to discuss Trump's "flat out unconstitutional" executive order demanding that the Department of Homeland Security make a list of citizens. It gets worse: Only those on that list will receive mail-in ballots.
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00:00 Welcome Today’s Guest: Alex Padilla
00:37 State of the SAVE Act & Senate Standoff
01:58 How Democrats Are Blocking the Bill Daily
03:12 Can Republicans Bypass the Filibuster?
05:08 Lawsuits, Media Coverage & Florida’s Version of the Bill
06:30 Why Republicans Target California
10:01 Breaking Down Donald Trump’s Executive Order on Elections
12:28 Where Are Congressional Republicans?
15:00 Padilla Reflects on Being Physically Confronted by Federal Forces
18:22 ICE Expansion, Detention Conditions & Oversight Battles
21:27 California Ballot Seizure Controversy & Election Threats
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Donald Trump's new executive order power grab will prevent eligible voters from casting their ballots. |
| 0:05.5 | And make no mistake, that's exactly what he wants. |
| 0:08.4 | Well, today's guest, Senator Alex Padilla, he's not going to let Trump get away with it. |
| 0:12.6 | From his work as California Secretary of State to the United States Senate where he chairs the Senate Rules Committee, |
| 0:18.5 | he's on the front lines pushing back against Trump's executive overreach. |
| 0:22.5 | Senator Padilla joins me to discuss Trump's |
| 0:24.8 | unconstitutional abuse of power. |
| 0:26.6 | Trump's attempt to federalize elections |
| 0:28.6 | and the dangerous political attacks |
| 0:30.5 | against the senator and his colleagues. |
| 0:32.2 | But before we get into it, |
| 0:33.3 | subscribe to this channel to learn how you can defend democracy. |
| 0:37.2 | Senator Alex Padilla, welcome back to defending democracy. Well, I'd say good to be back, but we've got a lot of issues under your hands right now. We sure do. And so I want to jump into them. I want to talk about the executive order that the president just issued. But before we do that, I want to get an update from you about the Save Act, the Save America Act. This is the mass voter suppression law that Donald Trump has been |
| 0:58.2 | now pushing and pushing and pushing on the Senate. John Thune, the Senate Republican leader, |
| 1:04.1 | seems to be hiding in a corner someplace trying to just have this go away. What can you tell folks |
| 1:09.6 | about this law, or this bill, I should say, |
| 1:13.0 | where it stands? Kind of what's going on? No, I appreciate that. Last time we, I was on, I think we were |
| 1:18.3 | talking about the SAVE Act as we were anticipating it. So a quick refresher, the SAVE Act is like |
| 1:23.6 | all the horrible things Trump would love to do to our election system. |
| 1:28.7 | They call it a voter ID bill and it's anything but it's really a voter suppression bill. |
| 1:33.6 | It has the voter ID element, but most IDs is you and I recognize a driver's license, et cetera. |
| 1:39.7 | That wouldn't be sufficient to qualify to vote under the language of what they call the Save America Act. |
... |
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