Donald Trump’s Big Lie isn’t just about what the defeated president felt or did — but rather the impact of his actions on American democracy and millions of voters. In conversation with NYU Law Professor Melissa Murray, Brennan Center President Michael Waldman tracks the current wave of voting restrictions sweeping statehouses around the country in the context of the nation’s history of voting rights — from the Founders’ debates, to the civil rights era.
“Some eras are quiet,” Waldman writes now. “In others, great forces clash, bringing about breakthroughs in participation—or a lurch backward. That’s where we are today: one of the most intense moments in our history in the fight for a meaningful right to vote.”
Waldman shows that the fight over the vote has always been a central political issue, delivering a message that the late Rep. John Lewis called “a message every American needs to hear.” Trump’s bid to overturn the election marked a break with that history. It’s an epic clash — with states rushing to restrict the vote, while Congress has the power to stop them. The question is whether it has the political will.
Join us as Waldman and Melissa Murray analyze the intense fighting over voting and the struggle for power.
Produced in partnership with New York University’s John Brademas Center
Speakers:
- Michael Waldman, President, Brennan Center for Justice, author of The Fight to Vote and The Second Amendment: A Biography and President of the Brennan Center for Justice, is a leading law scholar and public policy advocate.
- Melissa Murray, Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law, NYU School of Law
