FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
02/10/25
In The New York Times and on MSNBC this weekend, DASS Chair and Vice Chair point out the dangers of Trump’s mass firings and how they will make our elections – and our country – less safe.
As the Trump administration and its unelected crony Elon Musk take aim at federal agencies and the programs Americans rely on, DASS Chair Adrian Fontes and DASS Vice Chair Stephanie Thomas – in the first national interviews helming DASS – took their case to the American people how Trump’s actions in the past three weeks represent a fundamental threat to our democracy.
Read the full interview here.
Read more from Chair Adrian Fontes below:
“This is more than just about the economy, though I think that will probably be one of the things we talk about. But it’s also going to be about how government functions. The assault against governance generally is assault against democracy. You’ve got unelected billionaires, and they’re wiping out, or pretending to completely eviscerate, some of our government agencies. We’ve never seen that in the history of the nation.
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“Dismantling the part of the F.B.I. that monitored foreign influence in our elections, that is a little bit concerning. Are you basically, from the White House, inviting foreign governments to interfere in our elections?
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“Election administrators can do their duty while independently maintaining their political preferences. And that, for generations and generations, has been the American way.”
Watch the full interview here.
Read more from Vice Chair Stephanie Thomas below:
“In 2026, we have 26 Secretaries up for election – 13 of those are in GOP states – and we have been mobilizing, hitting the ground running already because Secretaries control a lot around election processes in most states. So, not only do we have to worry about overreach from the federal government and what state legislatures are doing, but Secretaries also set procedures and processes that also can have an impact on disenfranchising voters.
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”I think it’s a really… dangerous time for our country for leaders to fire people or put them on administrative leave, etcetera, for political reasons… A lot of these entities are deliberately set up to be very bipartisan: equal Democrat and Republican like the FEC.
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“We saw something similar [to the firings] with CISA, again an agency most people haven’t heard of – the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Their workers were placed on administrative leave, but what this group does is make sure that states are aware of attacks on our election infrastructure. They are looking out for foreign adversaries for a lot of states who don’t have the funding to have top-notch cybersecurity experts on hand – CISA plays that role for them. So, all of these moves are not only bad for democracy but dangerous for the American public.
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“We have seen probably 200 bills restricting voter access be introduced into [Congress] this year… They’re trying to make it harder for all Americans to vote whether you’re a college student, a woman who has changed her last name, the elderly, people of color, the disabled, low-income people – these are all communities that can be impacted by the bills coming out of the federal government and some state legislatures.
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“We want to make sure that not only are elections run safely and securely, but that people have access to the polls. We at the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State are certainly getting out, trying to reach the grassroots, mobilizing some of our allies to educate people about these threats to democracy… When people know that their freedoms are at risk, and that their democracy is at risk, they have shown up to support Democratic Secretaries.”