Threats to the November elections are extreme. The Trump administration has given every indication that it does not intend to let voting proceed fairly.

Phil Weiser, the Colorado attorney general, is among the people who can do something about it. In a recent interview with Newsline, Weiser outlined why he thinks the state can defend its sovereignty against attacks from the federal government and ensure President Donald Trump does not succeed in subverting democracy.

The subject matter of the interview — whether free and fair elections are still possible — was itself a sign of how America is faltering in the face of authoritarian treachery, and Weiser’s responses reveal a faith in the rule of law that increasingly appears at odds with reality, considering that the administration so often gets away with breaking the law and the U.S. Supreme Court so often bends it to favor Trump.

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But his answers also reveal that the state’s top law enforcement officer is preparing to win a monumental battle.

“We have already seen bigger threats to our republic, bigger threats to our state sovereignty, than we’ve ever seen,” Weiser said. “We have to be prepared. And the big question that we are going to answer this fall is whether we remain a republic where states have their own authority and states fully control elections.”

About those threats: Trump continues to promote the falsehood that he won the 2020 election, and now he has vast federal powers to leverage that lie against the impartial administration of elections. Earlier this month he said he wants Republicans to “nationalize” elections and “take over the voting.”

The violent deployment of immigration enforcement in cities like Minneapolis is widely seen as creating “a pretext to rig the election” through an armed presence at polling places. Weiser sees a role for local law enforcement in protecting voters against such federal thuggery if it appears in Colorado.

“It is important that we have law enforcement that both up front and after the fact prevents any intimidation. We have laws that ban people from intimidating or interfering with the right to vote,” he said. “If people hear of any of these threats, I want to hear about it in our office, and I want our law enforcement to be aware of it so we can protect the right to vote.”

Last month, Weiser launched a new online tool that residents can use to report misconduct by federal agents.

In January, the FBI raided the election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, an incursion that the Trump administration justified with widely debunked claims about fraud in the 2020 election. Some election law experts say the raid was a “test run” for November, when the administration could seize election machines and ballots at other sites around the country.

What if that happens in Colorado?

​​“What we need to make clear is no state election official should be turning over anything to an FBI agent if there is no actual warrant, and there’s no basis for an actual warrant because the federal government has no basis to seek to seize or to control or to oversee state election procedure,” said Weiser, a Democrat who’s running for Colorado governor.

Trump has repeatedly demonstrated he has little regard for the fine points of the law. But Weiser is confident the courts will provide a bulwark against federal election interference.

“In 2020, this administration, this president, tried to get a whole bunch of challenges that went to court to overturn election results. They lost every single one of them,” Weiser said, adding that if federal authorities try to interfere with Colorado elections, “The next step is we’re in court, and the administration is going to lose.”

It will lose, because the Constitution demands it, Weiser said.

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“The principle that we’re talking about here is as basic a constitutional principle as there is,” Weiser said. “States control elections. The federal government does not have the authority to take control, commandeer or otherwise direct our elections.”

Weiser has experience in this area. In 2020, he argued Colorado’s position before the U.S. Supreme Court in a dispute over “faithless electors,” and the court unanimously sided with his assertion of state control as it related to members of the Electoral College. He’s challenged Trump administration policies in court more than 50 times with an impressive record of success.

His trust in the courts, however, can seem dubious, given the behavior of the nation’s top federal judges in the Trump era. It’s true that federal district court judges have mostly hewed to core American principles in curbing administration extremism. But the Roberts Supreme Court has licensed presidential criminal behavior. It rules in favor of Trump in most of the numerous cases on its secretive shadow docket. Federal appellate judges appointed by Trump rule in his favor 92 percent of the time, The New York Timesfound.

Americans in the Trump era have learned the hard lesson that institutions will not save them. On the other hand, the residents of Minneapolis recently demonstrated that ordinary people can be extraordinarily effective in their own defense against tyranny.

“Minnesotans showed that brutality and sheer numbers could not overcome communities that were united in their opposition to the usurpers,” Minnesota Reformer editor J. Patrick Coolican wrote after nonviolent resistance in his state triumphed over federal aggression. “What happened and why it happened offer important lessons for our future and for democracy defenders across the country.”

Much of Colorado’s defense will fall to Weiser, who has already proved he’s up to the challenge. But Colorado residents also will have a profound role to play.