It's not as eloquent as "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," but give Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar (D) credit for his candor in this pugnacious political season.

With the Department of Justice (DOJ) peppering his office with subpoenas in an effort to pry loose control of the state's constitutionally protected responsibility to run its own elections, Aguilar recently received a letter announcing he was the target of an FBI investigation. Bullies love to apply pressure to those they imagine they can intimidate, but I'm not so sure it's working in Nevada.

Aguilar, a Democrat, responded to the letter by telling a Reuters reporter, "I am not scared of these fuckers."

There it is. Start printing the T-shirts.

"I am not scared of these fuckers." The secretary of state lacks FDR's rhetorical aplomb, but he knows how to cut to the bottom line. That's a good thing, because I think he'll be getting plenty of practice in the fight to protect Nevada's election process. A recent poll byThe Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsosfinds approximately 70 percent of registered voters from both parties believe the election outcome will be fair, but Trump won't accept a loss of control.

After The Indy reported first in September that Aguilar's office had received its seventh voter-related subpoena from the DOJ, the administration's elections fraud charade intensified. It came in the wake of the dismissal of an administration lawsuit against Nevada for refusing to turn over an unredacted copy of its voter rolls, including partial Social Security and driver's license numbers.

As Trump's popularity has plummeted, even with loyalists in his MAGA base, the "election security" canard has grown louder. Republican state officeholders who know better will be challenged to put Nevada's sovereignty over their party's conspiracy theories.

By their actions, they'll remind Nevadans who they really work for. Because the administration's bugaboo voter fraud claim is an argument without legs. In a timely report recently published at UNLV by Brookings Mountain West and The Lincy Institute, the analysis of documented voter fraud cases in the Mountain West from 1998 to 2025 showed just 11 cases in Nevada out of nearly 9 million votes cast.

Lest anyone think the findings were concocted by some liberal think tank's analytics, the report used data collected by The Heritage Foundation, the conservative mega-think tank responsible for Project 2025.

The report isn't a political gotcha. It's game over.

But that's just the problem. Lying about widespread voter fraud doesn't need facts. Big lies never do.

All they need are enough people in positions of authority to repeat them. That's part of what makes Aguilar's line important. "I am not scared of these fuckers." Because fear is fuel to the big liars.

Look no further than Aguilar's opponent as he campaigns for re-election. Republican Jim Marchant, endorsed and lavished in praise by the president, is so loyal to the lie that he could be the Robin to Trump's election-fraud Batman. Flying under a tattered MAGA "Stop the Steal" banner in 2022, Marchant ran competitively against Aguilar, losing by less than 3 percent of the vote.

This time, Aguilar has enjoyed a large fundraising lead. Marchant has relied on his relationship with Trump in a time of high-gasoline prices and daily chaos wafting from the White House. Over the years, Marchant has promoted the conspiracy that Dominion Voting Systems machines were rigged, that paper ballots in a state with 2 million registered voters was the only way to secure the election and expressed great confidence that Nevada's elections have been fraudulent since 2008. When he lost a race for Congress in 2020 to Steven Horsford, Marchant — you guessed it — claimed he was the victim of widespread voter fraud – just like his hero in Washington.

Trump has a lot riding on the outcome of the 2026 election. He seems particularly sensitive about the state of play in Nevada and recently gave Marchant a double shot of atta boys and accolades.

In the Reuters interview, Aguilar reminded the DOJ bullies that the scare tactics weren't working. He said, "These individuals can do as much as they want to try to intimidate us, but what it's going to do is make us harder in our positions and make us fight back even stronger."

And then he delivered the defining line for Nevada Democrats in the 2026 campaign.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family's Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Reader's Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.