Trump directs Justice Department to challenge possible Alaska Senate result

Courts and states have resisted the administration’s election interventions

President Donald Trump directed the Justice Department late last week to challenge a possible Democratic victory in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race, asking a court to delay certification until a determination is made on whether voters were confused by two candidates with the same name. The administration’s election litigation is now before a court even though the result is not yet known.

The dispute centers on names repeated on Alaska’s ballot. Trump followed his direction to the Justice Department by calling for the prosecution of Democratic candidate and former congresswoman Mary Peltola. Trump cited a New York Times report that Peltola’s campaign helped recruit someone named Dan Sullivan to siphon votes from the Republican incumbent, also named Dan Sullivan.

Under the Constitution, certification is a duty assigned to the states. Academics believe the lawsuit is the first time since the Civil Rights era that the federal government has sued to halt certification of an election. Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system might hold the key to Senate control, and Trump has called the system a scam.

Trump has for years claimed elections were rigged when he or his party lost, and he has used midterm rallies to say Democrats cheat and criticize election officials by name. This week, he told reporters he would accept the results if the elections were honest: “If they’re honest elections,” he said. The pattern of such claims predates 2026: after finishing second to Sen. Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican Iowa caucuses, Trump said, “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa,” and then, “He stole it.”

Earlier this week, Trump announced a $1 million bounty for anyone who provides proof of prior or current voter fraud in the country; it was not clear whether or how he planned to follow through. Democrats and other groups that oppose Trump, concerned that his words would turn into directives to have his administration interfere in the midterms, had spent months running exercises, preparing lawsuits and planning for tens of thousands of people to monitor the polls on Election Day. Theresa Lee, a senior attorney with the ACLU, said, “For at least the last year and a half, they’ve been laying that groundwork,” and added, “We’ve been preparing for just as long, if not longer.”

So far, early voting has been quiet, with about 35 million Americans already casting ballots without notable disruption. In that respect, 2026 resembles 2025’s off-year elections in New Jersey, Virginia and a handful of other states, where voting proceeded without major issues. The Justice Department’s more aggressive actions this month already make 2026 different from any election in recent memory.

The Justice Department has also pursued election-related demands in two other states. It sued California to block ballot counting after alleging the state had 20,000 noncitizens on its rolls, and made a similar demand of Washington related to about 400 voters. California and Washington said the demands came too close to the election to fulfill, and a federal judge on Wednesday rejected the federal government’s California demands. Earlier, the Justice Department seized ballots and election records related to the 2020 presidential election in Georgia’s Fulton County and launched a sweeping investigation of that vote. It has yet to turn up evidence supporting Trump’s fraud claims.

Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department did not want to intervene in elections but had no choice in Alaska. On CNN on Sunday, Blanche said, “We are not doing anything improper,” and added, “But I do think it’s important for the American people to understand that we are not — (and) President Trump is not — trying to take over a state election in any way, shape or form.” After the lawsuit was filed, Trump said, “I’m the one that said do it.”

Although the administration said it was acting on behalf of Alaska’s voters, Trump’s Republican allies in the state did not appear happy with the suit. Sen. Dan Sullivan would not say whether he supported it, while the state’s Republican-controlled government filed court papers seeking dismissal. The state’s other Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski, said the administration “should never have filed” it. Political parties often support extra candidates to pull votes from rivals; if state courts allow that practice, legal experts said, the federal government has no role challenging the results.

Derek Muller, a Notre Dame law professor, wrote that the Alaska lawsuit’s legal argument was “one of the worst ones I’ve ever seen.” He said that should reassure the public that Trump would not be able to change election outcomes. Muller said, “The notion that there’s going to be something systemic that’s going to thwart the will of the voters seems much more speculative,” and, “A lot of the conduct seems impulsive rather than strategic and planned.”

The Justice Department refused to join Trump’s allies in election litigation in 2020. In his second term, Trump has pushed out career staff and staffed his administration with people who helped challenge the 2020 vote. Courts have repeatedly rebuffed the administration, including by putting on hold two Trump executive orders seeking to change voting procedures, often because the Constitution gives the president no direct power over how elections are run. The administration also has lost more than two dozen cases trying to get detailed voter information from states. Trump and his allies lost dozens of lawsuits in 2020 as they tried to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Pat McCrory, a former Republican governor of North Carolina who is part of Right Count, a group of conservatives pushing back against election conspiracy theories and intervention in local elections, said he was confident the system would hold. “The only thing that protects us from anarchy is this thin piece of paper called the Constitution,” McCrory said. “That thin piece of paper is, to me, a cement wall.” Matt Dallek, a Georgetown political scientist, said, “The courts are likely to throw most, if not all, of these charges out,” but added, “But this is a way of intensifying the signal to Trump’s supporters that the elections are rigged.”

Concerns have mounted that Trump could deploy immigration agents, the FBI or the military to polls or seize ballots or voting machines, although multiple administration officials have denied such plans. All of that could happen before courts even have a chance to weigh in, said Brendan Nyhan, a Dartmouth political scientist. “The threat is that he’ll take actions that can’t be undone,” Nyhan said.