Justice Department election litigation continues after final-weeks Alaska and California challenges
Donald Trump accepted the results of the 2026 U.S. midterm elections on Tuesday after a lopsided defeat for Republicans, as Democrats won decisively. He said he was “absolutely willing” to accept the outcome and looked forward to working with Democrats. The Guardian described the acceptance as almost unprecedented, noting that Trump had raised doubt about every presidential race and midterm since his first election in 2016, except the 2024 election, which he won as Republicans performed well.
In the months before election day, the Trump administration waged an aggressive effort to sow doubt about the results, intimidate voters and election officials, and signal it would use the power of the federal government to challenge the electoral process. “It was essentially too big to rig,” an unnamed Trump adviser told CNN, according to The Guardian. The Guardian suggested Trump may have had no choice. Even before the results were known, many of his election interference attempts had simply never materialized.
Administration officials had declined to rule out the possibility of deploying immigration agents to the polls, and 1,000 Justice Department monitors were deployed to voting sites. The Guardian reported worries that the monitors would attempt to meaningfully disrupt the voting process. Some thought Trump would try something outlandish like seizing voting machines or ballots, while others speculated Republicans could try a longshot maneuver to block new members of Congress from being seated on January 3. None of that happened, and certification of new members in January looked likely to go smoothly.
The Guardian noted that the results did not mean Trump and his allies fully respected the electoral process. The administration’s legal efforts in that regard remained ongoing, with no immediate sign it would cease them. In a serious escalation in the campaign’s final weeks, the Justice Department attempted to block certification of the Alaska Senate race and to stop California election officials from counting certain ballots. It also threatened to prosecute California election officials, serving them subpoenas on Monday, the day before election day.
Cleta Mitchell, a Republican lawyer who has been a key player in spreading doubt about American elections, criticized Senate majority leader John Thune for not passing a sweeping voting restriction bill. “It’s not a big deal to you that our election system has been taken over and manipulated by the left. That aliens by the hundreds of thousands are on our voter rolls, that there are illegal votes by the thousands in the election results…and that it matters,” she said in a post on X. “When election results are not close … no one looks under the hood,” she said on another post.
Election day also brought isolated problems at polling places, which Trump allies sought to portray as larger controversies. After tabulator problems in a competitive New York congressional race, Katie Miller, the wife of top Trump aide Stephen Miller, posted, “This is how the left steals elections.” The Republican candidate who lost, representative Mike Lawler, publicly reassured voters that there were no “shenanigans” with the vote and quickly conceded.
“There’s no question that part of the reason the election subversion scenarios didn’t come to pass was because the margins of victory rendered them futile,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, a voting rights lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice. “But I think it had more to do with the incredible work of pro-democracy forces in foreseeing, preparing for, and responding to the administration’s efforts for the last two years.”
The Guardian reported that to some experts, Tuesday felt like a shift in Trumpworld’s approach to election integrity. “I don’t know necessarily margin of victory makes much difference to those who have profited off of the economy of grift around election conspiracies for quite some time. It might be the politics overall in the nation have changed to some degree, and that creates a different incentive structure,” said David Becker, the executive director for the Center for Innovation and Research.
For months, Democratic attorneys general and others war-gamed possible scenarios for what they would do if Trump tried to contest the results or took the extraordinary step of trying to use armed force to intimidate voters. When the Justice Department began filing lawsuits in the election’s final days, lawyers were prepared to rush to court.
Democrats’ gains at the state level also positioned the party to defend against election interference in the 2028 presidential election. Democrats held on to secretary of state offices, which oversee elections, in the swing states of Arizona, Nevada and Michigan, and picked up the offices in Georgia, a major battleground, and Ohio. They also gained hundreds of legislative seats, claiming trifectas — complete control of state government — in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Arizona. The Guardian reported that control of those positions would allow Democrats to pass laws guarding the certification process.
“We should not walk away from 2026 feeling as if the mobilization against the forces of anti-democracy was overkill or unnecessary,” Richard Hasen, an election law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in an essay for Slate. “We should be proud that, thanks to the efforts of thousands of people, the system held against a powerful barrage.” The immediate certification outlook appeared smooth, but the administration’s broader legal efforts remained active, with no immediate sign it would cease them.