With four days left before the November 3 midterm elections, the Trump administration's election legal challenges have sharpened into a two-front confrontation with the states that run American elections. On Thursday, October 29, the Justice Department filed an amended lawsuit in Alaska seeking to block certification of the state's Senate result if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses narrowly, and, in a separate pressure campaign in California, federal grand jury subpoenas reached Los Angeles County election officials as part of a criminal inquiry into alleged voting by noncitizens. Together, the moves amount to an extraordinary federal intervention in elections that the Constitution leaves to local administration — and election officials across the country told Reuters they are bracing for more challenges from Washington before Tuesday.
The Alaska development came first in the day's sequence. The Justice Department's revised complaint argues that operatives working for Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola orchestrated what it calls a "sham campaign for the purpose of misleading Alaskan voters and getting Peltola elected." The candidate at the centre of that claim is Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher who is on the ballot without a party affiliation and shares a name with the Republican incumbent, Senator Dan S. Sullivan. The department's filing adds a claim under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause to its earlier case, which was first brought on October 22 and sought to stop Alaska certifying a Senate result "pending an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan."
According to a person familiar with the matter cited by Reuters, the department has also issued more than 40 subpoenas and document requests in its Alaska probe. Separately, House Oversight Chairman James Comer opened a congressional investigation on Thursday into the same allegations, requesting voluntary interviews, while Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy directed a state investigation and said in an interview with News Nation that any finding of illegality "may in fact impact whether someone is seated in the US Senate." Alaska's election boards responded the same evening by filing a motion to dismiss the amended complaint and asking for expedited consideration of it.
In California, the pressure took a different form. The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder's office received federal grand jury subpoenas last week, copies of which were seen by Reuters on Thursday. The subpoenas seek information about the agency's methods for detecting unlawful voting by noncitizens and preventing such ballots from being counted, as well as records of the county's response to a series of Justice Department letters sent this month warning local officials that they risk criminal exposure if they do not verify voters' citizenship status. NPR reported that at least two employees at the registrar's office were served, with instructions to appear in court on November 4 — the day after the election. It was not immediately clear whether the registrar's office itself is the focus of the criminal investigation.
The California subpoenas land one day after a federal judge rejected the department's bid to force the state to set aside more than 20,000 mail ballots it flagged as likely cast by noncitizens. US District Judge David O. Carter ruled on October 28 that there was no legal basis for the demand and that the court was not convinced the federal list was reliable. The department is appealing that ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and has asked it to rule by Friday, October 30.
The Alaska dispute did not begin this week. The New York Times reported on Wednesday, October 28, based on 12 interviews, text messages and documents prepared for a potential lawsuit, that aides to Peltola worked with campaign lawyers and staff at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on a months-long "ballot composition project" to recruit candidates who could siphon votes from the incumbent. Two candidates were recruited, the Times reported, including Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. President Trump had already pushed the Justice Department to bring the Alaska case before the Times report, seeking to pre-emptively block Alaska from certifying a Peltola victory if she won, and after the report he called for Peltola to be removed from the ballot and prosecuted.
Both the Peltola campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee deny the central allegation. The campaign has said it had "no involvement with either Sullivan campaign" and did not recruit any candidates into the race, while the committee has denied involvement and accused Republicans of propping up candidates of their own in other races. Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. has previously denied that his aim was to cause confusion or divert votes, saying he ran because he was dissatisfied with the senator's record. Alaska's Supreme Court has already ruled him eligible to run, and in June the state's Division of Elections disqualified him before that decision was reversed in court — a reminder that the ballot-access question itself has already been litigated once.
The California campaign has a longer paper trail. The Justice Department has filed a civil lawsuit against the state and sent a series of letters this month to county officials, warning that officials who knowingly tabulate ballots cast by people federal agencies have identified as noncitizens risk becoming aiders and abettors to a federal crime. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter told reporters on Thursday that the department has charged 156 immigrants with voting or registering to vote unlawfully in a pre-midterm push, and that subpoenas to state and local election officials have been used to build such cases. A department spokesperson declined to comment on the latest subpoenas but said California and the federal government "agree that non-citizen voting is properly addressed through criminal law."
The stakes of both fights are national. Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority, and Democrats need a net gain of four seats to win the chamber back. Alaska is one of about ten highly competitive Senate races, and a contested certification there could leave control of the Senate unclear for weeks after Tuesday. All 435 House seats are also on the ballot, and if Democrats take one or both chambers, they could launch investigations into the Trump administration and increase pressure on the president over the war in Iran. That is why a dispute over one Senate seat in Alaska and a records fight in one California county are being watched far beyond their borders.
What links the Alaska and California actions is not just their timing but their theory. In both states, the federal government is using the machinery of federal law — a civil lawsuit and a Supremacy Clause claim in Alaska, grand jury subpoenas and a criminal probe in California — to challenge how states administer their own elections, days before voters finish casting ballots. Supporters of the approach argue that federal law gives Washington a legitimate interest in preventing voter confusion and unlawful voting, and that the courts, not the states alone, should decide whether a result can be trusted. Critics, including state election officials and Democrats, argue that the interventions are designed less to resolve proven problems than to cast doubt on results the administration may not like, and that the timing — after millions of ballots have already been cast — makes the doubt itself the damage.
The evidence so far cuts both ways, and neither side has yet won a decisive ruling. No court has found that Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.'s candidacy changed the outcome of a race that has not yet been held, and no court has found that the federal voter list in California is reliable enough to justify setting aside 20,000 ballots. Legal scholars quoted in earlier coverage of the Alaska suit have called it frivolous or baseless, while the administration insists the Times reporting justifies a full investigation before certification. In California, the subpoenas seek records, not convictions, and it remains unclear whether the employees served are targets of the investigation at all. What is not in doubt is the scale: more than 40 subpoenas and document requests in Alaska, a parallel criminal probe in California, a House inquiry, a state investigation, and an appeal pending before the 9th Circuit — all converging on the final weekend of a midterm campaign.
Alaska election officials did not mince words in their Thursday night filing, calling the amended lawsuit "meritless" and saying it has "cast a cloud over Alaska's election that is contrary to the public interest." Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan struck a similar note in California, saying: "At every step, the US Department of Justice has taken a confrontational, adversarial approach." He added: "Election officials are acting in accordance with state and federal law." Governor Dunleavy, by contrast, backed the federal push, saying any finding of illegality "may in fact impact whether someone is seated in the US Senate."
On the campaign trail, the mood was defiant on both sides. Alaska-based elections attorney Scott Kendall told Reuters: "This guy's existence is gonna hurt Mary Peltola so much more than it helps her," while adding that with so few undecided voters left, the revelations were unlikely to change the outcome. Julie Wyatt, a 62-year-old logistics manager from Juneau, wrote in an email that she still planned to vote for Peltola: "If the Republicans are this desperate, Mary has them on the ropes." In Georgia, where Harris campaigned on Thursday in Macon ahead of Friday's Atlanta rally, she told supporters: "The last year and a half, it's been difficult. Now we're in the phase where we can do a whole lot."
Among early voters, the issues driving turnout were closer to home. At a polling centre on Thursday in Columbus, Ohio — home to highly competitive Senate and governor's races — election official Antone White said turnout was about twice as high as in 2022. Sadirah Simmons, a senior citizen living on a fixed income who was waiting to cast her ballot, said: "The economy is not getting any better. You have to go out and vote if you want change." Her remark captures the paradox of this election's final days: while lawyers argue over certification in Alaska and subpoenas in California, tens of millions of voters are already deciding the outcome the old-fashioned way.
The immediate risk is delay and doubt. If the Alaska race is close — and recent polling has put Peltola narrowly ahead of Sullivan, with the second Sullivan drawing a small share — a court fight over certification could keep Senate control unresolved for weeks, with ranked-choice tabulation, legal briefs and possible appeals stretching past Election Day. That uncertainty would arrive at a moment when the Senate's balance determines everything from judicial confirmations to the legislative agenda of the president's final two years. In California, the subpoenas raise a different risk: that local election workers, facing the threat of criminal exposure, become more cautious, slower, or more reluctant to serve — a chilling effect that critics say is the point, and supporters say is simply accountability.
The longer risk is precedent. This is the first attempt by the Trump administration to block certification of a 2026 midterm result if its preferred candidate loses, according to Democracy Docket's case tracker. If a court accepts the argument that voter confusion caused by a same-name candidate justifies halting certification pending an investigation, future administrations of either party could deploy the same tactic in any close race with a plausible confusion claim. If the court rejects it firmly — as Judge Carter rejected the California ballot set-aside — the ruling could become a guardrail against pre-emptive certification challenges. Either way, the Alaska case is likely to be cited for years.
There is also a political calculation that cuts across the legal one. The administration has scaled back the president's own travel in the final days, cancelling planned weekend rallies in Kansas and Iowa and replacing them with about 20 virtual appearances, known as tele-rallies, across nearly 20 states, while keeping Friday's Daytona Beach rally in Florida. The Republican National Committee says the virtual events reach more voters; critics note that Kansas and Iowa are states where Republican incumbents face unexpectedly tight races. The legal escalation and the campaign recalibration point in the same direction: a final-week strategy built on mobilising the base, contesting the ground rules, and preparing — publicly — for a fight over the count itself.
The calendar from here is crowded. In Alaska, the election boards have asked for expedited consideration of their motion to dismiss the amended complaint, and the department has asked the court to deny the three pending motions to dismiss as moot — but no ruling had been reported as of Friday morning. In California, the 9th Circuit has been asked to rule by Friday on the appeal of Judge Carter's ballot decision, and the Los Angeles County employees served with grand jury subpoenas have been instructed to appear in court on November 4. On the campaign trail, Trump speaks in Daytona Beach on Friday evening, Harris rallies in Atlanta the same day, and the tele-rally schedule runs through the weekend into Monday, the final day of campaigning.
Then comes Tuesday, November 3, when polls close and the counting begins — first the early votes, already more than 44 million strong, then Election Day ballots, then, in Alaska's ranked-choice system, the tabulation rounds that could decide whether the Senate race is close enough for the certification fight to matter at all. If Sullivan wins clearly, the amended lawsuit may fade into a footnote. If Peltola wins narrowly, the question the Justice Department has posed — whether a result "that may be impacted by voter confusion" can be certified at all — will move from a court filing to the centre of American politics. Either way, the final weekend of the 2026 midterms will be remembered not just for who voted, but for who tried to decide, in advance, whether those votes would count.
What is the Justice Department asking for in Alaska? It asks a federal court to block Alaska from certifying "any result that may be impacted by voter confusion" pending an investigation into whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. were meant for Senator Dan S. Sullivan. The amended complaint adds a Supremacy Clause claim and relies on the New York Times report about Democratic operatives recruiting a second Sullivan.
Has any court ruled on the amended Alaska complaint? No ruling on the amended complaint had been reported as of Friday morning. Alaska's election boards filed a motion to dismiss it on Thursday night and asked for expedited consideration, while the department asked the court to deny earlier motions to dismiss as moot.
What do the California subpoenas seek? Records from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder's office about how it detects "unlawful voting by aliens" and prevents such ballots from being counted, plus records of the county's response to Justice Department letters warning of criminal exposure. At least two employees were served, with a court appearance set for November 4.
How many Americans have already voted? More than 44 million had voted by Thursday evening, according to the University of Florida's Election Lab — less than two million short of the total turnout in the 2022 midterms, with early voting still under way in many states.
Could the Alaska dispute delay knowing who controls the Senate? Yes, if the race is close. Alaska is one of about ten highly competitive Senate races, Democrats need a net gain of four seats for a majority, and a contested certification could leave Senate control unclear for weeks after November 3.
Related coverage on US News Pulse: Trump demands Peltola off Alaska ballot in fake Dan Sullivan fraud row; California ballots appeal: DOJ asks court to rule by Friday on 20,000 votes; Texas mystery mailers ruling: judge orders senders to testify under oath.
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