It’s Happening: DOJ Sues to Block Election Results if Republican Loses

The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit to block Alaska from certifying its Senate election results in the event that Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses to Democrat Mary Peltola. This move is the Trump administration’s most blatant effort to swing ballots in Republicans’ favor this November.

The lawsuit alleges that the Senate election should be nullified if Sullivan loses because there’s another “Daniel J. Sullivan” on the ballot also running as a Republican, and the Trump administration thinks voters will be too confused—even though Dan Sullivan is properly listed as the incumbent on the ballot.

“Daniel J. Sullivan decided to run for Senator in 2026 as a Republican with the intention of misleading supporters of Senator Sullivan into voting for him,” the DOJ lawsuit alleges. “The sole purpose of his candidacy is to benefit the Peltola campaign by reducing the number of votes for Senator Sullivan.”

The lawsuit raised alarm across the political sphere.

“Surprising that the president who tried to end American democracy and stay in power even though he lost is queuing up additional ways to try to end democracy in America,” the Center for American Progress’s Bobby Kogan mused online.

“Election Day isn’t the end of the fight,” the Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson wrote. “Get ready to get loud.”

“Trump isn’t going to try to interfere in the midterms, he’s already getting started,” chimed journalist Pedro L. Gonzalez. “They’re going to do this everywhere they think they can get away with it.”

This lawsuit comes just a day after Attorney General and former Trump personal attorney Todd Blanche admitted that he was open to blocking states from certifying elections. Now his DOJ is attempting to do just that.

Again, it is extremely abnormal for the Justice Department to be involved in election certification.

President Donald Trump blew up at a reporter Friday who questioned his vile defense of Vivek Ramaswamy’s ugly attack ad featuring Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton’s estranged mother. 

Speaking to reporters, Trump struggled to defend the campaign ad featuring Donna Arthur, who lost custody of Acton after years of documented issues, including homelessness and sexual abuse by her stepfather. 

“A mother is saying, don’t put my daughter there because she’s a terrible person, and she’s a liar,” Trump said. “Why shouldn’t somebody use that?”

“But do the sexual abuse allegations mean nothing to you, sir?” the reporter asked. “But do the sexual abuse allegations make no difference?

“Wait, wait, wait, slow down. Who are you with? Who are you with?” Trump said.  

“I’m with NBC, sir,” the reporter replied. 

“One of the worst networks you have,” Trump sneered, but the reporter continued to press him.

“Quiet,” the president snapped. “Isn’t she a fresh person? You’re a horrible little reporter, aren’t you? If my mother said bad things about me, you think the Democrats would put it up? I think so. But my mother thought I was wonderful!”

Of course, the issue isn’t that the advertisement featured Acton’s mother—it’s that it featured a woman who was estranged from her daughter because of alleged sexual abuse by Acton’s stepfather. In 1978, Arthur’s husband Cledith “Bud” Arthur was charged and indicted for rape. Court documents indicate he’d engaged in sexual contact with Acton when she was less than 13 years old. After her stepfather pleaded not guilty, he skipped bail, and Arthur left town with him, Acton said in a 2019 interview. 

This wouldn’t be the first time Trump has downplayed, or outright ignored, serious allegations of sexual abuse. The president has repeatedly dismissed the government’s own findings about his old friend Jeffrey Epstein, an alleged sex trafficker, as a “hoax.” The Department of Justice initially withheld documents relating to three interviews with a woman who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her as a child. Additionally, Trump has railed against a court that found him liable for sexually abusing author E. Jean Carroll. Meanwhile, dozens more women have accused the president of sexual assault.

Jared Kushner threatened to sue Vanity Fair for publishing an excerpt of a forthcoming book describing how the president’s son-in-law oversaw foreign slush funds filled by the leaders of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

In the new book Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East, author Matthew Cole revealed that Kushner oversaw roughly $2 billion in secret foreign bank accounts filled by the Saudis and Emiratis.

In a post on X Thursday, Kushner claimed the allegations were “completely insane and never happened.”

“These are outrageous fabrications being presented as investigative journalism. This is not journalism. It is a mixture of fantasy, fiction, and advocacy, written by someone who is either deeply disturbed or acting with sinister intent,” he wrote.

Kushner’s lawyer, Chad Mizelle, also hit back at the Vanity Fair article on behalf of his client—and threatened to sue the publication.

“Before publication, we sent Simon & Schuster a detailed 13-page letter responding to and categorically denying the extraordinary allegations made against my client, Jared Kushner, and challenging the total absence of supporting evidence,” Mizelle wrote on X.

“Vanity Fair has now published an excerpt amplifying these false and defamatory allegations. We have seen no credible evidence substantiating any of these claims, and we question what independent verification Vanity Fair conducted before publishing them,” he wrote. “We intend to pursue legal action against those responsible and hold them accountable.”

In the 13-page letter, another of Kushner’s lawyers, Alejandro Brito, insisted that Kushner had “no knowledge of, or involvement with, any such accounts.”

“Any allegation that Mr. Kushner knew of, had access to, had authorizations for or engaged in or directed any conduct related to any government-funded or government-linked bank account is totally false and defamatory,” the letter stated.

Speaking to reporters Friday, Donald Trump denied the potentially damning story about his son-in-law. “It’s a false story. It’s a false story. It’s a totally false story. It was totally an incorrect story. It was just fake news. Amazing,” Trump said.

The allegations contained in Cole’s book carry considerable legal weight. In 2017, Kushner was a government employee who worked in the White House, meaning he was required to submit both public and confidential financial forms and disclose any bank account to which he had access as a signatory or beneficiary. Kushner also failed to disclose himself as an agent of a foreign government, having been paid nearly $2 billion in total by foreign leaders. If he offered anything in return for the money, even just conversations with his father-in-law, then he would have violated U.S. bribery laws and the foreign agent statute.

The far-right Germany political party German Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, has tried to enlist support from President Trump and his MAGA allies for over a decade.

The Guardian, citing a data leak from the AfD, reports the party has lobbied Trump going back to his election in 2016, with the party debating on how to word a congratulatory telegram. The final message included the wish that Trump’s “hopes as a person be fulfilled.”

The leaks comprise over 420,000 emails, documents, and personnel records from the AfD since 2013, though the info thins out after 2019. They were given to reporters by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a hacker activist group.

After Trump’s election, the AfD didn’t just congratulate him, but asked that he support its efforts to remove the “enemy state” clause from the U.N. charter, a post–World War II vestige that allows action against “any state which during the second world war has been an enemy of any signatory.” The clause is irrelevant today, but the AfD, alone among German political parties, sees it as an attack on German sovereignty.

AfD leaders also sought to make contact with Richard Grenell, who during Trump’s first term was ambassador to Germany, but was unsuccessful, and pursued contacts with former White House adviser Steve Bannon, according to the leaks.

The party holds hardline anti-immigration and Islamophobic views, and some of its members have displayed sympathies and connections to Nazism. The party’s leader in the Thuringia region, Björn Höcke, was convicted of using a banned slogan from the Nazi Party’s paramilitary wing in 2024. AfD is currently leading national polls with 30 percent support in Germany’s multiparty democracy, and in September, it won 43.8 percent of the vote in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, where it is trying to form Germany’s first far-right state government since the Nazis.

German intelligence labels the AfD as a suspected domestic extremist organization. Germany’s leading political parties refuse to govern or form any coalitions with it. That hasn’t stopped Trump and his MAGA allies from praising the group. Vice President JD Vance, as well as numerous State Department employees, have frequently met AfD politicians, including the party’s leader, Alice Weidel.

The party’s deputy leader, Beatrix von Storch, and her husband Sven were at Trump’s “Make America Great Again Victory Rally” just before his inauguration last year, and she bragged in a newsletter that she met Steve Bannon and Donald Trump Jr.

Trump celebrated the AfD’s September win in Saxony-Anhalt on Truth Social, posting, “Wow! The Populist Party in Germany just had a really big night. They finally got tired of the absolutely horrible Immigration rules and regulations which have hurt Germany so badly. THEY ARE ON THE RISE, and not going to take it anymore! MGGA!!! President DJT.”

President Trump is losing young men.

Recent numbers from the Harvard Youth Poll show that confidence in Trump’s ability has cratered among men under the age of 30, with nearly 70 percent of them disapproving of his performance in his second term. That same number also disapproves of the Republican Party at large.

Seventy-four percent of men under 30 disapprove of how Trump has handled the economy, with the majority of them saying that their financial situations had either gotten worse or remained unchanged since he entered office. Furthermore, over half of young men said they’re entering midterms with the frame of mind to vote against Republicans rather than for Democrats, and 42 percent said their vote was a “vote in opposition to President Trump and his policies”—perhaps an indictment of both Trump and the Democratic establishment.

Trump’s success with young men was a key factor in his 2024 election victory against Vice President Kamala Harris. Men under 30 turned away from Democrats in droves, shifting nearly 30 points to the right since 2020. But much like the Black and Latino red wave that Republicans bragged about after that election, their ability to keep young men in their base has been fleeting. Rising costs, uncontrolled development of artificial intelligence, a lack of future security, and a general disapproval of the direction of Trump’s administration are all playing a part. Aside from the men, only 9 percent of young Americans in general think that the country is currently going in the right direction—presenting an ominous message for Trump as midterms rapidly approach.

View the full polling here.