Todd Blanche Crashes Out Over Pressure Against Trump’s Alaska Lawsuit

Attorney General Todd Blanche crashed and burned over the weekend while trying to defend the Justice Department’s lawsuit to block Alaska from certifying its Senate election results in the event that Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses due to voter “confusion.”

The lawsuit alleges that the Senate election should be nullified if Sullivan loses because there’s another “Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.” on the ballot also running as a Republican, and the Trump administration thinks voters will be too confused. Alaska’s Supreme Court in June upheld lower court rulings that found the two Sullivans could run in the same election—but the Trump administration has waited until just days before the election to intervene.

Appearing on CBS News’s Face the Nation Sunday, Blanche threw a tantrum as host Margaret Brennan showed that Sullivan was clearly listed as the “(Registered Republican) Incumbent” on Alaska’s ballot.

“I mean you’re not telling the truth, you’re not being honest with the voters!” Blanche whined.

Donald Trump has already admitted that he was the one who ordered the lawsuit, but Blanche refused to provide any details. “Who did he tell to do it?” Brennan pressed.

“So, I don’t—I will never, ever, ever talk about communications that I have with the president of the United States. I never have and I never will,” Blanche said.

Brennan read from the lawsuit that the DOJ had asked that Alaska’s state elections board and ballot counting review board “not certify an election result that may be impacted by voter confusion.”

“The confusion is defined as ‘Senator Sullivan not winning,’ and ‘had all votes cast for Daniel J Sullivan been cast instead for Senator Sullivan then he would’ve won,’” she said, leaving a lengthy pause for Blanche to respond.

“Well, that’s not what it says,” Blanche said.

“I’m quoting from it,” she said. “You are telling them not to certify it. What right does the federal government have telling a state not to certify or how to certify?”

“You know if you talk the whole time, you’re not going to get answers out of me!” he fumed.

Blanche didn’t fare much better during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union Saturday. Host Dana Bash quoted Trump’s claim that “the Democrats are trying to steal this important Republican seat.”

“He’s admitting it’s political. Do you see your job as helping Republicans keep this seat?” Bash asked.

“He’s not admitting it’s political!” Blanche cried. “Wait, you’re saying that a president saying that there’s something improper happening at the ballots is necessarily political? He’s the executive, he’s supposed to make sure that everything in this country is running right!”

Blanche raged that Democrats were “cheating” and Bash had “cherry-picked” that quote.

He finally exploded after Bash suggested that there were concerns that Trump was laying the groundwork to overturn the election, like “what we saw after January 6.”

“I mean oh, stop it!” Blanche shrieked. “Oh you gotta stop it with that. You’re not being a real person! Come on, man! That is crazy!”

Surely, when your arguments become that the other side is simply crazy, that’s how you know you’ve got a winning lawsuit. Clearly, Blanche has veered into unknown territory: It is extremely abnormal for the Justice Department to be involved in election certification. But that won’t stop the Trump administration’s most blatant effort so far to swing ballots in Republicans’ favor.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s decisive victory in Brazil’s presidential election Sunday was already being disputed by his far-right challenger Flávio Bolsonaro as results were coming in.

Bolsonaro, the son of imprisoned former President Jair Bolsonaro, said that the results of the runoff election should be annulled because of a Brazilian Supreme Court ruling extending voting by two hours. However, both Lula and Bolsonaro’s parties had called for that extension, making his point moot. (The Supreme Court only ruled on Lula’s petition, though the requests were the same.)

Lula’s left-wing Workers’ Party supported the extension because voters in urban São Paulo and Bahia, where it has a strong support base, had trouble getting to the polls due to trouble with bus services. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party, meanwhile, cited heavy rains in the southern parts of Brazil, where its supporters are more numerous.

Bolsonaro’s complaint is not likely to sway the Supreme Court. The high court’s president, Kassio Nunes Marques, who was appointed by the elder Bolsonaro, confirmed the election result, noting that extending times did not affect the electoral process or the vote count. Lula won 51.79 percent to Bolsonaro’s 48.21 percent, a difference of 4.4 million votes.

U.S. President Donald Trump had pushed for Bolsonaro’s party to win, having supported Jair Bolsonaro during his tenure and disputed his prison sentence over attempting to overturn Brazil’s elections in an attempted coup d’état in 2022. Trump has not yet commented on the result, but his son Donald Trump Jr. did on X Sunday night.

Complaining about Brazil’s Supreme Court, Trump Jr. posted that “if a conservative government in Brazil did this, everyone in the mainstream press in America would lose their minds, but I guess they’re just choosing to be silent because it’s all for the cause.” Perhaps he’s just mad that Brazilians have done what Americans failed to do: lock up a corrupt far-right leader and keep him from returning to power.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife, state Senator Angela Paxton, invested $600,000 into a business run by a man convicted of fraud.

The Texas Tribune reports that the Paxtons gave the cash to a construction materials business run by Scott Sherman, a home builder who pleaded guilty to mortgage fraud in 2014, through what was presented to the public as a blind trust. In reality, the Paxtons’ business activities were not shielded, as should be the case in a blind trust.

According to the Tribune, which cited previously unreleased records from Ken Paxton’s 2023 impeachment investigation, Sherman’s companies sent the Paxtons thousands of dollars while they were facing mounting tax debts. Ken Paxton was investigated by the Texas state legislature and was eventually acquitted. Now he’s Texas’s Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in a tight race with Democratic challenger James Talarico.

Paxton’s business dealings fly in the face of his public statements. He said in a news release last year that “in Texas, we fight fraud head-on and will not rest until every last corrupt actor is brought to justice.” Ethics experts told the Tribune that his activities undermine his position as Texas’s top law enforcement official.

Richard Painter, a former chief ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush, said he thought Paxton would be smarter than this. Referring to people like Sherman, Painter said, “They’ll pay out their friends while they’re not paying their taxes, run up debt. But the question is, why is the attorney general of Texas dealing with those kinds of people?”

Painter added that he thought “the attorney general of Texas would have the good sense not to be dealing with a convicted felon.”

Angela Paxton filed for divorce from Ken last year on “biblical grounds,” referring to her husband’s infidelity. Ken Paxton has continued to deal with shady characters since his investment in Sherman, spending New Year’s Eve 2024 partying with his mistress and two campaign donors who both fled the U.S. from health care fraud charges.

A 45-year-old Republican candidate in Iowa is being sued by his parents for $275,000 in unpaid rent. 

The Des Moines Register reported that the parents of lieutenant governor nominee Derek Wulf allege that he stopped paying rent two years ago on the farmland he rented out from them. A court petition filed Tuesday demands repayment and also accuses him of lying about his assets in financial documents to a lender.

While Wulf has yet to comment, his Trump–endorsed running mate, gubernatorial nominee Zach Lahn, denied that Wulf owes his parents any money at all—and insinuated that the conflict was spurred by the poor health of Wulf’s father. Wulf’s parents rejected that, calling the claim “categorically false.” 

Duane and Jackie Wulf, 83 and 82 years old respectively, join a long list of creditors demanding repayment from the Republican candidate. Eight people and companies have sued Wulf and his company, Shallow Creek Land & Livestock, since 2023 for payments owed to them. All but one of the lawsuits have been settled. That one is from the WCF Financial Bank, which claims that Wulf is over a year behind on credit payments. 

Wulf is a 45-year-old man with a wife and two children running for lieutenant governor. These financial issues are not only embarrassing but raise alarming questions about how he might abuse a position in office. Hopefully, Iowa will never have to find out. Polls show that he and Lahn are currently trailing Democratic gubernatorial nominee Rob Sand by about 11 points—in a state Trump won by 13 points two years ago.  

A federal appeals court on Friday stripped due process rights from hundreds of immigrants held by Immigration and Custom Enforcement.

In a 10–7 en banc decision, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that ICE detainees with pending immigration hearings are not entitled to receive a bond hearing, where a judge could assess their dangerousness and flight risk, regardless of how long they have been in detention.

The decision blocks efforts by federal judges who have been ordering the release of hundreds of immigrants—many of whom have no criminal record and have deep ties to the United States—held without bond by ICE’s mass deportation policy.

After the Fifth Circuit upheld ICE’s policy in February, other federal judges discovered that they were able to argue that detention violated immigrants’ constitutional due process rights. In the past year, judges have ruled against detentions without bond more than 21,150 times. The Fifth Circuit has now choked off that legal argument.

The case will likely head to the Supreme Court, which is set to decide on a number of immigration reform cases in the coming term.