Trump's DOJ sues Alaska and California to block vote counts, and Trump says he ordered it

Days before the midterm elections, President Donald Trump's Justice Department filed two extraordinary lawsuits aimed at disrupting how Alaska and California count and certify their votes — and Trump, asked about the Alaska case on Friday, left no ambiguity about who was driving it: 'I'm the one that said do it.'

Legal experts across the spectrum say both cases are almost certain to fail in court. But the lawsuits' legal weakness may be beside the point. Together, they represent the clearest signal yet that Trump's DOJ is prepared to intervene directly in the electoral process on behalf of Republican candidates — and that the president sees no reason to conceal his role.

In Alaska, the DOJ is seeking to block certification of the state's U.S. Senate race if Republican incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan loses by a margin narrow enough that a second candidate with a nearly identical name — Daniel J. Sullivan — could have siphoned off enough confused voters to cost him the seat. Without first examining that question, the department contends, certifying Democrat Mary Peltola as the winner would leave Alaska in breach of its obligations under the National Voter Registration Act.

I would give the complaint in this case a failing grade if it were written by one of my students. It's an embarrassment to the Department of Justice and is extremely unlikely to succeed.— Rick Hasen, law professor, UCLA

Writing on the Election Law Blog, Notre Dame Law School Professor Derek Muller argued that the National Voter Registration Act imposes no such 'duties' on a state, CNN reported. Beyond the legal flaw, Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, meaning a voter confused between the two Sullivans could rank both — and their vote would in all likelihood still count for the senator. Daniel J. Sullivan's name appears on the ballot without either the 'incumbent' label or a Republican party designation that distinguishes the sitting senator. The Alaska Supreme Court already ruled in June that Daniel J. Sullivan was qualified for the ballot, meaning the underlying issue has been litigated.

The California lawsuit targets a different pressure point. The DOJ demanded that California and Los Angeles County segregate the ballots of roughly 20,000 people it described, at various points, as 'likely' or 'suspected' noncitizens, preventing those ballots from being counted. The department gave officials 48 hours to comply, delivered its data on a USB drive with the password written on a Post-it note, and threatened to seek emergency relief if the state refused.

Los Angeles County's top election official, Dean Logan, told the Justice Department his office would not access the drive because it did not consider it secure, according to the Guardian. When the department later provided a spreadsheet, Los Angeles County examined a sample of 200 names — and found more than half were people not even registered to vote, with many identified as U.S.-born, according to Slate.

The DOJ's legal argument rests on the Constitution's Supremacy Clause, which holds that federal law prevails over state law when the two conflict. But Muller and Hasen both noted there is no federal law specifying how states must verify citizenship. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 actually prohibits states from systematically removing voters from rolls in the 90 days before an election — precisely to prevent eligible voters from being inadvertently disenfranchised, according to Slate.

It continues to baffle me why anybody … if presented with evidence that there are tens of thousands, 20,000 ineligible voters that are receiving ballots — that there isn't some motivation, anything to do something about that.— Todd Blanche, Attorney General

The administration's track record on noncitizen voter data has been poor. It claimed as many as 16,000 noncitizens were on Nevada's voter rolls; that number was later pared to 185. When Nevada investigated those 185 cases, it found all of them were citizens, according to CNN. Citing that flawed data, a federal judge this week moved to halt portions of the Department of Homeland Security's inquiry into alleged noncitizen voting in several states, California among them, cautioning that the efforts risked amounting to 'interference or intimidation.'

The California legal maneuvering grew increasingly aggressive. After a federal district court scheduled a hearing on the DOJ's request for a temporary restraining order, the department demanded a ruling by noon Thursday. When none came, it attempted to appeal the non-ruling to the Ninth Circuit — an appeal of an order that did not yet exist. Slate noted that temporary restraining orders are not appealable, and that the district court had barely had time to consider the matter, making the move a 'shocking abuse of the court docket.'

The Alaska and California lawsuits are the latest in a string of DOJ election interventions in the weeks before the midterms. In a reported immigration fraud investigation, federal agents descended on the Washington, D.C., home of Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, who is seeking re-election. A video released by the FBI took aim at Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and other Democrats, prompting a rebuke from a watchdog group. On the campaign trail, Attorney General Blanche has made appearances in support of Republican candidates. And the department has issued a series of press releases announcing voter fraud arrests of noncitizens, accompanied by photos of pre-dawn raids, according to the Guardian.

According to Slate, the DOJ announced the arrest of 28 people for noncitizen voting violations on the same day it sought the California restraining order, affording the New York Post exclusive access to footage of a pre-dawn operation that involved helicopters and armed federal officers. Noncitizen voting is extremely rare, and court documents in many of the charged cases contain little detail about whether the individuals knew they were ineligible, the Guardian reported.

The Justice Department has a longstanding internal practice — sometimes called the '60-day rule' — under which prosecutors refrain from actions that could influence an election in the period before it. The DOJ manual includes a provision directing that prosecutors and agents avoid taking any action — among them investigative steps, criminal charges, or public statements — aimed at affecting an election outcome. A separate provision instructs the department to hold off on overt criminal investigative measures in ballot-fraud matters until after the election has concluded, its results have been certified, and any recounts or contests have been resolved. In September 2024, while still serving as Trump's personal attorney, Blanche himself invoked that rule to contend that special counsel Jack Smith should be barred from filing a brief in the criminal election interference case against Trump.

For decades, the justice department sought to avoid investigative steps that might influence an election, recognizing that election integrity is threatened when DoJ is perceived as putting its thumb on the scale. This was always a case-by-case analysis, led by experts in the public integrity section. But this administration pushed those experts out of the department, and employees seeking guidance are now directed to political appointees loyal to the president.— Stacey Young, former DOJ attorney and head of Justice Connection

According to the Guardian, a Justice Department official said no rule or policy prevents the DOJ from acting in the period close to an election, characterizing the 60-day rule as nothing more than an informal practice. Ongoing work, the official added, does not have to pause during election season.

In 26 cases seeking unredacted state voter lists, the DOJ has yet to prevail, and it also lost at the Supreme Court in a case that sought to shut down mail balloting this election, according to Slate. Trump's March 2025 executive order requiring documentary proof of citizenship on federal voter registration forms has also been blocked by courts, with one ruling stating: 'Put simply, our Constitution does not allow the President to impose unilateral changes to federal election procedures.' The Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Postal Service likely exceeded its power when it moved to become a federal gatekeeper over state mail ballots following a separate executive order.

What makes the current lawsuits significant, CNN reported, is not their likelihood of success but what they signal about the DOJ's willingness to act — and what might follow if courts decline to intervene. Asked Thursday about the possibility of Justice Department involvement in the certification process or efforts to prevent states from certifying their elections, Blanche refused to rule it out, indicating such a step would be warranted only in a 'doomsday scenario' — a term he left undefined.

For decades, the justice department has avoided even the appearance of political interference in the run-up to an election, and that's exactly what the 60-day rule exists to protect. This DoJ is doing the opposite.— Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward

Why it matters — A president who openly directs his Justice Department to file election lawsuits — and whose attorney general won't rule out blocking state vote certification — is testing whether courts, or anything else, will constrain executive power over election outcomes.

Sources differ on Whether the DOJ's 60-day pre-election non-interference practice is binding: The 60-day rule is an informal practice, not a binding rule or policy. (theguardian.com (DOJ official)) vs The 60-day rule is a longstanding norm that exists to protect election integrity from DOJ interference. (theguardian.com (Skye Perryman, Democracy Forward))

Reported by slate.com, cnn.com, theguardian.com