American democracy faces one of its biggest stress tests of the modern era, as President Donald Trump’s sprawling campaign for power over elections encounters a firewall of judges, state election workers and voting rights leaders heading into Election Day.

A cascade of courtroom losses over the weekend dealt a major blow to the Trump administration’s last-minute efforts ahead of Tuesday to assert authority over voting and hold the prospect of prosecutions over the heads of state election officials. 

But another round of last-minute court hearings was set for Monday — and the U.S. Department of Justice asked the U.S. Supreme Court to require California to set aside the ballots of 20,000 suspected noncitizens.

Democrats, voting rights groups and even some former Trump administration officials have said they are braced for a range of possible disruptions and interference, especially as the president stares down the prospect of a blue wave that could wash away Republican control of Congress. Elections forecasters have said Democrats are on track to win control of the U.S. House and possibly the Senate, amid voter unhappiness with rising consumer costs.

“I fully expect my former boss, Donald Trump, to try to steal this election,” Miles Taylor, a deputy Department of Homeland Security chief of staff during the first Trump administration who became an outspoken Trump critic, told reporters last week.

Trump and his supporters have said the federal government’s actions are necessary to protect against noncitizen voting, which they warn cancels out the votes of Americans. 

While researchers have consistently found that noncitizen voting is rare and doesn’t impact the outcome of elections, Homeland Security has arrested dozens of noncitizens on allegations of election crimes in recent weeks, part of a concerted effort by the Trump administration to ramp up enforcement ahead of the election.

The last-minute push, Trump allies note, comes after the Senate didn’t advance Trump’s signature election legislation, the SAVE America Act, which would have imposed stringent requirements on voters to show proof of citizenship. The legislation passed the House but faced bipartisan opposition in the Senate.

“They voted against proof of citizenship so they can cheat,” Trump said during a rally in Salina, Kansas, on Sunday.

In the past four days, a federal judge ordered the list of 20,000 suspected noncitizens in California shared with an immigrant rights group, which said Saturday it found major problems with its veracity.

Another judge blocked the Justice Department from threatening election workers with prosecution. In Alaska, a judge dismissed a lawsuit that preemptively sought to question the certification of the results of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race. An appeals court also upheld limits on preelection field operations by Homeland Security.

On Monday, judges were expected to weigh requests to restrict federal law enforcement agents from serving as election monitors and additional limits on armed federal personnel at polling locations. Federal law broadly prohibits armed federal troops or agents at election sites.

Planning for ‘every single scenario’

As the court losses pile up, Democrats, civic leaders and election experts have watched with a wary eye toward how Trump will respond.

Election preparations by critics of the Trump administration have been underway for months. Congressional Democrats have mapped out dozens of scenarios, including the possibility that Trump will falsely point to a foreign threat against U.S. elections as an excuse to disrupt voting or seize voting machines.

They have also assembled a field army of volunteers to assist voters and monitor polling locations for signs of federal interference. Teams of lawyers have drafted a range of possible lawsuits that can be quickly filed if problems arise.

Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of the nonpartisan watchdog Common Cause, said her organization is deploying more than 21,000 election protection volunteers sporting bright yellow shirts. Common Cause has also trained 3,000 volunteers to work a voter hotline.

“Common Cause is prepared for every single scenario and we are refusing to let fear win,” Kase Solomón said during a recent press briefing.

Noncitizen voters

The Trump administration’s actions follow a refusal by dozens of states, including California, to share their full voter roll that includes sensitive personal data — information the Trump administration says would allow it to identify noncitizen voters.

“California could, but refuses to, provide the unredacted list, which would resolve this entire dispute in a matter of hours,” Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, wrote on social media over the weekend.

But Trump has spent years promoting falsehoods about stolen elections, long before the more recent focus on noncitizen voting. After he lost the 2020 election, the president and his allies waged an extensive pressure campaign in a bid to overturn his losses in key battleground states. 

Some supporters advanced baseless conspiracy theories about voting machines. As the midterm elections approach, Trump has again begun casting a cloud of suspicion over voting machines. 

He spoke about alleged vulnerabilities in the machines during a primetime speech in July, though in every state except Louisiana, machines produce paper records that can later be checked. In the final hours of the election, the president is returning to the theme.

“You know the paper ballots cost 9% of what these crooked machines cost,” Trump said at a rally in Dubuque, Iowa, on Sunday.

Trump’s intensifying rhetoric has been matched by the Justice Department’s rapid-fire legal challenges over the past several days seeking to influence elections, which under the U.S. Constitution are run by the states.

With polls set to open in a matter of hours, federal judges have blocked the Trump administration at every turn.

Threats to election workers

Late Friday, Judge Trina Thompson, an appointee of President Joe Biden in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, issued a temporary restraining order preventing the Trump administration from threatening election workers nationwide with prosecution. 

The order came after Essayli, during a court hearing last week, raised the possibility that California election officials could face “criminal liability” if they count the ballots of noncitizens. 

The Justice Department on Thursday also sent a letter to election officials nationwide that reiterated requirements under federal law to preserve election-related records and listed the criminal consequences of noncompliance.

When election officials perform the work in the manner required by state and federal law, “they do not violate federal criminal law even if a particular ballot belongs” to an ineligible voter, Thompson wrote.

The Justice Department has appealed the order to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Reminding election officials to follow federal law is a civic service, not a ‘threat,’” Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said on X.

Supreme Court weighs ballots case

Weeks after the Justice Department sued California in an effort to force election officials to set aside and not count the ballots of 20,000 voters it said were suspected noncitizens, the case reached the Supreme Court on Monday.

“If it turns out that those individuals cast ballots but are not, in fact, U.S. citizens, then California’s counting of their votes will violate (federal law) and will debase or dilute valid votes cast by U.S. citizens,” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in an emergency application to the high court.

The Justice Department has so far failed in its effort to require California to set aside ballots from individuals on the list, which was compiled by Homeland Security based on checks of government records and use of the research service LexisNexis. A district court judge and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals have both ruled against the Trump administration.

An immigrant rights group raised serious concerns about the list over the weekend after a judge forced the Trump administration to share a copy with the organization.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, said in a court filing Saturday that an analysis by data experts found that 42% of the names weren’t found on California’s current voter file. At least 22 names on the list are on a list of U.S. citizens compiled by the organization, the analysis found.

Judge James Boasberg, an appointee of President Barack Obama in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, on Monday prohibited the Justice Department from demanding that California set aside ballots — echoing previous rulings in the case now before the Supreme Court.

In Washington state, the Justice Department has demanded election officials set aside about 400 ballots from voters it alleges are noncitizens. On Sunday, several civil rights groups sued to block any segregation of ballots.

“We are days away from Election Day and these threats, again, are an attempt to sow fear and throw out eligible votes with no transparency,” Lilliane Ballesteros, executive director of the Latino Community Fund of Washington state, said in a statement.

Federal monitors at the polls

On Sunday, the NAACP asked for a temporary restraining order to prevent a wide swath of federal law enforcement agents from serving as election monitors.

The Justice Department has deployed election monitors for decades to watch polling places for compliance with federal voting rights laws. But the Trump administration has expanded the program, and plans to have roughly 1,000 monitors stationed across all 50 states on Election Day.

Justice Department lawyers typically serve as monitors, but the Trump administration this year also plans to tap federal law enforcement agents. In a court filing, the NAACP alleged the deployments are illegal and will have a chilling effect that intimidates voters.

“The law is clear — law enforcement agents can have an intimidating effect on voters, especially Black voters, and they have no role and no right to be inside our polling places,” Kristen Clarke, NAACP general counsel, said in a statement.

The Justice Department said in a court document that monitors aren’t allowed to have firearms and have been instructed not to interfere with voting and must dress in business casual clothing.

Senior Judge Reggie Walton, an appointee of President George W. Bush in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, held a hearing on Monday. The public docket indicated Walton would issue an order.

Alaska challenge tossed

Judge Sharon Gleason, an appointee of President Barack Obama in U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, on Sunday dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit that preemptively sought to pause certification of the Senate race.

The DOJ wanted a certification pause if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan lost to Democrat Mary Peltola — and if Sullivan lost by less than the number of votes received by another candidate of the same name, Dan J. Sullivan.

The New York Times reported last week that Democrats worked to recruit Dan J. Sullivan, leading Trump to call for him and Peltola to be kicked out of the election. While Alaska election officials had initially tried to prevent Dan J. Sullivan from appearing on the ballot, the Alaska Supreme Court cleared his candidacy earlier this year.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit had also asked for an order requiring all ballots for Dan J. Sullivan be set aside for further investigation. Gleason gave little credence to the request and wrote that the Trump administration had offered no explanation for how it would work.

“The absence of any explanation from the United States as to how its requested relief could redress its alleged injury while simultaneously maintaining the secrecy of the ballot is telling,” Gleason wrote.

The Justice Department immediately appealed the decision to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

WASHINGTON — When the polls close Tuesday night, the 2026 U.S. election will go down as one of history’s most expensive and extraordinarily ugly midterms — galvanizing record-breaking early voter turnout among a deeply divided electorate.

Voters on Saturday crossed the high-water mark of 52.7 million early votes cast, surpassing the midterm record set in 2022, though analysts were reluctant to translate it into a Democratic wave on the way.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice continued to run into a firewall of federal judges, losing its previous cases to take over mail-in balloting and obtain state voter rolls in advance of the midterms. The Trump DOJ actions nonetheless rattled state officials who hold the constitutional responsibility to conduct their elections.

“My hope is that this trend will continue and that our worst-case scenarios don’t come to fruition,” former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson told States Newsroom.

A federal appeals court on Friday denied Trump’s efforts to force state officials to quarantine up to 20,000 voter ballots. The department continues to pursue its preemptive lawsuit against Alaska’s U.S. Senate race results, depending on who wins. 

When asked by reporters Tuesday if he’ll accept a Democratic victory, Trump said, “I will, if they’re honest elections,” refusing to rule out federal interference feared by Democratic critics.

Trump insisted in September that his supporters “pretend” he is on the ballot, as his base has turned out in higher numbers during presidential elections to vote for him. “When I’m on the ballot, we kill everybody,” he said at his midterm convention in Texas. 

He also promised a $5,000 “Trump dividend” to voters if Republicans retained congressional majorities.

With GOP control of the House and Senate during the last two years of the Trump presidency in play, campaigns are on track to shell out $11.6 billion on ads, according to the firm AdImpact. The hard-fought Ohio and Texas Senate races led the way in spending. 

Democrats need to net four seats to control the Senate, while Republicans hold a narrow majority in the House.

Campaign advertising hit a low point when Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy aired a $4 million ad in which the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, called Acton “a liar.” 

The woman, Donna Arthur, has not been in communication with her daughter since the late 1970s, when court records show she lost custody and fled the state with her husband, Acton’s stepfather, after he was indicted for raping Acton.

Ramaswamy’s campaign pulled the ad Friday, roughly 10 days after it began to circulate. The ad drew outcry including from outgoing Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, though both Trump and Vice President JD Vance defended it.

Voters feel punished by cost of living

While ugliness punctuated the campaign season, poll after poll revealed the cost of living remains the top motivator for voters — including fuel prices and the cost of food and everyday goods that have been driven up by Trump’s war with Iran and an erratic tariff policy. 

“It ranks as one of the most important issues for over 80% of voters, and the majority of the electorate disapproves of Trump’s handling, not just of the economy in general, but of cost of living,” economist and former Biden White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein said Tuesday, during a virtual press briefing organized by the Democrat-aligned advocacy group Defend America Action.

The GOP also risks losing Latino support on account of the administration’s dragnet immigration enforcement tactics that have targeted legal immigrants, as well as U.S. citizens, and have ended in injury or even death on multiple occasions.

María Isabel Di Franco Quiñonez of Equis, a Latino-focused research firm, surveyed 900 Latino voters across seven battleground states and found sinking support for and trust in Republicans.

“The clearest finding was that voters want both responsible enforcement and generosity towards immigrants,” she said. “They want a controlled border, enforcement focused on criminals and a pathway to legalization.”

Trump ratings

Trump’s sagging approval ratings have dogged Republican midterm candidates, giving a major boost to Democrats’ chances of flipping the House — a tried and true pattern for midterm elections — and increasing the competitiveness of several U.S. Senate races.

“Given that the president’s not on the ballot, (voters) have no other place to take out their frustration or disappointment or anger, aside from candidates of the president’s party,” said David Dulio, a distinguished professor of political science at Oakland University in Michigan. The state is the site of one of the nation’s most vitriolic U.S. Senate races, between Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed and former Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers.

Democrats are reaching for command of the upper chamber, and if the final prognosticators and polls are correct, they could stand a chance in Republican strongholds. 

Major forecasts and pollsters more strongly favor Democrats to take the House, though some experts observe that years of gerrymandering, including Republicans’ mid-decade redistricting, combined with entrenched polarization could stunt the crest of a so-called blue wave. 

Several Republican-led state legislatures, including those in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, split majority Black voter districts after a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year struck down protections that were enshrined in the Voting Rights Act.

“I hesitate to say that Republicans are going to lose control of both houses, or Trump is going to be totally hamstrung by this blue wave. The polling has been so shaky in prior election cycles,” said Rob Glover, associate professor of political science at the University of Maine, where longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins is fighting to keep her seat against Democratic challenger Troy Jackson.  

“But if I was a Republican operative or strategist, I would be concerned,” he said. 

Senate races

As of Friday, The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, a nonpartisan forecaster, rated Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio and Texas as toss-up U.S. Senate races. The University of Virginia’s Sabato’s Crystal Ball categorized Alaska as a possible flip.

Inside Elections, another nonpartisan forecaster, projected Thursday that Democrats would gain enough seats to reach at least a 50-50 split Senate, ranking Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio and Texas as tilting blue. 

Pollsters have also found Democratic rumblings in time-tested Republican bastions. 

Wednesday’s New York Times/Siena poll found South Carolina voters, surveyed between Oct. 19 and Oct. 26, evenly split between Republican nominee Darline Graham, who is running to fill the seat of her late brother Sen. Lindsey Graham, and her Democratic challenger Annie Andrews, a pediatrician. 

A survey of Kansas voters between Oct. 26 and Oct. 28 by Emerson College Polling found Democratic candidate and pastor Adam Hamilton at 49% over Republican incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall, who polled at 45%. The survey, which asked voters who they would vote for if the election were held today, carried a 3.5 percentage point margin of error.

Trump on Thursday canceled his weekend trip to a rally in Kansas because Marshall is “doing very well,” but reversed his plans by Friday morning and announced he’ll appear in person, as scheduled. 

He similarly flipped on canceling his trip to Iowa to support Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is running against Democrat Josh Turek for U.S. Senate.

While the U.S. House appears to be tipping toward the Democrats, only a small fraction of the races across the U.S. are competitive. The districts include California’s 22nd; Florida’s 14th and 22nd; Iowa’s 2nd; Kentucky’s 6th; Michigan’s 4th, 7th and 10th; Montana’s 1st; New York’s 17th; North Carolina’s 1st; Ohio’s 7th and 9th; Texas’ 15th and 35th; and Virginia’s 1st, according to widely cited prognosticators.

Surge in early voting

Tens of millions of Americans have already marched — some literally —  to the polls, or submitted their mail-in ballots, in the final stretch leading up to Election Day.

Carrie LeVan, a political scientist at Colby College in Maine, said she’s not sure whether the enthusiasm driving early voters will translate into a “wave” election for Democrats, like the 2010 midterm “Tea Party” wave when Republicans regained House control by flipping more than 60 seats.

“There’s a lot of hype and expectation that Democrats are going to perform and have this huge wave this election cycle, and I don’t know — if I’m gonna make a prediction, I don’t think it’s gonna be that big,” she said.

LeVan highlighted this cycle’s rare mid-decade redistricting by Republicans, and then by Democrats, combined with “affective” polarization as obstacles to the size of shifts. The academic term affective polarization, she explained, is not just clinging to your side and your beliefs but rather “how much do I hate the opposition party?” 

“There’s all these things that have changed since the 2010 election, so can we ever have a wave that was as big, even if we’re so dissatisfied with the state of things right now?” she said.

An NRP/PBS News/Marist poll published Tuesday found other possible warning signs for Democrats hoping for a big surge.

The survey found several “key pillar groups” among Democratic voters, including voters under age 45 and voters of color, lagged in enthusiasm to vote in the midterms, while some Republican voter segments gained ground on who is “very closely” monitoring the races.

The poll also found some swing voters turned off by the Democrats’ primary victories for some far-left candidates, including those belonging to the Democratic Socialists of America. 

Democrats are grappling with how to navigate the intraparty divisions, particularly if they gain control of the House.

In the courts

Ahead of Election Day, an array of legal challenges are playing out in federal courts across the country.

The Justice Department wants to require California election officials to set aside the ballots of 20,000 voters it says are suspected noncitizens. The Trump administration doesn’t want those ballots to count unless voters can prove their citizenship. A similar request was also made to officials in Washington state.

Multiple federal judges have already ruled against the DOJ’s California request and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday dealt the Trump administration its third and fourth courtroom losses in less than a week. It’s possible the Trump administration will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. 

The Justice Department has also issued subpoenas to election officials in California, prompting a new lawsuit that seeks to stop the department from threatening state and local officials with prosecution. In recent days, DOJ lawyers have suggested election officials face “criminal liability” if they count the ballots of noncitizen voters.

In Washington, D.C., a federal judge is weighing whether to issue an order prohibiting the Trump administration from demanding that states set aside the ballots of voters. The judge has promised a decision by Monday.

And in Alaska, the Justice Department is continuing to pursue a preemptive lawsuit that would block the state from certifying the results of its U.S. Senate election if the Republican incumbent loses by less than the votes received by a nonpartisan challenger of the same name that Trump has said is on the ballot to confuse voters. 

The New York Times has reported Democrats helped recruit the spoiler candidate.

Ariana Figueroa, Shauneen Miranda and Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.

The Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to combat noncitizen voting and assert authority over elections came under intense scrutiny in courtrooms across the country on Thursday, as Democrats and voting rights groups alleged federal election interference.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to either reveal by midday Friday all states where it has demanded election officials pull aside or not count ballots — or else promise it won’t direct election officials to refuse ballots from some voters.

On the West Coast, an appeals court appeared skeptical of a Trump administration request to allow the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to resume election-related field operations that could sweep up U.S. citizens.

In California, the Justice Department vowed to keep fighting to require election officials there to set aside the ballots of some 20,000 voters the Trump administration alleges are suspected noncitizens and not count their votes unless they can prove their citizenship. On Thursday, Los Angeles County disclosed it had received federal grand jury subpoenas last week for election-related records.  

And in Alaska, the DOJ kept up pressure on election officials over its U.S. Senate race.

The bevy of lawsuits and hearings underscore the high stakes of the midterm elections to determine control of Congress. Amid sagging approval ratings, President Donald Trump faces investigations and a thwarted legislative agenda during his final two years in office if Democrats retake the House or Senate.

Final days before midterm elections

For the past year, Trump has sought power over elections. The Justice Department unsuccessfully sued dozens of states in an attempt to force them to turn over sensitive voter data, including driver’s license and Social Security numbers. The president also tried to use the U.S. Postal Service to impose restrictions on mail ballots, but was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Now, in the final days before Election Day, the Trump administration and its allies have launched a new effort to influence elections that pits it against state and local officials who say the federal government is overstepping its authority. A growing number of federal judges agree, and have handed Trump a series of court losses over the past two weeks.

At the heart of several of these cases is what power, if any, the Trump administration has over federal elections. The elections clause of the U.S. Constitution gives states the authority to run their own elections, though Congress can override state rules and regulations.

“The DOJ’s actions are indicative of a broad, ongoing pattern of attempted election interference by federal officials,” U.S. District Judge David Carter, an appointee of President Bill Clinton in the Central District of California, wrote in an order released late Wednesday that blasted the Trump administration’s efforts in California.

But the legal challenges continue to multiply.

The Republican National Committee on Thursday sued an election official in Black Hawk County, Iowa — home to Cedar Falls and Waterloo — alleging public records had been withheld related to the security of ballot tabulators. A day earlier, the Potter County, Texas, Republican Party sued to force a hand count of ballots in the state.

“We gotta be careful with the cheating vote counters,” Trump said during a rally in Michigan on Sunday, adding that “bad things happen with the vote counters, so we gotta be careful.”

In DC: Judge wants DOJ to identify targeted states

During a Thursday hearing, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg directed the Justice Department to provide more information on its efforts to require states to set aside the ballots of suspected noncitizen voters.

California and Washington state have so far publicly disclosed that they have received letters demanding that they segregate ballots. The Justice Department provided California officials a list of 20,000 voters and about 400 voters in Washington. 

While the DOJ has sued California in an effort to force officials to comply, as of Thursday afternoon Washington hadn’t been sued.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who’s in line to become speaker if his party retakes the House, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, along with other Democratic groups and a California voter, alleged in a lawsuit this month that the Trump administration has engaged in a pattern of intimidation intended to frighten officials into complying with unlawful demands to thwart voting.

The Democrats asked for a temporary restraining order, citing the Trump administration’s expanding campaign to pressure state and local election officials. 

Boasberg, an appointee of President Barack Obama in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ordered the Justice Department by noon Eastern on Friday to identify all states where the Trump administration has demanded ballots be set aside since July 1.

But the judge also offered the Trump administration a way out.

“Defendants may moot this process at any time by filing a notice indicating that they will not engage in the conduct sought to be enjoined in connection with the upcoming election,” Boasberg wrote in a brief order.

At the 9th Circuit: Homeland Security limits weighed

At the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a three-judge panel appeared unpersuaded by Trump administration arguments that Homeland Security needs limits lifted on election-related field operations less than a week before Election Day.

“What do you need in the next four days? What are you prevented from doing in the next four days?” Appellate Judge Sidney Thomas, a Clinton appointee, asked a DOJ lawyer during oral arguments on Thursday.

Earlier this month, a federal judge in California prohibited DHS from conducting operations that could sweep up U.S. citizens. The prohibition applies in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin until polls close on Election Day.

A Homeland Security Investigations internal memo dated Aug. 31 describes a “surge initiative” beginning Sept. 1 that includes conducting field interviews. The memo, which was filed in court, identifies those states as targets of the surge during September. Additional locations are redacted in the document.

Justice Department lawyer Gabriel Schonfeld said he couldn’t speak to the specifics of any particular investigation. He called the injunction entered by the lower court judge vague, making it difficult for federal officials to know exactly what is and isn’t allowed.

“The government is being chilled,” Schonfeld said.

The original lawsuit was filed by San Francisco, Santa Clara, the California Nurses Association, National Nurses United and the Voto Latino Foundation. They alleged voters, especially naturalized citizens, are at risk of intimidation and fear they could be wrongly targeted.

“Those folks have a civic duty they want to perform and they shouldn’t have to do it under this cloud of fear,” Hayden Johnson, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told the appeals court.

California and Alaska: What’s next?

The Justice Department immediately filed a notice that it would appeal a ruling by Carter denying its request that California election officials be forced to segregate the ballots of 20,000 voters.

The 9th Circuit already denied a previous, preemptive appeal brought by the Justice Department — a signal the appeals court would likely once again rule against the Trump administration.

But the case is set to continue past Election Day. While Carter has denied the Justice Department’s request for a temporary restraining order, the underlying lawsuit remains.

On Thursday, Carter appointed a special master to aid him and scheduled a hearing for Nov. 13 where witnesses may be called to testify about the list of suspected noncitizens.

In California, county election officials must certify results by Dec. 3.

The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office on Thursday disclosed federal grand jury subpoenas it received for a range of election and voting-related documents and information.

The disclosure came after Carter warned Justice Department officials to drop threats of prosecution against election officials. The subpoenas don’t make clear the target of the grand jury investigation.

In Alaska, the DOJ sued Alaska election officials last week in a preemptive attempt to stop the state from certifying the results of its Senate election if, under the state’s ranked-choice voting method, the Republican incumbent loses by a smaller margin than the votes earned by another candidate of the same name. 

Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan and his supporters have cast Dan J. Sullivan, another candidate, as a spoiler in a competitive race against Democrat Mary Peltola. State officials initially kept Dan J. Sullivan off the August primary ballot but the Alaska Supreme Court overturned the decision.

The case drew fresh attention after The New York Times reported that the Peltola campaign helped recruit Dan J. Sullivan. Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, has ordered an investigation, while Trump has called for Peltola and Dan J. Sullivan to be kicked out of the race.

The Justice Department on Thursday amended its lawsuit to highlight the Times reporting.

The Trump administration “brings this lawsuit to protect the integrity of the 2026 Senate election in Alaska,” the complaint says.

Less than a week before Election Day, President Donald Trump’s unprecedented drive for power over elections has set the stage for a series of courtroom fights that could quickly lead to a high-stakes showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court over the limits of federal authority.

Democrats and voting rights advocates have long feared Trump would attempt to interfere in the midterm elections, especially if Republicans appear poised to lose control of Congress. With early voting well underway across much of the country, they say those concerns are being confirmed as the Trump administration rushes forward a last-minute legal campaign to pressure election officials in a growing number of states.

The U.S. Department of Justice over the past two weeks has sued Alaska and California, seeking extraordinary federal intervention in their elections. Signs suggest the legal campaign might expand: On Monday the DOJ demanded election officials in Washington pull aside ballots of 400 alleged noncitizens. The department made a similar ask for 20,000 people in California before suing that state.

“I think we should be prepared to see suits like this anywhere where there’s a close election, especially in an election that could determine control of the House or Senate,” said Shelby Wayment, staff attorney at the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the University of California, Los Angeles.

States administer elections under the U.S. Constitution, with only Congress holding the power to override state-level rules and regulations. But Trump has sought to bend that constitutional guarantee to the breaking point, legal experts on elections say.

The Justice Department is claiming a federal criminal law against noncitizen voting entitles the agency to demand California and Washington election officials not count ballots.

In Alaska, the Justice Department preemptively sued to block state officials from certifying the results of the U.S. Senate election if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses to Democrat Mary Peltola by a margin that’s less than the number of votes cast for an alleged spoiler candidate of the same name, Dan J. Sullivan. Trump has said the DOJ acted at his direction.

Groundwork to challenge results?

The Justice Department is engaged in “preemptive election interference,” Steve Vladeck, a leading expert on federal courts and a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, wrote online. While he expressed confidence that the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, won’t endorse the DOJ’s “nonsense,” he voiced concern that the lawsuits will eventually stop seeming extraordinary.

“Preemptive election interference is a prelude,” Vladeck wrote. “Its whole point is to have the theories and the filings in place — and the specter of mischief in the air — before the counting starts so that the results can be attacked if, but only if, they don’t come out the ‘right’ way.”

All of it comes as Trump stares down the prospect of political defeat in the midterm elections. If Democrats retake the House or Senate, they will likely launch a series of investigations into the president and members of his administration that could bog down his final two years in office.

Asked Tuesday if he will respect the results of the midterms, Trump told reporters, “I will if they’re honest.”

Trump has laid groundwork to attempt to discredit unfavorable results, writing on Truth Social on Monday that the federal government would be closely watching the race for U.S. Senate in Minnesota. Republican Michele Tafoya, a former broadcast journalist, faces Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, a Democrat.

“The only way she can lose is if they cheat by playing games with the Ballots as they come in,” Trump wrote of Tafoya.

Courtroom losses

Previous efforts by the Trump administration to influence elections this year have largely failed. The Supreme Court blocked proposed restrictions on mail ballots, and federal courts across the country have blocked the Justice Department’s attempts to obtain state voter rolls that contain sensitive personal information, such as driver’s license and Social Security numbers.

Democrats and voting rights experts anticipate that federal courts will also block the latest round of legal action from the Trump administration. Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, emphasized in a statement that the Trump administration doesn’t have the authority to interfere in his state’s elections.

“The Trump administration is afraid and desperate. Their attempts to take over our elections will fail,” Padilla said.

The Trump administration has long said identifying and removing noncitizen voters is a top priority, though studies have consistently shown noncitizen voting rarely occurs. For instance, even if all 20,000 individuals on the DOJ list are noncitizens, it would represent only about 0.08% of the nearly 23.2 million registered voters in California. 

Still, the Justice Department has stepped up arrests of alleged noncitizen voters in recent weeks as part of a heavily publicized campaign it calls “Operation Protect the Vote.”

“Enforcing federal law increases the integrity of elections. It increases confidence in elections,” acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said at a recent news conference.

The Trump administration’s new plan to assert authority over vote counting in California suffered its first courtroom loss on Monday, when a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to grant the DOJ’s request for an emergency order requiring state and local officials to segregate the ballots of voters on the list of 20,000.

In a 2-1 decision, the panel dismissed the appeal on procedural grounds. The judges ruled the court didn’t have jurisdiction over the case because the Justice Department didn’t give a district court judge sufficient time to weigh the request.

Emergency of the administration’s making

The Justice Department filed the lawsuit in mid-October, despite the Trump administration initially saying this summer it had identified more than 190,000 possible noncitizen voters in California. DOJ lawyers then waited several days before seeking an emergency order, and then asked the judge to rule on their request in less than a day.

“This timing challenge is entirely of the federal government’s own doing. And it understandably leads skeptics to believe that this isn’t about improving California vote rolls, but is an attempt to cause confusion and discredit the impending election,” Stephen Richer, a legal fellow at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, said in a statement.

The case could quickly be back before the 9th Circuit. The district court judge in the case, Judge David Carter, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, held a hearing Tuesday and said he would rule Wednesday. His decision is almost certain to be appealed, regardless of what he decides — first to the 9th Circuit and then, potentially, to the Supreme Court.

The Justice Department would likely again encounter skepticism from the 9th Circuit.

Appellate Judge Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, wrote in a concurring opinion Monday that he would also deny the Justice Department’s request on the merits. The Trump administration offers “no workable plan” for how California would set aside ballots and he noted that the evidence that individuals on the list are actually noncitizens is contested.

“Courts tend to frown upon people creating their own emergencies and then saying, ‘Hey, look, we’re in an emergency,’” said Aaron Blacksberg, federal policy counsel at the nonpartisan Institute for Responsive Government.

Speedy resolution in Alaska 

In Alaska, the Justice Department’s lawsuit may move quickly — because Democrats and voting rights groups want a quick resolution.

Peltola’s campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the main campaign operation of Senate Democrats, have filed an emergency motion seeking a fast dismissal of the case. Lawyers for Alaska’s election officials are also asking a judge to rule by Monday, prior to Election Day.

“This lawsuit and this requested relief cast a cloud over Alaska’s election that is contrary to the public interest and that the Court should not allow to linger,” Margaret Paton Walsh, an assistant Alaska attorney general, wrote in a Monday court filing.

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason, an appointee of President Barack Obama in Alaska, has ordered briefs in the lawsuit to be filed on an accelerated timeline over the next few days — a sign she plans to rule quickly.

Keeping status quo

Whatever cases may reach the Supreme Court, the justices are generally reluctant to authorize dramatic changes to elections close to Election Day. 

Over time, the justices have adopted a doctrine called the Purcell principle, which advises against major changes to election policy and practice just before an election because voters could get confused. 

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has faced accusations that it applies Purcell unevenly. This spring the high court effectively paved the way for Republican-controlled Southern states to eliminate majority-Black congressional districts after it severely weakened the federal Voting Rights Act.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative, has drawn a distinction between federal courts ordering last-minute changes to elections and states making changes themselves. In September, the Supreme Court three times refused to overturn a Missouri Supreme Court decision that blocked the use of a gerrymandered congressional map drawn to aid Republicans.

The court’s unsigned opinion in the Missouri case offers hints about what could lie ahead for a case challenging the Justice Department’s demands of California, where voters have been sending in mail ballots for weeks.

“The Purcell principle applies with even greater force here. The election is not merely upcoming; it has already started,” the opinion says.

In the Missouri case, the Supreme Court took a strong stand against chaos, Blacksberg said.

“My hope is we’ll see an emerging theme of erring on the side of stability when there is a close question and also pro-light touch from the federal government,” Blacksburg said.