Trump’s Election Attacks Enter New Pre-emptive Phase
A lawsuit by the Justice Department challenging a potential narrow loss by the G.O.P. Senate incumbent in Alaska reflects a new tactic by the president to try to shape the election results.
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News ANALYSIS
A lawsuit by the Justice Department challenging a potential narrow loss by the G.O.P. Senate incumbent in Alaska reflects a new tactic by the president to try to shape the election results.
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Zolan Kanno-Youngs, who covers the White House, has been chronicling President Trump’s efforts to reshape the rules governing elections.
Oct. 25, 2026
For months, President Trump has mounted a sustained effort to attack the integrity of U.S. elections while using the federal government to try to assert more control over the voting process overseen by states.
Last week, Mr. Trump opened a new front.
Rather than simply push false claims at his rallies or target voters his administration claims should not be on the rolls, Mr. Trump moved to pre-emptively challenge the certification of Alaska’s Senate election if the Republican candidate narrowly loses.
In doing so, Mr. Trump harnessed the power of the federal government to try to interfere in the voting process before Election Day — essentially trying to nullify an opponent’s potential win before the game has been called.
Even for a president who worked to undermine and overturn the 2020 presidential election, the anticipatory strike reflects a new intensification of Mr. Trump’s attempts to use his official powers to achieve the election results he wants — one that undermines the democratic process, according to election and legal experts. While they say the administration’s lawsuit is unlikely to be successful, the tactic could still further Mr. Trump’s goals by shaking the confidence of voters in the outcome of the race.
“This is part of the election takeover playbook that I’ve seen around the world and unfortunately in some other autocratic environments,” said Michael McNulty, a former senior elections adviser for the U.S. Agency for International Development who has studied election issues around the world, including in El Salvador, Hungary and Venezuela. “Trump has essentially undermined the independence of the D.O.J. and it’s been weaponized.”
The latest phase of Mr. Trump’s strategy centers on the Justice Department, which asked a federal court to block the certification of the election if the Republican incumbent, Senator Dan S. Sullivan, were to lose by a slim margin. The administration argued the presence of another candidate with a nearly identical name on the ballot has skewed the election toward Democrats.
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Originally published by nytimes.com. Syndicated material does not necessarily reflect the views of Glamour Canada.
