Today’s HC-R
November 1, 2026 (Sunday)
Having seemingly given up on the House of Representatives, President Donald Trump and the officials in his administration are indicating that they intend to steal the 2026 midterm election to maintain Republican control of the Senate.
Trump continues to try to use the power of the government to boost his own popularity. On Friday and Saturday, Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank J. Bisignano sent an email to people with online Social Security accounts declaring that under Trump, “the Social Security Administration (SSA) is transforming into a model of excellence,” producing “the best performance in the agency’s 91-year-history.” More than 100 million Americans have online SSA accounts.
In fact, as Tara Siegel Bernard reported in the New York Times in July, the Department of Government Efficiency’s cuts of about 14% of SSA staff have created service delays. It’s much harder to get an in-person appointment, and although the agency reports that average phone response times dropped from 11 minutes to 5 minutes, it achieved that reduction by counting anyone who agrees to hang up and accept a return phone call as waiting zero minutes.
But it’s not just in boosting Trump that the administration is corrupting our government. Yesterday, in an astonishing illustration of just how thoroughly Trump and his cronies are weaponizing the government to cement their power, U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to stop threatening local and state election officials with criminal prosecution if they don’t do as the administration demands.
Victoria Craw of the Washington Post reported that Thompson said that Attorney General Todd Blanche and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin exceeded their authority when they sent warning letters to state election officials because states, not the federal government, are responsible for congressional elections. She also noted that they likely violated the Voting Rights Act by intimidating election officials.
“In the lead-up to the election,” Thompson wrote, “high-ranking DOJ and DHS officials have engaged in a campaign to intimidate, threaten, and coerce state and local officials and employees who are engaged in administering the ongoing midterm 2026 election. Although Defendants claim that their actions are designed to halt unlawful voting by noncitizens, their actions are likely to have the effect of interfering with election administration and disenfranchising lawful voters.”
“One of the hallmarks of a fair election is the freedom to exercise the right to vote free from threat, fear, or intimidation,” the judge wrote. “Free exercise of the right to vote is a core tenet of our democracy. It requires safeguarding to ensure full participation and public trust in our elections.”
Central to this effort to keep control of the Senate is the state of Alaska, where Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola has a slight edge over the Republican incumbent, Senator Dan Sullivan.
In late October, the administration sued to prevent the certification of any candidate in the election unless Sullivan wins. The administration’s argument was that Alaskan election officials had agreed to permit two candidates with similar names to be on the ballot.
On Friday, October 30, after a New York Times article alleged that members of Peltola’s staff recruited a challenger with a name similar to Republican Dan Sullivan—a common and legal maneuver both parties engage in—the administration asked a judge to order election officials in Alaska to separate all ballots that rank Daniel J. Sullivan from the rest of the ballots in the election.
As Gary Grumbach and Kyla Guilfoil reported at NBC News, they claimed they wanted the ballots separated “for the purposes of investigating whether such ranking was the product of voter confusion, should such an investigation become necessary.”
They did not explain how such a ballot could be reviewed or how reviewing a ballot would explain if a voter was confused. It also downplayed that under Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, any ballots on which the lesser known Sullivan is ranked first will automatically go to the voter’s second choice—presumably Dan Sullivan—if no candidate wins more than 50% of the votes on the first round.
Today U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason of the United States District Court for the District of Alaska dismissed the lawsuit prohibiting the state from certifying any winner in Alaska other than the Republican incumbent. She wrote that the administration had not provided a “workable plan as to how it proposes to segregate ballots cast for Daniel J. Sullivan on Election Day and then conduct a court-ordered unspecified ‘investigation’ of those ballots in a manner that would preserve voter secrecy.”
The administration, willing to violate Americans’ right to a secret ballot in order to make sure a Republican holds Alaska’s Senate seat, immediately filed a notice that it would appeal.
The Alaska Supreme Court signed off on the ballot months ago, specifying that the ballots would identify Senator Sullivan as the Republican incumbent and list the other Sullivan without a party affiliation.
Meanwhile, Democrats have filed a lawsuit over Alaska’s apparent failure to fully open at least 18 early voting locations in rural Alaska, disproportionately affecting the opportunity of Native Alaskans to vote.
Trump wants to retain power, but he seems to have little concern for the Americans he wants to govern. Tyler Pager of the New York Times reported that Trump spent last night at a lavish jungle-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago, where guests could feast on Alaskan king crab and eat from a caviar bar.
Even as Americans are struggling under soaring prices of gasoline and diesel caused by Trump’s war on Iran, and as polls show almost 70% of Americans are unhappy with Trump’s handling of the economy, Trump was proud to party with wealthy people three days before the midterms. “Look at all my rich members,” Trump crowed to reporters covering the event. “They spent all day getting ready. Look at these guys.” “These are the biggest guys on Wall Street.”
Pager reported that Trump repeated his anger with his former lawyer Alina Habba Mildon, who allegedly pocketed $50 million for obtaining a pardon from Trump for a Venezuelan billionaire. In a different article on October 29, Pager reported that Trump has told people around him that Mildon should make sure some of that money moves in his direction. He wants her to donate some of the $50 million payout to one of the projects that he’s pushing: his future presidential library, for example.
Pager noted that at his Halloween party, Trump also acknowledged the story Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, Ana Swanson, Paul Mozur, Tripp Mickle, and Julian E. Barnes broke in the New York Times on October 29 that a Chinese spy targeted Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang to obtain information about the company’s advanced AI chips. Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, was allegedly sending information gathered from Jensen Huang directly to Beijing, facilitating China’s acquisition of advanced chip technology. Previous presidents have thought such a transfer endangers national security.
Although he was briefed about the intelligence about a year ago, Trump chose to do nothing about it. The reporters note that Trump has not wanted to disrupt Nvidia sales, which are key to the strength of the stock market, or to complicate trade with China even more than he already has.
Last night, asked about Jensen Huang, Trump told reporters: “I have a lot of respect for him. I like him. We hope everything’s OK.” He added: “We’ll check it out. We’re going to check it out very closely.” Asked if he would keep Huang on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Trump said he “would like to say yes.”
“I mean, unless we find out something to the contrary,” Pager reports Trump as saying. “I’ve always found Jensen Huang to be very above board. But you know, you’re dealing in a very complex issue, I will say.”
With the midterm approaching and early turnout that appears to favor Democrats surging, Republicans who are not close to Trump appear to be sliding away from him. On Saturday the Republicans in control of Alaska’s state government asked Judge Thompson to reject the administration’s lawsuit, pointing out that “frivolous” candidates are legal and that the Alaska ballot actually includes a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, Eric Hafner, apparently pushed by Republicans to take votes from the Democrats. Hafner is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence in New York and has never lived in Alaska.
They reiterated that states, not the federal government, control elections.
And even while administration loyalists suggest they will accept the results of the Alaska election only if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan wins, when asked today if he shared that position, Sullivan himself told CNN: “No. I’m going to accept the election results.”