DOJ's Suit To Invalidate Alaska Election If Daniel S. Sullivan Doesn't Win [UPDATED] [UPDATED #2]

UPDATE 10/27/26: 

"State of Alaska says DOJ lawsuit over Senate race ‘has no legal basis’

Alaska Public Media | By Liz Ruskin

Published October 27, 2026 at 10:37 AM AKDT

Alaska Public Media

Alaska Elections Director Carol Beecher at a legislative hearing on July 22, 2026.

The State of Alaska is urging a federal judge to “immediately” dismiss a Trump administration lawsuit that could block certification of the U.S. Senate election if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan narrowly loses.

“Delaying certification of Alaska’s election results—but only if a particular candidate does not win—would interfere with state election administration and threaten election integrity,” the Alaska Department of Law, representing the Division of Elections and director Carol Beecher, wrote in response to the lawsuit.

The state said the lawsuit “has no legal basis” and would sow distrust in the vote. . ."

From:  https://alaskapublic.org/news/politics/elections/2026-10-27/state-of-alaska-says-doj-lawsuit-over-senate-race-has-no-legal-basis  

This was not something I expected!  Very positive move.  I guess they know it will only interfere with getting election results out in a timely manner. 

Also, commenter Allen gives the link to find the court docket for Alaska court case that began last June.  Thanks, Allen.  This new case is a Federal, not State case.]]

UPDATE 10/24/26:  

"Under representation from the ACLU of Alaska, the League of Women Voters of Alaska joined two individual Alaskan voters and Common Cause in a filing to intervene on the case on Friday, October 23. If granted, an intervention allows these additional interested parties to join the existing suit to present our unique perspectives. We also filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which would be considered by the court after the decision on the motion to intervene."] From an email from League of Women Voters

 This is getting lots of national and international attention already and I don't need to repeat more than the basics. Here's the start of The Guardian article:

"Donald Trump said he ordered the justice department to file a lawsuit to block the certification of Alaska’s US Senate results if the Republican incumbent loses, a move that voting rights experts called an “unprecedented intervention” by the federal government with control of Congress in the balance.

“I’m the one that said do it,” Trump told reporters as he landed in Florida for a campaign rally on Friday."

Some others:

CNBC

Newsweek

(Several others had paywalls so I won't link them, but you get the picture.  This is big news.  The first actual salvo of the Trump administration's attempt to overturn elections that don't go his way.)

Basically DOJ has filed suit to invalidate the Alaska Senate election if the sitting Republican Senator Daniel S. Sullivan doesn't win the election on the grounds that another candidate, named Daniel J. Sullivan, will have confused voters into voting for him instead of Daniel S. Sullivan.  (I'd note that I wasn't confused after I marked Daniel J. Sullivan as my second choice - my first choice was NOT Daniel S) (Because we have Ranked Choice Voting I can make a second and third choice when I vote.  You can even make a fourth choice vote, but I haven't figured out how that would ever matter because one of the candidates would have a majority before it got that far.)

What I can provide are links to nine blog posts I wrote in June and July of this year, where this battle was already fought out in the Alaska Courts and the Alaska Supreme Court ruled the State could not throw Daniel J. Sullivan off the ballot.  

I'd also note a couple of other points I didn't see much in the other coverage:

1.  The GOP have pushed hard* to get Democrats to vote for Eric Hafner for US Representative instead of Independent Bill Hill.  Hafner is a resident of a New York prison.  

*"Pushed hard" = sending out millions of dollars worth of flyers and other advertising to push Hafner and other non viable candidates to take votes from leading Democratic candidates. 

2.  The Alaska Division of Elections initially chose to drop Daniel J. Sullivan on the grounds that he was trying to confuse the voters (not a legal criterion of keeping someone off the ballot).  There is a good chance that the Republican led State and State Division of Elections won't challenge the DOJ lawsuit and simply invalidate the election.  What happens then?

Here are the posts I did in June and July of this year, chronicling how the State tried to keep Daniel J. Sullivan off the ballot and how the Alaska Supreme Court rejected that move.  

June 22, 2026 Senator Dan Sullivan Does Not Want To Run Against Dan Sullivan [UPDATE] 

June 23, 2026 The Dan J Sullivan Removal From Ballot Hearing 

June 25, 2026  Daniel J. Appeal Of Division Of Elections Decision Plays Out In Nearly Empty Court Room

June 26, 2026 It's Almost 7pm -I Can't Find The Sullivan Decision - [Update - His Name Goes Back On The Ballot]  

June 28, 2026

Supreme Court Hearing On Daniel J. Sullivan v Alaska Division of Elections Appeal On Zoom Only

Monday, June 29, 2026   Alaska Division Of Elections v Daniel J. Sullivan At Supreme Court

Monday, June 29, 2026   Supreme Court Keeps Daniel J. Sullivan On The Ballot 

Tuesday, June 30, 2026  Division of Election's Sample Ballot Leaves Off Daniel J's Party Affiliation

Tuesday, July 07, 2026  Silence [UPDATE: Ballots Printed And Overseas Ballots Sent]

I've already thrown out the flyers supporting Hafner, but I do have one that is in response to those flyers:  

My sense is the Republicans are sure the Democrats have put up Daniel J. Sullivan to run for Senate to confuse voters, because that's what they would do. And are doing with other candidates.  During the primaries they spent close to a million dollars promoting Outside (of Alaska) candidates like Hafner.  

It's June 4: Remember Tiananmen

 tiān'ānmén: 天安门 - Gate of Heavenly Peace 

[from:  https://contextualchinese.com/%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6]

I arrived in Hong Kong in July 1989 for a year to teach at Chinese University of Hong Kong.  Tiananmen had happened barely a month before.

In May of 1990 I took a group of Hong Kong students to Beijing at the invitation of the Ministry of Personnel to learn about Chinese Civil Service Reform.  One student couldn't come because his father thought it was too dangerous.  We had planned the trip so we would be back in Hong Kong well before the one year anniversary.  

This is a picture of the Forbidden City in May 1990 from Tiananmen Square.  Here's a post with more pictures of that trip.

Just as the Trump regime is busily erasing government information and history that's not supportive of their ideology 

• Here are all the ways people are disappearing from government websites
• Trump administration purges websites across federal health agencies
• The Trump administration is deleting government data. From infant deaths to hunger, here are five ways it’s hurting Americans
• Trump Erasing Black History An Urgent Crisis

China [is] Erasing Tiananmen Massacre Memory As 37th Anniversary Nears

But in this digital world, information can't really be suppressed forever.  Individuals, organizations, in the US and around the world, are and will be the preservationists of US history.  

And the same is true for Tiananmen.  

From The Guardian

So this post is my contribution on this 37th Anniversary of Tiananmen to keeping the memory alive.  

Here's a link to an old post about the iconic photo of Tankman.

Blacks Targeted On TikTok

 I was talking to an African-American friend today (who is also very much an American, by the way) who told me his TikTok account has been hampered by bots who target his messages that use words like 'white' as violating TikTok rules and it's taking just too much time to fight this.  

I don't use TikTok - I have enough online distractions so I've limited myself - so I wasn't aware of this issue.  But it seems to be longstanding and I'm guessing it's a well organized campaign - like the CRT nonsense - to suppress black voices.  From the people who use terms like 'cancel culture' to accuse others of doing what they themselves are actively doing.  

From a  July 2021 NBC piece:

"Tyler tried a number of phrases, including ones declaring his support for “Black Lives Matter,” “black people,” “black voices” and “black success,” and simply stating “I am a black man” — all of which would immediately trigger a pop-up message prompting him to “remove any inappropriate content.”

But putting “supporting white supremacy” or "supporting white success” in his bio did not prompt the same inappropriate content message. Neither did 'I am a neo-Nazi.'”

It says TikTok apologized, but it's clearly an ongoing problem for my friend.  

Here's a TIME article almost exactly one year before this article on the same issue, just to show its ongoing.   

From a January 2022 article at Insider, we can see the source of the problem my friend was reporting: 

"TikTok told Insider that all of the content cited in the Media Matters study was removed from the platform for violating its hateful behavior policy. Additionally, the company outlined anti-abuse efforts that it has built into its product, including its addition of new controls that allow users to delete or report multiple comments at once and block accounts in bulk."

My friend was reporting what he called bot accounts that would report comments with the word "white" as violations and TikTok would remove them.    Here's a message he got from someone who reported him to TikTok and got things taken down.   

This is, presumably, a white guy telling a black guy he's being racist for talking about white racism.

I'd note that for TikTok content creators with tens of thousands of followers, their income stream is  cut way back when their content is blocked.  

From a December 2021 NYTimes article specifically on the TikTok algorithm :

"the app is shockingly good at reading your preferences and steering you to one of its many “sides,” whether you’re interested in socialism or Excel tips or sex, conservative politics or a specific celebrity. It’s astonishingly good at revealing people’s desires even to themselves — “The TikTok Algorithm Knew My Sexuality Better Than I Did,” reads one in a series of headlines about people marveling at the app’s X-ray of their inner lives."

This article focuses on how the algorithm addicts users and the information it collects on users as the paragraph above indicates.  This leads to concerns about national security because of TikTok's Chinese origin.  It doesn't discuss how the algorithm determines inappropriate content.  

So, this is just a heads up for people like me who only see TikTok videos when they are reposted in other social media.  African-Americans appear to be targeted and their messages are getting censored.  My friend's issues were about using words like 'white' and having people complain to TikTok and getting things blocked.