Trump election lawsuits, DOJ monitors loom over 2026 midterms

The Trump administration‘s monthslong campaign to challenge how states conduct elections and pushback against those efforts come to a head as Election Day arrives Tuesday.

Those efforts have included lawsuits, an attempt to implement a new U.S. Postal Service rule for mail-in ballots this year, threatening letters to state election officials and a plan to increase the number of poll monitors.

The administration could continue such efforts beyond Election Day.

Democratic lawmakers, attorneys general and advocacy groups are poised for battle if the administration tries to interfere with voting sites or challenge ballot counts, particularly in the states that could determine whether President Donald Trump‘s fellow Republicans lose their narrow Senate majority.

“Got to be prepared for anything, and we are,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta told CNBC on Monday evening.

“We’ve been, you know, blocking and tackling and protecting and defending our elections for months and through the last few weeks of the voting window, and it’ll all culminate tomorrow. And each of Trump’s attempts has failed,” Bonta said.

After a series of legal losses by Trump’s Department of Justice in election cases, “I’m not sure what he has up his sleeves,” the attorney general said.

But he also said that he and other California officials, along with the 23 other Democratic state attorneys general for months have been preparing for Election Day and potential actions by the Trump administration “to disenfranchise and suppress votes and voters.”

“We game-planned, and you know, war-gamed and tabletop- and scenario planned all the possibilities,” Bonta said.

“We’re ready for National Guard or ICE or Marines at polling stations near polling stations, armed people near polling stations,” he said. “We are ready for ballot seizures tomorrow, and I think we’re ready for the monitors that are coming.”

Bonta said that if those extreme events happened, California officials would quickly seek relief from the court system.

He noted, “We have laws in place right now where it is a criminal offense” to remove ballots from the custody and control of an election official.

On Monday, multiple federal courts were dealing with urgent motions in election-related lawsuits and appeals by and against the Trump administration.

The cases include an appeal by the DOJ of the dismissal Sunday of its lawsuit seeking a delay in the certification of Alaska’s Senate election if incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses by a margin that could be attributable to voter confusion from having a man with the same name on the ballot.

In another case, the DOJ on Monday asked the Supreme Court to block California from counting about 20,000 mail-in ballots from voters whom the DOJ suggests might not be U.S….