With the midterm elections a week away, President Donald Trump is pre-emptively casting doubt on the results if they are unfavorable to the Republican Party. On Tuesday, reporters asked the president if he would unconditionally accept the results in November. “I will if they’re honest elections,” Trump responded.

It’s a familiar line for Trump. As the Washington Post summarized, “In 2016, Trump said he would accept the election results ‘if I win.’ In 2020, he repeatedly declined to commit to accept the results, saying ‘We’re going to have to see what happens.’ In 2024, Trump said he would accept the results if the election was ‘fair and legal and good.’”

Trump has yet to admit he lost the 2020 election against Joe Biden, in one six month period alone claiming he won more than 100 times, despite there being no evidence of widespread voter fraud. The president has lost at least 64 court cases challenging the results.

But some analysts are growing increasingly worried Trump might do more to annul voting results this time around, especially as the Department of Justice is getting increasingly involved in the elections. Earlier this month, the DOJ filed criminal charges against more than two dozen green card holders in California, accusing them of illegally registering to vote or casting fraudulent ballots. Last week, Trump personally requested a DOJ lawsuit against Alaska to block certification of the state’s Senate election if the Republican incumbent loses. The New York Times reported it was “a highly unusual move that signaled an effort to potentially intervene in the outcome.”

On Monday, the Trump administration threatened Washington state with legal action if it did not purge around 400 people from its voter rolls that they claim are not U.S. citizens.

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“The timing of this request — one week before the General Election — is no doubt intended to cast unfounded suspicion on the results,” Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said in a statement on Monday. “We take our responsibility to protect voter information seriously and will only respond to requests that follow due process. We saw what happened in California and don’t want Washingtonians to be harassed.”

Even if these attempts don’t work, the overall goal may be to rattle voter confidence in the security of the U.S. elections. “This is part of the election takeover playbook that I’ve seen around the world and unfortunately in some other autocratic environments,” Michael McNulty, a former senior elections adviser for the U.S. Agency for International Development, told the New York Times. McNulty has studied elections in countries like El Salvador, Hungary and Venezuela. “Trump has essentially undermined the independence of the DOJ and it’s been weaponized,” he said.

“Time and again, the evidence shows U.S. elections are secure. State and local election officials, in communities across the country, painstakingly implement layered security to protect the integrity of elections,” Ben Hovland and Emma Hulbert write in a recent article for Center for American Progress. “Despite all this evidence, the Trump administration continues to call the security of elections into question. As the Center for American Progress has detailed, alleging voter fraud or invoking national security emergencies provide powerful pretexts for challenging election results, despite the fact that these claims are contrived to justify just such election subversion. Widespread voter fraud is a myth, and presidents have no constitutional or legal authority to take control of elections.”

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Attorney General Todd Blanche lashed out at CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday after she questioned whether President Donald Trump’s intervention in Alaska’s Senate election could lay the groundwork for overturning results he dislikes.

“Oh, stop it!” Blanche exclaimed during a heated appearance on “State of the Union.” “You’ve gotta stop it with that! You are not being a real person! Come on man, that is crazy!”

“It is not crazy!” Bash responded.

The confrontation came as Bash pressed Blanche about the Justice Department’s unprecedented lawsuit seeking to block certification of Alaska‘s Senate election if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses. Trump acknowledged Friday that he directed the legal action, telling reporters, “I’m the one that said do it.”

The administration argues that another candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., could confuse voters and siphon support from the incumbent, potentially benefiting Democratic challenger Mary Peltola. Alaska courts have rejected efforts to remove the similarly named candidate from the ballot.

Asked what crime justified federal intervention, Blanche struggled to identify one.

“What’s the crime? Well, it depends. There could be a crime,” he said, before arguing that the real concern was voters becoming confused and having their voices ignored.

Bash then raised the possibility of a “doomsday scenario” in which Trump attempts to overturn election results, invoking the aftermath of the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

“That is not a real question!” Blanche protested.

“We’re not laying any groundwork for the president to do that!” he added, insisting the administration was not attempting to take over a state election.

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On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., rejected the Justice Department’s intervention.

“It’s not the federal government’s business to run Alaskan elections,” Schiff said. “It’s Alaska’s business to do that.”

Schiff argued that Alaska’s courts had already addressed the ballot dispute and questioned the Justice Department’s legal standing.

The lawsuit has also drawn criticism from Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, underscoring opposition extending beyond Democrats.

With Election Day quickly approaching, the administration’s willingness to challenge how a state certifies its results has raised concerns about federal interference in elections traditionally administered by state officials.

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President Donald Trump is urging Republicans across the country to vote early and by mail, even as his Justice Department escalates legal challenges to election procedures in multiple states less than two weeks before the midterms.

In a series of nearly identical Truth Social posts promoting Republican turnout, Trump encouraged voters to use virtually every available method of casting a ballot.

“Whether you VOTE early, absentee, by mail, or in-person, Republicans must SWAMP the Radical Left Dumocrats with massive turnout!” he wrote.

The enthusiastic endorsement of mail voting comes from a president who has repeatedly attacked the practice as vulnerable to fraud and previously sought sweeping restrictions on mail ballots.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors sent letters Friday to election officials in at least 18 California counties, demanding that they identify and set aside ballots suspected of belonging to noncitizens within 48 hours.

“Any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli warned.

The demands follow a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to prevent California from counting ballots associated with roughly 20,000 people the administration considers likely noncitizens. State officials dispute the reliability of the federal government’s data and warn that eligible voters could be disenfranchised.

Federal prosecutors have charged 28 people in California with illegally registering to vote, some of whom also allegedly cast ballots. Research has consistently found noncitizen voting to be extremely rare.

In Alaska, Trump’s Justice Department filed a separate lawsuit seeking to block certification of the Senate race under certain circumstances if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses to Democrat Mary Peltola. The dispute centers on another candidate named Daniel Sullivan, whom Republicans argue could confuse voters.

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“I’m the one that said do it,” Trump told reporters Friday, acknowledging that he directed the lawsuit.

The California and Alaska cases involve different legal questions, but together underscore the administration’s aggressive involvement in state election administration. For Republican voters, however, Trump’s message remains straightforward: Use every available voting method to defeat Democrats.

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