DOJ launches new midterm legal battle

President Trump has directed the DOJ to file a lawsuit seeking to block the results of Alaska's Senate race in the event Republican Dan Sullivan loses, according to NBC News. The instruction opens what the network calls a new legal battle over the midterm elections, which another NBC News segment describes as reaching a boiling point with 12 days to go.

The directive is conditional: it applies only if Sullivan, the Republican in the contest, is defeated. Republicans have raised a separate complaint about the same Alaska contest. They say another man with the same name as Sullivan has joined the race, and they contend the aim is to confuse voters.

NBC News correspondent Gabe Gutierrez reported the developments on Oct. 23, 2026, in a Nightly News segment titled as a new DOJ legal fight tied to the midterms. Taken together, the presidential order and the Republican complaint about the duplicate name make Alaska the focus of the segment. The segment ran about one minute and forty seconds.

Summarized by PolitiKool from NBC News’s reporting. Read the full story at NBC News →