President Donald Trump yesterday intensified his effort to save Republicans’ congressional majorities ahead of Tuesday’s US midterm election, restoring planned 11th-hour rallies he had cancelled a day earlier while stepping up legal interventions that could pave the way for court challenges to the results.
The November 3 contest has already drawn 48 million early ballots, more than any other midterm election in US history, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab.
Trump’s fellow Republicans are likely to lose their slim majority in the US House of Representatives, according to non-partisan analysts, with control of the Senate expected to be hard fought.
The Trump administration is pushing forward in legal cases in Alaska, home to a Senate contest that may play a pivotal role in determining the majority, and California, which historically takes more time than most other states in counting ballots.
The Justice Department filed an amended lawsuit in Alaska on Thursday seeking to block the certification of results in the event of a narrow Republican loss, citing a New York Times report that Democratic operatives recruited a spoiler candidate with the same name as the Republican incumbent.
If Democrats take one or both chambers of Congress, they intend to launch investigations into Trump’s administration and increase pressure on the president to end the war against Iran.
In California, meanwhile, the Justice Department is escalating its pressure campaign against state election officials, issuing subpoenas as part of a criminal probe into alleged voting by non-citizens, according to copies of documents seen by Reuters.
A US appeals court yesterday rejected the department’s request to temporarily block California from counting any mail ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters that the Trump administration alleges are likely non-citizens, the second time the court has done so this week.
Pope Leo cast a ballot by mail in the US midterm elections, the Vatican Press office said yesterday, a historic first for the American-born pontiff.
“In keeping with this long-standing practice of civic participation, he has submitted his mail-in ballot in Chicago,” the Vatican said. “The Holy Father expresses his belief in the right and the duty of citizens to participate in democratic processes.”
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