Trump's DOJ asks Supreme Court to set aside as many as 20,000 California ballots

Final stretch of the midterms

President Donald Trump is holding rallies in Republican strongholds as the midterm campaign closes, urging voters to elect Republican candidates so his administration can finish work it began two years ago. An opinion column puts his national net approval at -27 points and says polling shows him underwater on every policy, from inflation to immigration. The same column blames higher bills on his tariffs and his decision to go to war with Iran. One forecast model gives Democrats a 95% chance of winning back the House and a 54% chance of taking the Senate. Election day falls on Tuesday, 3 November 2026.

Immigration becomes a liability

Immigration, which drove many voters to the polls in 2024, has turned into a challenge for Republicans. The southern border is largely shut, and attempted illegal crossings fell from a peak of nearly 250,000 in November 2023 to about 11,000 in August 2026. The enforcement drive that came with it has drawn wide criticism, with large raids in Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis and federal detention capacity more than doubled through local jail contracts, retrofitted warehouses and tent cities. Public polling suggests voters are now more likely to trust Democrats on immigration, although Republican voters remain more motivated by the issue. Senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who won in Arizona two years ago, put the Republican position plainly.

“Republicans are really out of step with where Americans are with immigration, just like how Democrats were out of step in 2024”

Gallego also said voters do not want heavy-handed immigration forces or racial profiling. Some Latino voting-rights activists fear that recent raids in California could hold down Hispanic turnout, while others expect the opposite in several of the most competitive House districts.

Justice Department and the voting fight

Attorney General Todd Blanche's Justice Department has pressed several legal fronts in the last weeks of the campaign. Bloomberg reports that the administration asked the US Supreme Court to order California to set aside as many as 20,000 mail-in ballots from people whose citizenship it questions, with counting already well advanced in the state. In the final week of October, letters went to election officials in all 50 states warning that failing to keep election records for 22 days could bring criminal charges. A federal judge had earlier that week criticised the administration for similar threats against election officials in a separate case. A department spokesperson said it follows the facts and the law, not anyone's political timetable.

Over the past year the department has demanded unredacted voter rolls, raided election offices and claimed that noncitizens voted in large numbers, claims that several bipartisan investigations have found to be extremely rare. Shelby Wayment, a staff attorney at UCLA Law's Safeguarding Democracy Project, described the strategy in blunt terms.

“They're trying to create chaos and distrust in the system”

Voter-fraud cases and a super PAC

As of late October 2026, more than 220 people across 28 states had been charged in connection with voting violations during Trump's second term, part of an effort to find, arrest and publicise such cases over several months. A 30-year-old woman from India, a legal permanent resident with two young children, turned herself in at a federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. The government says in court documents that she registered to vote in 2022 and voted in 2024 unlawfully, because she is not a citizen, and that she made false statements on her naturalization application. Some detainees have been held for days, and at least one man remains in a Texas jail.

Separately, a super PAC called Our Heritage Matters, registered on 15 October 2026, has spent $6.5 million over the final 10 days of the campaign on mailers and digital ads backing obscure third-party candidates with almost no chance of winning the vote on 3 November. The spending runs through two Delaware limited-liability companies formed on 6 October that have reported no other activity. The PAC does not have to disclose its donors until December, and mailers tracked by the mail-monitoring firm Mintt suggest a spoiler effort aimed at Republican voters.