With a week left until Election Day and millions of ballots already cast, federal judges are airing not-so-subtle skepticism about the timing of the Trump administration’s recent election lawsuits against states.
In rulings in unrelated cases late Monday, judges in California and Alaska pointed out that Justice Department officials had waited months to sue state election administrators over issues that had been on their radar since at least early summer.
The judges signaled they were unsympathetic to the DOJ’s demands for speedy rulings, noting that officials had ample time to act but filed their challenges only after many ballots had been mailed and processed.
“That these proceedings encroach on the cusp of an election,” U.S. Circuit Judge Gabriel Sanchez of California wrote separately in an order, “is a delay entirely of the United States’ own making.”
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In California, Sanchez and Judge Mark Bennett of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals were the 2-1 majority in an order that shot down the Justice Department’s bid to more quickly force state and local election officials to set aside 20,000 mail ballots the administration claims are for potential noncitizens.
The opinion noted that Department of Homeland Security officials first sent their analysis of alleged noncitizens on voter rolls to the state in July. When state officials asked the administration for details about the methodology, the administration didn’t respond. Hearing nothing further, election officials mailed ballots at the beginning of October, as required by state law.
The administration had all the information it needed to file suit “well before” mid-October — 10 days after California counties could begin counting and months after the original notification — the order says, adding that the administration’s “claimed emergency, at least in part, is a self-constructed one.”
The DOJ attorneys in the lawsuit initially asked for a ruling by Election Day on their request for an order. Then, shortly before 9 p.m. on Oct. 21, they demanded an expedited ruling by noon the next day — effectively giving the district court three business hours to rule, the order says.
The district court hadn’t yet ruled when the lawyers filed an appeal to the 9th Circuit. The DOJ’s sense of urgency appeared to have been driven in part by a sudden realization that Los Angeles County had processed 331,000 ballots and that counting was well underway, according to the 9th Circuit’s order.
“That the United States had overlooked the fact that counties across California would be working diligently to process ballots for the millions of voters residing within the State does not equal inaction by the district court or circumstances outside the United States’s control,” the opinion read.
In the Alaska case, lawyers for Democrats and voting advocacy groups pointed to the Trump administration’s suspect timing in asking to speedily consider dismissing the DOJ’s lawsuit before the election — and a federal judge agreed.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason noted that months had passed since the Alaska Supreme Court had cleared the way for two Senate candidates named Dan Sullivan to appear on the state’s ballot. Sample ballots went out over the summer, the primary was held without issue in August, and no other legal challenges had been filed over the listing of names on the ballot, the judge wrote.
“After Alaskans had already begun casting their ballots for the November 2026 election — and nearly four months after the Alaska Supreme Court directed the Division of Elections to include Daniel J. Sullivan on the ballot for the upcoming United States Senate election — the United States initiated this action on October 22, 2026,” she wrote.
The judge set a blisteringly fast pace for federal litigation, with filing deadlines that set up a potential decision on the motions to dismiss by Thursday night.
Democratic officials at the state and federal level said they expect the Justice Department to expand its 11th-hour legal maneuvering in the coming days. In court papers Monday, they asked a judge to block the DOJ from ordering state and local election officials to remove specific voters from their rolls prior to Nov. 3.
The motion, filed on behalf of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and other Democratic groups, also asks the court to prohibit the DOJ from forcing election administrators to withhold or set aside ballots.
Shortly before the motion was filed, the Justice Department set another potential legal challenge in motion in the state of Washington. In a Monday letter to Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, the DOJ claims the state has more than 400 noncitizens who voted in U.S. elections. Similarly to California, the DOJ gave Washington a tight deadline to comply with checking the citizenship of those listed.
The letter even acknowledges the time constraints and the looming midterm elections. The DOJ gave the state a deadline of noon Wednesday, adding: “If you cannot implement this process by then, given the ongoing federal election, the United States will have no choice but to seek emergency relief.”
When asked by a reporter on Thursday whether the DOJ would continue bringing litigation to other states, Attorney General Todd Blanche said, “Maybe.”
“It depends. There’s a number of states that we’re looking at. So, whether we’re gonna do something before the election, I don’t want to get ahead of the civil lawyers working on those cases,” Blanche added. “But yes, if we have the same information from other states I expect we’ll move.”
Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels declined to comment on the pending litigation and did not address a question seeking to clarify Blanche’s remarks.
In an emailed statement, she said it was the department’s job to prevent noncitizens from voting. “When our federal partners identify individuals who, with a high level of confidence, are or were noncitizens and have cast ballots, the Department will act, and it will not wait for a more convenient time,” she said.
Justin Levitt, a constitutional scholar at Loyola Law School, said the Justice Department’s cases thus far appeared to be based less on a coherent legal strategy and more on an effort to keep the administration’s contested claims of ballot problems in the news.
“Most of them are press releases rather than cases. They just happen to have court docket numbers on them,” Levitt said in an interview. “What they’ve done so far in this administration is really just get themselves in the press for 24 hours and survive until they can figure out what to do next.”
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