Try and Stop Us Digest — October 21, 2026

Must Read

Trump's DOJ Has Become The Biggest Threat To Free And Fair Elections

L.A. County's review of DOJ's “noncitizen” list found that most of the names don't even have an L.A. County address, and that a “high percentage” were born in the U.S. The Guardian: Only about 7,000 of the 20,000 names DOJ sent had an address in Los Angeles County, according to the county's Tuesday court filing. In a sample of 200 names, Aman Bhullar of the county clerk and recorder's office found that 38.9% of the records with birthplace information showed the person was born in the U.S., and he said 43% of those on the list had cancelled voter registrations and 71% of the sample had never voted. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which compiled the list, has resisted state demands to share its methodology, and its track record is bad: In July it accused Nevada of having as many as 16,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls, then sent a list of 185 names, and Nevada officials found that all 185 were citizens. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter has now conceded: "There may be some names on there who, it turns out, ultimately are citizens."

California asked a federal judge to reject DOJ's bid to set aside ballots from the 20,000 suspected noncitizens, calling the lawsuit a "reckless political stunt." Bloomberg / Democracy Docket / MS NOW: Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a Tuesday filing: "At worst, it threatens to disenfranchise thousands of Californians this election." State attorneys call DOJ's demand "astounding," and Bonta says its argument "borders on the absurd." The law DOJ relies on, 18 U.S.C. § 611, bars noncitizens from voting but does not apply to election workers. Los Angeles County, also a target of the suit, says the statute "cannot be read as an implied grant of authority to impose an emergency ballot withholding regime." Bonta told MS NOW on Sunday that the threats against election officials are the administration's "contingency plan" for losing the midterms.

DOJ has never explained how its count of “noncitizens” on California’s rolls fell from 190,000 to the current 20,000, yet it wants a judge to quarantine live ballots mid-election. Votebeat: In July, federal officials said they had found more than 190,000 potential noncitizens on California’s voter rolls but never provided the list. It isn’t clear how the number fell to 20,000, and L.A. County officials said the spreadsheet DOJ sent appeared to include residents from across the state. Stephen Richer, a former Republican registrar in Arizona said: “This is the first time the Trump administration has tried to take action to sequester ballots that are live ballots — and that’s unusual.” David Becker, a former DOJ voting rights attorney who leads the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said DOJ “appear[s] to have intentionally gamed the system to wait until the last minute to cause the most chaos in California.” Three U.S. senators, led by California Democrat Alex Padilla, have asked Attorney General Todd Blanche to commit publicly not to seize ballots.

Most Americans Don't Trust Trump To Accept The Midterm Results

Seven in 10 Americans doubt Trump will accept a Republican loss in the midterms. Washington Post / ABC News: A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that 7 in 10 Americans are not confident Trump will accept the results if Republicans lose, including half who are “not at all” confident. The doubt crosses party lines: 94% of Democrats, 77% of independents and 36% of Republicans are not confident. Asked by NBC News in February whether he would accept the results if Republicans lost Congress, Trump said: “I will if the elections are honest.” Sixty-one percent say Trump is not committed to free and fair elections, up from 56% in 2025. The distrust is aimed at Trump, not the voting system: About 6 in 10 Americans, including 70% of Democrats and 67% of Republicans, are confident the midterms will be conducted fairly and accurately.

Only 35% of Americans would support Trump sending federal agents to seize ballots and take over vote counting. Democracy Docket: The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) poll found that just 35% of Americans support Trump sending federal agents to seize ballots and take over vote counting if there are “serious concerns” about voter fraud. The same poll found that 58% of Americans agree Trump is “a potentially dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy,” including around two-thirds of independents and Hispanic Americans.

Officials Are Preparing For Trump To Interfere Before And After Election Day

National security officials are quietly coaching states and lawmakers on how to prepare for Trump interfering in the midterms. Washington Post: A group of current and former officials with Defense Department experience have spent several months consulting with officials from 10 states, including governors, election officials and members of Congress from both parties. They have war-gamed scenarios including troops or immigration agents at polling places and attempts to nullify results based on fraud claims. Trump and top Cabinet officials have declined to rule out sending troops or immigration agents to polling places, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed a senator's question about whether he would refuse such an order as a "hypothetical." Tammy Patrick, chief program officer at the National Association of Election Officials, says election officials are rehearsing what to do if a federal agent appears at a polling place to compel access to ballots, and, of the administration's moves so far: "All of these things," she said, "are being done in the open."

Republicans in Congress could try to block Democrats from taking the House majority by refusing to seat them, though most legal scholars doubt it would happen. New York Times: The outgoing House ceases to exist at noon on Jan. 3, and the House clerk assembles the list of new members, a job most experts see as bookkeeping. Some commentators speculate Republicans could pressure the clerk to refuse to recognize Democratic winners, as Trump leaned on Mike Pence to refuse to certify the 2020 results. Speaker Mike Johnson, who played a major role in the 2021 effort to challenge the Electoral College results, successfully delayed swearing in Democratic Rep. Adelita Grijalva of Arizona for nearly two months last year. Two moderate House members, one from each party, have asked their colleagues to pledge to accept certified results and block efforts to refuse or delay seating winners, and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries says Democrats are "preparing for all eventualities."

In The States

ARIZONA — Trump is dusting off the Maricopa "rigged" playbook, and his allies are pushing a debunked "BUSTED" video to feed it. Wired: Trump told reporters last week that "Maricopa is a very, very dishonest county" and that county election officials should "be ashamed of themselves" over 3,000 ballots mailed early in error. Then the election-denial group We the People USA Alliance posted a video captioned "BUSTED" that showed two county employees working in the tabulation center and insinuated they were tampering. It drew more than 1 million views. The county says the employees were uploading election data to a computer that isn't connected to the internet or the tabulation equipment, and the clip came from a nonpublic backup camera. The group's founder, Republican National Committee representative Shelby Busch, took it to Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, whose office called the FBI. An Arizona attorney general's investigator found nothing to investigate, so Busch took it to Steve Bannon's podcast, where Bannon asked: "Can somebody get involved here?"

ARIZONA — Arizona is preparing for ICE at the polls, and agents were already spotted circling a Phoenix neighborhood near a polling site on primary day. Votebeat: Voting rights group LUCHA says agents were "circling" the Maryvale neighborhood, about a half-mile from a polling place, on the day of the state primary. DHS declined to say what they were doing, citing "operational security." In May, Trump said he would do "anything necessary" to ensure "honest elections" when asked whether he'd deploy ICE or the National Guard to voting sites. DHS says ICE doesn't plan to patrol polls but left open that agents could respond to threats or serve warrants nearby. LUCHA has trained hundreds of poll observers, more than ever, and the ACLU of Arizona sent every county a letter warning that "counties should not treat this as a remote or hypothetical concern."

NORTH CAROLINA — A federal judge let North Carolina's last-minute mail ballot restrictions stand, and early data show rejections already running at double the 2022 rate. The Washington Sun / Democracy Docket: U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder ruled Monday that it was too late to overturn rules the Republican-led elections board imposed on Sept. 4, the morning the first absentee ballots went out. The rules direct counties to "spoil" ballots when the inner envelope isn't sealed perfectly. Data from 27 of the state's 100 counties show a rejection rate of about 3% and as high as 7–8% in Mecklenburg and Forsyth counties. Democracy Docket estimates the 3% rate would mean roughly 3,900 ballots thrown out statewide. Voters are also dropping out of mail voting: Absentee requests are down 32% from 2022. Common Cause North Carolina State Director Sailor Jones says: "If the trends hold, we're looking at thousands of votes that could be spoiled because of this new guidance."