BLOCK THAT VOTE: The Trump administration made the highly unusual request to a federal court to block certification of the Alaska Senate election if Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan loses by a narrow margin. The Justice Department filing set off alarm bells over whether President Trump and his administration will accept the results of November elections.

  Trump later admitted that the filing came at his own direction, demonstrating that the Justice department has lost its traditional independence from the White House. Arriving in Florida Trump told reporters, “I’m the one who said do it.” For months he’s been talking about trying to exert federal control over elections.

  The President is upset because the Alaska ballot includes a second Dan Sullivan, Daniel J. Sullivan, also a Republican, who the Justice Department claims is running to confuse and split the vote for Daniel S., although the line for Dan S. Sullivan says that he is the incumbent.

RAMASMARMY: Vivek Ramaswamy, the Ohio Republican candidate for governor, on Friday defended his advertisement that features the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent as fair game for the campaign.

  Ramaswamy has faced widespread backlash, including from fellow Republicans, who have called for the ad to be pulled from the airwaves and internet. In the ad the mother of Dr. Amy Acton, the Democratic candidate, says her daughter lies about having been raped by her stepfather as a girl, even though the man was criminally charged. 

 Ramaswamy said, “We will not apologize for it.”

  “We ran an ad about lying,” he said. “Amy Acton is lying. She has been lying this entire campaign about me, about her record about her history in this state. The irony is they are lying about an ad that is about lying. That is the truth of the matter. It had nothing to do with childhood abuse.”

SCRUTINY:  The Department of Justice threatening “significant federal scrutiny” sent letters yesterday to local election officials across California demanding that they help identify noncitizens on their voter rolls and set aside their ballots. 

  The Trump administration is on a campaign aimed to uncover noncitizen voters and to stall election processes in states where it has claimed without proof that large numbers of noncitizens are registered to vote. The administration has already sued California seeking to block counting of more than 20,000 mail ballots sent to people they claim are not citizens.

PRAVDA: Russian disinformation operatives are pumping the internet full of fabricated claims about Democratic candidates, AI-manipulated videos of celebrities, and fake posts immitating real news outlets in an effort to influence American voters next month, researchers say.  They say Kremlin-backed groups are using familiar tactics they’ve previously used to sow distrust and discord in US elections.

EARLY AND OFTEN: Nearly 24 million Americans have already voted in a surge of early voting in the midterm elections. 

  More people are voting early that they did in 2022. Election researchers say they can’t tell whether these are people who would have voted anyway or this represents greater interest in this coming election.

  More Democrats tend to vote by mail and midterm elections tend to favor the party out of power.

INFINITE SCROLL: 

— The Justice Department also yesterday brought charges against two former FBI officials accusing them of making false statements to Congress regarding the investigation into presidential son Hunter Biden and his notorious laptop computer. The charges claim that both former agents obfuscated what they knew about the Hunter Biden investigation.

— In another act of campaigning through economics, President Trump is rolling back tariffs on some Canadian goods that disproportionately hurt residents in Maine and similar states, Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins announced. The new policy will exempt nine categories of products from the high tariffs Trump imposed on Canada this summer. 

FAMILY MATTERS: Authorities in the Philippines are investigating Thomas Markle, the estranged father of Prince Harry’s wife Meghan, after he was accused of possessing images of child sexual abuse.

  Philippine authorities say it was Meghan’s  half-brother ‌Thomas who ⁠provided police with a laptop and boxes of images. Meghan Markle said in a statement that she had ​known about the allegations against her 82-year-old father since 2018 and prevented him having contact with her children Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5. Her father had been living in Cebu but is now believed to be in the US.

HOME PLATE: The Milwaukee Brewers won game one of the World Series 3-2 over the Tampa Bay Rays last night in Milwaukee. The series continues tonight, again in Milwaukee.

  Neither team has ever won a World Series.

THE SPIN RACK: Adolph Hitler’s notorious “Eagle’s Nest” Bavarian Alps retreat, now a tourist attraction, was seriously damaged by an arson fire. It might be nearly destroyed. — Scottish actor Jack Lowden from the series “Slow Horses” appears to be the leading candidate to be the next James Bond, the superman of spies. Ironically in “Slow Horses” his character is assigned to an MI5 unit of misfits and screwups. He might be promoted to taking his martinis shaken, not stirred.

BELOW THE FOLD: Former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told host Bill Maher that President Trump is considering reverting the press briefing to what it used to be … a swimming pool.

  It would have to be a pool that could accommodate a whale.

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