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On Sunday, the U.S. District court for the district of Alaska dismissed Donald Trump's suit against the state without leave to amend. In other words, the U.S can't file an amended complaint for the same claims. Judge Sharon Gleason granted the motion brought by the GOP-controlled state government on standing grounds. She held that even if the feds can establish an injury caused by defendants (i.e. that the non-incumbent Dan Sullivan's presence on the ballot violates federal law), there's nothing the Court can do about it. There's no remedy or redress for the feds' complaint. Thus, they don't meet the criteria to get into federal court.
The Alaska Supreme Court already addressed this issue and allowed the other Sullivan to remain on the ballot. And the incumbent Sullivan is identified as such on the ballot. Plus, as we've pointed out many times, Alaska uses ranked-choice voting so if anyone is truly confused, they can rank both candidates first and second.
Alaska argued that the DoJ's demand to segregate ballots to determine if voters were confused was impossible. The Judge agreed and held that the requested relief is "infeasible":
As explained by the State and Intervenor-Defendants, many voters have already cast their ballots in the November 2026 general election. Those cast ballots have been commingled and cannot now be segregated or the identity of the person who cast each ballot ascertained. More fundamentally, the United States provides no workable plan as to how it proposes to segregate ballots cast for Daniel J. Sullivan on Election Day and then conduct a court-ordered unspecified 'investigation' of those ballots in a manner that would preserve voter secrecy.
Gleason also wrote that intervention at this late date would create voter confusion and could cause people to stay away from the polls. Under the Purcell principle, courts are to avoid taking any such actions so close to election day.
But Politico points out that the feds seem to have moved on to Plan B, which is to intimidate anyone who seems to support Dan J. Sullivan. Apparently, the FBI has "visited" donors to the retired teacher's campaign. The U.S. Attorney in Alaska has said he's investigating despite the fact that Republicans have engaged in this practice more often and in this cycle and federal law doesn't explicitly prohibit it. (L)