Free and Fair Elections

October 29th, 2026. Flavio Bolsonaro's escape from Brazil to Miami turns out to have been arranged in part by White House officials, including Trump advisor Jason Miller, who arranged for a charter jet to take the Bolsonaros from Argentina to Florida. Edward Wong, Ana Ianova, Hamid Ali Aziz, and Tyler Pager of the New York Times reported today that Trump himself ordered the State Department to give temporary status to Flavio Bolsonaro and his family on humanitarian grounds. U.S. officials told the reporters that the government will likely grant them permanent residency later. Wall Street Journal reporters Vera Bergen-Gruen, Samantha Pearson, Ryan Dubé, and Philip Wegman write that Bolsonaro intends to set up a political system in exile, despite the fact that more than 50 countries, including Latin American leaders from a wide range of political persuasions, have recognized the victory of Luis Senacio Lula da Silva in Sunday's election. Lula won by more than 4.4 million votes. International observers call that margin decisive. Trump has refused to recognize Lula's victory, suggesting that the votes against the right-wing Bolsonaro were rigged. But as the Wall Street Journal reporters add, it's unclear how much political capital he will be willing to expend on propping up Bolsonaro's pretensions to power. Trump's own energies have been devoted to trying to project authority and power, but he has succeeded primarily in illustrating that he is far more concerned with his development projects than with what's going on in the White House. Yesterday, he posted at length on social media about the East Potomac golf course he wants to redo, the one where the administration cut down more than 400 trees in defiance of a judge's order, saying it is highly dangerous, dilapidated, and absolutely disgusting, and calling for it to be closed immediately for safety reasons. Last night, Eric Flack of WUSA 9 reported that the National Park Service told a federal judge it is closing not just the East Potomac golf course, but also nearly all of Haynes Point, beginning on November 15. As Flack notes, this area includes the perimeter running loop, the dedicated bike and pedestrian lane the Park Service completed in 2023, and the picnic areas and open space used year-round. The Park Service did not say how long the closure would last. Trump promised, Rachel Treisman of NPR reports that plans for the finished park show only a golf course. The current facilities for walkers, runners, cyclists, birders, picnickers, and so on are not shown. Trump is paying less attention to the affairs of government. Today, when asked about claims that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had fired Lieutenant General Sylvia for leaking classified information from the Pentagon, Trump responded, She's got problems. She's going to have big problems. She did. We're very much looking for leakers. And, uh, she's going to have big problems. Long-term problems. Lieutenant General Sylvia said, Lieutenant General Brett Sylvia, the Director for Strategy, Plans, and Policy on the Joint Staff that advises the President on military issues, is a man. Tonight, Shawneen Miranda of News from the States reported that Trump has canceled his rallies in Kansas and Iowa planned for this weekend. When a reporter asked if the Kansas cancellation meant he was sick of traveling, Trump exploded, calling the reporter sick, and saying, Trump is also expending his energies in trying to convince Americans that the Democrats are rigging the 2026 midterms. The administration has tried to force California to set aside 20,000 ballots in the election, claiming that those casting them might not be citizens. Yesterday, as Ryan Sabalo of CalMatters reported, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter said, saying the Trump administration is engaging in a broad, ongoing pattern of attempted election interference. Carter noted that Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen has also sent letters to the secretaries of state in New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, claiming that the state's voter roles include non-citizens. Mullen publicly alleged there were 15,903 voters in the state's non-citizens on the voter rolls in Nevada, then quietly dropped that number to 185. When Nevada officials chased down the 185 names, every single one belonged to a U.S. citizen. Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own constitutional elections procedures. Carter wrote, This case is about the right of every American citizen to vote in a free and fair election. The administration has asked a federal appeals court to rule by Friday on an emergency attempt to stop California from including those 20,000 ballots in the ballot count. In the meantime, as Rick Hazen of Election Law Blog reported, this afternoon, the leadership of the Department of Justice directed California's top federal prosecutors to launch criminal investigations of local and state officials, claiming they are administering illegal voting. In a but-her-emails kind of moment, the administration is also jumping on yesterday's New York Times story by Kellen Browning that a staffer for the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Alaska, Mary Peltola, searched for a candidate for the Democratic candidate for the Republican candidate for the Republican candidate, Dan Sullivan, as a spoiler for the race. Browning reported that this sort of activity, called ballot stacking, is common in politics and generally considered legal, and has been employed by both parties in Alaska, and that Republicans had used it against Peltola herself two years ago. The author suggested the story was important simply because, it reveals the lengths to which Democrats went to seek advantage in a Senate race that could determine control of the chamber. The source for the story, Peltola's former campaign manager, Elisa Rios, said Peltola was not directly involved in the project, but was definitely aware. Before publication of the story, Browning notes, Rios contacted the Times and said she wanted to take back her previous statements. As discussed, the story was not directly involved in the project, as discussed on our call earlier today, I am confirming that I have retracted all statements made regarding the 2026 Alaska Senate race, in connection with any article you may or may not be writing, Ms. Rios wrote. I am not willing to be a source for any story in any capacity. Peltola's campaign, Peltola and Daniel J. Sullivan, all deny any involvement in a ballot stacking plan. Sullivan says he ran because he was dissatisfied with the performance of Senator Sullivan. Ballot stacking runs into legal trouble if a candidate is paid to run. No one has said this is the case in the 2026 Alaska race. On October 23rd, the Justice Department sued Alaskan election officials to block the certification of a winner in Alaska's Senate race unless the Republican won, saying the inclusion of Daniel J. Sullivan on the ballot might confuse voters who wanted to elect Senator Dan Sullivan, who, unlike Daniel, is listed on the ballot both as a Republican and as the incumbent. With the publication of the New York Times story, Trump promptly took to social media to call the scheme illegal election fraud. He called for Peltola and Daniel J. Sullivan to be removed from the Alaska ballot, letting Republican Senator Dan Sullivan run essentially for the election. Sullivan to be removed from the Alaska ballot, essentially unopposed. The Justice Department promptly issued at least three dozen subpoenas and requests for the preservation of documents. On Wednesday night, Republican Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy announced he was ordering an investigation into whether Peltola's campaign should face criminal charges or civil penalties, although he did not identify any illegality. Michael Kosnar, Megan Brand, and Raquel Cornell, Yaribe of NBC News reported that at Dunleavy's request, Alaska's Department of Public Safety Deputy Commissioner Austin McDaniel said Thursday that the Alaska Bureau of Investigation had started looking into the alleged conduct in a recent New York Times article. Today, the New York Times ran two stories noting that ballot stacking is common and legal. A piece by Reed J. Epstein reported that while the Alaska race has drawn the most attention, both parties are quietly trying to use little known candidates in other battlegrounds to siphon votes. Epstein explained that in Ohio, for example, Republicans are promoting a socialist candidate to take votes from Democratic candidate former Senator Sherrod Brown. Another piece by Madison Malone Kircher titled Ballot Stacking in Elections? History Shows It's Not Unusual. listed some of the more spectacular instances of ballot stacking in U.S. history, including the 2020 Florida state Senate race in which a Republican paid Alexis Pedro Rodriguez to challenge an incumbent Democrat, State Senator Jose Javier Rodriguez. It worked. The challenger won more than 6,000 votes, 32 more than the incumbent, and the Republicans flipped the seat. In that case, the exchange of money, across the legal line, and the challenger later pleaded guilty to campaign finance crimes. But the context for the Alaska story arrived too late. Trump and the Republicans are pushing the story as hard as they can to suggest Democrats are cheating in the midterm elections. Another ballot stacking story from this week adds even more context to the Alaska story. Donald Shaw of Sludge, the home for investigative justice, journalism on money in politics, reported that a review of tax records shows that the nonprofit organization that helped to get Cornel West on the 2024 presidential ballot got all of its $7.7 million in funding that year from a right-wing political network bankrolled by Elon Musk. West, a leftist Black intellectual, was widely seen as a spoiler to siphon votes from his party. He said, Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris. And there is, in fact, reason to be concerned about the Alaska election process. Eric Stone and Hannah Flohr of Alaska Public Media reported on Tuesday that polling places in some rural areas failed to open as schedules said they would. Democratic state Senator Bill Wilachowski wrote to Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher and Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom on October 23rd to say that at least 18 rural early voting locations have failed to open as legally required. He noted that in the primary, dozens of rural Alaskan voters did not have their absentee in-person votes counted because it took too long for their ballots to arrive by mail to the division's regional office and expressed concern the same thing could happen in the future. He said, He called the division's failures shocking. Dahlstrom responded, She noted that these early polling locations were free to change their hours. Meanwhile, there has been widespread talk that Trump intends to restart the military assault against Iran after the election, and it appears a plan is in place should he decide to do so. Yesterday at the Middle East Institute, Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat of Connecticut, said that the war plan that has been prepared for the administration is insane. It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law. He continued, The plan that they have developed will lead, in my view, to a prolongment and an escalation of this war that will be devastating for our security interests. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed, by Michael Moss.