Donald Trump’s trip to Alaska earlier this month was a real doozy.

Should I be surprised? The previous time he visited my home state, in August 2025, he ordered the US military to roll out a red carpet for Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The two billionaire oligarchs chummed it up and posed for cameras, then talked about the war in Ukraine and achieved no formal ceasefire and no peace agreement.

I was curious to see what Trump would do this time. If our economy is so good, as he says it is, and if Republicans are so superior to Democrats, as he says they are, then why fly 3,400 miles to hold a rally for Dan Sullivan, Alaska’s junior Republican senator running for his third term?

Sullivan is in a tight race with his democratic challenger, Mary Peltola. That’s why. Control of the US Senate for the next two years could come down to Alaska.

A week ago, Trump made a desperate move. He directed the US Department of Justice to file a lawsuit against the state of Alaska because a second Dan Sullivan, a retired schoolteacher from the coastal fishing town of Petersburg, is also on the ballot.

On Wednesday, the plot thickened when the New York Times reported that back in the summer of 2025, Democratic operatives began to engineer ways to get a spoiler on the Alaska ballot, according to interviews with Peltola’s former campaign manager and longtime aide, Elisa Rios, who was fired in a staff shake-up in August. Other sources included texts.

Rios said Peltola was not directly involved in the operation but was aware of it. Last week, Rios contacted the Times and retracted all statements “made regarding the 2026 Alaska Senate Race.” She added: “I am not willing to be a source for any story in any capacity.”

A spokesperson for the Democratic Senate campaign arm told the Guardian: “Republicans have a long history of recruiting and propping up candidates in an attempt to boost their own campaigns.”

Trump’s justice department lawsuit, however, is unprecedented. It seeks........

© The Guardian