Justice & Legal

A lawsuit written to activate only with a loss is still waiting for one.

By RuthThe Money Desk · the afternoon edition, 10 November 2026

The assignment came back the way these things do on a slow news morning: walk it from the top, one beat at a time, nothing added.

On 23 October, before a single Alaska ballot had been counted, the Justice Department drafted a lawsuit built to activate only if Senator Dan Sullivan lost narrowly. On 24 October, the suit was filed, asking a court to block certification of a result that had not happened yet. On 28 October, the president called the Peltola campaign's reported recruitment of a second candidate named Dan Sullivan illegal and said she should be disqualified; Alaska Republican officials repeated the claim the same day.

By 4 November, Mississippi had its own numbers to argue over: Democrat Scott Colom led Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith by a little over 2,000 votes, 461,370 to 459,201, under one percentage point, in a race The Hill had already called too close to call. On 5 November — twelve days after the Alaska suit was filed, not the same week — the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent Mississippi election officials a demand to preserve every affidavit ballot in the state, the documents The Hill reported are typically called provisional ballots, and called the demand a first step toward possible legal action.

The same day, the Washington Examiner reported the Justice Department had gone quiet on its own Alaska investigation. Peltola led Sullivan 102,701 to 102,075, a 626-vote margin, with 74 percent of the state's ballots counted. The department that had filed a contingent lawsuit on 24 October had nothing new to add about it, and the count stayed open.

The lawsuit written to trigger on a loss is still waiting for the loss. So is the filing Mississippi copied from it.

Scott Colom says the "toss-up" label alone cost him money he needed to win outright, before any lawsuit entered the picture — a forecaster calling a race close enough to doubt is itself a fundraising event, just not one that pays him. The lead he is actually sitting on, a little over 2,000 votes, is harder to answer than a label. It only has to outlast the lawsuits that are waiting on it, hon.

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House GOP fires one man over a worst-in-a-decade loss; Senate GOP keeps its leader by acclamation

By MortThe Records Bureau · the evening edition, 10 November 2026

Jim Jordan is the new House Republican leader. The news is the vote total: 106 to 73, Steve Scalise losing the job to the man who co-founded the House Freedom Caucus to make leadership's life difficult. That is the whole turnover, as a scoreline.

The obituary starts earlier. On November 4th, Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters he would not run for minority leader, the first man to leave the stage after Republicans took their worst midterm defeat in a decade. The same day, Jordan announced he was running, teeing up the fight with Scalise. The same day, asked about the race, President Trump said he would stay out of it. "The speaker was fantastic," he told reporters. "All good people." He did not say whether the fantastic people should keep their jobs.

Two days later, on November 6th, Senator Ron Johnson tried to stop the clock, writing to Senate Republican Conference Chair Tom Cotton that holding leadership elections on schedule was "political malpractice." He and Rick Scott pushed to delay the vote. The vote happened anyway, on schedule, Tuesday. By 3:40 in the afternoon, a Senate GOP aide announced John Thune had been re-elected leader "by acclamation" — the word for a vote nobody bothered to count because the outcome was never contested. The revolt had an afternoon. It did not have a candidate.

This is not new hogwash. Back in September, Vice President JD Vance was asked to endorse Thune for another term and said it wasn't his business to do so — a vice president ducking his own party's Senate leader two months before the vote, while the president was feuding with Thune over an election bill the Senate had refused to pass. Even the White House could not work up the nerve to back a change it never actually asked for.

So count what moved. Lisa McClain kept her gavel as conference chair, 93 votes to 57. Brian Jack takes over the campaign arm aimed at 2028, the next time the House is up. Jim Jordan sits where Scalise sat. John Thune sits where Thune always sat.

The dead: the promise of generational change Republicans made themselves after the worst losses in decades. It was preceded in death by Mike Johnson's exit, announced November 4th before anyone had to push him. It is survived by Jim Jordan, new in the chair, and by John Thune, not new in his at all.

In lieu of flowers, watch what the new furniture does with the old majority's old bills.

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