An Alaskan candidate for U.S. Senate who ran under the same name and party affiliation as incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan has been declared ineligible to appear on the primary ballot by the state’s elections director. On Monday, Alaska Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher stated in a letter to candidate Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. that his election filing was not to “declare an actual good-faith candidacy for the office of United States Senator, but was instead filed with a purpose to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality.” Sullivan filed for candidacy only two days before the June 1 deadline—and as Beecher pointed out, he filed as “Dan Sullivan” and did not include his middle initial or suffix to differentiate himself from the incumbent senator.  Sharing the name with the senator is merely a “matter of fate,” this Sullivan claims. “I am a qualified candidate who followed the rules and filed to run for office under my legal name,” he said last week. At one point, Sullivan listed “S,” rather than “J,” as his middle initial, exactly mimicking the senator’s name. Even the two candidates’ logos are hard to distinguish. Both include the last name “Sullivan” and the Alaska north star in white and yellow lettering on a blue background, with slightly different fonts.  Left: Sen. Dan Sullivan’s campaign logo, courtesy of Dan Sullivan for Alaska. Right: Daniel J. Sullivan’s campaign logo, courtesy of Sullivan for Senate. Beecher further cited that Sullivan did not usually go by “Dan,” and observed he had only recently registered as a Republican. Beecher’s statement came in response to a letter from the National Republican Senate Committee noting that Sullivan’s campaign manager is a consultant and longtime supporter of the opposing Democrat candidate, Mary Peltola, and that Sullivan himself has donated several hundred dollars to Democrat candidates nationwide. “The only plausible explanation for someone with this record running for office as a ‘registered Republican’ is to mislead unwitting Alaska voters who intend to cast a ballot for incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan,” the NRSC stated. “Sham Candidate Sullivan” is merely a Democrat ploy to confuse Republicans and split their votes between two candidates in order to bolster Peltola’s chances of victory, according to the NRSC. It’s no secret that Alaska is a crucial state for Democrats. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has listed Alaska as one of its top five target states this cycle since February 2025, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer listed Alaska as one of “the four states we have to pick up to win back the Senate.” Sullivan has 30 days to appeal the decision before his candidacy is officially terminated. Alaska’s primary elections are set for Aug. 18, and the top four candidates will advance to the general election.

A top federal prosecutor says California has “basically” decriminalized voter fraud by stripping away election safeguards used by other states. Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, told the Daily Signal that federal prosecutors are fighting for access to the state’s voter rolls in federal court and investigating election fraud allegations as Americans head into the midterm elections. “California has basically what I will call decriminalized voter fraud, or a lot of things that people consider voter fraud,” Essayli said. “The states have a lot of leeway as to how they want to run elections, and so California has just taken off all the safeguards that most states have to reassure the public that only eligible U.S. citizens are registered to vote and casting ballots in an election.” Essayli’s office has launched multiple ongoing investigations into alleged voter fraud in the state. While Essayli said his office cannot discuss pending investigations, he mentioned federal charges against a woman accused of paying homeless people on Skid Row to register to vote with false information. He called that case “a little slice” of the voter fraud that federal prosecutors are examining. California continues to insist its elections are secure while refusing to show the receipts, Essayli noted. He stressed that the only way to be certain of security would be to audit California’s voter rolls, which is why the Justice Department is requesting access to the voter rolls. California is resisting, arguing in part that turning over records would violate state privacy laws, he said. Essayli stated that the law requires states to show voter rolls to the attorney general, and said the argument made by California is “ludicrous” because federal law supersedes state law. The state automatically sends mail ballots to all active registered voters, and allows ballots to arrive up to a week after Election Day, allowing vote counts to change for days on end. Most California voters are not required to show identification at the polls. He stated that California’s automatic registration system is “basically registering everyone who interacts with the DMV as a voter,” and that officials “were caught about five or six years ago registering noncitizens who got driver’s licenses to vote, and they had to go and take them off the voter rolls. And those are just the ones they caught and admitted to.” He also criticized California’s accepted forms of identification for first-time voters who register without a driver’s license or Social Security number, citing examples like gym memberships, prescription drug labels, and health insurance cards that do not prove citizenship. When presented with a scenario of a voter using a gym membership purchased without any identification or citizenship documentation, Essayli said that is “how it could happen,” and said DOJ is looking into specific instances. Essayli stressed that U.S. citizenship is already mandatory to vote in federal elections, but Congress did not put enough teeth into the enforcement mechanism. He stressed the need for a stronger framework requiring voter ID and actual proof of citizenship at the time of voting, saying it would be “the safest, most secure way to ensure compliance with the law.” Regarding California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s claim on Monday that he and his wife were under federal investigation, Essayli told the Daily Signal in a written statement that he could not comment on pending investigations, and DOJ was unable to provide comment.

Gavin Newsom would have you believe he is now the brave victim of a Trump-orchestrated reign of terror. In a self-pitying video released this week, the California governor melodramatically declared that he and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, had proudly joined “Donald Trump’s hit list.” Federal agents, he wailed, have been knocking on doors of family, friends, and former employees. Grand juries are being “abused.” Investigators are digging through years of documents—not because they found crimes, he insists, but because they are simply trying to manufacture them. According to Newsom, the entire effort is raw political revenge for his repeated criticisms of Trump and his rumored interest in running for president in 2028. This is Newsom’s calculated bid to become the Left’s Trump. He frames every legal pressure as a witch hunt, turns routine scrutiny into a badge of honor, and positions himself as the defiant champion who will lead the resistance.  He hopes the “hit list” rhetoric, paired with the suggestion that Trump fears him as a genuine threat, will rally the progressive base, attract big donors, energize activists, and finally make him the Democratic Party’s Trump-like figure—resilient, victimized, and destined for the White House. It won’t work. The parallels are hollow. Trump endured four criminal indictments, two impeachments, an FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, a public mugshot, gag orders, and novel legal theories pushed in hostile courts. His supporters rightly called it lawfare—the weaponization of justice by a politicized system. Newsom faces nothing comparable. There have been no SWAT raids on his mansion, no agents rifling through wife’s underwear drawer, and no Alvin Bragg-style press conferences inventing felonies from misdemeanors with ever-shifting “other crimes.”  Newsom and his wife have not even been personally subpoenaed. Instead, federal investigators have interviewed associates and issued routine subpoenas to banks and financial institutions for records linked to nonprofits and businesses tied to the Newsoms.  These are standard tools that Newsom and his allies long cheered when used against conservatives. Yet, he casts these inquiries as a Trump-driven “reign of terror.” Newsom is frantically searching for any angle to paint a legitimate investigation as false persecution. The hypocrisy is incredible. For years, Newsom praised every aggressive legal move against Trump—creative charges, friendly venues, and process as punishment. “No one is above the law,” he declared repeatedly. Now that career prosecutors in the Eastern District of California, following leads that began under the Biden administration, are reviewing patterns in his own circle, it suddenly becomes a fascist plot driven by Trump’s personal dread. This is the classic double standard: justice for thee, but tyranny for me. The questions under review are real and long predate any Trump return. Newsom’s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, pleaded guilty in May 2026 to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, false statements, and related counts after allegedly diverting roughly $225,000 from a dormant campaign fund tied to former Biden health secretary Xavier Becerra. Wiretaps and evidence gathering started years earlier. Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s nonprofit, The Representation Project, raises even more serious concerns. IRS filings show she and her production company, Girls Club Entertainment LLC, have pulled in roughly $3.7 million combined over more than a decade—including her $150,000 annual salary plus licensing and production fees for her own films.  These payments consume an outsized share of the organization’s modest budget, while donations flowed from entities with business before the state. Longstanding Sacramento questions about self-dealing and pay-to-play optics triggered reviews well before any supposed vendetta. Then there is Newsom’s predictable counterattack. When federal agents appeared near one of his events last year in Los Angeles, he immediately filed Freedom of Information Act requests framing routine law enforcement presence as intimidation by Trump’s “personal police force.” On the very same day he released his victimhood video, his office demanded more records from the Justice Department.  He weaponizes transparency demands against others while shielding his state’s books on pandemic fraud, homelessness spending, and nonprofit dealings. All of it is designed to manufacture a narrative of victimhood rather than confront the actual questions being asked. California’s well-known history with fraud makes the entire martyr act impossible to take seriously. An estimated $20 billion in Employment Development Department pandemic unemployment fraud vanished to criminals and overseas scammers while legitimate claimants suffered. Billions poured into homelessness programs have produced proliferating tent cities, open drug use, street filth, and declining public order.  Businesses and middle-class residents continue fleeing the state in droves, shrinking the tax base and accelerating decline. This is the governance record of a career machine politician who lectures the nation on morality while insulating his inner circle from scrutiny. All of this exposes why Newsom’s comparison to Trump is hollow. Trump rose as an outsider who built a genuine grassroots movement against a hostile establishment. Newsom is the ultimate insider—a product of elite California whose leadership has delivered high taxes, failing schools, urban decay, and mass exodus. Claims that Trump “fears” his influence only highlight the vast gap between the two men. If the probes ultimately clear the Newsoms, full transparency will vindicate them. But the desperate spin, selective amnesia, and emperor’s-new-clothes denial only deepen the humiliation.  History will record the fraud—and dismiss the performance as the transparent ploy of a man who expected exemption from the standards he demanded for everyone else. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes. Jack Fowler: Speaking of war, Victor, Spencer Pratt says it’s war.  On Friday, two things happened. One is his business mysteriously burned down.  Victor Davis Hanson: I know it, it did. Not so mysteriously. I think some of his political opponents’ supporters did it, but who knows?  Fowler: Yeah. But he also put out a concession video.  I’m going to read this now. This is from RedState: Watch it. They’ll wish the mail-ballot fraud scheme to elevate [Nithya] Raman had never taken place.  Pratt says he’s moving on from the campaign phase of his mission to save Los Angeles to the next, more interesting phase, reminding people that his goal wasn’t to become mayor but to expose the corrupt machine and that he’s laser-focused on just that.  “Do you think they can really get rid of me that easily?” says Pratt. “Hey, morons, I didn’t get into this for political power. I got into this to expose the corrupt machine. Nothing’s changed. You enjoy your worthless meetings in City Hall. I’ve been lighting you up every single day, and now I don’t have to worry about offending CNN viewers.  “I don’t have campaign laws hamstringing me now. It’s war.”  He made threats. He’s got some videos and documents that are going to be very harmful to one of the two candidates.  Victor, I think he’s here to stay. I don’t know. What do you think?  Hanson: Yeah, I think so. I think what he’s referring to is that every would-be whistleblower or discontented person is sending him material. He’s the person to do it, and he will air it, and that’s going to give him a lot of exposure and clout.  But when you run for office in Los Angeles, or California in general, what he’s basically saying is this, the subtext is this: Is it so hard to say that if you want to be a voter, then you don’t just go to get a building permit or apply for disability and give your name, and they mail it to you?  You just register to vote. You go to a state office, and you take the initiative, and you register. Then you give an address. You show a California driver’s license, which is now not required. You should have to have a driver’s license or a state-issued ID, one or the other.  They mail it. You give them an address. They check it on a computer to see if you’re actually at that address, and they mail you one ballot.  Then you take that ballot, and if you want to fill it out, we could call it an absentee ballot. Maybe you would be ill. But more likely, you should go to the polls, and you should show your California driver’s license again.  And we don’t do that.  But we do if you want to get disability. I must have been to 40 medical procedure appointments for this latest bout with cancer. I’m talking about blood draws. I’m talking about X-rays, CT scans, and lung-volume tests.  Every place I went: “Can I see your ID? Can I see your ID? Can I see your ID?”  But not to vote? Not to vote?  That’s just crazy.  So, what he’s saying is, you people conduct elections, and you have no idea who’s voting. You give licenses to people here illegally, and that license is used to get a registered vote, but you don’t even check if they’re at the address. You don’t even check if they know English.  Nobody has to know. How could you vote and not know the language of the country? By making an X. You can do that in California with a witness.  And then what’s so hard? India, you’re talking about India has 1.4 billion people. They don’t take a week to tally the ballots.  And what’s the good of saying, “Well, we authenticate”?  Well, you have to authenticate it because you have so many laxities built into this corrupt system. And even then, when you did that in the 2024 election, you only rejected 0.09% of the ballots. So, you’re not really auditing them. You’re letting them go right by you.  I think the election exposed that California has reached critical mass at this point. People said to themselves, “This state is dysfunctional. It can’t conduct honest, transparent elections with readily tabulated votes. Nobody trusts it anymore. It has no confidence from the population, and we understand what’s happening.”  300,000 to 500,000 people are leaving every year who are taxpayers in the middle- and upper-middle-income brackets.  When they go, then we have more entitlements, and more people come into the state, either legally or illegally, who are impoverished. And there’s less and less money to pay for more and more people who want federal, state, and local help in California.  And therefore, we’re going to do what? We’re going to raise the gas tax. We’re going to raise the income tax. We’re going to raise the property tax.  Then more people are going to go, and more people are going to come in to get more benefits. That’s where we’re in a doom loop.  And it’s not going to get better.  It is a Third World country. It’s falling apart.  And when you add $250 billion of fraud and stolen money—and I must say, trying to be as objective as I can, I’ve been following that story—I would conservatively suggest that, based on what’s in the paper and the names and online pictures of the people who have been arrested, 60% to 75% are immigrants.  So, that’s not a good look.  People come over here, and instead of kissing the soil and saying, “Thank God I’m in the United States. I owe so much to my host,” it’s, “Oh man, there’s nobody here. These people are stupid. They give away stuff. I’m going to get mine.”  That’s the wrong attitude.  Fowler: Hey, we flew them over here, even at our own expense, so they could then rip us off. It’s easy to connect those dots.  There’s an online publication out of Fresno, Victor. I coincidentally saw it the other day. I think it’s GV Wire. And it had an article by two nonprofit leaders from a Catholic organization.  They’re trying to do the Lord’s work, and we’re hurting in the Central Valley now. There are fewer donors, and the reason is people are leaving.  Hanson: They’re leaving. Just last week, two people that I would say are in the high-income brackets—they pay a ton of taxes—basically said, “I’m done.”  As one person said, “With the federal income tax and Medicare and the Obamacare and California’s 13.3% income tax, I pay 58% of my income. And I get the worst roads. I get gangbangers. I get high crime. I get filthy streets. I get homelessness. And I get elections like they have in Los Angeles.  “And we’re sitting on a bonanza of gas and oil, and we have $6.50 gas. We have the second- or third-largest forestry industry in the country, and we let it burn down. We have 60 million trees that burned up, and we drove everything out except maybe two companies.  “We have rare-earth minerals. We have everything. It’s the most richly endowed state in the country and the most beautiful, and it’s the most ill-governed.”  So, they’re leaving.  And I don’t know what’s going to happen. You get the impression that people want them to go. It’s like the Seattle mayor said, “Bye-bye.”  In “The Dying Citizen,” I quoted an immigrant who said, “We’re so happy you people are leaving because you’re making room for us, and we’re taking over.”  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Is there room in Major League Baseball for faithful Christian players? Last week, several San Francisco Giants players wore the Pride-themed baseball cap during the team’s Pride Night, but with a twist: They wrote Bible verses on their caps referencing Genesis verses related to God’s creation of the rainbow. Now Major League Baseball is taking aim at those players. “The writing on the cap violates our rules and, consistent with normal practice, we have warned the players about future violations,” said Pat Courtney, chief communications officer for the league, in a statement Monday to Outsports, a website that boasts it’s “Proudly LGBTQ+ Owned and Operated.” But one conservative senator is raising the alarm about whether MLB has a double standard. “The league’s claim that it merely forbids ‘writing of any kind’ on its uniforms does not survive a cursory review of the league’s recent history,” writes Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., in a Tuesday letter to Major League Baseball Commissioner Robert Manfred. “In 2020, MLB itself turned its uniforms and its fields into a billboard for political and social messages. It created jersey patches reading ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘United for Change.’ It authorized ‘BLM’ to be stenciled onto pitching mounds. And it suspended its own equipment rules so that players could display progressive political slogans on their cleats,” Hawley added. What does MLB think it’s doing penalizing players for their Christian faith? They owe us some answers. Right now. pic.twitter.com/yDPmjC6SMZ— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) June 16, 2026 Hawley, who notes in his letter that the league “enjoys a sweeping, judicially manufactured exemption from the federal antitrust laws,” doesn’t mince words about his concerns in the letter, which requests Manfred respond to a series of questions. “The league went beyond tolerating speech—it designed speech, promoted speech, and shoehorned social and political messages into the game broadcast to millions of Americans. Yet when three players added a handful of characters citing the Book of Genesis to their caps, the league reached for its rulebook.” In a statement Tuesday, the league told The Athletic the Monday statement was not about “the content of the message,” and that the league respected “players’ right to free expression.”’ “We have given the same warning numerous times in the past to players for messages such as ‘Dad,’ ‘Happy Mother’s Day, I Love Mom’ and names of family members.” The statement comes the same day other conservative politician are speaking out. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier posted on X: “Do you practice religious discrimination in Florida, @MLB? You’ll be hearing from my office soon.” Do you practice religious discrimination in Florida, @MLB?You’ll be hearing from my office soon. https://t.co/znUcRXH8p6— Attorney General James Uthmeier (@AGJamesUthmeier) June 16, 2026 Texas Gov. Greg Abbott posted: “The Texas Rangers are the only team in Major League Baseball that doesn’t host a Pride Night. This week, they’re hosting Faith and Family Night instead.” “In Texas, we don’t punish people for living out their faith. We protect that right,” he added. The Texas Rangers are the only team in Major League Baseball that doesn't host a Pride Night. This week, they're hosting Faith and Family Night instead. Meanwhile, MLB just warned Giants pitchers for writing Bible verses on their own caps. In Texas, we don't punish people for…— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) June 16, 2026 Vice President JD Vance also signaled support for the players, writing: “Trump won we don’t have to do this anymore.” Trump won we don’t have to do this anymore https://t.co/Dsl5DH2obf— JD Vance (@JDVance) June 16, 2026 Now just to put this in context: Many Americans don’t support the LGBT lifestyle. A third of Americans believe same-sex relationships are morally wrong, according to a recent Gallup poll. Fifty-seven percent of Americans think changing one’s gender is morally wrong. The baseball players who refused to kowtow and show support for a value they don’t agree with took care to speak diplomatically and in a way that encouraged dialogue. There were no ugly slurs or lack of compassion. Take San Francisco pitcher Landen Roupp, who inscribed his Pride Night cap with Genesis 9:12-16, which is where God tells Noah the rainbow will be a sign of His covenant not to flood the earth again. “It’s just about God’s covenant and a promise that He makes to us that, you know, His faithfulness and His mercy,” Roupp said at a press conference after the game, reports NBC Sports Bay Area. “That’s just kind of something I believe in, and I stand firm in that, and I’m thankful we live in a country where, you know, we have the freedom to believe what we want … and express what we want.” Asked what he would tell someone in the LGBT community who objected to his baseball cap inscription, Roupp said, “there’s no hate in it at all.” “First of all, as a believer, I would push them to read the Bible … there’s no hate in it at all, you know, like I said, we live in a country where you’re welcome to believe what you want,” he said. Roupp wasn’t alone among the players in sending a different message on Pride Night, which was described as a “celebration of Pride and the LGBTQIA+ community” on the Giants website. Pitchers J.T. Brubaker and Ryan Walker also wrote Bible verses on their caps, while Sam Hentges, also a pitcher, wore the regular Giants cap, not the Pride version. Earlier this month, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Blake Treinen also refrained from wearing the Pride baseball hat during a game. It’s not clear if the league objects to players not wearing the Pride hat. Major League Baseball did not respond to a request for comment on whether that was allowed. Like Roupp, Hentges emphasized he had no “hate.” “I grew up as a Christian, I’ve grown in my faith. There wasn’t any hatred behind it,” Hentges said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s just something that I feel like I was forced to support when I don’t morally support it.” That seems reasonable enough, to refuse to show support for something you morally oppose. Yet there was enough criticism that the San Francisco Giants issued a statement a day after the game, addressing the matter and apologizing for the “pain and anger” caused by players’ choices: “The San Francisco Giants are proud to support Pride Night and the LGBTQ+ community. … We also respect that individuals may make personal choices about participating in team activations. “We understand that the choices by individual players have caused pain and anger to many in the LGBTQ+ community and we are sorry for that.” Yet have the Giants or any other team ever issued a statement responding to Christians who objected to Pride Night? I doubt it. No one is forcing baseball to take moral positions on hotly disputed issues. (I don’t see any baseball teams hosting Marijuana Night or Sports Gambling Night, for instance.) But if the league continues to do so, it should also accept that players should be allowed to be true to their own beliefs. These baseball players showed tremendous courage. No doubt, they put their future careers at risk, as well as possibly jeopardized possible brand deals. They deserve to be celebrated by Christians and others who hold traditional values—and MLB should swiftly find a way to assure Christian baseball fans they are respected, too.