Politics
Column: The presidential race won't be over on election night. Here's what can go wrong after that
The presidential election is still too close to call, but here are three predictions you can take to the bank:
First, we won’t know who won on election night. Three potentially decisive states — Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — are notoriously slow at counting. A winner may not emerge before the end of the week.
Second, no matter who wins, Donald Trump will charge that the vote was rigged. He made that claim in 2020, when he lost decisively to Joe Biden. He claimed (again without evidence) that he was robbed of popular votes in 2016, even though he won the election. He has already charged that Democrats will cheat this year. “It’s the only way they’re going to win,” he claimed.
Third, if Trump loses, he will challenge the outcome in the courts, just as he did in 2020. “It’s not over on election day; it’s over on inauguration day,” Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita said earlier this year. So get ready for long and bitter legal battles that could end up in the Supreme Court with its Trump-friendly majority.
We’ve been here before. Four years ago, Trump tried to undo Biden’s election with a barrage of legal challenges that failed. He asked Republican state legislators to overturn results and demanded that then-Vice President Mike Pence block the count of electoral votes. All refused. A mob of angry, deluded Trump supporters tried to stop the process by invading the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; that failed, too.
The guardrails of democracy held — and legal scholars say those guardrails are a little stronger now.
“I’m very confident that the candidate who wins on Nov. 5 will be inaugurated on Jan. 20,” said Justin Levitt, who teaches election law at Loyola Law School in L.A. But a lot can happen between those two dates, he warned.
“There can be litigation. There can be delays. There will be a lot of misinformation, some of it spread on purpose,” he said. “There are real opportunities for unrest, maybe even violence.”
Here are four scenarios in which a close election could run into trouble:
Asking the courts to decide
“There is always the risk of another Bush v Gore,” Rick Hasen of UCLA Law School wrote recently, referring to the 2000 Supreme Court decision that decided that year’s presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. “If the election comes down to a few thousand votes or less in a state that is crucial for an electoral college victory, then we’ll expect both sides to litigate as hard as they can.”
In Pennsylvania, for example, Republicans filed a lawsuit complaining the state’s rules for accepting absentee ballots that arrive with small errors, like a missing date on the envelope, are too lenient. The state Supreme Court left it up to the state’s 67 counties to decide how to handle the ballots.
If those ballots could swing the election, the Trump campaign could argue that it’s unfair for counties to adopt different rules. A similar issue prompted the high court to act in Bush vs. Gore.
Republicans have already filed more than 100 lawsuits challenging election rules in several states to improve their chances after election day.
Refusing to certify results
What if local officials refuse to certify election results they don’t like?
Most legal scholars say courts are almost certain to knock down those attempts — but they could still lead to delays, legal battles and potential unrest.
The once-obscure issue of certification achieved more notoriety after Georgia’s Republican-led election board issued new rules requiring county officials to investigate potential irregularities before they certify results.
Certification has traditionally been an administrative action in which election boards merely confirm that the compiled results match up with what precincts have reported. Investigating allegations of irregularity or fraud is up to law enforcement agencies, not election boards.
In several counties around the country, pro-Trump election officials have briefly refused to certify election results, but courts have uniformly ruled against them. Two Georgia courts have already ruled that the state election board’s new rules are invalid.
“Certification is not likely to produce a [constitutional] crisis,” said Edward Foley, a leading election law expert at Ohio State University. “The courts are going to handle it as they already do.”
The danger of violence
But all those challenges raise the prospect of violence.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump told his followers: “If you don’t fight like hell, you won’t have a country anymore.”
This year, he has revived that warning, telling supporters that the stakes of the election are existential — literally. Last month, in Wisconsin, he told a rally that if he doesn’t win, migrants “will walk into your kitchen. They will cut your throat.”
“You won’t have a country anymore,” he said, again.
Violence is always possible, even likely. Trump has already been the target of two assassination attempts. But law enforcement agencies have spent four years preparing to protect polling places, tabulation centers, election officials and judges.
Detroit’s tabulation center, which Trump claimed (without evidence) was a hotbed of fraud, has been outfitted with bulletproof glass. Maricopa County, Ariz., where election officials have been attacked by pro-Trump zealots, is stationing snipers on the roof. The U.S. Capitol Police have worked to ensure that Jan. 6 cannot recur.
In the end, election law scholars say violence need not derail the outcome.
“I do worry about it,” said Levitt. “We live in a climate where some people consider threats of violence an acceptable tactic. … But it’s not going to affect the outcome of the election any more than it did on January 6.”
Congress gets the final say — again
Under the Constitution, Congress formally counts the electoral votes on Jan. 6. That normally ceremonial process almost went off the rails in 2021, when Trump urged Republicans to block legitimately elected Biden electors from swing states. Two-thirds of House Republicans supported the scheme, but Democrats and moderate Republicans quashed it.
That scenario is less likely to recur, thanks to a law Congress passed in 2022, making it harder to challenge electoral votes and clarifying that the vice president has no power to direct the outcome.
Still, if one-fifth of the members of each chamber object to a state’s electoral votes, both houses must vote to accept or reject them. If both chambers have GOP majorities, the outcome could come down to a handful of moderate Republicans like Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
There’s also a wild card in the list of potential nightmares: What happens if the electoral vote is a tie, 269 to 269?
In that case, the House of Representatives would choose the next president under a rule that would favor Republicans. Instead of a normal vote by individual members of the House, each state’s House delegation would get one vote — meaning California and North Dakota would get equal weight. In the current House, 26 states have mostly Republican House members; only 22, including California’s, are dominated by Democrats. (Two states are evenly divided.)
A tie hasn’t happened since 1800, when Thomas Jefferson tied with Aaron Burr. (Jefferson won the runoff.) Polymarket, a prediction market, puts the odds of a tie this year at 4%.
Misinformation will remain a danger
This is not a “both sides” issue. Only one party has told its followers that if it loses, the only possible reason will be that the election was stolen.
It doesn’t seem to matter whether the challenges are plausible. In 2020, they weren’t, as evidenced by Trump’s long string of losses in the courts. But polls this month have found that most GOP voters believe election fraud is likely to occur this year even though no significant instances have been proven in decades.
Claiming that every election is rigged is not only part of Trump’s political message; it has become part of his business model.
Last time, he raised more than $250 million after election day with his claims. Only $13 million of those donations funded legal efforts to reverse the result. The rest went into Trump’s political coffers, giving him an early start toward his next campaign.
And the misinformation Trump has cultivated won’t go away after inauguration day. He has made bitter post-election battles a durable feature of American politics.
“It is profoundly unhealthy for democracy,” said Levitt. “It is a long-term cancer in the system.”
Read more McManus columns on the election:
Politics
Trump-aligned House holdouts accused of holding ‘life-saving’ veterans bill ‘hostage’ over SAVE America Act
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A sweeping veterans package supporters describe as the largest expansion of veterans’ health care and benefits in more than a decade is expected to return to the House floor when lawmakers come back from the July recess, but backers warn the legislation could once again become collateral damage in the Republican standoff over the SAVE America Act.
The Take Care of America’s Veterans Act rolls roughly 60 veterans bills into a package that would dramatically expand veterans’ health care and benefits. At its core, the legislation would cement veterans’ access to community care outside the VA while increasing benefits for combat-wounded veterans, caregivers and Gold Star families, expanding mental health services and enacting dozens of additional reforms.
House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., told Fox News Digital he intends to bring the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act back for a vote as soon as the House reconvenes next week.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – MARCH 17: Eugene Simpson, 29, from Dale City, Virginia goes through physical therapy at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington, D.C. with Michael Minor, a kinesiotherapist with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs on March 17, 2006 in Washington, D.C., USA. (Photo by Jeff Hutchens/Getty Images) (Jeff Hutchens/Getty Images)
HOUSE CONSERVATIVES DERAIL GOP AGENDA IN SAVE AMERICA ACT SHOWDOWN
The legislation was held up last month after a group of House Republicans joined Democrats to defeat a procedural vote, stopping the House from taking up the bill.
“I’m feeling good as long as my members stay with us on the rule,” Bost said. “Right now, there’s some politics being played, not about this bill, but just in general.”
The bill became entangled in a broader House Republican fight over the SAVE America Act, legislation championed by President Donald Trump that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
On June 30, the House voted on H. Res. 1398, the procedural rule governing floor consideration of several bills, including the National Defense Authorization Act and the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act. The rule failed after 14 Republicans joined Democrats in opposition, preventing the House from taking up the veterans package and bringing floor business to a standstill. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., claimed to have voted against the rules vote in protest against House leadership’s handling of the SAVE America Act. As a result, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson sent the members home early.
Bost accused the holdouts of effectively putting veterans legislation on hold.
The US Department of Veterans Affairs building is seen in Washington, DC, on July 22, 2019. (Photo by Alastair Pike / AFP) (Photo credit should read ALASTAIR PIKE/AFP via Getty Images) (Photo credit should read ALASTAIR PIKE/AFP via Getty Image)
‘IT’S A MESS’: GOP TURNS ON HOUSE CONSERVATIVES AS VOTER ID BLOCKADE STALLS TRUMP’S AGENDA
“They’re holding all bills hostage,” Bost said. “They’re not voting for any rule. Any bill that has to pass a rule before it comes to the floor—which this bill does because of its size—can’t move.”
Although Bost said he supports the SAVE America Act and has voted for it three times, he argued the Senate’s failure to act should not stop the House from advancing unrelated legislation.
“I agree with that bill,” Bost said. “But the Senate still has to do their work. We don’t stop our work because the Senate isn’t doing it.”
With 23 legislative days left in the Congressional session, Concerned Veterans for America Strategic Director John Byrnes, a supporter of the bill, said time is of the essence.
“There are lots and lots of things that have to get done,” Byrnes told Fox News Digital. “There’s also the National Defense Authorization Act, which is a must pass every year, so these things eat up time. There’s requirements to have debate on these, which eat up session time.”
Byrnes argued that every procedural delay pushes other legislation further down the calendar.
“This bill will save lives in 2027,” Byrnes said. “If we lose veterans because they could have had faster, better access to health care, we’re never going to get those veterans back.”
Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill. ( )
TRUMP’S SAVE AMERICA ACT SHOWS SIGNS OF LIFE IN THE SENATE DESPITE REPUBLICAN REVOLT
But Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who also voted no on the procedural vote, told Fox News Digital that he has concerns about how the bill is financed.
“I appreciate what the chairman’s trying to do in some respects, but there’s a few issues,” Roy said.
Among them, Roy pointed to provisions offsetting new spending through changes affecting other veterans.
“You’re taxing certain veterans to provide some sort of benefits and changes to other veterans,” Roy said. “There are concerns about some of the pay-fors.”
Veterans of Foreign Wars has also taken issue with Section 108 of the bill, warning that it would codify changes to future disability ratings for tinnitus and sleep apnea to help finance other veterans priorities.
But Bost said this is inaccurate.
“No veteran is going to have their benefits reduced,” Bost said. “If you’re receiving a benefit right now, that’s not going to be reduced at all.”
Roy, who previously served two years on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said he supported a lot of what the bill was seeking to accomplish; but said other pieces of legislation are priorities, too.
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“There is a block of us for whom border security, the SAVE Act and demonstrating our leadership on major issues is critical,” Roy said. “Some of these other bills may or may not get hung up based on a desire of many in the conference to see movement on other things.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Luna’s office and the White House for comment.
Politics
Assassinations unleashed under Trump haunt Iran war endgame
WASHINGTON — Shortly before President Trump ended a ceasefire with Iran this week, Israeli officials presented his team with intelligence indicating Tehran was hatching new plots to kill him.
It was not the first such warning. U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies have tracked evidence for years of Iranian efforts to target the president, with signals only increasing since the start of the war.
Their desire to target Trump and his top aides began six years ago, just outside Baghdad International Airport, when the president ordered a drone strike that killed Iran’s most powerful general. The assassination of Qassem Suleimani brought the two countries to the brink of war.
Yet even as full-scale war was averted, top Iranian officials vowed revenge for the strike, authorizing attempts on the lives not just of the president, but of his secretary of State and national security advisor, among others, even after they had left office.
Now, calls for revenge have reached a sharper pitch in Tehran, after a joint U.S.-Israeli operation killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the start of the war in February.
At Khamenei’s funeral ceremonies this week, red flags of vengeance flew throughout the capital as protesters explicitly called on their government to “kill Trump.” His son, Mojtaba, the new supreme leader, was absent from the commemorations, fearing assassination himself.
Mourners hold an anti-President Trump banner at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosque during mass funeral prayers for Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family in Tehran on Sunday.
(Morteza Nikoubazl / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The prospect of foreign assassination plots targeting U.S. leaders puts the United States in dangerous new territory, where its embrace of political killings could ultimately place its own officials at unprecedented risk. And experts fear the existential threat of assassination has pushed peace further out of reach: When both sides believe their survival is at stake, the trust required for diplomacy becomes far harder to achieve.
Israeli news organizations have reported that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, cited Iranian attempts to kill Trump in recent years as part of his case to go to war in the first place.
A U.S. official told The Times that a range of serious threats exist against the president, including from Iran, but that Israel’s intelligence pointed to a more specific plot. The official did not provide further details. Israeli officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has said in recent months that the government sees vengeance against U.S. officials as “its legitimate duty and right,” and “will fulfill this great responsibility and duty with all its might.”
“The Suleimani killing accelerated a lifting of restraints on foreign assassinations — and the taboo on targeting and killing foreign leaders, with U.S. military assets, has been more or less lifted,” said Matt Dallek, a political professor at George Washington University.
“If the United States sets the example of how to conduct international relations, and it is using assassination of foreign leaders as a political weapon, it’s only logical that other countries will be more inclined to also engage in assassinations,” Dallek added. “It does seem likely that Trump will have a bigger target on his back.”
Returning from a NATO summit in Turkey on Wednesday, Trump was forced to switch back to an old model of Air Force One — equipped with specialized defensive technologies — from a new plane given as a gift by Qatar, after the Secret Service warned of potential threats to the aircraft from Iran.
“They want to take out the U.S. leader — me,” Trump told reporters aboard the plane. “I’m on whatever list. I saw this morning I’m on every single one of their lists. And so far, I guess I’ve been a bit lucky, but maybe that doesn’t last very long.”
The threat has remained on his mind in the days since. In an interview with the New York Post, Trump told the reporter, “I hope you’ll miss me,” adding that he has “been on their list for a long time.” And in a subsequent social media post Friday night, he warned of a catastrophic response he instructed the administration to pursue in the event Tehran succeeds.
“1000 Missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he wrote, “with thousands of more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat, pronounced in many corners of the Globe, to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate, the sitting President of the United States of America, in this case, ME!”
The United States had a decades-old prohibition against assassinating foreign leaders before Trump’s presidency, codified in an executive order signed by President Ford in 1976 over concerns of a CIA plot to kill Fidel Castro.
The policy was only strengthened further by subsequent administrations, fearing a new international standard for targeted killings could result in unintended consequences in the halls of Washington.
Other administrations have been accused of targeting foreign leaders before. Under the Obama administration, an international coalition targeting the Libyan regime of Moammar Kadafi during the country’s 2011 civil war struck his fleeing convoy, leading to his capture and killing by rebel fighters.
But experts say Trump’s explicit targeting of Suleimani and Khamenei — and his public celebration of their deaths — marks a new paradigm.
“Through words and actions, President Trump has done more to normalize political violence than any other U.S. president, certainly in modern times,” said Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago and author of “Our Own Worst Enemies: America in the Age of Violent Populism.”
“On the international front alone, the president routinely brags about killing Iranian leaders and seizing the leader of Venezuela, among others,” he added, “to the point that assassination is becoming the new normal in international politics.”
Politics
Trump takes unusual step, lets bipartisan housing bill become law unsigned amid SAVE pressure campaign
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A bipartisan housing bill became law Saturday at midnight after President Donald Trump declined to sign it, capping a weeks-long saga over whether the president would veto the measure amid frustrations with Congress over his stalled agenda.
Trump refused to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act — legislation aimed at expanding the nation’s housing stock and lowering costs — in an attempt to pressure Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, despite the housing bill clearing both chambers with overwhelming majorities.
“I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, which is polling at 97% with the Republican Party, and very high with the non-politician Dumocrats,” he declared on Truth Social Friday morning.
The Trump-backed election measure, which would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections and impose voter ID requirements, has struggled to overcome the Senate’s 60-vote threshold.
Meanwhile, the House has not passed a version of the bill that includes the president’s proposed crackdown on mail-in voting and banning men from women’s sports.
President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, June 3, 2026, in Washington. (Alex Brandon/AP)
HOUSE CONSERVATIVES DERAIL GOP AGENDA IN SAVE AMERICA ACT SHOWDOWN
Under the U.S. Constitution, Trump had 10 days, not including Sundays, to sign or veto the housing measure after the House formally transmitted the legislation to the White House in late June. The president ultimately chose neither option, allowing the measure to become law without his signature.
Though Trump declined to veto the legislation, he sharply criticized elements of the bill and argued it should not have been a legislative priority in recent weeks.
“It’s so unimportant … compared to the SAVE America Act,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office in late June. “I think the SAVE America Act is exactly what it says. It’s saving America from crooked elections.”
Trump went on to call the housing bill “a yawn,” adding, “compared to the SAVE America Act, just about everything is a big yawn.”
It would have taken a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override a veto — a margin the House and Senate exceeded when they passed the legislation. However, it remains unclear whether so many Republicans would have defied the president had he vetoed the bill.
Trump also appeared to criticize the bill over a provision restricting Wall Street investors from purchasing single-family homes — a policy he first proposed during his January State of the Union address and later urged Congress to pass. Trump previously argued the investor ban would give individual homebuyers a leg up against private equity firms in the housing market.
“I don’t want to hurt people that own houses, too,” Trump later told reporters, appearing to reference the provision. “These people, for the first time in their lives, they have valuable houses. They’ve become rich. I don’t want to hurt them either. What you want to do is what’s good for everyone, get the interest rates down.”
The law also aims to boost housing supply by streamlining federal environmental reviews, loosening rules around the construction of factory-built homes, and incentivizing local governments to modify their zoning laws to allow more housing, among roughly 60 provisions.
Trump’s souring on the legislation created headaches for Republicans, who touted the bill as an affordability win as voters grapple with high housing costs.
“It’s irresponsible to postpone signing the Housing bill due to the SAVE Act,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a retiring lawmaker who lost re-election to a Trump-backed challenger, wrote on social media. “We need to start delivering relief to people for the high cost of housing ASAP!!”
Construction workers stand on the roof of homes under construction at a new housing development on June 24, 2026, in Valencia, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
WARREN TELLS TRUMP TO ‘SIGN THE DAMN BILL’ AS BIPARTISAN HOUSING PACKAGE REMAINS STALLED IN WASHINGTON
Trump abruptly canceled a signing ceremony for the legislation at the U.S. Capitol in June with GOP leaders. The stage had already been set, with at least one senior Republican arriving unaware the president had called off the event shortly before it was scheduled to begin.
The president then declared he would not sign the legislation until Congress passed the SAVE America Act, despite Senate GOP leaders insisting the votes do not exist to advance the measure.
Trump has also expressed frustration with the Republican-controlled Senate for declining to weaken the legislative filibuster, which requires 60 votes to advance most legislation in the upper chamber.
“GET SMART REPUBLICANS, IF YOU DON’T, YOU WON’T BE IN OFFICE FOR LONG!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Sunday.
Before Trump came out against the bill, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “one of the most significant pieces of housing affordability legislation in American history” and said it included an array of policies “long championed” by Trump.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 15, 2025. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Meanwhile, Trump political operative James Blair touted the legislation for including the president’s Wall Street investor ban, which he referred to as a “signature commitment.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has argued that Republicans will still promote the landmark housing bill ahead of November.
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“We’ll still celebrate it, but he’s trying to make a point, and I think he’s making it very effectively,” the speaker recently told reporters, referring to Trump. “And the fact that you all ask me every three steps down the hallway illustrates that he has achieved the desired objective, and that is to make SAVE America the number one thing, because if we don’t get that right, everybody’s concerned about what happens next.”
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