Blanche cites elections clause Bash left off screen

Dana Bash displayed Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution on screen during CNN’s State of the Union on Oct. 25, 2026, showing only the first clause. Todd Blanche objected and asked that the second clause be put back up.

“Well conveniently, you put up the Constitution on your screen, but you highlighted only the first clause,” Blanche said. He pressed the producers to restore the rest of the text. “the second clause says ‘but the Congress may at any time by Law’ and we have a law and that’s the law we’re relying on when we filed suit earlier this week.”

The Justice Department had sued three days earlier, on Oct. 22, in federal court in Alaska. The filing seeks to block certification of the U.S. Senate race if Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan loses and ranked-choice reallocation of votes cast for unaffiliated Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. would have made the senator win. The suit cites the National Voter Registration Act. Bash called that statute the “motor voter law.”

Bash opened on the crime question. Blanche answered directly from the facts the department was citing. “What’s the crime? Well it depends. There could be a crime, but the real wrong here is that Alaskans are gonna be confused and will not have their vote heard.”

The ballot carries two men named Sullivan. Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired schoolteacher, received 2.5 percent in the primary. In the August primary, Sen. Dan S. Sullivan won more than 68,000 votes to Daniel J. Sullivan’s 4,107. Elections Director Carol Beecher ruled Daniel J. Sullivan ineligible. A Superior Court judge restored him to the Aug. 18 primary ballot. He later changed party registration and is running in the general election unaffiliated. Democrat Mary Peltola is also on the ballot.

The numbers around the seat are tight. The Cook Political Report rates the race a “toss up.” Decision Desk HQ shows Peltola up about two points. An InsiderAdvantage poll of 1,200 likely voters conducted Oct. 9-10 showed Peltola at 50 percent and Sullivan at 48 percent head-to-head. In a margin that small, votes cast for a second candidate who shares the incumbent’s name are not a technicality. They are the difference between a result that matches voter intent and one that does not. The constitutional text Blanche had restored to the screen is the clause that lets Congress set rules against exactly that failure, and the department is invoking a statute Congress already passed.

Bash rested her constitutional point on the first clause of Article I, Section 4, which leaves the times, places, and manner of congressional elections to the states, and on the Alaska court rulings that kept Daniel J. Sullivan on the ballot. Blanche’s answer was the next words of the same section: Congress “may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.” He said the Alaska courts had not resolved the federal-law claim the department is now bringing. That is the structure the text itself supplies—state administration first, federal statute when Congress has spoken.

Bash then asked whether the suit lays groundwork for President Donald Trump to overturn the election, and she raised a comparison to Jan. 6. Blanche cut her off. “Oh stop it. You gotta stop it with that! You’re not being a real person. Come on, man. That is crazy!” He called the premise “not a real question.” “We’re not laying any groundwork for the president to do that! So your premise, your question, is not true!”

He tied the remedy back to Alaska’s own process. “If the law is broken, and that’s for Alaska and the Alaskan court system to determine if the law is broken, then any state should not certify.”