bid

Despite bipartisan opposition to the war, efforts to impeach Hegseth were squashed as Iran denies US, Tehran talks

Zemmour wants to kick out ‘foreign unemployed people’ after last month’s violent protests.

French far-right Eric Zemmour, known for his anti-Islam and anti-immigrant stance, says he’ll be standing in next year’s presidential election.

“I can confirm to you that I will indeed be ⁠a candidate in the presidential election”, Zemmour told TF1 TV, adding that he was running to “keep a France that is French”.

Zemmour, a 68-year-old Jewish author and veteran television commentator, finished fourth in the 2022 presidential election.

This time, he says he wants to expel foreign offenders who are in prison, as well as “foreign unemployed people who have been out of work for more than six months”, even if they are legal residents.

He says he wants “two million fewer immigrants” in France, who are seen by many among the far right as key instigators of violence during last month’s student-led cost of living protests.

Last month’s violence has led to the soaring popularity of frontrunner Marine Le Pen, with whom Zemmour will be competing against in April 2027.

Le Pen, who is the leader of the far-right National Rally party, is widely projected to win the election to replace Emmanuel Macron, who will end his term as president of France.

Meanwhile, far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon of the France Unbowed party, who has been accused of encouraging the unrest, unveiled his programme on Saturday to some 17,000 supporters.

A Los Angeles County judge who has been accused of sexual harassment, making racist remarks and mistreating fellow members of the bench was officially removed from office Tuesday, officials said.

The state Commission on Judicial Performance upheld 17 findings of misconduct against Judge Robert Draper, 84, according to a disciplinary document made public Tuesday.

“Judge Draper persistently violated the standards governing judicial behavior and engaged in extensive and severe misconduct,” the commission said in a statement. “Judge Draper’s misconduct reflected either a concerning lack of familiarity with ethical precepts, or an unwillingness to conform to those precepts.”

Earlier this year, Draper compared the commission to the “Russian Mafia” in an interview with The Times where he denied all wrongdoing and claimed the charges were political payback for his opposition to another judge’s bid to become L.A. County’s presiding justice.

In an e-mail to The Times, Draper said the commission’s ruling was “wrong” and that he plans to seek review from the California Supreme Court, which he said “will look at the actual facts and not simply the characterization of those facts by the Examiners.”

“Kind of like what every citizen is entitled to – a presumption of innocence, a fair opportunity to be heard by an unbiased panel, decision makers who are willing to actually look at the real facts in a complete way and apply the legally required standard of proof rather than simply reciting it, and then ignoring it,” he wrote. “It just amazes me that I have had to go this far in order to have these standards for the first time applied.”

The Commission has only ordered the removal of 14 judges across the state since 2002, according to its website.

The removal order was the final step in a years-long fall from grace for Draper. A well-respected veteran member of the bench, colleagues began expressing concern about his decline in 2022. In 2023, according to a letter sent to the state commission, he was barred from hearing cases and re-assigned to a Santa Monica Courthouse department that colleagues likened to a “closet.” When a Times reporter visited the building earlier this year, staff on site said Draper almost never came in.

In letters sent to the commission in 2022 and 2023, two of the L.A. County Superior Court’s top judges accused Draper of sending abusive e-mails to colleagues replete with racist and abusive language. In one letter, then-Presiding Justice Samantha Jessner said Draper was “unable to carry out the duties and responsibilities of a judge” due to deteriorating mental and physical health.

“He has demonstrated a flagging handle on reality,” L.A. County Superior Court Judge Eric Taylor wrote.

Draper was accused of sexual harassment, making racist remarks and callous behavior all over the course of one hearing in 2022.

According to court records and testimony given at Draper’s six-day removal hearing earlier this year, the judge allegedly stroked a female lawyer’s hair after going on a tangent to a Black attorney about “Black history, Black football players, the Civil Rights Act, and the Black Lives Matter movement,” even though the case had nothing to do with those issues.

The commission described Draper’s misconduct as “extensive” and argued his alleged racist behavior continued while testifying in his May removal hearing. While testifying he referred two specific Black people as “very black in terms of pigmentation” and “way Black,” according to the commission.

He was also accused of making crude remarks to a group of female attorneys while in chambers. Reflecting on his time as a civil attorney, he recalled how male lawyers would deride female secretaries, insisting they learn to “f— better than they could type,” according to testimony given by attorney Janice Brown at Draper’s hearing earlier this year.

Draper lost his bid for re-election in June to former L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Tal K. Valbuena by nearly 13 points, after the L.A. County Bar Assn. rated Draper as “unqualified” for service.

The race highlighted the lengths the insular judicial community would go to protect their own from election challenges. Despite well-known concerns about Draper’s fitness, a political action committee run by fellow judges gave $72,500 to his campaign, state election finance records show. The PAC did not respond to prior inquiries from The Times.

A fellow judge, speaking on condition of anonymity because judges are not allowed to speak to the press, described the end of Draper’s career as a “super sad situation.”

“Perhaps it should spur California to consider enacting what most states have — a mandatory retirement age,” the judge said.

Unions slam the increase as insufficient, as the government seeks to defuse the unrest ahead of upcoming elections.

The French government has announced it will move a planned rise in the minimum wage forward by a month as it seeks to quell mass protests over the cost of living.

French ⁠Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu announced on Monday that the 1.6 percent increase in the minimum wage, originally planned for the start of 2027, will now take effect from December 1, 2026.

The move comes amid weeks of student-led demonstrations that started with calls for greater investment for the country’s underfunded schools but have morphed into broader protests and serious unrest – part of a wave across Europe.

The minimum monthly wage in France currently stands at 1,477.93 euros ($1,656); the increase raises it by 24 euros ($27) to 1,502 euros ($1,683).

“Regarding the SMIC [minimum wage], we have decided two things: to bring forward the increase to 1 December as opposed to 1 January, and to raise this increase to 1.6 per cent,” said Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Farandou at a press conference.

This increase represents “the second-largest rise in 20 years; it should not be underestimated”, Lecornu told reporters, stressing that this boost is “not merely symbolic”.

“This increase has been carefully planned to ensure it does not lead to job losses,” the PM said.

The last rise came in June, when inflation levels triggered a 35-euro ($39) hike.

Despite the accelerated increases, the minimum wage still falls short of union demands. The CFDT, France’s largest union, has called for a 100-euro ($112) increase, while the left-wing CGT union is demanding a 10 percent rise, equivalent to around 150 euros ($168) a month.

CFDT head Marylise Leon said the increase was “insufficient”. ⁠CGT head Sophie Binet described it as “crumbs”.

Election tension

The government is concerned about mounting social tensions five months before presidential elections.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen is the frontrunner in the polls. Far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon of the France Unbowed party, who has been accused of encouraging the unrest, unveiled his programme on Saturday to some 17,000 supporters.

He pledged to boost the economy by capitalising on consumer spending and “through billions [of euros] that already exist”, adding that these savings “must be channelled towards our country’s environmental and social needs”.

The Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) says its decision not to submit a bid to replace the U.S. Navy’s T-45 Goshawk jet trainer was driven by the service’s insistence on a fixed-price contracting structure. The company has also called attention to the potential export opportunities that could emerge for whoever ultimately wins the Undergraduate Jet Training System (UJTS) competition.

For more than a year, SNC had touted plans to compete for UJTS with its Freedom Jet, which was set to be the only clean-sheet design in the running. However, the company confirmed on Tuesday that it had not done so. This has left the Beechcraft M-346N, based on the established M-346 Master jet trainer, submitted by a team made up of U.S. firm Textron and Italy’s Leonardo, as the only known entrant.

Through UJTS, the Navy hopes to acquire 216 new jet trainers to replace its aging fleet of approximately 200 T-45s. The first versions of the Goshawk began entering Navy service in the early 1990s, and the fleet has received significant upgrades since then. The aircraft are aging, and operating and sustaining them have become increasingly challenging. A spate of reported hypoxia-like physiological episodes among pilots led to the development of a new oxygen system in the early 2020s. There have been several Goshawk crashes in recent years due to a variety of factors. The Navy lost another T-45 just in May, with the two individuals onboard thankfully surviving.

SNC had previously said that the Navy’s contracting structure was the central factor behind its decision not to submit a proposal for UJTS, but did not elaborate initially. TWZ reached out for more information and subsequently received a much more detailed response.

Fixed-price risks

“SNC’s decision was driven by the acquisition structure, not the aircraft, the team, or the mission. The current solicitation requires industry to commit to firm-fixed-price production before the aircraft design has fully matured,” SNC told us. “This creates a level of risk we could not responsibly accept and a risk that we believe the Navy will inherit as future cost increases and schedule delays. After careful review, we concluded that we could not commit to pricing a future configuration that has not yet completed the normal design maturation process.”

“Our concerns centered on three related issues: firm-fixed-price production before design maturity, limited visibility into the program’s long-term funding profile, and the requirement to lock in production pricing before key design decisions are finalized,” the company continued in its lengthy statement. “Taken together, those elements place a significant amount of program risk on industry while important aspects of the program are still evolving.”

As the name indicates, firm-fixed-price contracting involves the customer and the vendor agreeing to a hard cost figure up front. Cost growth due to delays and other factors is then generally shouldered by the vendor, though the parties can also renegotiate the terms down the line.

The pros and cons of firm-fixed-price have been a particularly hot topic of debate between the U.S. military and its suppliers for years now. It has been argued that fixed-cost deals are good for U.S. taxpayers, by promoting accountability and preventing an endless stream of funding going into programs that are not delivering results. At the same time, questions have been raised about incentives, or the lack thereof, and the compounding impacts of ballooning costs on program schedules due to factors potentially beyond a company’s control.

Boeing has become something of a poster child for the pitfalls of fixed-price contracting that can emerge on both sides of the equation. In recent years, the company has seen billions of dollars in losses on high-profile fixed-price deals, particularly with the U.S. Air Force. This includes the KC-46 Pegasus aerial refueling tanker and T-7A Red Hawk jet trainer programs. The company has lost more than $3 billion just in the course of work on two new VC-25B Air Force One jets. This is in no small part due to quality control problems and other issues at Boeing. At the same time, fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and other macroeconomic factors have also played a part.

In April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that outlined much of this continued debate. It also declared that “it is the policy of my Administration that fixed-price contracts with performance-based considerations should serve as the default and preferred method of procurement in order to advance cost predictability and budget discipline, appropriate contractor incentives and accountability, and streamlined procurement and contract administration.”

Earlier in the year, the Navy had notably announced an increase in the total cost ceiling for the prospective UJTS contract from approximately $1.8 billion to $2.7 billion. At the same time, additional questions have been raised about the availability of funding for the program at the time of the contract award, which is now set to come late next year.

SNC’s clean-sheet Freedom design

SNC had already been taking something of a riskier approach to UJTS. As we noted in the opening of this story, the Freedom jet trainer had been the only clean-sheet design set to compete to replace the Navy’s T-45s. At the time of writing, a prototype has yet to fly. In contrast, the Beechcraft M-346N is based on a design in widespread operational service globally today. Lockheed Martin and Boeing had been expected to put forward versions of existing jet trainers before they dropped out of the running earlier this year.

Furthermore, SNC had been continuing to develop the Freedom jet to be capable of performing carrier qualifications and simulated carrier touch-and-goes at bases on land. This is despite the Navy having long ago axed those requirements from the UJTS program as part of a broader shift in how it trains naval aviators. Unlike the service’s current T-45s, the future UJTS jet trainers are not required to be capable of operating from real carriers at all.

Freedom Family of Training Systems (FoTS)

Continuing changes to the Navy’s naval aviation training pipelines have been and still are controversial, but it has shown no signs of backtracking. Service officials consistently point to developments in virtualized training and assisted carrier landing capabilities as having fundamentally changed what is required to safely and effectively produce new naval aviators.

Flight Ready: Magic Carpet

Flight Ready: Live, Virtual, Constructive

“Our decision does not reflect any change in confidence in the Freedom Trainer. Freedom was designed specifically for naval aviation training as a clean-sheet, carrier-capable solution intended to deliver modern training capability and long-term lifecycle savings,” SNC said in response to queries this week. “We continue to believe it is the best option for the Navy’s future jet training needs.”

In statements earlier this week, SNC expressed its willingness to re-engage with the Navy if changes are made to its T-45 replacement plans.

Export potential for any future Navy jet trainer

SNC has also now shared insights into how it previously attempted to address its concerns about the UJTS contracting structure with the Navy. The company notably highlighted potential for export deals facilitated through the U.S. government’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program.

“SNC engaged extensively with the Navy on the UJTS requirement over several years and raised these specific concerns directly,” per the company’s statement to us. “We appreciate the professionalism and openness of the Navy and PMA-273 team and have remained engaged in a constructive dialogue throughout the process.”

PMA-273 is the Naval Undergraduate Flight Training Systems Program Office at Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR).

“We have shared several ideas with the Navy, including additional risk-reduction activities through preliminary design review, proposals based on more mature designs and acquisition approaches that better align production commitments with design maturity,” according to SNC. “Greater visibility into the program’s long-term funding profile would also help, with additional pre-planned Foreign Military Sales partnerships developed with and for the joint force training and readiness.”

“Programs at this level should be considering bringing our allied partnership and investment to the table to drive production and affordability on both the front end and the back end,”  SNC’s statement explains. “There are more than 600 FMS trainer aircraft requirements that could be combined in a joint program for the UJTS at a tremendous cost offset to the Department of War.”

When Boeing won the Air Force’s T-X competition with what became the T-7A Red Hawk in 2018, TWZ also highlighted the immense potential for foreign sales that could result. Despite interest from several countries for versions of the Red Hawk, no export sales of T-7s have yet been announced. The T-7 program, which is notably being run under a fixed-price contract, has also been beset by technical issues, delays, and cost growth.

How the Navy proceeds now with UJTS, if at all, very much remains to be seen, especially with the M-346N being the only known serious entrant at this point in time.

“The program office is restricted from disclosing this information or commenting on active proposals,” a Navy spokesperson told TWZ when asked for an update on UJTS following SNC’s decision not to bid. “To maintain the integrity of the competitive process, source selection information including bidder identities and proposal details, are restricted from public disclosure.”

It is important to note here that the UJTS program schedule has already slipped multiple times. The original goal was for the Navy to begin receiving new jet trainers in 2028. Now, the initial contract for these jets is not even expected to come until the fourth quarter of Fiscal Year 2027, which runs between July and September of next year.

“I’m unable to share details of the proposal or speculate about the Navy’s next steps,” Textron also told TWZ in a separate statement. “Textron Aviation Defense also brings an established American workforce, supply chain and production capability to support delivery at scale. Combined with a mature Integrated Training System that brings together live, virtual and constructive training, the M-346N offers the U.S. Navy a low-risk solution designed to prepare aviators for the demands of the high-end fight.”

“Ultimately, the Navy is best positioned to determine the path forward, and we stand ready to re-engage if the approach is revisited,” SNC told us. “Our view is simply that robust competition delivers the best value for the Navy and the taxpayer over a program of this duration. We would welcome the opportunity to compete under a structure that we can responsibly support.”

For now, as far as we know, the Navy is pushing ahead with UJTS, even though there appears to be only one contender for the fixed-price contract.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

For the second time in less than a week, a United States appeals court has rejected a petition from the administration of President Donald Trump to set aside 20,000 ballots in California over concerns about non-citizen voting.

The decision came down on Friday, with less than four days until the November 3 midterm elections.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Trump’s request would violate the US Constitution and risk disenfranchising eligible voters.

“The consequence of the United States’s request is not merely ballot segregation, but ultimately both the cancellation of the ballot and the removal of voters from the voting rolls,” the majority wrote in its ruling.

Judges Mark Bennett and Gabriel Sanchez – appointed by Trump and his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, respectively – formed the majority.

A third judge, Trump appointee Patrick Bumatay, issued a dissent, saying the administration’s petition was a “reasonable request”.

The Trump administration has claimed that nearly 20,000 “likely non-citizens” received mail-in ballots to vote in California’s midterm elections on November 3. It sued the state on October 15 to prevent those ballots from being counted.

But the accuracy of the Trump administration’s list has been called into doubt, as have its claims of widespread non-citizen voting.

Election fraud in the US is extremely rare. So is non-citizen voting, despite Trump’s assertion earlier this year that as many as 278,000 foreign nationals across the country were registered to vote.

Like California, states such as Nevada and Washington have also received lists of alleged non-citizen voters, but officials there have found the documents largely inaccurate.

In Nevada, for instance, state authorities issued a statement in September saying the Trump administration had erroneously identified citizens as non-citizens on its list. Not a single name was correct, according to the statement.

California, a Democratic stronghold, will elect 52 members of the House of Representatives, one of Congress’s two chambers, on November 3.

The state has long been Trump’s target for criticism, with the president accusing its Democratic leadership of “cheating” in elections.

But California officials, including Governor Gavin Newsom, have countered that the Trump administration is seeking to meddle in the state’s elections to sow voter distrust and undermine the results.

“This is a sad, desperate attempt by Trump to use his politicized Justice Department to try to suppress California voters,” Newsom said in a news release after the October 15 lawsuit.

Non-citizen voting in federal elections is against the law in all 50 US states, including California.

The Constitution’s Elections Clause also grants states exclusive authority to administer elections, though it does allow for Congress to pass regulations concerning voting procedures.

The Trump administration initially sent California its list of 20,000 “likely non-citizens” on October 12, barely three weeks before the midterm election.

California officials refused the administration’s demand to set aside the 20,000 ballots, requesting proof that the names on the list were indeed foreign nationals. According to the California government, no such evidence has been provided.

The Trump administration last week charged 28 foreign nationals in California with election-related infractions, but some of the accused told the Los Angeles Times they had never registered to vote.

The newspaper’s reporting suggested some of the non-citizen defendants shared the same name as eligible voters.

As the October 15 lawsuit navigated the court system earlier this month, the Trump administration sought an emergency ruling from the 9th Circuit Court to suspend the 20,000 ballots.

But the appeals court rejected the petition on Monday, saying the Trump administration had not given lower courts adequate time to weigh the matter.

A lower court ultimately ruled against the Trump administration on Wednesday, and the administration again appealed to the 9th Circuit Court.

In its majority decision, the appeals court framed the Trump administration’s lawsuit as an attempt to violate the Constitution’s Elections Clause.

“We decline the United States’s invitation to contravene the Elections Clause by undermining the Constitution’s plain text,” the majority wrote.

The majority also wrote that it had “major concerns” that granting the Trump administration’s request would “harm the public interest by risking the disenfranchisement of eligible voters and putting the entire tabulation process in jeopardy”.

Nairobi, Kenya – For more than four decades, the World Athletics Championships have been held across continents but never in Africa.

That changes in 2029, when Nairobi becomes the first African city to host the track and field championships, bringing the sport’s flagship global competition to a continent whose athletes have helped shape its history.

The World Athletics Championships were established in 1983 in Helsinki, Finland, after decades in which athletics’ biggest global competitions were largely tied to the Olympic Games. The inaugural championships brought together 1,333 athletes from 153 countries, laying the foundation for one of the most important events on the international sporting calendar.

Africa’s relationship with athletics stretches much further back. Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila became the first African to win Olympic marathon gold in 1960, followed by generations of track and field athletes including Uganda’s John Akii-Bua, Morocco’s Said Aouita and a succession of Kenyan champions.

Kenya’s own story is particularly significant. Kipchoge Keino’s 1,500-metre triumph at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics helped establish Kenya as a global distance-running powerhouse. Generations that followed – from Paul Tergat and David Rudisha to Eliud Kipchoge, Vivian Cheruiyot, Hellen Obiri and Faith Kipyegon – have turned Kenyan athletics into a global sporting identity.

Kenya is the second most successful nation in World Athletics Championships history.

For Keino, the two-time Olympic champion and former world record holder whose achievements helped establish Kenya’s reputation in distance running, Nairobi’s selection represents the culmination of decades of progress.

“When we started running, we were young Kenyans with a dream to represent our country and show the world that African athletes could compete at the highest level. Seeing Kenya prepare to host the World Athletics Championships in 2029 is a deeply special moment,” Keino told Al Jazeera.

“It is a testament to how far our country has come from sending athletes abroad to compete, to welcoming the world to our own home.”

Keino said hosting the championships would also give Kenya an opportunity to showcase its talent, culture and hospitality while investing in the future of athletics.

How did Kenya win the bid?

Kenya’s campaign to host the 2029 championships lasted three years and culminated in victory at the World Athletics Council meeting in Budapest on September 15 .

Competing bids came from London, Rome and Munich, all cities with established records of hosting major international athletics events.

Nairobi’s bid highlighted the ongoing renovation of Kasarani stadium ahead of the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations, as well as Kenya’s experience hosting the 2017 World U18 Championships and the 2021 World U20 junior Championships. Kenya also drew lessons from its unsuccessful bid for the 2025 championships, which was awarded to Tokyo.

World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said the council had received four strong bids and described Nairobi’s proposal as “compelling and emotional”.

“Nairobi and Munich ultimately presented two compelling propositions. They offer very different but equally exciting opportunities for our sport, and I am delighted that we can now begin working with both cities to stage two world-class championships,” Coe said.

Athletics Kenya declined to comment on the decision.

Doping questions return

The celebrations were quickly accompanied by questions over whether Kenya can host an event of this scale while dealing with persistent scrutiny over doping in athletics.

Since the international sport governing body World Athletics established the Athletics Integrity Unit in 2017, 318 Kenyan athletes have been sanctioned for anti-doping rule violations, according to figures reported following the announcement. Of those, 136 were still serving bans.

Kenya is not among the countries with the highest overall number of anti-doping violations globally, but its prominence in distance running means high-profile cases often attract considerable international attention.

Kenya’s anti-doping system has also faced scrutiny. In 2025, the World Anti-Doping Agency found Kenya’s anti-doping agency non-compliant with the global anti-doping code, putting additional scrutiny on the country’s system. Kenya was removed from the agency’s compliance watchlist in 2026 after corrective measures.

Recent cases, including the bans of marathon world-record holder Ruth Chepngetich and former half-marathon world-record holder Kibiwott Kandie, have kept the issue in the spotlight.

For Nairobi, the challenge will be to demonstrate that its anti-doping systems are strong enough to protect the credibility of the 2029 championships.

Kenyan Member of Parliament Dan Wanyama, who chairs the committee on sports and culture, said the country has the experience and infrastructure to host the event.

“We have already held several athletics championships which were very successful. It is a thing of pride for us to defeat major global cities London, Munich and Rome,” Wanyama told Al Jazeera.

“As the chair of the sports committee in Parliament, I can assure you we have the right infrastructure in place because the championship will be held at Moi International Sports Stadium (known locally as Kasarani). The contractor is already on site and preparations have started in earnest.”

Kenyan athletics fan Winston Omondi said some of the criticism of Kenya was unfairly focused on the country.

“If it was about doping, then there are so many developed countries that should not even be participating in athletics, including London itself,” Omondi told Al Jazeera.

More than one stadium

Doping is not the only test facing Kenya.

As the country prepares to host the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations with sporting infrastructure being upgraded at Kasarani and Nyayo stadiums, the World Athletics Championships will require more than a competition venue.

Nairobi will have to ensure adequate training and warm-up facilities while improving transport links, accommodation and athlete services. The city will also need reliable systems for security, accreditation, broadcasting, medical care and the movement of thousands of athletes, officials, journalists and spectators.

Beyond the stadiums, Nairobi’s wider infrastructure will come under scrutiny, particularly its traffic congestion and public transport network.

The success of the championships will therefore depend on more than upgrading Kasarani. Kenya will have to demonstrate that Nairobi can deliver a seamless experience for a global sporting event while maintaining the standards expected of one of athletics’ biggest competitions.

For a country whose athletes have spent decades representing Africa on the world stage, hosting the championships is a historic opportunity. It is also a test of whether a continent that has produced generations of world-class athletes can host the sport’s biggest global events on its own ground.

But winning the bid was only the first race.

As Omondi put it: “We have come so far as people, as a country and as a continent for us to be judged in this way.”

The updated lawsuit cites a new report that Democratic operatives recruited a competitor to confuse voters and unseat a Republican incumbent.

The United States Department of Justice has filed a revised lawsuit seeking to decertify the results of a Senate race in the state of Alaska if Republican incumbent Dan S Sullivan loses narrowly.

The updated lawsuit on Thursday comes just days before the November 3 midterm election, which will determine control of Congress.

The complaint accuses Democrats of trying to confuse voters by placing a candidate with the same name as Sullivan on the ballot.

Alaska’s Senate race is one of seven key toss-ups that will likely decide whether Republicans keep their majority in Congress’s upper chamber.

Democratic challenger Mary Peltola is seeking to unseat Sullivan, a Republican ally of US President Donald Trump.

But a New York Times report on Wednesday alleged that members of Peltola’s campaign helped recruit a retired teacher, Dan J Sullivan Jr, to run for the Senate seat as a spoiler candidate, designed to draw votes away from the incumbent.

The Times report prompted a renewed legal push under the Trump administration to bar Alaska from certifying its election results, should Senator Sullivan lose.

The Department of Justice issued 40 subpoenas and document preservation requests as part of the revised complaint, the Reuters news agency reported.

Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy also ordered a criminal investigation into the allegations. Peltola’s campaign has denied involvement in Dan J Sullivan Jr’s bid for the Senate.

Prosecutors, however, have accused the Democrat and her allies of playing partisan tricks – and undermining voters as a result.

“They orchestrated his sham campaign for the purpose of misleading Alaskan voters and getting Peltola elected,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in their amended complaint.

But the Justice Department’s lawsuit has raised concerns about election integrity and federal meddling.

Under the US Constitution, election administration falls to the states, not the presidency.

In June, Alaska’s Supreme Court ruled that Dan J Sullivan Jr could compete in the midterms, and the state’s election office has already taken steps to reduce confusion between the two Sullivans.

Recruiting candidates to split an opponent’s vote – a practice known as ballot stacking – is also generally considered to be legal and has been used by both parties in Alaska.

Critics have been sceptical of the Justice Department’s bid to pause the certification of Alaska’s Senate results if Senator Sullivan does not win re-election, noting it would be impossible to divine voter intent based on the final tally alone.

Justin Levitt, a former Department of Justice official under President Joe Biden, also questioned what legal authority the federal government had to get involved in the case.

“I don’t know what they’re putting out subpoenas to investigate because I don’t know what federal violations are implicated that DOJ would have jurisdiction over,” Levitt told the Associated Press news agency.

“Sure makes it seem like the point of the investigation is to become the story.”

Democrats and Republicans are locked in tight races nationwide that will determine which party holds a majority in the US Senate for the remainder of Trump’s second term in office.

Republicans currently hold a slim majority in the legislature’s upper chamber, with 53 out of 100 seats.

Democratic candidates are hoping to win seats by capitalising on Trump’s deep unpopularity and frustration over the cost-of-living crisis.

Trump has suggested he may not accept the midterm results if his party loses its majorities in Congress, and he has pushed false claims of widespread voter fraud.

The Justice Department has also attempted to challenge the voting process in several states, including California.

It was less than a month before the Nov. 3 election when Los Angeles city attorney front-runner Marissa Roy realized she’d missed her lucky manicure.

A deputy attorney general in the California Department of Justice, she had scarcely slept since her team clinched its historic $17-billion settlement with Meta in August. She’d been canvassing hundreds of voters and sounding out scores of deputy city attorneys in her bid to transform the troubled office where she’d launched her career in 2017 into the “largest public interest law firm” in L.A.

Between filming TikTok spots and prepping for formal debates, Roy has been fine-tuning her plans to avenge exploited tenants and claw back stolen wages, tame runaway civil liability, protect victims of child abuse and domestic violence, and join other elected attorneys in lawsuits against the Trump administration.

Nails didn’t make the cut.

“There’s just been too much to do,” Roy said of the chrome gel ritual she inaugurated as a volunteer for Eunisses Hernandez in 2022.

Marissa Roy outside L.A. City Hall. “I wanted the slogan ‘let’s sue it’ — that was violently nixed,” she said of her campaign.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Seen one way, Roy’s talismanic manicure is an object lesson for her fiercest critics: all flash and no substance, evidence the 34-year-old lacks the “gravitas” to be among the state’s most powerful elected lawyers.

But like the iridescent glitter in her campaign-matched chrome polish, the meaning shifts with the viewer’s perspective.

To supporters on the city’s restive left and the clique of California city attorneys eager to add Roy to their group chat, it’s a winking show of solidarity burnished through years of knocking on doors for fellow up-and-coming progressives. It was metallic blue for Hernandez, silver for Ysabel Jurado and ultraviolet for her own historic primary upset in June. Her backers see fierce loyalty reflected in the polish, a ritual she started while hunting salon wage thieves to sue.

“I wanted the slogan ‘let’s sue it’ — that was violently nixed,” Roy said of her campaign.

With her Democratic Socialists of America sass, bright amethyst blazers and Bollywood needle drops on Instagram, the lifelong Angeleno cuts a stark contrast to her rival, Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney, 58, who leapfrogged to a second-place finish in the primaries amid a stoic, law-and-order campaign that sometimes slipped into Spencer Pratt-style dystopian imagery.

McKinney’s boosters point to his extraordinary biography — from penniless orphan to director of special prosecutions in the country’s largest district attorney’s office — and celebrated courtroom prowess as evidence he is better suited to handle the 120,000 violations referred to the city attorney for potential charges every year.

“John has the experience, stature, reputation, and gravitas to do the job and will be both effective and respected,” said former Los Angeles City Atty. Burt Pines. “I do not have the same confidence in her.”

Campaign materials for the Los Angeles city attorney candidate at a canvassing event in Silverlake.

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

Roy’s allies counter that prosecuting misdemeanors is only a third of the city attorney’s job — and typically the less complex part. Whereas McKinney has never worked a civil case, Roy has managed multicity litigation and shares the credit for legal victories no attorney could secure alone. In the Meta case, Roy and her team had argued that the social media giant had intentionally designed its products to hook young children and repeatedly misled the public about known risks.

“She was one of the original four team members in California that stayed up until 2 a.m. filing the [Meta] complaint,” said California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta. “She helped develop our legal strategy, particularly our deception theory, which was our core theory of legal liability for the case.”

Similarly, while McKinney’s camp paints a lawman of singular personal ability, Roy supporters describe her as brilliant, driven, and eager to lift the best and brightest around her.

“She is tenacious and works around the clock,” said San Francisco City Atty. David Chiu.

She’s also infamously bubbly: When a canvasser door-knocked 9th Circuit Judge Richard Paez, for whom Roy had clerked, he reportedly asked the volunteer to give her a hug.

“She has a natural enthusiasm about her that is infectious,” said Mark Ramos, chair of Los Angeles County Democratic Party. “She’s [always] shown up, and showing up matters.”

Which matters more — individual virtue or collaborative ingenuity — now in effect divides the race for the most abstruse job in local politics: Four of L.A’s former city attorneys have endorsed McKinney, while California’s current top elected lawyers have largely lined up behind Roy.

A head-to-head match with McKinney was not what Roy envisioned last year when she launched her campaign to unseat the incumbent city attorney, Hydee Feldstein Soto. After charming L.A.’s major power brokers, she had hoped to win the primary outright and avoid a runoff so she could focus exclusively on the Meta trial in August.

“I had been planning for things to end in June,” she said.

Feldstein Soto was bogged down by scandal and soaring civil liability costs for the city. She also faced criticism for ducking challenges to President Trump’s policies, including the deployment of military troops to Los Angeles last year, a fight the city joined but did not lead.

By early spring, Roy had racked up endorsements from the state’s legal elites and leftist kingmaker Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). She earned the imprimatur of the city’s powerful Democratic clubs and its influential labor unions, while enjoying widespread support from a democratic socialist base.

Marissa Roy, left, candidate for Los Angeles city attorney, and Alyssa Acevedo, with Service Employees International Union canvass in Silverlake.

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

L.A. voters want “the transformational leadership that they’re seeing in [New York Mayor Zohran] Mamdani, and also in Mayor [Daniel] Lurie in San Francisco,” said L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, a longtime friend of Roy’s and among her earliest endorsers. “Angelenos are increasingly impatient in wanting to see that change come to their city, too.”

Then, in April, Feldstein Soto slipped from unpopular to politically radioactive after hackers stole thousands of LAPD files from her office. That inspired a late-breaking police union endorsement and a surge of corporate cash for McKinney, boosting him to a second-place finish and knocking out Feldstein Soto in a historic rout.

McKinney touts the city attorney’s prosecutor role as a means to stem quality-of-life crimes and curb homelessness. Roy has promised to keep more Angelenos housed and protect their livelihoods through “affirmative litigation” — suits brought against slumlords and exploitative corporations under the state’s Unfair Competition Law.

“When you file these suits, you have complete discretion,” said Pines, the former city attorney who successfully lobbied the state to extend Los Angeles that power in 1977 and watched in dismay as Feldstein Soto left it to whither.

In recent years, affirmative litigation has become an essential tool for defending against punitive federal policy and recovering public funds, Pines and others said.

Seeing the San Francisco city attorney’s office sue to overturn California’s ban on gay marriage — a law that would have stymied her gay younger brother — inspired Roy to give up her elementary school dream of decoding ancient texts to pursue the law.

“Childhood Marissa spent recesses in the library buried in books about ancient Egypt,” Roy said. “It was San Francisco suing — that was when I began to become aware of the power of lawyers.”

Unlike her opponent, Roy grew up comfortably in Monrovia, largely shielded from the sacrifices her family made to afford her an elite education. The daughter of an Indian immigrant mother and a white American father, she graduated from Flintridge Prep and attended University of Southern California on scholarship.

While studying law at Yale, she interned in the affirmative litigation department in the San Francisco city attorney’s office — a program Chiu lauded as “an essential training ground for the next generation of government lawyers” in a recent law review article.

Roy and her supporters say those early experiences cemented her commitment to teamwork, which is central to the less glamorous, more costly side of the city attorney’s job: serving as general counsel for myriad city agencies and legal advisor to City Hall.

“There’s absolutely more collaboration and it’s more significant given the things we’re up against,” said San Diego City Atty. Heather Ferbert, a close ally of Roy’s.

John McKinney, a Los Angeles County prosecutor running against Marissa Roy to become L.A. city attorney, speaks during a news conference on May 5, 2026.

(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)

Ferbert and others pointed to a surge in lawsuits against municipalities over everything from sidewalk trip-and-falls to police misconduct — cases that can lead to seven- or eight-figure payouts.

“If it’s not extremely unusual, it doesn’t make it to the city attorney’s desk,” said Oakland City Atty. Ryan Richardson, who endorsed Roy.

As a deputy city attorney, Roy spearheaded a trio of major wage-theft suits just a month after she was admitted to the bar. Independent expenditure groups supporting McKinney spent more than $350,000 trying to strip her of that title because she was paid by a nonprofit — an common arrangement employed by government law offices across the U.S. — while the city attorney’s office itself gave her permission to use it, and lists her as such in its court filings.

McKinney has since sought to paint Roy as the second coming of George Gascón, the polarizing district attorney who was drubbed in 2024 — a move that assumes most voters are still thinking about Gascón, or are likely to see the graying “godfather of progressive prosecutors” in a raven-haired deputy attorney general.

“The only way you disprove that is by putting your head down and doing the work 10 times harder,” Roy said. “Voters are smarter than that. People in the coalition see these tactics and are tired of them too.”

WASHINGTON — It is a heated debate in the struggling Republican Party: whether to broaden its ideology or follow the advice of Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh and others who argue against deviating from core conservative principles.

Now, the GOP has a chance to see whether a moderate can become a model for Republican resurgence, with Florida Gov. Charlie Crist announcing Tuesday that he will run for the U.S. Senate in that politically important state.

Crist, who has bucked the GOP’s conservative wing on voting rights, global warming and other issues, enjoys high approval ratings. But with the governor facing a conservative in the primary, Republican leaders across the country have seized on Florida as a battleground in the larger philosophical war over the party’s future.

Crist won instant endorsements from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the GOP Senate campaign committee. The two see him as the best hope for keeping a Senate seat in GOP hands as the party tries to avoid falling below the crucial number of senators needed to block legislation, an outcome that many political analysts see as likely.

Crist’s main primary challenger, former state House Speaker Marco Rubio, went on the attack Tuesday, releasing a video showing the governor with President Obama and criticizing Crist’s support of the Democrats’ “reckless” economic stimulus spending.

“Our primary will offer Republicans a front-row seat to a debate about the future of the Republican Party here in Florida and across the nation,” Rubio said. “My campaign will offer GOP voters a clear alternative to the direction some want to take our party.”

Rubio, 37, is little-known outside of Miami and is given steep odds of taking down Crist.

The Florida announcement comes as GOP infighting has intensified following moderate Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter’s defection to the Democrats and a spate of recent surveys that show only about one-fifth of American voters consider themselves Republicans.

Last year’s elections almost wiped Republicans off the map in the Northeast and Southwest. The party won only a fraction of Latinos and other minorities that once were seen as building blocks of a new, long-lasting majority.

Several GOP leaders — including Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — late last month announced the formation of the National Council for a New America to open a policy-focused discussion designed to help rebuild the party.

But the group has been ridiculed by leading conservatives, who complained that the rollout touched on economic and national security issues but not on social concerns such as abortion, gay marriage and guns.

Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee wrote a derisive column on the Fox News website poking fun at the GOP leaders for needing a “listening tour” to understand the American psyche. In it, he accused the council of treating “values voters as if they were embarrassing distant cousins who are allowed to come to the family gatherings a couple of times a year, but aren’t expected to be seen beyond that.”

Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, chided the group for kicking off its campaign “devoid of the values that once caused voters to identify with the party.”

In a television interview over the weekend, former Vice President Cheney said he would “go with Rush Limbaugh” as a true Republican over former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, a moderate who last year endorsed Obama’s candidacy.

Limbaugh, the conservative talk show host, also has been critical of Republicans who do not adhere to core conservatism, saying recently that when Specter left the party he should have taken 2008 presidential nominee John McCain with him.

Complicating the GOP’s challenge in presenting itself as a unified party is the presence of the powerful pro-business Club for Growth, which helped push Specter out of the GOP and has been harshly critical of Crist.

Republican strategists said Tuesday that the party needed to be more concerned about picking candidates who could win than with limiting itself to pure conservatives, particularly with the GOP at risk of losing Senate seats in Ohio, Missouri, Kentucky and New Hampshire.

Already, the Specter defection has put the party’s Senate roster right at the crucial number of 40 — and if Democrat Al Franken is declared the winner of last year’s Minnesota Senate race, then the majority party (with the help of two independents) will have the 60 votes needed to override Republican filibuster attempts.

Grover Norquist, who as head of Americans for Tax Reform is a key leader of the conservative movement, said he had a pragmatic desire to elect “the most Reaganite Republican that can win in any given district or state.” That means, he said, that he supports electing moderates in Maine but not necessarily in Texas — and that in Florida, where Obama won last year, Crist may well be the best candidate.

Cornyn, a conservative, signaled months ago that he would take a pragmatic view on the question of ideological purity versus winning elections. Addressing a conservative conference in February, Cornyn said he would recruit moderate candidates if they matched the politics of their states, and that “a circular firing squad is no solution” to the party’s problems.

The Texas senator described Rubio, a Cuban American, as having a “very bright future,” but added that Crist was the “best candidate in 2010.”

Crist, 52, is expected to present himself as an answer to the Republican Party’s image troubles — a nonideological figure with a can-do, friendly demeanor.

He rose to prominence as a tough-on-crime Florida state lawmaker by supporting chain gangs for prisoners. As attorney general and governor, he aggressively courted Latino and black voters. Early in his term, he pushed a rule to speed the restoration of voting rights for ex-felons — a deeply unpopular move with many Republican politicians.

In February, after Obama’s stimulus plan was rejected by every House Republican and all but three Republican senators, Crist irked conservatives by joining the Democratic president at a campaign-style rally in hard-hit Fort Myers, Fla., to extol the need for the bill.

Tom Slade, a former chairman of the Florida GOP, said popularity always trumps ideology, and he predicted Crist easily would win the Republican nomination.

That, he added, that might be good for the party as a whole.

“There are not enough blue-eyed, white, blond guys and girls who go to church three times on Sunday and once on Wednesday to make up a majority for the Republican Party almost anywhere,” Slade said. “If we don’t broaden the party, there won’t be much of a party left.”

—

peter.wallsten@latimes.com