Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp has been hit with the largest ever fine against it for its business practices.
A judge in New Mexico on Wednesday ordered the company to pay $25bn (£18.6bn) following a two week trial earlier this year that found it had spent years lying to the public about how it handled Facebook user data.
“The lies extend beyond Facebook’s data practices as well,” the judge said, adding they went to “the heart of Facebook’s core business practices.”
The fine is the largest to date against Meta, which has either been fined or agreed to settle several other lawsuits this year, including an $18bn deal with California over child safety.
The lawsuit stemmed from the role of Meta, then known as Facebook, in what became known as the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
That firm utilized data and information from millions of Facebook users as part of its work in political consulting, including on work related to the 2016 US Presidential election, which saw Donald Trump elected for the first time.
The US Federal Trade Commission in 2019 levied a $5bn fine against the company over its data privacy practices.
Lawyers for New Mexico sued the company over many statements Meta executives had made over the years that user data was never shared with or accessed by third parties without a user’s permission, when in reality it had been.
They claimed that the entire population of the state, roughly 2 million people, was impacted by Meta’s dishonesty regarding the way it controlled user data. A jury found that Meta had violated state laws more than 40 million times.
“For too long, powerful technology companies have operated as though their size and influence put them beyond the reach of the law,” New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said Wednesday.
“Today’s result makes clear that no corporation is too powerful to be held accountable.”
The state lawyers sought up to $40bn in fines against Meta. Meta had argued anything beyond $3.4bn would be unconstitutional.
Judge Francis Mathew on Wednesday was direct in his decision to fine Meta an amount roughly equal to its profits each quarter.
He said Meta’s violations of law and misrepresentations to the public about how their Facebook data was used and shared were “willful” and spanned “more than 11 years,” stretching from 2010 to 2021.
Communications between senior executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, were “designed to mislead the public,” Judge Mathew wrote in his order.
While the full amount of the penalty against Meta, based on thousands of violations of state law, was calculated as $219bn, Judge Mathew reduced the penalty to the $25bn fine.
A spokesperson for Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
New Mexico has been one of Meta’s most notable adversaries in court. The state this year also fined Meta almost $1bn for misleading the public about the safety of its social media platforms for children.
The judge overseeing that lawsuit ultimately compared Meta to an industrial polluter of the air, with its form of pollution being “the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children.”
California and several other states had collectively sued Meta over similar issues related to a lack of child safety features on Meta’s platforms and resulting harms to children.
Meta and the states reached a mutual settlement deal, which did not include a fine or any admission of wrongdoing, to end that case only a few days into what was expected to be a multi-week trial.
US president has continued to support data centres in advance of midterms, despite growing opposition from Republicans.
Published On 21 Oct 202621 Oct 2026
United States President Donald Trump has said AI data centres should pay “dividends” to communities, in a shift before the midterm elections.
“If companies want to make their Data Centers popular, pay the community, and/or individuals within the community, a ‘dividend’” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday.
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The president’s comments come after he doubled down on his support for data centres, a stance seen as one of several political liabilities for Republicans in the run-up to the midterm election, as Trump’s approval rating has hit record lows.
Polls show dismal support for such centres amid concerns about the sprawling complexes’ water and energy use.
In the post, Trump advised companies that they could make the centres popular if they “pay the community, and/or individuals within the community, a ‘dividend’.”
“I have watched the process closely, and Data Centers that were highly unpopular in a certain area, have become extremely popular when a financial deal is struck,” he said. “MAKE DEALS, and get them built!!!”
Several top Republican candidates have opposed data centres before the midterm polls, with the issue emerging as an area of rare bipartisan consensus in advance of the November 3 vote.
Republican Senate candidates, including Ken Paxton in Texas, Mike Rogers in Michigan and John Husted in Ohio, have all called for more restrictions and oversight on the centres, in a reversal of earlier positions.
The issue featured prominently in a recent debate in Iowa, where Republican Senate Candidate Ashley Hinson said the local level should decide whether to build AI data centres.
Despite the shifting sentiment, Trump in late August issued an impassioned defence of data centres, decrying what he called “the anti-Data Center movement” as a gift to China.
“The only reason that communities throughout the USA should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump wrote at the time.
“If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”
Trump has taken several measures to accelerate data centre development, including issuing an executive order last year that called for measures to fast-track permitting and environmental review. The order promised to use federal land for the “expeditious and orderly development of data centers”.
Trump has also backed a voluntary pledge by AI companies to cover the full cost of the electricity data centres use, but has avoided supporting legally binding federal restrictions.
A Gallup poll conducted in March suggested that 71 percent of Americans opposed establishing AI data centres in their areas.
An ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday identified a similar rate of disapproval, with 72 percent of respondents saying that they opposed building new data centres in their communities.
Soluna to partner with Applied Digital to develop wind-powered AI data center in Texas
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WASHINGTON — Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islander adults have become more disillusioned with President Trump and Republicans as the Nov. 3 midterm elections approach, according to a new AP-NORC/AAPI Data poll, giving Democrats a substantial edge on major issues like the economy and health care.
The survey, which was conducted from Sept. 8-15 by AAPI Data and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, reveals that Trump’s standing on the economy has fallen among AAPI adults over the course of his second term.
About one-quarter of AAPI adults approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president overall. Only about 2 in 10 approve of his performance on the economy, which the vast majority of AAPI adults see as one of the most important issues for the upcoming election.
But although AAPI adults trust Democrats more than Republicans on a wide range of issues, views of the Democratic Party itself are still split.
Rebecca Larocco, a 45-year-old Korean American in Corning, Iowa, voted for Trump in 2016 and is leaning Republican in the midterm elections. She approves of his immigration policies but is unsure about Trump’s handling of the economy as the Iran war continues to compound gas prices.
“Where I’m at, it’s went up almost $1.50 (a gallon),” she said. “I didn’t expect to go into war at all, that has been definitely unexpected and I’m not sure… I’m just hoping they’ll do what they’re saying and get our economy back on track, get immigration and crime lowered.”
The economy remains top of mind for an overwhelming majority of the AAPI adult population when they consider the midterms. With the ongoing Iran war affecting gas prices and other costs staying elevated, Americans overall are deeply pessimistic about the state of the economy and see it as a high priority for the midterms. That includes AAPI adults — according to the poll, about 9 in 10 rank the economy as one of the most important issues for the upcoming election, and about 8 in 10 say this about the cost of living.
The economy, the cost of living and healthcare dwarf other issues for AAPI adults. About 7 in 10 AAPI adults say healthcare is one of the most important issues for the election, while only about half say this about foreign policy, crime, immigration, election fairness or climate change.
At the same time, Trump’s economic approval among AAPI adults has dropped about 10 percentage points over the course of the year, and there are other signs his popularity has waned with this group. In late 2024, just after the election, about 4 in 10 AAPI adults had a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view of Trump. That’s fallen to about 3 in 10 now.
“What the data show is that any gains that he made not only during the 2024 election — there was a bit of a honeymoon period that Trump enjoyed after the election before Inauguration Day — that has now largely disappeared,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder and executive director of AAPI Data.
Len Takahashi, 57, of Universal City, Texas, describes himself as conservative but voted for Democrats in the last three presidential elections and for Republicans in midterm elections. For this midterm election, he is simply open to candidates who prioritize the economy.
“I would like policies that look in the best interest of the American public,” said Takahashi, who is Japanese American. “That could be bringing down spending, a balanced budget of U.S. spending, bringing down inflation, working towards a more stable economy and, lastly, just a better atmosphere between the far left and far right.”
Democrats have gained at Republicans’ expense since Trump returned to the White House when it comes to AAPI adults’ trust in handling many key issues.
In a March 2025 poll, AAPI adults were evenly divided over which political party would better handle the economy and immigration. Now, Democrats have a roughly 20-percentage-point advantage on both issues.
Meanwhile, around two-thirds of AAPI adults have a “somewhat” or “very” unfavorable view of the GOP. Only about one-quarter have a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view.
But while trust in the Democrats on specific issues has increased, AAPI adults are ambivalent about the party as a whole. About half, 48%, of AAPI adults have a “somewhat” or “very” unfavorable impression of the Democratic Party, while 44% have a “somewhat” or “very” favorable impression.
A separate AP-NORC survey of registered voters in September found, similarly, that while voters in general are deeply dissatisfied with Trump and the GOP, few think either party is capable of solving important problems.
Louise Rider, 40, is a Democrat living in Chicago. She believes Democrats are better than Republicans across all issues but says she’s unhappy with how the party has governed.
“I don’t think the Democrats are doing great, I think they need a lot of change as a party,” she said. “It’s kind of a helpless feeling, that nothing will get done with both parties unless there’s major changes.”
Some Republicans still stand behind Trump. James Finley, 74, of Lenox, Massachusetts, said Trump deserves some understanding because he cannot bring down high prices overnight. When it comes to Republicans in general, Finley is a little more critical.
“They’ve had the majority for a couple of years,” said Finley, whose ancestry includes Japanese heritage. “I think they could have done a little bit more or maybe a lot more in terms of passing certain things that I wanted to pass.”
Still, he sticks to the party line and because “all I ever hear from Democrats is to get Trump,” Finley said.
As the election approaches, many AAPI adults are worried about problems with misinformation, legal challenges to the results, and voter suppression. About half of AAPI adults say it’s a “major problem” in U.S. elections that people who are eligible are not allowed to vote, while about two-thirds see foreign government attempts to influence results as a “major” problem.
Looking ahead to the November election, about half of AAPI adults are “extremely” or “very” concerned about fake or false information about the candidates, and about half also feel this way about legal challenges to the election results.
Finley is unsure if the voting process can be tightly monitored to prevent undocumented or unregistered people from attempting to vote.
But Takahashi, the conservative from Texas, is worried that Trump will try to manipulate the election.
He’s concerned, he said, that Trump would amplify claims of “fraud in the election system” should the midterms not go in his favor. “(He’ll) make that a point to distract the American public,” he said.
Tang, Jiang and Sanders write for the Associated Press. Tang reported from Phoenix and Jiang from New York. The poll of 1,023 U.S. adults who are Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander was conducted Sept. 8-15, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based Amplify AAPI Panel, designed to be representative of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is ±4.7 percentage points. This poll is part of an ongoing project exploring the views of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, which are usually not highlighted in other surveys because of small sample sizes and lack of linguistic representation.
When a county judge put the brakes on what would be the largest data center in California, ruling the whole project needed extensive environmental review, Kristian Salgado was relieved.
The community organizer lives in Imperial County, where the nearly one-million-square-foot facility was proposed. The rural county near the Mexico border struggles with bad air pollution and has one the state’s highest rates of asthma hospitalization for kids, according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. One of Salgado’s nephews lives right next to the site and struggles with the respiratory disease.
“It just seemed very unusual that a project of this scale, with that many backup generators could be permitted without requiring any further [analysis] of what that would mean for residents,” she said.
Now, Salgado and others who share her concern believe Proposition 45 on the November ballot could roll back their wins. The initiative changes the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, a law intended to inform decision makers and the public about a project’s possible environmental impacts — and mitigate them to the extent possible.
Supporters say Prop 45 will speed up environmental review for essential housing, transportation, water, health, education and other projects, cutting costly delays and passing the savings on to consumers. Opponents say it not only weakens environmental protections for many developments, but will cover potentially polluting ones — including data centers. The Yes on 45 campaign forcefully rejects the data center claim, but independent legal experts are divided.
At the heart of the debate is the definition of one of the categories covered by Prop 45: “broadband internet access projects” or “mass-market retail service … that provides the capability to transmit data to, and receive data from, all or substantially all internet endpoints.”
Dan Dunmoyer, president and chief executive of the California Building Industry Assn., which supports the proposition, was adamant: “We specifically excluded data centers” when crafting the measure.
Yet the proposition expressly names certain excluded projects: nuclear energy, high-speed rail, jails and Delta conveyance facilities. Data centers aren’t among them.
Dunmoyer maintains that even if they’re not explicitly listed, data centers just don’t fit the measure’s definition.
In a Daily Journal op-ed, Rachelle Chong, a former Federal Communications Commission member, similarly argues that the definition refers to internet access bought from a provider like AT&T or Comcast. “A conventional data center ordinarily performs an entirely different function,” she wrote, arguing data centers aren’t in play.
But land use attorneys Matthew McKerley and Richard Frank, in another op-ed, say many modern data centers fit the bill because they house equipment used to transmit consumer data to and from the internet.
They also highlight conspicuous campaign finance contributions, including $250,000 from Prologis, which developed two data centers in San Jose.
Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at UC Berkeley Law, said data centers will argue they fit the definition — and then it will be up to the courts to decide.
“Anyone telling you that it’s definitely not going to be data centers, they cannot read the future,” he said. “The way they’ve written the language, they can’t provide 100% assurance.”
Eric Biber, a UC Berkeley law school professor with expertise in environmental law, pointed to language in the measure requiring it to be interpreted broadly “to afford the fullest possible weight to the interest of, and the approval and realization of, essential projects.” In a blog post, he called it “a thumb on the scale” that could lead courts to conclude that projects should be covered when their eligibility is in doubt.
But Ryan Thomason and J. Scott Miller, partners at the law firm Mitchell Chadwick with CEQA expertise, think it’s likely courts would rule otherwise. In an article, they note that the definition used in the measure hews closely to another section of California law, which distinguishes providing internet services from offering content, services and applications online. “Courts generally interpret identical language in related statutes to have the same meaning,” they write.
Dunmoyer, of the California Building Industry Ass., stressed that the measure doesn’t overthrow local zoning rules.
Opponents are “making it sound like in your backyard will be a data center,” he said. “Well, that doesn’t happen at all by this initiative. That has to happen by a county board of supervisors voting to put a data center in your backyard. And if they decide to do that, this initiative does nothing to expedite that CEQA review.”
But what if local officials run afoul of their constituents? In the case of the Imperial Valley Data Center Campus, the roughly 75 acres of unincorporated land where it would go had already been zoned for data centers. As a result, county officials said they had the power to move forward with the facility for artificial intelligence computing infrastructure without city approval.
They granted the project an exemption from the state environmental review.
Then came the backlash. Residents spoke out at public meetings, rallied on the streets, circulated a petition and formed a community organization. The city of Imperial and the Sierra Club sued. In the wake of the outrage, the county walked back its decision, declaring a moratorium on data centers. (The developer sued the county over the ban, and the county recently rescinded it following a court order.)
If Prop 45 passes — and data centers are covered by it — Eric Biber, of UC Berkeley Law, told The Times that such a moratorium wouldn’t be possible. That’s because the measure prevents state and local officials from changing the rules for a project once its application is submitted, he said. So if a community didn’t have a moratorium in place and its zoning laws allow a data center, “They’re done,” said. Existing bans aren’t expected to be affected.
Attorneys for the No on Prop 45 campaign argue that it could have real-world impacts for the Imperial Valley facility, saying the developer could claim the new rules apply. For instance, the measure would prevent courts from overturning approvals of qualifying projects because of CEQA violations. Courts would only be able to halt the affected portion of the project while the issue is fixed.
Sebastian Rucci, principal developer of the Imperial Valley data center, said he will fight for his project to move forward and that there’s an environmentally sound way to do it. He said he’s willing to negotiate and mitigate where necessary — but will not go through the CEQA process. If push comes to shove, he said he’ll move the project elsewhere. California could “get in the game” or be left in the dust, he said.
Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing, the company behind the project, says it will create at least 100 permanent jobs and generate $28.7 million in annual property tax revenue.
CEQA requirements “are not about the environment,” Rucci said. “They may be for some, but they’re not for many. For many, they are about killing things.”
BOULDER CITY, Nev. — Janelle Sorenson loves the clear night skies in Boulder City, less than an hour’s drive from the bright lights of the Las Vegas Strip. It’s a small, quiet town, and she thinks an artificial intelligence data center would ruin the community and scar the desert landscape.
So over the summer, she joined with other residents to successfully oppose plans for one of the giant computing warehouses that have popped up around the country.
But their victory was short-lived. The developers withdrew their application and instead sought adjacent land owned by the federal government — and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management signed off.
“Not only did we not get to decide anything or have a say,” Sorenson said, “we were just really kept in the dark.”
The Townsite data center was the first in the country to be approved on federal public land, though construction is stalled after a judge ruled that the government couldn’t use an old environmental review from when the project was intended to be a solar farm.
Tech companies are eager for vast tracts to build data centers that can be as large as 70 football fields, and Townsite could set a precedent for similar projects on federal property with more than a dozen others in the planning stages. President Trump has been a steadfast supporter of the AI industry, which he views as a source of economic growth and part of a global competition with China.
However, data centers have been unpopular in many communities as voters worry about higher electricity bills, declining water supplies and other effects. In Nevada, where 80% of the land is owned by the federal government, Townsite and other projects have become a dominant issue in the battleground state’s closely watched governor’s race.
Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, one of his party’s most vulnerable incumbents, doesn’t outright oppose building data centers on public lands, as long as they have community support. He recently signed an agreement with Trump’s Republican administration to streamline infrastructure projects, which could include data centers on federal lands.
Democratic nominee Aaron Ford, the state attorney general, has pledged to oppose data centers on public lands, saying affordable housing should be the priority.
Both say the projects, whether on public or private land, must follow state rules, such as requiring data centers to cover their own energy costs and protecting water supplies, or they would lose eligibility for state tax abatements.
Sorenson, the Boulder City resident, considers herself a liberal, but she said her conservative neighbors are on the same page as she is.
“We’re all aligned on this,” she said.
Autumn McGrath-Shook, who lives in the same town, said she recently left the GOP and registered with the Green Party over data centers, though she still identifies as conservative. Worried about the environmental impact on wildlife, she joined forces with “these crazy libs” to oppose the project.
Data centers have quickly become a “catalyzing issue” in the midterms, catching many politicians flat-footed, said David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
Some state leaders who were previously supportive of data centers have rushed to respond. For example, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott paused data center approvals until audits are completed, and Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro signed an executive order removing data center proposals from a fast-track permitting process and requiring them to receive local approval before seeking state approval.
In August, Ford announced his plan to pause new tax abatements for data centers while an audit is conducted to see whether the projects have fulfilled promises about producing tax revenue and economic benefits.
In September, Lombardo, who has said data centers provide enormous economic opportunity for Nevada, signed an executive order placing more guardrails on them and requiring them to pay more taxes to support schools.
The two have successfully “muddied the waters” on their data center positions, Damore said.
Lombardo criticized Ford for co-sponsoring 2015 legislation that created the state’s tax abatement program for the facilities, a measure that received bipartisan support. Ford criticized Lombardo for giving more than $200 million in tax breaks to data centers, which is connected to the legislation that Ford co-sponsored.
Ford told the Associated Press that he would use “every tool” at his disposal to prevent data centers from skirting state guardrails, including withholding tax abatements and pursuing litigation.
Lombardo, whose campaign declined to make him available for an interview, has a similar pitch. His office said he would not hesitate to confront the federal government to advocate for Nevadans.
But that’s not good enough for McGrath-Shook, who is on the fence in the governor’s race. She thinks Ford is soft on crime, but she views Lombardo as more pro-data centers.
“I would much rather vote for Lombardo than Aaron Ford in a normal world,” she said. “But with the looming data centers, it really changes the landscape — and literally.”
Last year, Trump signed an executive order to accelerate permitting for AI data centers, and his administration has rolled back the National Environmental Policy Act, saying the bedrock law needlessly delays federal approval for energy and infrastructure projects.
Dan Diorio, executive vice president of state policy and government affairs for the Data Center Coalition, said the industry wants to be a part of the conversation about responsible development on federal lands.
“The good-faith actors in this space are going to be approaching that development responsibly,” he said, “ensuring that it’s going to do no harm on important federal lands.”
But environmentalists are concerned about data centers developing on federal lands to skirt environmental protections and laws and circumvent permitting processes. They’re generally opposed to using public lands for the projects in the first place.
“We believe that public lands are reserved for public good and should be protected and kept in trust for future generations,” said Olivia Tanager, director of the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe Chapter. “And the idea of using public lands for data center construction totally flies in the face of that set of values.”
She said Congress should pass legislation with new standards for environmental reviews and public engagement that could slow development.
“Short of some type of legislation to that effect,” Tanager said, “we’re staring down the barrel of having many data centers move forward on public lands over the next few years.”
Hill writes for the Associated Press.
GoAerials/iStock via Getty Images
Anthropic (ANTHRO) is exploring data center investments across Australia, with a preference for regional locations and brownfield sites powered by renewable energy, Bloomberg reported.
Jeff Bleich, Anthropic’s international special envoy, said at the Australian Financial Review’s Energy and Climate Summit in Sydney
Both Russia and Ukraine have stepped up attacks on infrastructure in recent months as the war between them continues into its fifth year following Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Kyiv said it is targeting places that help the revenue streams for Moscow’s war machine, and that the latest attacks could force Russia to divert its resources to repair the damage at Yandex.
Writing on Telegram, the company confirmed that its data centre in Vladimir was damaged and that operations had been “completely suspended,” although they were working to restore connectivity.
The other strikes against Yandex facilities were on Thursday in Sasovo and Friday in in Kaluga, south-west of Moscow, causing operations to be suspended.
The tech company – which also runs a food-ordering and taxi app used by tens of millions of people – said its data centres were critical for the normal operation of its services, and that it was “very difficult to predict” when they would be back online.
Meanwhile, Russian strikes on Ukraine have also continued through the weekend.
The State Emergency Service of Ukraine said six people were injured in Russian attacks overnight on four districts in its south-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region.
On Saturday, at least 20 people including four children were killed in Russian attacks on Zaporizhzhia, local officials confirmed.
Third strike on Yandex facilities in a week comes as Russia and Ukraine escalate attacks on tech infrastructure.
Published On 11 Oct 202611 Oct 2026
A Russian data centre run by technology and AI company Yandex has been shut down after it was hit in a drone attack.
No injuries were reported in the attack on the facility in the city of Vladimir, east of the capital, Moscow, the company said on Sunday.
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Emergency services were at the site and several of Yandex’s services were unavailable to users, the company said, as it evaluated ways to restore its systems.
“Operations at the data centre have been completely suspended,” Yandex said in a service alert on Telegram, advising users to activate disaster-recovery plans as the platform operated in emergency mode.
“The remaining resource configuration is considered unstable,” it added, warning that technical support communications could also be disrupted as teams assessed the damage.
It is the third attack on the company’s data centres in the last week, as Russia and Ukraine continue to escalate attacks on each other’s technology infrastructure.
On Friday, Yandex, which is heavily involved in Russia’s AI development and is sometimes referred to as “Russia’s Google”, said its data centre in the Kaluga region southwest of Moscow was struck by Ukrainian drones and partly put out of action.
A day earlier, a Ukrainian attack shut down Yandex’s data hub in Sasovo, southeast of Moscow, where two of the three supercomputers used to develop the company’s AI model are housed.
“We always respond in mirror-like fashion,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday, following the Sasovo strike. “You all know, they have been hitting and continue to hit our data centres. We are responding. I can’t share all the details.”
Russia has struck several Ukrainian data centres and telecommunications infrastructure facilities over the past month, including targets in central Kyiv, in an apparent effort to disrupt the country’s connectivity and digital commerce.
A federal judge ruled against the Justice Department’s use of voter data to cross-reference an immigration database.
Published On 9 Oct 20269 Oct 2026
A United States judge has ruled that the Justice Department unlawfully sought state voter rolls to cross-check against a federal immigration database and identify voters it considered ineligible.
US District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan’s decision on Friday marks another setback for President Donald Trump’s efforts to expand federal oversight of elections ahead of the midterms, as Republicans seek to retain control of Congress.
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In a 78-page ruling siding with watchdog group Common Cause, Sooknanan said the administration had understated the risk of wrongly removing eligible citizens from voter rolls because of inaccuracies in the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database.
“The challenged policy represents the federal government’s attempt to decide who gets to vote,” Sooknanan wrote, adding that Congress had left that authority to the states.
The Justice Department said it was reviewing the ruling.
Ming Cheung, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, said the ruling made clear that the administration could not use the federal government to disrupt elections or put voters’ rights at risk.
“The Trump administration has repeatedly taken extreme measures to interfere with how elections are run, undermine confidence in the results, and create confusion,” Cheung said in a statement.
Last year, Trump directed the department to crack down on voting by ineligible people, despite research showing voter fraud is rare. The department subsequently demanded unredacted voter rolls from nearly all 50 states, including sensitive personal information.
Eighteen states, mostly Republican-led, complied. The department cross-checked their data against SAVE and flagged people identified as noncitizens for potential removal from voter rolls.
Sooknanan said the database could contain outdated citizenship records, potentially misidentifying naturalised US citizens.
The department has also sued 30 states and Washington, DC, over their refusal to provide voter data. Twenty-six cases have been dismissed.
In a separate case in June, Sooknanan blocked the expanded use of the SAVE database for voter roll checks, an order the US Supreme Court temporarily paused last month.
Federal law bars systematic voter roll purges in the 90 days before a federal election, which could limit the ruling’s practical effect before the November 3 vote.
The LAPD’s legal bills keep piling up.
The city of Los Angeles has shelled out nearly $480 million over the last five and a half years to end legal disputes involving the Police Department, including claims of excessive force, litigation over traffic accidents and cases filed by employees who allegedly faced retaliation after reporting misconduct.
The soaring legal costs have come under greater scrutiny in recent years as Los Angeles’ financial problems have gotten worse. The city faced a $1-billion budget shortfall in 2025 but, after various cost-cutting measures, managed to set aside funding for the LAPD to hire more than 500 new officers in the coming year.
The LAPD’s annual lawsuit costs more than doubled from 2019 to 2025. The payouts peaked in 2024, when the city spent $178.6 million to resolve more than 300 police-related lawsuits and civil claims, before dropping to just over $100 million in 2025, according to a Times analysis of city attorney’s data.
The Times reviewed hundreds of pages of court documents and analyzed data from the city attorney’s office released through a public records request showing nearly 2,000 payouts dating to January 2019.
Through the first six months of this year, the city has paid out $20.3 million in legal settlements and court judgments involving LAPD officers. Several recent big-dollar verdicts aren’t included in that tally because they hadn’t yet been approved by the City Council.
The surging cost of LAPD payouts depriving the cash-strapped city of money for pressing needs such as fixing roads and sidewalks, according to City Controller Kenneth Mejia.
“There’s a reason why your streetlights are out and they’re not fixed for a year, there’s a reason why your sidewalk won’t get fixed or your animal shelters are understaffed or underfunded,” said Mejia, whose office is conducting an audit of the city’s risk management strategies, the results of which will be released this year.
Experts are still untangling the reasons for the explosion of legal payouts involving police — which stretches far beyond L.A.
This year, a legal defense organization found that New York City has paid more than $796 million since 2019 to settle lawsuits involving accusations of police misconduct — including $117 million in 2025. In Chicago, the city is on track to blow past the $252 million spent last year to resolve police lawsuits, mostly involving plaintiffs who went to prison based on faulty evidence, according to local news reports.
In Los Angeles, the surge has come under the watch of City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto, who has blamed the rising costs on the way the office handled litigation of all kinds before her administration — as well as a national legal trend of so-called nuclear verdicts.
“The system is getting inflated in a way that is unhealthy and it creates, I think, incentives to sue and to do pie-in-the-sky settlements,” Feldstein Soto said in interview with The Times earlier this year. She said her office evaluates each claim case by case, deciding when it makes more sense to settle rather than go to trial, at which juries can issue decisions based on emotion or differing perceptions of what occurred. Feldstein Soto has lobbied for years to change state law to limit “non-economic” damages.
Feldstein Soto’s critics contend that she has pursued a hard-line approach in recent years, refusing to settle except in cases where it is clear the city is likely to lose in court.
That tough stance has led to mixed results. The city has lost some jury verdicts that could have been avoided if it had been willing to settle. It has also prevailed in several high-profile cases, including this year when a jury ruled that an officer was not liable for the 2021 death of a 14-year-old girl killed by a wayward bullet fired during a hasty confrontation with a suspect at a North Hollywood department store.
The city attorney’s office said in a statement to The Times that while it is proactively working to curb rising litigation costs “by every means possible,” it could not “control the number, timing or claimed damages of lawsuits filed against the City.”
“Nor does the Office have control over the alleged root causes of these liabilities: the City Attorney’s Office is not responsible for LAPD policies or personnel,” said the statement, adding that the number of lawsuits filed against the city has risen by roughly 20% in each of the last four budget years, straining the office’s resources.
Zachary Powell, an associate professor of criminal justice at Cal State San Bernardino, said that although data suggest that use of force by police has decreased since 2020, the public has become “much more aware of police abuses and conduct than they ever were before.”
“I think people also ask a lot more questions in a jury setting,” he said.
Other explanations, he says, are the passage of statewide police accountability measures and the fact that a backlog of cases from the pandemic years are finally coming due.
The Times’ analysis found that hundreds of legal battles involving officer-involved traffic incidents make up nearly a quarter of all payouts. Since 2019, the city has paid $125 million for the thousands of accident claims, just under a third of which stemmed from cases in which officers were found to have failed to stop or yield at crossings before crashing into another vehicle or a pedestrian. Pursuit-related claims and suits stemming from cases in which officers made improper left turns have also cost the city millions.
Other legal costs date back years — and in some cases decades.
The city is still paying $7,410 a month to Clarence Chance, who in the early 1990s was awarded a large payment over a wrongful arrest that led him to spend 17 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. Nearly $40 million has gone to people whose homes were damaged after the LAPD bomb squad botched the detonation of seized fireworks and leveled part of a city block in 2021.
One of the biggest payout categories was $104.6 million spent since 2019 on claims related to police shootings — more than three-fourths of which involved people who were reported to be under the influence of a substance or in the midst of a mental health crisis, according to The Times’ analysis. Roughly $38.4 million was paid out after police shot someone wielding an edged weapon, such as a knife, the analysis found. Shootings involving gang officers cost the city nearly $4 million in that span.
Dozens of lawsuits remain pending, including claims related to the handling of mass pro-immigration protests since last year, likely putting taxpayers on the hook for more large payouts in the future. Police use of hard foam projectiles, house-mounted officers and other tactics against crowds have already cost the city at least $22 million in the last seven and a half years — just over half of which stemmed from the department’s response to the 2020 mass protests over the murder of George Floyd.
Such totals may not always include lawyer fees that are negotiated after a settlement is reached — or if a case is appealed.
Jonathan Evans, a civil rights attorney who has sued the department, thinks the big payouts show that greater public awareness of mental health issues is a factor. Recognizing this, he said, municipalities are agreeing to higher settlements than in years past.
“The decision to use lethal force is being more heavily scrutinized,” he said.
Tens of millions of city dollars have in recent years gone to disgruntled police officers who sued over workplace injustices such as sexual harassment, racial discrimination and retaliation. Since 2019, at least 27 LAPD employees have won million-dollar-plus jury verdicts or settlements from the city; many more have seen five- or six-figure paydays.
To clamp down on future legal costs, the department last year brought back a former senior official, Arif Alikhan — at a monthly salary of $20,000, paid for by a private donation — to study how to reduce the number of costly lawsuits. Alikhan did not respond to a call requesting comment.
The department maintains an early intervention system that flags officers based on risk factors, such as a relatively high volume of civilian complaints, frequent use force, and involvement in preventable traffic collisions or pursuits. The system is used to determine whether they need additional training or should be reassigned or placed on a performance improvement plan.
Within the LAPD, some officers and the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the rank-and-file union, argue that the city should fight back harder against claims with no credibility, instead of settling. They say officers who are most often sued tend to come from specialized units that do the type of proactive policing that the department and most of of the public wants: targeting gangs, drugs and guns.
Attorneys who represent officers that have sued the department over whistleblower retaliation dismiss the claim by Chief Jim McDonnell and others that some cops are exaggerating their claims in pursuit of a big payday. If anything, they contend, the continued large payouts are a product of entrenched racial and gender bias and inconsistent discipline — and the LAPD’s unwillingness to learn its lessons from past lawsuits.
Greg Yacoubian, a labor attorney, said there is little incentive for the current system to change because the costs of lawsuits are passed on to taxpayers — not the officers involved in misconduct and their bosses.
“The person responsible for the error never feels the pinch,” Yacoubian said.
Times staff writer James Queally contributed to this report.
At the 2026 International Astronautical Congress in Turkiye, SpaceX unveiled a new visualisation of its plan to put a million satellites in space to power AI data centres.
Published On 7 Oct 20267 Oct 2026
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IRGC commander says oil flows through US-supervised route in Hormuz are ‘negligible’.
Published On 5 Oct 20265 Oct 2026
Crude oil exports from the Middle East have risen above pre-war levels on four of the seven days in the last week of September, provisional data from ship-tracking firm Kpler showed.
However, senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Ali Fadavi said in a televised interview on Sunday night that only three to four million barrels of oil per day (bpd) are now moving through the route, dismissing the amount as “negligible” when compared with pre-war traffic.
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Fadavi said, for the first time, no US vessels were present in the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, the Sea of Oman or even the northern Indian Ocean and US warships are “100 percent vulnerable” to IRGC attacks.
Kpler data showed crude exports from the region exceeded pre-war levels on September 24 and between September 27 and 29, rising to 19.5-22.5 million bpd.
Around that time, Iran claimed success in attacking ships – including US Navy vessels – near the Strait of Hormuz, saying the strikes had forced Washington to move its warships further from the Iranian coast.
Before the US-Israel war on Iran began, exports averaged 18 million bpd between March 2025 and February 2026.
According to Kpler data, the overall tally for crude, oil products, chemicals and non-gas liquids averaged 22.4 million bpd in the seven days to September 30.
On October 1, the seven-day moving average for crude exports was at 18.5 million bpd. This includes transits via the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea, exports from terminals and ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman.
The number of liquefied natural gas cargoes exiting the Strait of Hormuz also rose in September to its highest monthly level since February.
The figures exclude any vessels that might have crossed the strait with their automatic identification system transponders turned off to avoid detection.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency reported at least one attack a day in the Strait of Hormuz or in the Gulf of Aden since October 2.
On Sunday, Iran’s top negotiator and parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed until the United States accepts Tehran’s seven-day plan to reopen the waterway.
For aerospace aficionados, it’s like we have entered into an alternate dream reality. The idea that we are seriously talking about the possibility of bringing back the SR-71 Blackbird to flight status is hard to comprehend, but amazingly this is where we are at. The biggest question I am getting about all this is why? We touched on the likely primary answer to that in our original reporting — high-speed is back in tactical vogue, and the Blackbird can sustain it in a realm of great interest, between Mach 3 and 4, and do it over and over again. It can also carry very large things and even launch them off its back at those extreme speeds. But those are not the only potential reasons for taking on such a gargantuan, high-profile, and costly technical challenge. Learning from the journey itself could be just as valuable as the actual flight test data a revived SR-71 produces.
Let me explain.
The Blackbird was as close to alien tech as it gets over 60 years ago, and even today, we have nothing like it in known operation. Yet it has been dormant for nearly three decades. Much of the expertise that built, supported, and operated it is sadly gone. But the exercises of reverse engineering and leveraging breakthroughs in additive manufacturing and rapid prototyping, as well as injecting new material sciences, avionics, propulsion and other technologies where applicable, and above all else, building the digital toolkit to make it all happen as fast and efficiently as it can be done, are all of extreme learning value.
I would not be surprised if a ‘digital twin’ is being created right now of the SR-71 using NASA’s SR-71 tail number 844 — the jet in question that has mysteriously disappeared from its display pad. Once such a model exists, breakthroughs in digital engineering can be brought to bear to see how fast the program can be accelerated, both in terms of development and flight testing. This could include not only getting the SR-71 back in the air, but improving its performance and reliability, possibly substantially, using all the new technologies we have today. It’s even possible a clone of sorts leveraging all these advances could be built using digital engineering tools.
This is not necessarily an unprecedented concept. Just look at similar exploratory engineering programs like the X-55. But when it comes to partially reverse-engineering an airframe you have no support for, and few, if any, spare parts, America’s highly-secretive foreign materiel exploitation (FME) community could potentially lend a hand.
Operating in the shadows, they have been able to not only get totally foreign aircraft divorced from American supply chains pieced back together and flying, but they sustained them for years in total secrecy. They also did this long before the advent of rapid prototyping and digital engineering assets that we have today. Imagine what they can do now. They could be a top source for NASA to pull in to help in its far less sensitive but uniquely similar endeavor. This is just one example of many of how government and industry could come together to support and benefit from the SR-71 resurrection program.
Now, about those supply chains. During its heyday, the SR-71’s logistical tail was one of the most exotic ever created. It supported the Blackbird, as well as its progenitor, the A-12, for the better part of half a century. Reestablishing this supply chain would be a highly challenging, but rewarding exercise that could have major impacts across the aerospace industry, as well as others. So, how can we use all the capabilities we have now to jump-start the sustainment of the highest-performing air vehicle from an era of slide rules and drafting tables?
The idea of putting aircraft out of production back into production is not a foreign one to the U.S. military, either. NASA’s SR-71 program could serve as a pathfinder for better evaluating such proposals and their costs, while pushing the envelope forward on exactly how it can be done efficiently. The same can be said for simply keeping aging aircraft (or any vehicle or system for that matter) operating longer and for cheaper, by applying cutting-edge technologies and practices. NASA can create the playbook for doing so, and that playbook could end up being more valuable than the flight testing a reborn SR-71 does.
I think it’s fairly clear that we have lost something when it comes to aerospace engineering as of late. With all our advances and incredible tools even legendary Skunk Works founder Kelly Johnson could have only dreamed of, it seems like we have to relearn even simple lessons from decades ago, and oftentimes that can be a very expensive, time consuming, and even deadly process. In some ways, it seems like we have gone backward, or at least stalled out in certain engineering areas. The simple things become hard and hard things have become simpler. How did they do so much protractors and pencils way back then? Getting a Blackbird flying again can help explore and possibly answer this and other questions, and help mitigate these deficiencies going forward, as well.
Even if NASA’s dormant SR-71 never ends up getting back in the air, even attempting such a challenge could be considered a success. Doing so could identify core areas across multiple disciplines that could be improved and areas of existing technology that could be better exploited for a whole array of tasks. It can also develop and refine new technologies in the process. All this sits at the core of NASA’s mission, and there is no vehicle on Earth that could drive people and organizations to give it their all for such a comeback dream as the Blackbird. It’s even possible that we could see corporations or even individuals help foot the bill for it.
And yes, all these benefits need to be weighed against cost. Surely there is a limit to how much the government can invest in such a program. Now corporations and individuals, that’s a different story.
So, yes, the main goal of this effort will likely be high-speed flight testing, but so much can be learned in the journey to get there that it must be quantified in the ‘business case’ for reviving the Blackbird.
The two candidates to become California’s next governor painted vastly different portraits of the state they want to lead during a televised CNN debate Wednesday night — though they both agreed the state faces tremendous challenges.
Democrat Xavier Becerra, leading in polls, cast the state as an economic engine and a critical bulwark against the disastrous economic policies and creeping authoritarianism of the Trump administration, but also a victim of Trump policies, including tariffs and the war in Iran, that have made life less affordable and the nation less safe.
Becerra said he would work hard to help struggling Californians — including by cutting red tape on housing and regulating AI to ensure it doesn’t destroy jobs — while his challenger, Republican Steve Hilton, would harm them further by backing President Trump’s agenda at every turn.
Hilton, endorsed by Trump, blamed the state’s most entrenched ills on years of Democratic governance, awash in unnecessary state bureaucracy and regulation that have made it wildly unaffordable, and wrongly obsessed with fighting the president instead of bringing down costs and fixing related local issues like homelessness.
Hilton said he would help struggling Californians by cutting taxes, cutting the cost of building new housing, eliminating fraud and bringing common sense back to state policy-making.
Both candidates came out of the gate on offense, and at times it got intensely personal, particularly on immigration — with Becerra accusing Hilton of welcoming white immigrants into the country while rejecting Latino immigrants, and Hilton accusing Becerra of handing migrant children over to sex and labor traffickers during his time as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary.
With ballots soon arriving in voters’ mailboxes and the Nov. 3 midterm election rapidly approaching, the hour-long debate — moderated by CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash in Burbank and aired live by the national news network — provided the public with its latest look at two candidates vastly different both in politics and campaign style.
Becerra, a former Congress member from Los Angeles, California attorney general and Health secretary under President Biden, surged past a slate of other Democrats to win the June primary after onetime front runner Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out of the race amid sexual assault allegations. Hilton placed second after Republican voters and others coalesced behind his message to shake up Sacramento — earning him the right to face off against Becerra in November.
Hilton, a former British political aide, former Fox News host and Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has been crisscrossing the state looking for votes anywhere he can find them — an uphill battle given registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, and opposition to Trump is widespread in the state and growing even among Republican voters.
A poll this month by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times found 58% of likely voters surveyed said they support Becerra, compared with 33% who back Hilton — a slight increase to Becerra’s lead compared with an August IGS poll. California voters identified the high cost of living as their top concern, but that was followed closely by opposition to the Trump administration.
The same poll found found that 76% of Republican voters in the state approve of the president’s performance, down from 83% last year.
Becerra has taken a less visible approach to campaigning, with critics accusing him of intentionally keeping a low profile in an effort to cruise to victory in a state that hasn’t elected a Republican to statewide office in two decades.
“I just want to say thank you to CNN for bringing Xavier out of hiding,” Hilton said at the beginning of Wednesday’s face-off. “He’s barely been seen in public since the primary four months ago; it’s very important we have this debate.”
During the debate, both candidates seemed prepared to focus on the lack of affordability — namely by blaming the other’s political party for it. But they also discussed artificial intelligence and data centers, immigration policy and, of course, Trump.
California has some of the highest housing and energy costs in the nation, and affordability tops the list of concerns for likely voters. It also was the first issue the candidates debated.
Hilton has made the cost of living a central theme of his campaign, with a plan he calls “Califordable” to cut gas prices and end income taxes on earnings up to $150,000. He blamed California’s high costs on Democrats, who have controlled the Legislature and statewide offices for more than 15 years. Hilton says he can lower costs by slashing onerous state regulations on businesses.
Hilton said the “quickest way to get more money in people’s pockets is for the government to take less out” and to reduce regulations to allow more housing to be built — including in “10 new cities” he said he would help build in the state.
Becerra has blamed higher prices on Trump’s tariffs and the war against Iran. In response to attacks from the U.S. and Israel, Iran has for months choked off a major oil trade route, sending global gas prices soaring — to a national average of $4.48 per gallon this month.
Becerra said Hilton’s plan to end income taxes would amount to a massive tax cut for “billionaires and millionaires” that would take money from schools, healthcare and other critical services. “The math doesn’t add up to what he’s talking about. He’s going to have to take it out of somewhere. It will come out of our schools,” Becerra said.
Becerra said he would bring down costs for people by cutting red tape, including on housing, and fighting the Trump administration — which he said is the real driver of cost increases. He also said he has helped create millions of jobs during his career.
Hilton and Becerra both support regulations for data centers and artificial intelligence companies, a sign of growing bipartisan pushback seen across the country.
Hilton said he wants California to take a leading role in regulating AI, given much of the industry is located in the state, and expressed concern about losing AI jobs to other states such as Texas and Arizona. Hilton questioned whether Becerra would have the political courage to rein in the industry, saying his campaign has received funding from it.
When Bash asked Hilton if those companies should be able to “self-police,” as Trump has suggested, Hilton said, “We’ll have to see.” He also said he appreciates the effort by Trump to get assurances from AI companies on safety during a recent summit, and he would work to make sure that those promises are upheld.
Becerra derided Trump’s deal as a meaningless “pinky promise” that does not guarantee a safe path forward. He said he would lead efforts to reach real and meaningful regulations but also work directly with local communities on what they want.
“If someone wants to come in and build a data center that creates more jobs in the community, adds more energy to our grid, and it actually protects and adds more water capacity, then let’s talk,” he said. “But it has to be good for the community.”
Becerra has faced bipartisan criticism of how Health and Human Services cared for the influx of unaccompanied immigrant children during the pandemic.
Hilton has hammered Becerra on it, and at the debate accused him of sending “thousands of young children directly into the clutches of child sex and labor traffickers.”
Becerra was attacked by Democratic rivals in the gubernatorial primary in the aftermath of a Pulitzer Prize-winning series in the New York Times, including an article that said thousands of migrant children who entered the United States between 2021 and 2023 worked in slaughterhouses, factories and other dangerous jobs that violated child labor laws. The investigation also alleged that tens of thousands of the children Becerra’s agency released couldn’t be found because he relaxed screening of relatives and sponsors.
Becerra repeatedly has said that despite a lack of congressional funding for licensed-care facilities dismantled by the Trump administration, his staff worked hard to vet the people who the children would be placed with.
At the debate, he called Hilton’s claims “Trump talking points.” He also said more needs to be done to ensure children aren’t separated from their immigrant parents.
Becerra also has slammed the Trump administration for its mass deportation program and immigration crackdown, which has sent immigration enforcement agents into cities across the country, including Los Angeles.
Hilton said he would work to “lower the temperature” in the immigration debate and “prioritize the removal of dangerous criminals,” which he said is not occurring in California because Democrats are playing “politics” with the Trump administration.
Becerra, the son of immigrants, said California welcomed Hilton as an immigrant, and Hilton “welcomed ICE mercenaries” into California in return. He also accused Hilton of welcoming immigrants that look like Hilton, who is white, while working to remove immigrants who look like Becerra, who is Latino.
“I have fought all my life to make life better for immigrants, to represent them well, to defend them, to let them grow and build like my parents. But here’s the problem I have with your policies: You seem to welcome immigrants who look like you, but deport immigrants who look like me,” Becerra said.
Hilton called that “disgraceful.”
Hilton repeatedly has praised Trump and his policies and consolidated support among California Republicans after Trump endorsed him before the June primary. But Trump’s endorsement could be an albatross in the Nov. 3 election, given his low approval ratings — particularly in California.
Becerra repeatedly hammered Hilton as a Trump acolyte, so much so that Hilton said that it was Becerra’s only attack line, and that Becerra “takes no responsibility” for Democratic policies that have harmed California for years.
“All you ever say is Trump, Trump, Trump, and that’s nothing but an insult to every Californian who is desperate for something to change in this state, and all you’re offering is more of the same,” Hilton said.
Becerra countered that Hilton embraced Trump during the primary.
“Your words, Trump, Trump, Trump. Because he is your supporter,” Becerra said. “You chased his endorsement.”
