Donald Trump

President Javier Milei’s role in cryptocurrency launch does not translate into a fraudulent scheme, judge says.

An Argentinian federal judge has dropped a criminal investigation into President Javier Milei and his sister Karina Milei over the collapse of a cryptocurrency he promoted online.

Judge Marcelo Martinez de Giorgi issued the decision on Friday, according to court records, ending an inquiry into Milei’s role in the launch of the $Libra token, which crashed after a brief rally.

“The reported events do not constitute a criminal offence,” the judge said in a ruling. He also wrote that investor losses and the rise and fall in the currency’s price were insufficient to establish fraud.

In his ruling, Martinez de Giorgi said that Milei’s institutional standing could have given the launch “greater impact” when he posted about it, but that does not translate into a fraudulent scheme.

Javier Milei recommended the little-known meme coin in a post on X in February 2025. He later deleted the post and denied any link to the cryptocurrency, whose value soon plunged.

The judge also dismissed an investigation into US businessman Hayden Davis, who described himself as a “launch adviser” for the token. Davis has acknowledged that he held close to $100m after the crash and denies any wrongdoing.

“For the first time in history, a President of the Nation was investigated with complete freedom, resulting in absolute proof of his innocence,” read a post shared on X by the official presidential office.

“The question that remains is this: Who will take responsibility for having wasted Argentine taxpayers’ money and the President of the Nation’s time in a failed attempt at an institutional coup?”

Milei’s friendship with Trump

Milei is one of US President Donald Trump’s closest allies. Trump firmly backed him a year ago and has called him his “favourite president”.

Trump made clear the support hinged on a victory for Milei’s party.

“I’m with this man because his philosophy is correct,” he said ahead of a White House lunch with the Argentinian leader last year. “If he wins, we’re staying with him. And if he doesn’t win, we’re gone.”

Earlier this month, Milei urged Trump to emerge stronger from the US midterm elections, saying the vote mattered for the West as a whole.

Austerity at home

Since taking office in 2023, Milei has laid off thousands of state employees, shut ministries, cut subsidies and reduced government-funded programmes. The measures were meant to fight high inflation, which has fallen to about 2 percent a month.

Milei says his plan is working, claiming that Argentina has grown for 27 consecutive months and is expanding at four times its historical rate.

When the coin crashed, Milei said he had acted “in good faith” and accused his political rivals of trying to exploit the situation.

Global crude prices continue to climb, with Brent benchmark hitting $117.30 a barrel to build on four-year highs as market fears grow over a potential resumption of the US-Israeli war on Iran.

In just 11 days, millions of Americans will head to the polls to vote on key local races and decide the fate of Congress.

Perhaps no voting bloc will be more crucial in swinging the balance of power than Latinos.

In 2024, after decades of reliably supporting Democrats, the electorate of roughly 36.2 million people (about 15% of all total voters) shifted massively to the right and supported Donald Trump at previously never-before-seen rates. After the election, armchair pundits and paid professionals proclaimed that Ronald Reagan had been right all along. Latinos were Republican. They just needed to realize it.

It didn’t take long for that narrative to start crumbling. A year after Trump’s reelection, Latinos in California helped pass Proposition 50, which allowed Democrats to redraw the state’s congressional map in their favor to counter a successful effort by Texas Republicans to do the same — coincidentally, the Texas gerrymander was at least partially motivated by said gains with Latino voters.

Latinos also helped Democrats pick up governorships in Virginia and New Jersey in 2025 — with two-thirds of their votes going for Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, respectively.

Whatever gains Republicans made with Latino voters appear to have vanished. Recent polls show the demographic to be experiencing buyers’ remorse, citing the increased cost of living, the Trump administration’s heavy-handed immigration enforcement tactics, involvement in wars abroad and a stagnating economy as reasons for the disillusionment.

President Trump’s approval rating among Latinos dipped to 27% in an early October NBC News survey. That same poll found that Democrats have a 24-point lead on whom Latino voters want to see in control of Congress.

But don’t expect this whiplash back to the left to be permanent.

“It’s not a realignment, it’s a de-alignment,” said Mike Madrid, a former Republican political consultant and author of “The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy.”

“Latinos are completely moving away from both parties and that’s what’s created this dramatic swing of 25 points towards Trump in four years and then massive swings back.”

So how will the Latino vote shake out in two weeks? Below are five races we are keeping tabs on.

L.A. mayoral race

You don’t need to go outside the city limits to find proof that Latino voters aren’t political ideologues.

During the 2022 mayoral primary, billionaire Rick Caruso won the largest share of the Latino vote (34%). A few months later, Karen Bass became mayor, winning 51% of the Latino vote.

Bass once again won the Latino vote during the 2026 primaries, carrying 35 Latino-majority neighborhoods in the June 2 election — compared with seven for her current challenger, Councilmember Nithya Raman.

Four months, much campaigning and the botched response to a massive warehouse fire in heavily Latino Boyle Heights later, Raman — a democratic socialist — now has a 24-point lead among Latino voters, according to an October Berkeley IGS/L.A. Times poll.

Notably, 34% of Latinos remain undecided heading into the Nov. 3 election.

“Latinos are about a third of the voters in L.A.,” Fernando Guerra, a professor of political science and Chicana/o studies at Loyola Marymount University, told The Times this month. “While they show preferences, they are not deeply committed to either candidate, so they are the quintessential swing voters who decide late.”

Will the embattled incumbent keep her job, or will Los Angeles become the next big city to elect a mayor backed by the Democratic Socialists of America? Latino Angelenos will decide.

California 22nd district

Will Democrats’ Proposition 50 redistricting gambit pay off? Voters of this newly reconfigured Central Valley district populated by blue-collar and agrarian Latinos will decide.

Republican David Valadao is the incumbent and is being challenged by activist and educator Randy Villegas. In 2024, voters in the district backed failed Republican Senate candidate Steve Garvey.

Political forecasts have Villegas — a progressive populist — with a narrow lead over the incumbent.

Part of his appeal, Madrid said, was his messaging.

“[His message is] the establishment’s not working and that institutions aren’t working,” Madrid said. “It’s a much more populist message. I don’t believe this is ideological one bit.”

Colorado 8th district

It doesn’t get more battleground than this congressional district located in the Denver suburbs. It is the center of Latino voting power in Colorado — Latinos account for 40% of the total electorate. .

The incumbent is Republican Gabe Evans and Trump carried the purple district by less than two percentage points.

Evans currently has a slight lead over Democratic candidate Manny Rutinel, an attorney and economist. Rutinel’s messaging has focused on the rising cost of living and the Republicans’ immigration policies.

It could get him elected. A local survey found that 56% of Latino voters in Colorado approve of Democrats in Congress, while 39% said they do not approve.

Florida 27th district

Will disassociating from Trump help this Republican incumbent keep her job?

Journalist-turned-Congress member María Elvira Salazar, a Cuban American, made headlines in September after releasing a political ad calling out the president’s immigration enforcement, alleging that Trump, who carried the majority Latino district by 15 points in 2024, had betrayed her constituents.

Elvira Salazar currently holds a narrow lead over her Democratic rival Elliott Rodriguez, who is also Cuban American.

“She’s trying to show distance and trying to show an independent streak,” Madrid said of the three-term incumbent. “She’s trying to say, ‘I’m not that.’ And you can’t do that on the economy as a Republican, because that changes all the time. What you can do as a Latino in a Latino district … is say your policies have gone too far.”

Texas

Okay, I’ll admit that I’m cheating with this one. But there’s just so much going on in Texas that it deserves its own section. The Lone Star State is ground zero for this supposed great political de-alignment.

In 2025, at the behest of Trump, Texas Republicans undertook an unprecedented mid-decade congressional redistricting in hopes of gerrymandering a map that would give the party an advantage in the 2026 midterm elections. They factored in the historic gains with Latino voters.

“They drew those districts based on what they thought were the 2024 numbers,” said Matt Barreto, a professor of political science and Chicana/o & Central American studies at UCLA. “And now those 2024 numbers are evaporating.”

The plan appears to be backfiring spectacularly, at least in south Texas.

Trump won Texas’ 15th congressional district in 2020 and 2024, and in 2022 the majority Latino electorate voted for Republican Monica De La Cruz. But polls now show that Democratic candidate and singer-turned-politician Bobby Pulido has a seven-point lead. Pulido, who bills himself as a moderate, has focused his messaging on affordability and the rising cost of living.

A similar situation is taking place in the Latino-dense 34th and 35th districts, where Republicans Eric Flores and Carlos De La Cruz, respectively, are hoping to take advantage of the redrawn Republican-friendly boundaries to flip those seats red. Both face uphill battles as polls show them neck-and-neck with their Democratic opponents.

“You now have these two districts, Texas 9th and 35th, that are 51% Latino, but now Latinos are telling us they have lost confidence in the Republican Party,” Barreto said. “What we’re seeing is very strong evidence that Latinos are shifting back even more so against Trump and Republicans because they did not deliver on any of their promises from 2024.”

In the statewide Senate and gubernatorial races, Democrats are feeling hopeful. Democratic challenger James Talarico currently has a slight lead on his Republican opponent Ken Paxton. Among Latinos, that lead was clocked at a whopping 30 points in an October Fox News survey.

But what has been Talarico’s key to connecting with Latino voters?

“He’s turning away from race and ethnic-based politics to class consciousness,” Madrid said. “[He’s acknowledged] that Latinos have had their futures taken away from them.”

The seminary student and educator has also been critical of his own party — calling it out for ineptitude, leaving voters behind — and arguing that anti-establishment messaging is enticing to Latinos who have been spurned by both major parties.

If Texas gets its first Democratic senator since 1993, it’ll be thanks to the Latino vote.

Texas Latinos’ faith in the ruling party is so low that even the state’s governor, Republican powerhouse Greg Abbott, finds himself in a tight race with Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa. Roughly 56% of Latinos were in favor of Hinojosa over the incumbent, an October poll found.

“Latinos are the only voters voting rationally in a broken system,” Madrid said. “We’re shifting by 25 points. If you don’t pay attention to our priority issues, we’ll vote you out, that’s how the system was designed.”

Latinos appear to be swinging back to the left, but Democrats shouldn’t take those gains for granted, Madrid said.

“The Democratic Party has done nothing to win these voters back. They’re just not Republicans,” Madrid said. “And for the moment, that’s good enough.”

(Jackie Rivera / For The Times; Martina Ibáñez-Baldor / Los Angeles Times)

Join De Los for a Día de Muertos event at Hollywood Forever

Dia de los Muertos at Hollywood Forever

(Diana Ramirez / De Los)

This Saturday, join De Los at Hollywood Forever Cemetery to celebrate Día de Muertos. We’ll have an altar set up from noon to 8 p.m. where visitors can write ofrendas that will be displayed throughout the event.

There will also be a photo booth run by Las Fotos Project on site from 2 to 6 p.m.

This is an all-ages event and will feature performances by música Mexicana act DannyLux, soul singer Trish Toledo, psychedelic cumbia group Tropa Magica and indie rock band Los Shadows.

Registration and event information can be found here.

If you’re looking for more places to partake in Día de Muertos festivities this year, check out De Los’ list of 50 ways to celebrate the holiday throughout Southern California.

Stories we read this week that we think you should read

Unless otherwise noted, stories below were published by the Los Angeles Times.

Politics and immigration

Arts and entertainment

Southern California

Lawyers for two accused officials say Department of Justice seeking to revive scandal before midterm vote.

Two former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents have been charged in connection with a 2020 probe into a laptop belonging to former President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

The former officials, Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, were charged with lying to Congress. They made their first court appearance in Washington, DC, on Friday.

Lawyers for the officials accused the Department of Justice of filing the charges to revive the salacious saga just days before the November 3 midterm vote, in which Republicans face an uphill battle against Democrats to maintain control of Congress.

A lawyer for Floris said she “served our nation as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years”, while accusing the Justice Department of building its case on hearsay.

“Yet today, the DOJ [Justice Department] has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts,” the statement said.

“It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election.”

Floris and Benavides had overseen the Foreign Intelligence Task Force (FITF) at the FBI when Hunter Biden’s laptop was found. The pair testified to Congress that the unit, which focuses on foreign interference in US elections, was not involved in the laptop investigation.

In a criminal complaint, federal prosecutors alleged the statements contradicted messages sent during the same period.

While launched by Trump during his first term, the FITF was heavily targeted by Republicans under former US President Joe Biden. They charged the unit was politically biased and used to cover up information about Biden’s laptop.

The unit was disbanded when Trump took office for the second time in January 2025.

Scandalous saga

The existence of the laptop became known in October of 2020, just weeks before Biden and Trump faced off in a presidential election.

Its strange origins, having been dropped off at a Delaware computer repair shop and apparently abandoned by Hunter Biden, prompted suspicion. Its contents were first reported on by the New York Post, based on information provided to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Several former intelligence officials warned that the laptop had the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign. However, the FBI later seized and verified that the laptop and its contents, including messages related to the younger Biden’s foreign business ties and explicit photos of his drug use, were authentic.

The laptop was later used to back federal gun and tax evasion charges against Hunter Biden, although no wrongdoing related to his business ties or connection with his father was found.

Trump FBI Director Kash Patel has pledged to investigate the agency’s conduct throughout Biden’s presidency. Critics have accused him of flagrant politicalisation.

“Lying to Congress by senior FBI officials strikes at the heart of our system. No one is above the law,” Patel said in a statement posted on X.

The Justice Department has historically sought to avoid public and overt investigative acts in the direct lead-up to an election that involve candidates or that risk influencing an outcome.

But officials in the last two weeks have made a series of bold moves in cases with political undertones, including a search of Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar’s house in an immigration fraud investigation.

The department also unsealed a corruption indictment on Thursday against powerful Democratic Virginia state Senator L Louise Lucas.

Trump advises the Republican gubernatorial candidate to keep running the controversial advertisement.

US President Donald Trump has backed Republican Vivek Ramaswamy amid controversy over an attack advertisement by the Ohio gubernatorial candidate against his Democratic rival.

Trump said in a social media post on Thursday that Ramaswamy should keep running the advertisement that features Democratic candidate Amy Acton’s estranged mother.

In the advertisement, Donna Arthur, Acton’s mother, disputes her daughter’s account of a childhood involving homelessness and ⁠⁠sexual abuse by her stepfather, urging Ohioans not to vote for her.

Acton says she has not seen her mother since 1978. Acton’s brother has supported her account of being sexually abused by her stepfather when she was a child. The stepfather, who died in 2004, was charged with rape.

“Anybody whose mother spoke about a daughter in that way would normally lead to the daughter being precluded from serving in office,” Trump said.

The US president also attacked Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who advised Ramaswamy to take down the advertisement, labelling him “disloyal” to the Republican party.

‘It’s wrong’

At a gathering with reporters at the Ohio Statehouse, DeWine recalled the painful experiences of rape victims he dealt with as a county prosecutor and state attorney general.

“It’s wrong to run this ad,” he said. “And, even at this late time – my wife, Fran, saw the advertisement just run this morning on TV – I would just urge the Ramaswamy campaign to take this down.”

Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, called the advertisement ⁠⁠a “desperate, disgusting attack”, while Acton campaign spokesperson Addie Bullock called Ramaswamy’s decision to promote it “both despicable and entirely predictable”.

Vice President JD Vance, campaigning on Wednesday with Ramaswamy ⁠⁠and US Senator Jon Husted, an Ohio Republican, had brushed aside ⁠⁠the blowback.

Vance, a former senator from Ohio, expressed disgust with Republicans “whining” about the advertisement as low and in poor taste.

Ramaswamy’s campaign said it was spending $4m to promote the advertisement.

Opinion polls suggest Acton is narrowly leading Ramaswamy in a tight race to replace the term-limited DeWine.

Homeland Security targets nine states in a push to identify voting fraud, a move critics denounce as tantamount to voter intimidation.

A United States federal judge has ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to halt operations aimed at finding non-citizen voters in nine states ahead of the midterm elections.

The ruling by US District Court Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin said the investigations likely violate a provision of the Voting Rights Act that prohibits voter intimidation. She further said the DHS may have relied on flawed data in its investigations.

That leads to “an objectively reasonable fear of law enforcement entanglements that intimidates citizens from urging or aiding others in exercising their right to vote”, she wrote.

The order applies to federal efforts targeting California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.

The DHS has publicised what it has described as a push to identify individuals who have committed voter fraud, with some local offices posting photos of agents knocking on the doors of suspects.

The operations come as the administration of US President Donald Trump has sought to highlight instances of voter fraud ahead of the November 3 midterm vote.

While there are recorded instances of fraud in every election cycle, such isolated cases remain exceedingly rare.

There has been no evidence to indicate that non-citizen voters have influenced the outcome of any election at any level in the country.

In a statement following Thursday’s ruling, the DHS maintained that its investigations were aimed at “removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of US citizens”.

“We have no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be US citizens,” it said.

In their lawsuit challenging the DHS’s efforts, the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United, along with the Voto Latino Foundation, San Francisco and Santa Clara County, said that some US citizens felt they were wrongly identified and questioned as part of the investigations.

A lawyer representing the groups said it was “clear from the start that DHS built its lists on bad data, never checked how often it was wrong, and recklessly sent agents to people’s homes weeks before an election”.

Benjamin Farley, the supervisory counsel for democracy defense at the National Immigration Law Center, said the ruling sent a strong message about voter intimidation ahead of the midterm vote.

“Yesterday’s decision is a clear rebuke of the government’s efforts to scare voters away from the polls this November and a reminder that all US citizens – regardless of color, place of birth, or the nationality of their family members – have the right to participate in American elections free of intimidation,” he said.

“No armed federal agent is going to stop us from casting our vote.”

United States President Donald Trump has long touted himself as a political outsider, someone who would expose the elites’ abuse of power and shift government focus from far-off conflicts to problems at home. Phrases like “drain the swamp” and “America first” have proved to be powerful rallying cries, sparking a whole cadre of “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) Republicans.

Halfway through his final term as president, though, Trump has backpedalled on many of those ideas, cosying up to the ultra-wealthy, sidelining investigations into convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and launching an ongoing war with Iran.

That about-face appears to be having a real impact on Republicans running in the US midterm elections in November, said Rina Shah, a geopolitical adviser and strategist and a former senior GOP congressional aide.

“In competitive races, some are quietly distancing,” Shah said, adding that they are “talking about gas prices, local issues, or [saying] ‘I’m focused on my district’ – because the Iran war and the Epstein drip are already showing up in attack ads and soft polling.”

Here’s what you need to know about whether the Republican Party has softened its stance on these issues.

Which Republicans have broken with Trump over the Epstein files?

During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump said he would declassify troves of files kept by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about Epstein and his global network of contacts. Trump’s future cabinet members, too, were enthusiastic about this, with Kash Patel, now head of the FBI, saying it was time to “put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are”.

Yet a few months after taking office, Trump began dragging his feet, sparking a backlash from influential MAGA figures. Trump began calling the entire issue a “hoax” and saying Republicans were being duped by Democrats into calling for an investigation into Epstein’s network.

Congress did eventually force the release of the files, with help from a handful of Republicans who broke with Trump. The Trump administration has released batches of the heavily redacted files, but has continued to withhold some. Meanwhile, all the Republican lawmakers who voted to mandate releases have paid a price for their insubordination, with three even losing their offices.

US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene left her Georgia seat in January 2026, after publicly clashing with Trump over Epstein. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, lost her bid to become the party’s candidate in her home state after Trump refused to endorse her. Colorado’s Lauren Boebert barely won the primary in her own contest after angering Trump by supporting calls for transparency from Thomas Massie, another Republican bent on exposing what the files held. Massie, of Kentucky, also drew Trump’s ire, which likely cost him the primary.

No more foreign wars?

Trump had long said he would be reducing foreign military involvement, breaking with the interventionist tendencies of other recent Republican presidents. Now he and his party face tough questions about the US-Israel war on Iran, which influential figures in the MAGA movement like political commentator Tucker Carlson have called a mistake, saying, “This is Israel’s war. This is not the United States’ war.”

Amongst disgruntled MAGA supporters, a narrative has emerged of Trump using the war to also distract from the Epstein issue. Massie, the former congressman, summed up the sentiment by saying, “Bombing a country on the other side of the globe won’t make the Epstein files go away.”

Trump has tried to downplay the war’s impact, but voters, even in the Republican Party, think he broke his own promise, driving the overall approval rating for the ratings-obsessed president down to record lows. “Seven months into an open-ended campaign with shifting goals,” said Shah, “that promise looks different to a lot of his voters.”

Few Republicans, however, have responded to that public sentiment with their votes in Congress, where Democrats have tried repeatedly to curtail Trump’s war on Iran by passing resolutions pointing out he failed to get the body’s approval.

In September, just seven Republican House members joined Democrats to pass an anti-war bill. In the Senate, similar efforts have been supported by just a handful of Republicans. Trump called the Republican lawmakers supporting the anti-war bills “unpatriotic,” and said, “They should be ashamed of themselves.”

As with the Epstein files, Trump took action against rebellious Republicans over the Iran war, for instance backing a rival of Senator Bill Cassidy, who voted in favour of the anti-war bill, in a primary in Louisiana that the Republican senator ended up losing.

What happened to Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp”?

One of Trump’s most appealing promises had been to purge the government of a “deep state” establishment he says is running the country without being accountable to the public on social issues, and fiscal and foreign policy.

In a way, Trump did keep that promise. An entire federal government division – the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – forced tens of thousands of federal workers out of their jobs and dismantled institutions like the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The military threw out notions of racial, gender, and economic diversity. Everything from universities to the Smithsonian Institution was subjected to a campaign against an unqualified, diversity-obsessed elitist class.

But lobbying groups, including some supporting foreign governments, have been given a free hand, and ethics rules and watchdogs who would tackle political corruption have been weakened, said Shah, the Republican strategist.

At his presidential inauguration, Trump literally surrounded himself with the wealthiest people in the world, some of whom have gone on to play some part in his administration.

The United States ambassador to Turkiye and special presidential envoy for Syria and Iraq says Washington’s relationship with the countries in the Middle East needs to change.

Tom Barrack says the US no longer seeks to dominate the region.

He won’t say whether the war in Iran was a mistake – but acknowledges the instability it caused has led to unintended consequences.

Barrack says President Donald Trump is against what he calls “forever wars”, and ending the US-Israel war on Iran will require a major compromise. According to him, each side will have to accept conditions it does not like.

However, he is worried that growing tensions could lead to miscalculation.

Barrack says trust is lacking between Washington and Tehran, and that is hampering talks to agree on a deal.

He tells Al Jazeera that countries in the region should not depend on the US to solve their problems and that they need to look out for themselves. He insists the Trump administration has not abandoned the region, but is rather re-examining its role.

Barrack admits that years of US involvement in the region demonstrate that intervention and regime change do not work. He says it is time to put down the guns and resolve disputes through negotiations and mutual respect.

Neil Bush says that he will vote for Democrat James Talarico due to reservations about Republican candidate Ken Paxton.

Neil Bush, brother of former Republican President George W Bush, has said that he voted for the Democratic candidate James Talarico in a crucial race for the United States Senate.

In a social media post on Tuesday, Bush said he voted for Talarico due to concerns about the Republican candidate, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Talarico and Paxton are in a tight race for Texas’s open Senate seat. Democrats are hoping to seize control of the 100-member Senate in the November 3 midterm elections, when 35 seats will be on the ballot.

Bush’s endorsement of Talarico is the latest sign of division among Texas Republicans.

Bush comes from a prominent Republican family: not only was his brother a president, but his father, the late George HW Bush, was too.

“My concerns about his judgment and conduct are hardly mine alone,” Bush wrote. “He was impeached by the Republican-controlled Texas House, although subsequently acquitted by the Texas Senate.”

To explain his decision, Bush pointed to Paxton’s divisive track record, including efforts to support President Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 presidential election.

“I have been deeply troubled by Paxton’s conduct as Texas Attorney General, particularly his decision to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election in other states in an effort to help Donald Trump remain in power,” Bush said.

“I believe that effort was an affront to our democratic institutions and the peaceful transfer of power.”

His brother, the former president, has largely receded from political life and has declined to endorse candidates in recent elections. Before serving in the White House from 2001 to 2009, George W Bush was governor of Texas.

But George W Bush’s daughter Barbara Bush has also shown her support for Talarico by donating to a political action committee backing his campaign.

Texas has long been considered a Republican stronghold, and Democrats have not won a Senate race in the state since 1988.

But polls show Talarico locked in a close race with Paxton, who defeated incumbent Senator John Cornyn in the Republican Party’s primary run-off on May 26.

Paxton had secured an endorsement from Trump on May 19, days before the run-off.

In a statement, Trump criticised Cornyn as “not supportive of [him] when times were tough”, while praising Paxton as a “MAGA Warrior”.

Some Republicans have expressed frustration over Trump’s intervention on Paxton’s behalf, given the vulnerabilities posed by his state impeachment and other scandals.

A Marist poll released on October 14 found Talarico winning 47 percent of the vote compared to 45 percent for Paxton.

The United States has accused Canadian politicians of trying to influence its midterm elections, pointing to Canada’s efforts to push back against President Donald Trump’s tariff campaign.

In a fact sheet released on Wednesday, the US embassy accused Canada of being dismissive of its allegations of election interference.

“The Canadian government brushes off concerns about potential interference in U.S. elections, even as its ministers and premiers openly describe plans to influence American politics in official documents and public appearances,” the fact sheet reads.

The two countries have been locked in a trade war since the start of Trump’s second term in 2025, with Canada responding to US tariffs with import taxes of its own.

But the US embassy identified public statements about the tariffs as being attempts to sway the November 3 midterm election.

Among the politicians singled out in the fact sheet was Canadian Industry Minister Melanie Joly. The fact sheet pointed to comments Joly made in August about responding to Trump’s tariffs.

“We’re also targeting products that will target states in the US. And so we’re being wise and strategic to put political pressure,” Joly said at the time.

The embassy also took issue with Joly’s meetings with Democratic officials in Boston and Chicago in September. When asked by a reporter what she thought might happen with regard to tariffs if Democrats won the midterms, she said, “That’s exactly why I’m meeting so many governors and potential presidential candidates.”

Joly has rejected the suggestion that her actions could amount to interference, saying Canada would never meddle in US elections. She said her meetings with US politicians, both Democratic and Republican, were about building Canada’s economy.

“Fundamentally, what I’ve done in the US is to attract investments,” she told reporters on October 14.

The embassy also pointed to Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s calls for retaliatory measures on US products, as well as his government’s advertising campaign against Trump’s tariffs, launched last year.

The campaign, which featured clips of former US President Ronald Reagan criticising tariffs in a 1987 radio address, prompted Trump to call off trade talks with Canada in October 2025.

While the embassy laid out several examples of Canadian officials trying to influence US trade policy, it didn’t explain how those efforts amounted to interference.

Other instances of alleged election interference included Liberal MP Anthony Housefather saying he had campaigned in Florida on behalf of Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, ahead of her primary election in August.

The fact sheet also accused individual Canadians of illegally participating in US elections, naming 11 people who had been charged or sentenced for voting between 2012 and 2024.

The sheet did not, however, present any evidence linking those citizens to a Canadian government effort to involve itself in US elections.

“All Canadians should refrain from attempting to participate in or influence U.S. elections in any way,” the US embassy’s statement said. “Americans decide America’s elections.”

The fact sheet comes a week after US Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra said Washington was closely watching Canada for signs of interference ahead of the midterms.

“We’re monitoring it, we’re evaluating it and if some of it becomes election interference then America will respond to it,” Hoekstra said in a podcast interview on The Really Big Show, according to The Canadian Press.

The US and Canada have long been allies, but relations have frayed since Trump returned to office.

Not only has the Republican leader triggered a trade war with Canada, but he has also repeatedly threatened to make Canada a 51st state.

There have also been reports that separatist leaders from Alberta had sought support from Trump administration officials ahead of a failed referendum on the province’s independence this week.

Ahead of Monday’s provincial vote, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney addressed concerns about potential US interference in the referendum, saying Canada expected foreign governments to stay out of its elections.

“Our expectation is, to be absolutely clear, on foreign governments, United States included, is we don’t get ourselves involved in their elections, they don’t get themselves involved in our elections,” he told Global News.

Al Jazeera has reached out to the Prime Minister’s Office and Global Affairs Canada for comment, as well as the office of Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Industry Minister Joly.

LEWISTON, Maine — Maine Republican Susan Collins has promoted her reputation as one of the most independent U.S. senators and she is using the waning days of the election season to sell that message to voters by campaigning with a former colleague who has endorsed her.

Collins is trying to fend off a challenge from Democrat Troy Jackson, a onetime state Senate president, and on Wednesday she made appearances with Joe Manchin III, a West Virginian who was a Democrat then became an independent late in his career before retiring.

After stopping for breakfast at Simones’ Hot Dog Stand in Lewiston, Collins spoke of how she and Manchin were “part of every piece of bipartisan legislation that passed and became law” during their time together in office.

Manchin said to lose Collins would be “to lose the soul of the Senate.” He praised her independent streak, her willingness to buck Republican President Trump and her record of fighting for Maine’s interests.

“This is a true blue-blooded Maine person who knows exactly where she came from,” Manchin said.

They planned a stop later at a New Balance shoe facility in Norway. Jackson, 58, is scheduled to campaign Thursday in Portland with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive congresswoman from New York.

Collins, 73, is in what may be her toughest reelection fight as she seeks her sixth term.

It’s only the second time that she has sought reelection in a midterm with a sitting Republican president, and the national trends are much less favorable to the GOP than they were the last time she did so, in 2002. Trump’s approval has fallen well below where it was when he took office last year, and a recent poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that a strong majority of voters want change in Washington.

Collins has been working to persuade voters that she is independent of Trump and willing to break with him. In Manchin, she enlisted a politician who was one of the most moderate voices in the Senate. Manchin said in 2023 that Trump would “ destroy democracy in America” if he was elected to a second term.

Among the few dozen Collins supporters at the Lewiston event was Mike Marcotte.

“I may not have always been a fan of her complete package of votes, but when I look at the vitriol that’s in the U.S. Senate right now, we need more people like Susan Collins,” he said.

Jackson got a late start on campaigning after the party’s initial nominee exited the race but trails Collins in the money race by less than $3 million after an aggressive quarter in which he raised more than $20 million. Jackson has campaigned relentlessly and his events have drawn hundreds. Collins has largely stuck to smaller appearances.

Some of Jackson’s backers demonstrated across the street from the hot dog stand. A few held signs bearing the face of Brett M. Kavanaugh, the U.S. Supreme Court justice whom Collins voted to confirm and whose vote eventually helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion.

“Someone needs to stand up and be a check on Donald Trump and his harmful policies,” said David Sysko.

Collins has broken with Trump and Republicans over the years. She voted to convict him at his impeachment trial in 2021. Increasingly during the campaign, she has worked to distance herself from the president as Democrats argue that she is too close to him.

Collins said in early October that she is “not exactly his favorite senator,” and that she did not expect Trump to campaign in Maine. He has steered clear of the state with the Nov. 3 election nearing.

Pinning Collins to Trump is central to the Democrats’ strategy. In one ad, a nurse says the state is in a healthcare crisis “because of Susan Collins and Donald Trump,” citing Collins’ vote for Trump’s push for Medicaid cuts. Collins did vote to advance the bill but ultimately voted against it.

Trump also was a major focus of four contentious debates between the candidates this month, where Collins sought to distance herself from the president and Jackson repeatedly accused her of doing Trump’s bidding.

Asked at the final debate to name a time in which she bucked her own party and succeeded, Collins gave the example of rallying support against Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth, who was confirmed as Defense secretary.

Democrats seized on the moment and released a statement that said the exchange “underscores a central question in the Maine Senate race: Does Collins, a Republican in a state that disapproves of President Donald Trump and has grown bluer in recent years, stand up to her party enough to earn the independent streak she has staked her career on?”

Jackson has characterized Collins as out of touch with the struggles of working-class people in Maine. He has described Collins as a “rubber stamp” for the president and criticized her votes on Kavanaugh and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s second-term Health secretary. Collins has said she does not regret either vote.

Republican ads against Jackson, a logger from northern Maine, have focused more on accusations of his having a volatile personality and behaving like a bully with female colleagues. Jackson has denied those accusations.

Collins distanced herself on Wednesday from a Republican super PAC attack ad that she said “should be taken down.”

The senator was a top target of Democrats in 2020 when she defeated challenger Sara Gideon by nearly 9 percentage points. Collins is the only Republican senator from New England, a distinction she has had since January 2013.

Whittle writes for the Associated Press.

US president has continued to support data centres in advance of midterms, despite growing opposition from Republicans.

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.

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.

Amid escalating tensions with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, United States President Donald Trump has increased pressure on the Eastern European country to make a deal that would end the war with Russia.

Speaking at the White House on Tuesday, Trump doubled down on his efforts to blame the Ukrainian president for holding up peace efforts that would bring the years-long conflict to a close.

“Zelenskyy has to want to settle this war, and if he doesn’t, I think it’s going to be a very bad thing,” Trump said as he talked about Russia having an “unlimited” supply of people to send in the fight.

Moments later, the US president referenced a contentious Oval Office meeting he held with Zelenskyy in February 2025, shortly after returning to power.

Zelenskyy, Trump said, could have made a “better deal” then. “He’s going to have to want to make a deal, because I don’t think his people are going to stand for it any longer,” Trump told reporters.

On Tuesday, the Ukrainian president met US special envoy Steve Witkoff and European leaders in Oslo, Norway, to discuss ending Russia’s war.

In a post on social media after the meeting concluded, Zelenskyy said, without providing specifics, that his country has “some clear ideas on how to get to peace”.

“We are united with our European partners in this effort, and we want the Americans to take these ideas to the Russians,” Zelenskyy wrote. “One of the important ideas is to move to a potential trilateral meeting of the leaders to address the issues that only the leaders can do.”

The Ukrainian leader added that Witkoff would head to Russia on Wednesday, where peace discussions are expected to continue.

“Let’s see what Putin has to say,” Zelenskyy said.

When asked whether Russian President Vladimir Putin should meet Zelenskyy, Trump said there was “tremendous” hatred between the two leaders.

“It’s hard for them to be in the same room,” Trump said. “I don’t care how it’s done.”

Starlink controversy

Trump’s remarks come as the White House continues to squeeze Ukraine in order to force the country to cut a deal with Russia.

Last week, Ukrainian officials reported slowdowns with Starshield, the military-grade version of the Starlink satellite system, run by the aerospace company SpaceX.

Ukraine relies on the technology for communications and intelligence to prevent Russian attacks.

It is unclear who ordered restrictions that limit Ukraine’s access to Starshield. SpaceX CEO and Trump ally Elon Musk pointed a finger at the White House.

“Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” he wrote on October 14.

The news agency Reuters also reported that the order came from inside the White House, citing two US officials and a Western official.

But a report in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday claimed US officials had blamed Musk himself for the slowdown, saying the SpaceX CEO ordered it last week. Trump and US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth have both denied that the government directed the restrictions, with Hegseth pushing responsibility towards SpaceX.

Building ties with Putin

Trump, meanwhile, has sought to ease the historically tense relations between Russia and the US.

In August 2025, Trump invited Putin to Alaska, the Russian leader’s first visit to US soil in a decade.

More recently, Trump has expressed openness this month to meeting with Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, as part of a trilateral discussion on denuclearisation.

Trump also announced this month that he struck a deal to obtain diesel from Russia, marking a stunning reversal of years of US pressure on Moscow’s economy.

The US president also waived new economic restrictions that would have been imposed under the Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, a bipartisan law he signed one month earlier, in honour of a late senator.

It would have imposed sanctions on Russian officials, banks and tankers, as well as tariffs on countries that purchase Russian oil.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the decision on Tuesday, saying the law allowed the waiver through a provision embedded in the legislation.

“The president chose to use a national security waiver to not immediately implement those [sanctions and restrictions], because he recognises that these things have to be looked at in their totality,” Rubio said in an interview with India’s News18.

Rubio argued that Trump was engaged in a “balancing act” in deciding the extent of US-imposed economic restrictions and how they could impact the rest of the world.

“When you do that pressure, sometimes it spills over and has a negative impact on other countries,” Rubio said.

The lawsuit argues Trump bypassed Congress and misused a century-old law to impose sweeping tariffs on Canadian imports.

A US food importer is suing US President Donald Trump over his 50 percent tariffs on Canadian goods, arguing he lacks the legal authority to impose sweeping tariffs without congressional approval.

Gellert Global Group, a New Jersey-based company that imports Canadian cheese, filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in the US Court of International Trade in New York.

The company says the tariffs are driving up its costs and disrupting its relationships with suppliers on both sides of the border. Between September 16 and October 11, Gellert had paid more than $520,000 in duties, according to the complaint.

“Gellert Global Group has spent generations building trusted relationships with suppliers, customers and partners across the food industry,” said Thomas Gellert, the company’s co-chief executive officer, in a press release. “These tariffs disrupt those relationships overnight and create costs and uncertainty that ripple through the entire supply chain.”

The lawsuit challenges Trump’s decision to use a Depression-era law to impose tariffs on a wide range of Canadian products, including dairy products, furniture, clothing and wine.

Trump first imposed the 50 percent tariffs over the summer, accusing Canada of discriminating against American-made cars, alcohol and dairy products. He expanded the measures in September, adding more products in response to Canadian retaliatory tariffs.

The lawsuit argues that the law doesn’t apply to the Canadian policies the Trump administration says are discriminatory, since two of them “arose in response to the president’s own tariffs, while the third involves Canadian dairy policy governed by the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)”.

It also questions why Canadian cheese is being taxed over disputes involving alcohol and cars.

“No president should have the power to pull a dormant statute off the shelf and use it to impose sweeping tariffs or import bans without the limits Congress required,” said Sara Albrecht, chairman and CEO of the Liberty Justice Center, a nonprofit legal organisation that filed the suit on Gellert’s behalf.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to the Reuters news agency.

At the centre of the case is Section 338 of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which allows the president to impose tariffs of up to 50 percent on imports from countries found to discriminate against American businesses.

The provision had never been used until Trump invoked it this year.

The lawsuit argues that newer laws passed by Congress since then, such as Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, require investigations, public comment and other safeguards that Gellert says the Trump administration has bypassed, and that these override Section 338.

“The administration cannot skip those protections by reaching for a 1930 statute that no president had ever used to impose a tariff,” said Jeffrey Schwab, the Liberty Justice Center’s senior counsel and director of litigation.

In addition, the lawsuit says that even if Trump is allowed to use the older law, he hasn’t met its requirements, including waiting 30 days before tariffs can be collected on new products added to the list.

The administration only waited seven days to start collecting tariffs on cheese in September, according to the lawsuit.

Gellert is asking the court to declare the tariffs illegal, stop them from being collected, and order refunds with interest for importers who have been impacted.

The lawsuit marks the fourth major legal challenge to Trump’s tariffs.

In February, the US Supreme Court struck down most of the tariffs he imposed in 2025, and a trade court later ruled against a temporary 10 percent global tariff. A separate challenge to tariffs imposed over alleged forced labour in international trade is still pending.

The revocations targeted visa holders who had allegedly broken the law, or pose threats to national security.

The Trump administration has said it has revoked more than 300,000 visas issued to foreign nationals, claiming it has done so at a faster pace than any previous administration.

A spokesman for the US Department of State said on social media on Tuesday that the revocations targeted foreign nationals in the United States on visas who had broken the law, committed fraud or posed threats to national security.

“We have zero tolerance for foreigners here on visas who break the law, commit fraud, or undermine our national security,” Tommy Pigott, State Department spokesman, said in a post on the social media platform X.

The administration would continue taking action to secure US borders and protect national security, he added.

Al Jazeera has reached out to the State Department for comment.

The number of visa revocations exceeded 175,000 in August.

In January, the department said it had revoked more than 100,000 visas, a record at the time.

The administration has also adopted a stricter policy on granting visas, with tightened social media vetting and expanded screening.

Rights advocates and human rights experts have condemned the Trump administration’s social media screening efforts, which they say threaten free speech and are akin to surveillance and the singling out of immigrants.

Trump calls for Zelenskyy to be replaced as negotiator, while Ukraine’s president says arms shipments delayed.

United States President Donald Trump says someone other than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy should negotiate on Kyiv’s behalf in talks to  end Russia’s war.

“Zelenskyy is a man that should have had settled this war a long time ago. If he would’ve listened to me, he would have made a much better deal a long time ago,” Trump told reporters outside the White House on Monday. “Maybe it’s time for Zelenskyy to get somebody else to negotiate.”

The US president has been verbally swiping at his Ukrainian counterpart for several days as a rift between the leaders deepens.

On Sunday, Trump claimed on Truth Social that Zelenskyy does not want to end the war. Earlier this month, he called for him to be replaced as president, and labelled him a “warmonger” over Ukraine’s attacks on Russian oil refineries.

Trump has also defended sanctions waivers for Russia, saying in the same Truth Social post that he wants to keep Moscow at the negotiating table.

Zelenskyy said the decision “will hurt Ukraine” and strengthen Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war effort.

Trump also announced plans on October 9 for Russia to supply more than 300,000 metric tonnes of diesel to US and global markets to tackle fuel prices that have soared since the US and Israel launched a war on Iran in late February.

The decision has angered not only Kyiv, but also European partners and US officials, who say it rewards Moscow while it continues its four-and-a-half-year war on Ukraine.

Zelenskyy told US senators at a meeting on Monday that decisions taken by the Trump administration “are hard to explain between friends”.

He said arms shipments had been delayed and intelligence sharing restricted.

“We also know that … the Pentagon is delaying the delivery of missiles that our partners have already paid for through the PURL (Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List) programme,” he said.

To his knowledge, he added, one missile package was waiting for the signature of US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

He also said several European countries were ready to transfer Patriot interceptor missiles from their own stockpiles but were awaiting US approval.

In remarks posted in a video on Telegram, Zelenskyy said that on three occasions in the past week, Ukraine had not received the advance warning of Russian attacks generally provided by its partners.

Last week, Zelenskyy suggested a disruption of Starlink services in Ukraine was “deliberate”. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio rejected the claim.

The sparring comes as Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff is ⁠set to travel to Norway this week for the next round of negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine, the Reuters news agency reported, citing three people familiar with the matter.

Two of the sources said they expected Zelenskyy to attend the meetings.

The Oslo discussions are expected to include Zelenskyy, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, representatives of the E4 – made up of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Poland – the European Union, and NATO.