Government

A new poll shows that the majority of Americans want the Democrats in Congress this January to deliver an end to the war in Iran, reverse US President Donald Trump’s trade policies, and bring down the high cost of living.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Tuesday found that 71 percent of Americans supported Congress passing legislation to end the war with Iran, including 93 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of Republicans. About 62 percent backed repealing Trump’s import tariffs, while nine in 10 respondents said Congress should focus on the cost of living during its first 100 days.

The war with Iran and Trump’s tariffs have both contributed to economic pressures, linking voters’ concerns about living costs to the administration’s foreign and trade policies.

Americans also expect some degree of cooperation between the White House and the incoming Congress. Large majorities of respondents from both parties said it was important for Trump to work with Democrats, and for Democratic leaders to try to work with the president.

Political retaliation against the Trump administration is a lower priority. Forty-two percent said it would be bad for the country if the new Congress tried to impeach Trump, compared with 33 percent who thought it would be good.

Democrats will have between 54 and 56 Senate seats next year, depending on results from uncalled races in Mississippi and Alaska. But delivering on voter priorities could still be difficult. Most bills need 60 votes to overcome a Senate filibuster, and Trump can veto legislation that passes both chambers.

Repealing tariffs or reversing other administration policies would therefore require either sufficient Republican support or a willingness to confront the president politically.

Seth Masket, a political science professor at the University of Denver, said voters are motivated by opposition to the Trump administration on several fronts, including the economy, the war, corruption and immigration enforcement.

“They want to see Democrats working to fix these things. And also to some extent, to hold the Trump administration accountable,” Masket told Al Jazeera.

A fight over who leads the Democrats

The pressure to deliver on those priorities is unfolding alongside a growing dispute over who should lead the Democratic Party.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll did not measure public support for individual congressional leaders. It did, however, find that the Democratic Party itself remains unpopular, with 45 percent of respondents viewing it favourably and 51 percent unfavourably.

Hakeem Jeffries is widely expected to become speaker of the House, despite calls for an alternative. No challenger has publicly emerged, but a Change.org petition urging Democrats to reject his leadership has attracted more than one million signatures. House Democrats are due to hold leadership elections on November 18 and 19.

The Senate contest is less settled. Chuck Schumer, who has led Senate Democrats since 2017, faces calls to step aside. Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen has said Schumer should not receive a “blank check” and is considering a possible challenge. Michigan Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed has backed Van Hollen.

The backlash reflects broader dissatisfaction with the party’s direction. Jeffries and Schumer have been criticised over their positions on Israel and Gaza, their relationships with corporate donors and pro-Israel lobbying groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and what voters see as a failure to confront the Trump administration forcefully.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which counts several elected officials among its members, has not backed Jeffries or Schumer for their respective leadership posts. In a statement to Al Jazeera, the DSA said Democrats must reject “half-measures” and deliver on popular policies.

“We the people must be a counterweight both to the internal politics of Congress and the corporate donors who want to keep business as usual,” DSA spokesperson Priscilla Yeverino wrote to Al Jazeera.

Political commentator Bea Neilson said some progressives see the two leaders as representing an older Democratic establishment that is out of step with the party’s base.

“They want an avatar of a fighter,” Neilson told Al Jazeera.

But Neilson argues that the role of the House speaker is not simply to dictate the party’s legislative agenda. Rather, they respond to the positions of lawmakers across the caucus, working with policy committees and other groups to identify legislation that can secure enough votes to pass.

Individual members or blocs of lawmakers can withhold their support, making the job an exercise in negotiating competing interests as much as setting political direction.

Masket agreed that the effectiveness of congressional leaders is often measured less by their public speaking than by their ability to manage their caucuses and get legislation through Congress.

“People wanting their speaker or a Senate majority leader to be a more inspiring leader, I think they’re just asking for the wrong person,” Masket said. “That’s the wrong title for that role.”

That role, he suggested, may fall more naturally to the next generation of presidential contenders, who are expected to begin emerging early next year.

The leadership elections will take place before the new Congress begins in January. The larger question for Democrats is whether their leaders can turn a sweeping electoral mandate into tangible change.

Mathias Licharz calls for the ‘unconditional’ release of ousted politicians, including former leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Myanmar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has summoned the head of mission at the German embassy in the country over a Facebook video calling for authorities to “unconditionally release” ousted politicians such as former leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that Mathias Licharz in the video “appeared to fuel opposition to the host country and its Government, thereby inciting internal unrest”.

Licharz met Deputy Foreign Minister Ko Ko Kyaw, was “warned against the video” and handed an aide-memoire, the ministry said.

“The Deputy Minister strongly warned against recurrence of such act and informed him that any similar conduct would be treated with utmost seriousness and would take appropriate actions,” the ministry said.

Licharz posted the video on Sunday, standing outside the former Yangon residence of Win Myint, the figurehead president of Aung San Suu Kyi‘s government that was removed in a 2021 coup.

The German diplomat said in his message, marking Win Myint’s 75th birthday, that the United Nations still regards him as the “legitimate president” of Myanmar.

In the video, he called for authorities to “unconditionally release all those who are arbitrarily detained, including Win Myint and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi” – using the affectionate term by which Aung San Suu Kyi‘s supporters refer to her.

Germany’s embassy in Myanmar did not immediately comment.

Win Myint’s downfall

Win Myint was jailed in the February 2021 military coup, ending Myanmar’s decade-long democratic experiment.

Since then, pro-democracy rebels rose up and long-simmering ethnic minority rebellions challenging central rule boiled over.

Authorities said in April he had been pardoned of his post-coup convictions – charges that supporters and analysts say were confected to oust the government.

However, Licharz said in his video message his efforts to meet Win Myint had been unfruitful.

“There is only one conclusion,” he said. “U Wint Myint is not a free man. He’s not allowed to meet with whom he would like to meet, and he’s not allowed to communicate independently,” he added, using a male honorific.

The military leadership behind the coup organised elections, installing a nominally civilian government this year, although analysts regard it as a fig leaf for ongoing military rule.

“Should the Charge d’Affaires choose to recognize U Win Myint as President and wish to discontinue his service in Myanmar, the Ministry would have no objection,” the Foreign Ministry statement said on Tuesday.

Aung San Suu Kyi remains detained but was moved to house arrest in the capital Naypyidaw this year, authorities say, where access to the 81-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate remains tightly controlled.

The decision comes after ​an OpenAI agent breached ​an Australian government website in June.

Australia will make it mandatory for artificial ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠intelligence companies to immediately report when their ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠AI models go rogue and to open their models for evaluation, the government said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday the government had accepted all recommendations from a rapid review into the breach, which “include ⁠⁠mandatory AI company reporting when ⁠⁠it comes ⁠⁠to misaligned behaviour or cyber-incidents, and consideration of reforming criminal ‌‌law in cases of serious misconduct”.

“Australia is the first mover in this space, and we want to make sure that we continue to work so that we can reap the potential benefits from AI,” he said.

The decision comes after OpenAI-powered models hacked into an Australian government health data system in June, slipping past its digital defences and accessing files without authorisation.

Top AI firms have recently raised the alarm regarding the risk of humans losing control of their systems, calling for AI development to slow down to a pace that allows it to be safely regulated.

Earlier this year, Anthropic’s safety research scientist Evan Hubinger went so far as to say he believes there is a greater than 10 percent chance that AI could “kill all humans” within a decade.

Rapid incident notifications

The new Australian AI regulator will oversee security controls throughout the development and deployment of AI systems, identify and manage serious risks, and conduct independent ‌‌evaluations of AI models.

The AI standards would also mandate rapid notification to the government of incidents such as “misaligned behaviour” conflicting with developers’ intentions.

Australian government documents define frontier AI as the most sophisticated models at the cutting edge of current technological capability.

Albanese told OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman that the US company took too long to inform the government of the incident. OpenAI apologised for the breach and its slow response.

Inquiry recommends law changes

A government inquiry into the June breach made several recommendations, including that the government consider changing the law.

The proposed AI regulator would follow Australia’s appointment of an eSafety Commissioner in 2015. The office describes itself as the world’s first government agency dedicated to keeping people safer online.

Since December last year, the commissioner has been enforcing a world-first ban on Australian children younger than 16 holding accounts on popular social media platforms.

A YouGov poll completed on the eve of the 2026 midterm elections has found that Americans were far less likely to back candidates who supported the US-Israel war on Iran.

The poll, released on Monday, found that 44 percent of people said they were less likely to support candidates who backed the war, while just 13 percent said they were more likely.

That means a candidate’s support for the war was more than 3 times as likely to put people off as to win them over.

Another 26 percent, meanwhile, indicated the Iran war would not make much of a difference in their vote.

The economics of the war also factored into people’s choices. Some 56 percent of those surveyed said that the US should prioritise avoiding higher prices domestically over achieving US President Donald Trump’s military goals in Iran.

Meanwhile, 22 percent said the opposite: that the Trump administration should prioritise the war over higher costs.

The poll also asked who should decide when the war ends. A majority, 53 percent, said Congress should have the final say, while 29 percent said that the president should decide.

The US and Israel jointly launched the war against Iran on February 28. But Trump’s decision to bypass congressional authorisation for the war has raised constitutional concerns in the US.

Jonathan Guyer, the programme director at the Institute for Global Affairs at Eurasia Group, a risk consultancy firm, told Al Jazeera that the poll – which was conducted on his organisation’s behalf – indicated Americans were looking to Congress to be more assertive.

“The story of the [economic] tradeoff is really important, and then there’s this other story of where Congress has been: Why haven’t lawmakers, not just over the last year but over the last decade, played a bigger role as a backstop on reckless wars launched by presidents?” said Guyer.

“And I think these numbers show the public really wants Congress to play a bigger role and expects their lawmakers to hold power to account.”

Anti-war lane

The survey is the latest to underscore the unpopularity of the US-Israel war on Iran, which has killed thousands of people in Iran and contributed to surging prices, a top issue in the November 3 midterm elections.

Trump’s Republican Party suffered one of the most significant electoral setbacks in modern US history, with Democrats reclaiming both chambers of Congress with strong majorities.

Democrats also flipped key offices in states like Texas, once seen as a conservative stronghold.

Those results have advanced a debate over the war that is playing out in both parties, often pitting more hawkish establishment figures against newcomers opposed to foreign intervention and support for Israel.

In the wake of the “blue wave”, analysts have argued that Democratic voters may expect the party’s leadership to take firmer steps to rein in the president and bring the fighting with Iran to an end.

On Monday, Trump himself said “Iran militarily is effectively over”, though he declined to rule out any further military action. A US naval and land blockade around Iran also remains in effect.

Guyer said he anticipates that foreign policy and, in particular, US support for Israel is likely to emerge as a key dividing line for candidates in future elections, particularly the upcoming 2028 presidential election.

“I think it does create a lane for people like Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, for the wing of the [Democratic] party represented by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who have a very strong position on this war and on the role of the US in the world that traditional Democrats have been largely silent on,” said Guyer.

A similar debate is also taking place on the political right.

Following the midterms, US Vice President JD Vance shared a lengthy social media post blaming his party’s implosion on the war.

Figures such as Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene have also criticised the war as a betrayal of Trump’s promise to end conflicts around the world.

While the YouGov poll found that Republicans were the only group more likely to vote for a candidate if they supported the president’s war, Guyer says that support has been “softening”.

“A third of Republicans say that backing the war made a candidate appealing, so it’s kind of small,” he said. “And 40 percent shrugged and say it made no difference.”

United States House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has thrown his support behind impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as the Democratic Party prepares to use its incoming congressional majorities to probe President Donald Trump’s administration.

In a Sunday appearance on the Television show This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Jeffries weighed in on the upcoming impeachment resolution, anticipated for the coming days.

“I’m a hard yes on the Hegseth resolution,” Jeffries said. “The so-called secretary of defence has abused his power, undermined our national security, and engineered this reckless and costly war of choice in Iran.”

The impeachment resolution has been spearheaded by outgoing Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a vocal critic of the US-Israel war on Iran.

“Pete Hegseth has got to go,” Jeffries added. “I believe there will be incredibly strong support for that resolution.”

Investigating ‘unprecedented corruption’

Jeffries is poised to become the next speaker in the House of Representatives after Democrats notched a historic victory in the November 3 midterm elections.

Both the House and the Senate flipped into Democratic control, with the left-wing party making some of its biggest gains in the lower chamber in more than half a century.

Democrats are expected to use their new congressional majorities to launch investigations into the Trump administration.

There have also been concerns, voiced by Trump himself, that he and other top officials could face impeachment.

In Sunday’s interview, Jeffries said the Democratic majority would move “aggressively” in its first 100 days in office, both to address affordability and “unprecedented corruption” under Trump.

“We are committed to cleaning up the mess wherever it’s found,” Jeffries said. “That’s in Congress, in the Supreme Court, and with respect to this administration.”

Currently, Republicans hold a government “trifecta”, with control of both chambers of Congress and the presidency. The Supreme Court also boasts a conservative supermajority, shaped by three Trump appointees.

But a new Congress will be sworn in on January 3. In the coming weeks, Democrats will choose their party leaders for both chambers.

Representative Robert Garcia formally announced his bid to lead the House Oversight Committee in a letter to colleagues on Thursday.

The committee is the chamber’s principal investigative panel, with the power to subpoena witnesses and documents.

‘Very serious’ allegations

On Sunday, Garcia told CNN that Stephen Miller‘s influential role in the Trump administration warranted investigation.

Miller, who was named last week as White House chief of staff, has been closely associated with Trump’s hardline immigration policies since his first term as president.

“What we think is that Stephen Miller is the architect of this horrific, unjust policy happening across the country,” Garcia said, pointing to policies of separating immigrant families and accusations of due process abuses.

“Stephen Miller is at the centre of major policy decisions that are happening in the administration, and it does deserve oversight and investigation.”

Garcia also signalled interest in questioning businessman Elon Musk over his leadership in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a federal initiative that led to widespread federal workforce cuts at the start of Trump’s second term.

DOGE also sought access to sensitive government data, including Americans’ personal information.

“What happened with DOGE, in particular, and the federal employees losing jobs the way they did and people’s data likely being compromised, I think, is very serious,” Garcia said.

Congressional committees have the power to hold hearings, subpoena witnesses, and demand documents, giving lawmakers a constitutional check on the executive branch.

The House can also impeach administration officials if a simple majority votes in favour.

Conviction and removal, however, require a two-thirds vote in the Senate, a high bar even with Democrats controlling the chamber.

Trump’s camp bites back

The White House was quick to draw its own battle lines.

Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Attorney General Todd Blanche said there could be investigations into Democratic lawmakers over their “threatening” rhetoric.

He added he was ready to counter Democratic efforts to probe and impeach Trump officials.

“If that’s what this new incoming leadership wants to do, we are ready,” said Blanche, a former personal lawyer for Trump. “If you work in this administration, you have a lawyer. It’s me.”

Trump, meanwhile, made similar remarks in a Truth Social post on Saturday.

He called on the Justice Department to investigate Democrats over their plans to haul his allies before congressional committees, branding them as “SLEAZEBAGS” who “should go to jail”.

“The threats being made by the Democrat Party against innocent Republican Donors and Party Members are absolutely unprecedented, and totally illegal,” the president wrote.

United States-based chipmaker Nvidia is investigating its chief executive officer, billionaire Jensen Huang, after he confirmed he had an intimate relationship with a woman accused of working for Chinese intelligence.

In an announcement on Sunday, Nvidia said the probe would be conducted by a “committee of independent directors” with outside counsel.

“While the board has no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised, the board’s inquiry will examine all available information,” Nvidia’s board of directors said.

It said the board continued to have “confidence in Jensen and his leadership team”. Huang will continue to lead Nvidia during the probe.

The investigation follows a report in The New York Times last month that Jensen may have been the target of a Chinese espionage plot.

China and the US have been in competition to dominate key tech sectors like artificial intelligence (AI).

Amid the AI boom, Nvidia has seen demand for its chips and programming interfaces explode, resulting in the company being valued in the trillions of dollars.

For years, the US has sought to restrict the export of advanced chips to China, fearing the Asian superpower could gain an edge over its technology and military sectors.

But on October 29, The New York Times said it had obtained exclusive information that a Chinese woman named Alice Huang, or Huang Le, sought to cultivate close ties with Jensen Huang in an effort to glean information about Nvidia’s technology.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, has denied any allegations of spying in the case.

The New York Times also reported that Alice Huang’s employer, Megaspeed, had become one of Nvidia’s largest buyers, purchasing some $4.8bn in equipment from the US firm.

Jensen Huang’s ties to Alice Huang, who is of no relation, spurred fierce bipartisan backlash in the US Congress in the aftermath of the report.

“For months, bipartisan members of Congress have raised concerns about NVIDIA’s advanced AI chips going to China,” Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote in a statement.

“NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang and NVIDIA’s board owe Congress answers. And we need to pass bipartisan legislation we have ready to stop advanced American technology from going to China.”

Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives also called on Huang to appear and testify before Congress about the affair on November 18.

“It is vital that Congress determines the extent to which US national security has been placed at risk,” Republicans John Moolenaar, Brian Mast and Rick Crawford said in a statement.

In an email to Nvidia staff on Sunday, Huang had admitted to having an extramarital relationship.

“I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse ‌for what I did,” Huang said.

Nvidia has grown rapidly in recent years with the rise of AI, producing chips for large language models developed by companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Google.

Huang has also been closely working with US President Donald Trump since the Republican leader returned to office in 2025.

In August of that year, the Trump administration announced it would take a 15 percent cut of certain Nvidia chip sales to China.

Trump reportedly bought as much as $1.6m in Nvidia stock and sold about $1m in August, ahead of November’s midterm elections.

After the midterm races last Tuesday, stocks for AI-related companies, including Nvidia, tumbled in reaction to widespread Republican losses.

Trump has pushed back against calls to regulate AI companies, but many Democrats during the midterms campaigned on placing restrictions on the companies, including on the construction of data centres.

Nvidia lost $450bn in market value in a single trading day last week, but it rebounded on Friday, regaining 4 percent of its losses.

Israel’s president officially tasks the opposition leader with forming a new government.

Israel’s opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot, the man officially tasked by President Isaac Herzog with trying to form the country’s next government, has said that he was open to including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his coalition lineup.

In a speech at Sunday’s ceremony in Herzog’s office in Jerusalem, Eisenkot suggested Netanyahu’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was also welcome to join.

“If members of Likud and the Religious Zionist Party truly believe this is a time for unity, as they told the president, I cannot conceive of any reason why they would not support a government under my leadership and the principles I have presented,” Eisenkot said.

Eisenkot, who ran as Netanyahu’s main rival, has six weeks to form a new government. At the ceremony, Eisenkot said he will act in the interests of the public and represent all parts of Israeli society.

Herzog, meanwhile, warned that the country faced uncertainties after the November 3 midterm elections in the United States, which brought victories for several political figures critical of Israel and the US’s military support.

“The State of Israel needs a stable government,” Herzog said, pointing to the “new political reality” in the US.

Eisenkot led Israel’s military from 2015 to 2019 and sat as an observer in Netanyahu’s war cabinet for the first eight months of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which began in October 2023.

Despite this, Arab-led parties endorsed Eisenkot for the mandate to replace Netanyahu.

In Israel’s October 27 elections, Eisenkot’s four-party alliance won 48 seats, while Netanyahu’s right-wing and religious bloc secured 53, leaving both short of the 61 needed for a parliamentary majority. Arab-led parties, representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, won a record 19 seats.

Eisenkot has ruled out forming a government with the Arab-led parties, which would give him a 67-seat bloc. Winning over the two ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah Judaism and Shas, would give him exactly 61 seats.

He could also form a government with fewer than 61 seats if he wins a parliamentary confidence vote.

“Netanyahu still has time to derail Gadi Eisenkot’s efforts to form a government and sabotage attempts to gain a vote of confidence,” said Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.

“In the meantime, he remains caretaker prime minister. If Eisenkot fails, Netanyahu would be the natural second in line to be tasked with forming a government. And if he fails, elections would then be called, and that would still allow Netanyahu to remain as caretaker.

“Many of Netanyahu’s critics say that is his aim. The big question in Israeli politics now is: does the opposition really want to get rid of Netanyahu? Or is the opposition to Palestinian Israelis in mainstream politics so strong that they’re willing to risk keeping Netanyahu in power by going back to the ballot box?”

Colombian President de la Espriella says those behind the attack in Santa Rosa del Sur will have ‘nowhere to hide’.

A drone attack on a military base in northern Colombia has killed three soldiers and wounded at least 16, the country’s armed forces said.

The Colombian military said in a statement on Saturday that the attack hit a base in Santa Rosa del Sur, a small town in the foothills of the San Lucas mountain range. Authorities have not said who carried out the strike, the latest in a series of attacks on security forces as violence rises across rural parts of the country.

The area is rich in gold mines and has long been disputed by rebel armed groups including the Gulf Clan, the National Liberation Army (ELN) and smaller groups led by former members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Footage shared on social media showed clouds of smoke rising from the base after three explosions, and soldiers taking cover in shelters made of sandbags.

“Those who were behind this attack… will have nowhere to hide,” President Abelardo de la Espriella wrote on X. “Every attack against our soldiers strengthens our resolve to defend Colombia.”

Rising violence

Violence has intensified in several rural areas since de la Espriella, a conservative, took office in August.

The president cancelled peace talks with rebel groups and has taken a confrontational approach, including more air strikes, deploying more troops in some cities and creating joint task forces to defend strategic assets such as a pipeline that runs from the Caribbean coast to central Colombia.

De la Espriella’s government argues that armed groups used ceasefires granted by the previous government to consolidate their grip on rural areas, where they tax local businesses and profit from the drug trade.

Some groups have responded by stepping up attacks on the country’s armed forces.

Last week, a military base in Tolima province was targeted with missiles made from gas canisters. The attack killed four civilians, including a two-month-old baby.

Police in the border city of Cucuta have been attacked several times with remotely activated bombs.

State forces and illegal armed groups carried out 34 attacks with bombs or explosives in Colombia in the four weeks to October 16, a 9 percent increase on last year’s four-week average, according to ACLED, a group that monitors armed conflicts.

A 2016 peace deal with FARC led to the demobilisation of more than 14,000 fighters, but smaller groups have since fought over the rebels’ former territory.

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog has tasked Gadi Eisenkot with forming the country’s next government, passing over the former army chief’s rival, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Herzog told Eisenkot of his decision on Saturday evening and will formally hand him the mandate at a ceremony on Sunday, the president’s spokesperson said.

Herzog held consultations with political parties this week to decide who he would appoint to form a government after neither side secured a majority in the October 27 general election.

Some 67 lawmakers, including from Arab-led parties, endorsed Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar party, to form the next government, while only 46 backed Netanyahu, the current prime minister.

Eisenkot will have 28 days – with a possible 14-day extension – to build a coalition of at least 61 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, the minimum threshold for a government.

In the October election, Eisenkot’s four-party alliance won 48 seats, while Netanyahu’s right-wing and religious bloc secured 53, leaving both short of the 61 needed for a parliamentary majority. Arab-led parties, representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, won a record 19 seats.

Eisenkot has ruled out forming a government with the Arab-led parties, which would give him a 67-seat bloc. Winning over the two ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah Judaism and Shas, would give him exactly 61 seats.

He could also form a government with fewer than 61 seats if he wins a parliamentary confidence vote.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on Herzog’s decision, said the president “took the predictable route” in selecting Eisenkot, as he had the highest number of recommendations.

“The hard work will begin now for Eisenkot to put together a government that can pass a vote of confidence at the Knesset that: one, will not break too many of the promises he made on the campaign trail; and two, that can survive the opposition of the right-wing bloc led by Netanyahu,” Odeh said.

If Eisenkot fails to form a government within the allotted time, Herzog will nominate another candidate. If the second nominee fails, a parliament majority can back a third candidate, who will be granted a final 14 days.

If, once again, no government is formed, a new election will be called within 90 days, with Netanyahu staying on as a caretaker prime minister.

United against Netanyahu government

Eisenkot led Israel’s military from 2015 to 2019 and sat as an observer in Netanyahu’s war cabinet for the first eight months of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which began in October 2023.

Ahmad Tibi, a senior member of the Joint List – a coalition of Arab-led parties that holds 11 seats – told Al Jazeera on Saturday that Herzog’s decision was “expected”.

“We were concerned that the president would move towards a national unity government,” he said, referring to a proposed power-sharing agreement between Eisenkot and Netanyahu.

Instead, Arab-led parties endorsed Eisenkot for the mandate, granting him a “considerable margin”.

Tibi said he believes Eisenkot is headed for a minority government “with external support from the Arab parties”.

While this would not be a “dream government” for Arab-led parties, Tibi prioritised bringing down “the government of Netanyahu, [Itamar] Ben-Gvir and [Bezalel] Smotrich”.

Hours before Herzog’s decision, Netanyahu had warned that a government formed by the opposition bloc with support from Arab-led parties would lead to Israel’s collapse.

“Such a government, dependent on Islamists, will dismantle the state of Israel from within, as is happening in European countries, and far worse than that,” Netanyahu said in a prerecorded video speech, echoing the language of far-right politicians who falsely claim parts of Europe have come under Islamic law.

Netanyahu “described us as supporters of terrorists and terrorism”, Tibi said. “My response to him is this: Netanyahu is the biggest terrorist in Israel and the region, and the foremost supporter of terrorism, particularly Jewish terrorism in the West Bank and the Palestinian territories.”

Al Jazeera’s Odeh noted that although Eisenkot has expressly said he does not wish to form a government with Arab-led parties, “they both share quite compelling reasons to get rid of Netanyahu”.

El Hierro asks Spanish government for help after more than 3,300 people arrived on boats since start of November.

Authorities of El Hierro, one of Spain’s Canary Islands, have declared an emergency and asked the government in Madrid for help after a surge in migrants and refugees arriving on boats.

“We are very concerned… by this sharp increase in arrivals,” Alpidio Armas, head of the governing council for El Hierro, one of Europe’s main entry points for migrants and refugees from West Africa, told Spanish television on Saturday.

“This is precisely what has led us to declare an emergency in order to ensure a framework of cooperation with higher-level institutions.”

More than 3,300 people have arrived on the island in about 30 boats since the start of November, according to local authorities. El Hierro has about 11,400 residents.

Officials are seeking temporary accommodation for the new arrivals, while conditions at the island’s hospital have become “undesirable”, Armas said.

The situation is “absolutely unsustainable”, the Reuters news agency quoted Fernando Clavijo, the regional leader of the Canary Islands, as saying on Friday.

Maritime rescue services rescued 3,261 migrants and refugees off the coast of the Canary Islands in the first six days of November.

Clavijo said the numbers were approaching the record levels seen in 2024, and on some days, the current pace was even higher.

Buses have been diverted to migration operations, and medical staff have been brought in from other islands, he said.

Deadly route

The Atlantic route from West Africa to the Canary Islands is one of the world’s deadliest migration crossings.

Two people were found dead on a boat heading for the Canaries this week, and five others are believed to have died during the voyage, according to the AFP news agency, citing survivor accounts.

At least nine migrants or refugees have died off the islands in recent weeks.

Arrivals reached a record of more than 46,000 in 2024, then fell sharply due to tighter surveillance and greater cooperation with countries of origin and transit.

Between January and October, 13,327 irregular migrants and refugees arrived by sea, 5.5 percent fewer than in the same period last year, according to Spain’s Ministry of the Interior.

Patrols off Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco have pushed departures further south, from The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea, making crossings longer.

Senegalese police said on Saturday that they intercepted 142 migrants, including women and young children, off Dakar.

Israel’s president says he will task opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot with forming a new coalition government.

Isaac Herzog has been holding talks with political parties after neither Eisenkot’s bloc nor that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secured a majority in Israel’s parliament, known as the Knesset, following last week’s election.

Eisenkot will now have 28 days to try to form a new administration, with the potential for a 14-day extension.

“Now is the time to form a national emergency government. I will do everything to ensure we are worthy,” the former military chief wrote on X.

No political party in Israel has ever won an outright majority, meaning all governments have been coalitions.

Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party and its far-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish allies won 53 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, while Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar party and three other Jewish opposition parties in his bloc won 48.

Two Arab-led alliances, the United Arab List and the Joint List, together won an unprecedented 19 seats following a surge in turnout among Arab voters.

That positions them as potential kingmakers. However, all but one of the Jewish parties pledged before the polls not to work with them to form a government.

Herzog said that, after consulting all parties during the week, he would give Eisenkot the first chance to form a government.

A statement from the president’s office said he had informed both Eisenkot and Netanyahu of the decision.

Following consultations with delegations from the incoming Knesset members, Eisenkot received 67 recommendations for the premiership and Netanyahu 46, the statement said.

The president has broad discretion to pick someone they believe has the best chance of building a coalition and does not have to choose the leader of the party with the most seats.

With Democrats’ decisive victory in the United States’ midterm elections on Tuesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York is on the verge of making history as the first Black speaker of the US House of Representatives.

For the 56-year-old congressman, it would be the culmination of almost two decades in office, giving him a central role in Democrats’ efforts to rein in Republican US President Donald Trump in the final two years of his presidency.

But as Jeffries celebrated the “blue tsunami” that swept Democrats back into power the day after the election, some within the party were not convinced that the congressman, known for his cautious approach to politics and longstanding support for Israel, was the right man for the moment.

An online petition on Change.org calling on lawmakers to choose another speaker had collected more than 980,000 signatures by Saturday morning, while several newly elected progressive lawmakers have not said whether they will support him.

“We believe the Speaker should represent the Democratic voters, not just the Democratic establishment,” the petition reads.

“This is not a foregone conclusion,” it continues, urging others to run for the job.

Jeffries, who has spent years cultivating relationships within the Democratic caucus, now finds himself at the centre of a bigger fight within the party, as its growing progressive wing pushes for a more confrontational approach to Trump and a break with some of the ideas that have defined the Democrats for decades.

From Brooklyn to Democratic leader

Jeffries grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in the 1970s and 1980s, as the neighbourhood was grappling with the crack cocaine epidemic.

“There was a lot of dysfunction and pain that surrounded the communities that I was raised in, but also a lot of love and compassion from family and friends, and community folks,” he told NYU Law in 2019.

The son of two social workers, Jeffries eventually became a lawyer, tracing his decision to pursue a career in law back to the 1992 riots that erupted in Los Angeles after four white police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King, a Black man.

“It crystallized the fact that we still had a long way to go to eradicate social and racial injustice,” he said.

Jeffries went on to work as a corporate lawyer before entering politics, losing two runs for the New York State Assembly before winning a seat in 2006 and eventually being elected to Congress six years later.

In Washington, he helped broker a bipartisan criminal justice reform law signed by Trump in 2018. Two years later, during Trump’s first impeachment trial, he argued that Trump should be removed from office as one of seven House impeachment managers who presented the case to the US Senate.

Rising quickly through the Democratic ranks, Jeffries became caucus chair in 2019 before making history three years later, when he was unanimously chosen to succeed former Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the party’s House leader, becoming the first Black politician to lead a party in either chamber of Congress.

Can Jeffries unite his party?

Jeffries and Pelosi have been compared for their distinct leadership styles. While Pelosi was known for her commanding, top-down approach, Jeffries has built a reputation for quietly and deliberately building consensus among his colleagues.

That approach has frustrated some Democrats, who say Jeffries has been too reluctant to take firm positions and who question whether he is prepared to confront Trump and Republicans in Congress aggressively enough.

Those concerns were on display after Jeffries declared after the election that “the American people don’t want us to get even; they want us to get things done on their behalf.”

Among those who pushed back was left-wing political commentator Hasan Piker, who reposted a video of Jeffries’s comments, saying: “No, we definitely ARE looking for justice and accountability.”

Jeffries also faced criticism after reports emerged in August that he had privately met Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who does not have a formal role in the administration but has been involved in diplomatic efforts in the Middle East and in Russia.

Jeffries defended the meeting, saying Kushner had requested it and that he had used it to discuss the affordability crisis. But critics argued that rather than meeting privately with Kushner, Jeffries should have been preparing to investigate his business dealings.

Ahead of the election, Axios reported on a plan by some incoming progressive lawmakers – informally known as “The Bloc” and including Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier of New York and Melat Kiros of Colorado – to use the upcoming speaker vote to win concessions from Jeffries on issues such as Medicare for All, cutting funding for ICE, and weapons shipments to Israel.

That may be harder now that the Democrats have a comfortable majority, with Jeffries less dependent on progressive newcomers to secure the speakership. But the result also makes it harder for Jeffries to argue, as he has in the past, that Republican control of Congress is hindering the Democrats’ ability to advance their agenda and hold Trump accountable.

Jeffries’s Israel stance divides Democrats

Of all the sources of tension between Jeffries and his party’s progressive wing, the hardest divide to bridge may be over his longstanding support for Israel and ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

At a conference hosted by the group in 2020, Jeffries opposed putting conditions on US aid to Israel and described Jerusalem as New York City’s “sixth borough”.

He has also been one of the top recipients of financial support from AIPAC and its network of donors, earning the nickname “AIPAC Shakur” from New York radio host Charlamagne tha God.

In a celebratory post after the elections congratulating the candidates it had supported, AIPAC singled out Jeffries and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer by name.

But Jeffries’s steadfast support for Israel throughout its genocidal war on Gaza has put him increasingly at odds with his own party, and he recently signalled that his position may be changing.

In July, even as he voted against an amendment that would have cut $3.3bn in annual military aid to Israel, he acknowledged the need for a reset in US-Israel relations.

“A meaningful change in direction is needed,” he wrote in a letter to colleagues.

Jeffries appears to have the speakership all but secured, with no serious challenger emerging so far.

However, with Trump still in the White House, a party grappling with its own divisions, and voters expecting change on everything from the cost of living to the war on Iran, the bigger test for Jeffries will come once he is on the job.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog must decide who gets the first attempt at forming a government, after an inconclusive election left both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his main rival, former army chief Gadi Eisenkot, short of a parliamentary majority.

Herzog has said he will task a candidate with forming a government on Sunday. Eisenkot has received the endorsement of a majority of lawmakers – but only thanks to parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, which won a record 19 seats in October’s election, but whom Eisenkot has ruled out bringing into government.

Here is what we know:

Who is Herzog likely to ask to form a government?

During consultations between party heads and Herzog, which ended on Thursday, 67 out of 120 Knesset members endorsed Eisenkot, while only 46 endorsed Netanyahu.

Netanyahu’s endorsements fell seven short of his bloc’s 53 seats after United Torah Judaism, one of his longtime allies, withheld endorsements over his coalition’s failure to exempt ultra-Orthodox Israelis from military service.

Herzog has not publicly committed to either side, saying that while the numbers may look clear, “mutual vetoes between the blocs and within the blocs themselves” made it hard to tell who could build a coalition.

Prior to the October 27 elections, reports emerged that the president wanted to push for a national unity government between Netanyahu and Eisenkot’s rival parties to avoid another election.

How difficult will it be to form a government?

No bloc has secured the 61 seats needed to form a majority government. Netanyahu’s right-wing and religious alliance has 53, four Jewish-led parties backing Eisenkot hold 48, and the Arab-led parties hold 19.

Eisenkot has ruled out forming a government with the Arab-led parties, which would give him a 67-seat bloc. Winning over the two ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah Judaism and Shas, would give him exactly 61 seats.

United Torah Judaism has signalled that its support was available for the right price, but Shas endorsed Netanyahu on Wednesday.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, would need to lure an opposition party to his side. A unity government with the two men rotating as prime minister – and excluding Arab-led parties from government – is another option, but many Netanyahu rivals have ruled out serving under him.

Will Arab-led parties be part of the next government?

So far, it seems unlikely that they will.

The Arab-led parties are the Joint List, an alliance of three parties, and the United Arab List (Ra’am). They hold 11 and eight seats, respectively.

Ra’am says it is willing to join an Eisenkot-led government, while the Joint List has ruled out joining but offered to help put him in office from the outside.

Both endorsed Eisenkot during consultations with President Herzog, but he has refused to bring either into government unless they meet certain conditions, including recognising Hamas as a “terrorist organisation”.

Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas, whose party joined an anti-Netanyahu coalition in 2021 and became the first party representing Palestinians to enter government in Israel, has expressed support for disarming Hamas, but declined to label it as a “terror” group.

However, Israeli law allows Eisenkot to become prime minister with fewer than 61 seats if his proposed government wins a parliamentary confidence vote – which the two could help him secure.

Eisenkot could form a minority government in the meantime and later secure a majority by luring the two ultra-Orthodox parties by making concessions on the conscription issue.

In positions that many observers see as highlighting the second-class nature of Palestinian citizens in Israel, some of Eisenkot’s allies have opposed any reliance on Palestinian lawmakers, while Netanyahu’s Likud has threatened that cooperating with the Arab-led parties would be “dangerous to Israel”.

Senior Joint List member Ahmad Tibi told The Associated Press that rejecting a partnership would prove Israel is “an ethnocracy, not an absolute democracy for all citizens”.

What do Palestinian-led parties want from the next government?

First, an end to Netanyahu’s rule.

The Joint List said its unanimous backing for Eisenkot answered a “public demand” to stop Netanyahu and his government returning to power.

By widening Eisenkot’s lead, it said, it hoped to narrow the path to a unity government that keeps Netanyahu in office. Its support, it added, did not mean dropping its reservations about an opposition that had not shown readiness to confront Netanyahu’s approach or incitement against Palestinian citizens of Israel.

In return for outside support, Arab-led parties are seeking guarantees for Palestinian citizens, including an end to house demolitions and incitement, action against crime, and a political horizon for Palestinians.

Tibi told The AP he had no illusions that this would end Israel’s wars or bring a Palestinian state, but said a “repair government” would improve Palestinian citizens’ lives, including, potentially, by tackling violent crime in their communities.

Ra’am leader Abbas has also said ending the government of Netanyahu, and far-right figures such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, is a priority.

What happens if no government can be formed?

The nominee chosen by Herzog will have 28 days to form a coalition, extendable by 14 more. If they fail, another nominee will be chosen and granted 28 days.

If the second nominee fails, a parliament majority can back a third candidate, and be granted a final 14 days.

If once again no government is formed, the Knesset will be dissolved and an entirely new election called within 90 days. This would mean Netanyahu staying on as caretaker prime minister.

Nehru Jamhour, an analyst of Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that this drawn-out impasse was the likeliest outcome, and Netanyahu’s preferred one. He said that Netanyahu was hoping that a repeat election could weaken his rivals and depress turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel.

In September, a poll found that 70 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans supported limiting the construction of new data centres in the United States.

But that opposition was tested in Tuesday’s midterm election, with analysts examining key races to see if the public backlash would translate into votes.

It did. There were 41 ballot measures related to data centres in Tuesday’s midterms, spread across the country.

According to Data Centers on the Ballot, an election-monitoring project run by Redbud Consulting, voters are on track to reject data centre development in all but one of the contests.

Two of the races continue to be counted but are expected to result in majorities to reject or limit data centres.

Only Harwood, North Dakota, a small town with a population of fewer than 800 people, voted to oppose such limits. The measure it defeated would have required independent reviews of large industrial projects like data centres before they could be built in the area.

Experts say Tuesday’s midterm elections indicate that the debate around data centres has become a bipartisan issue, intertwined with cost-of-living concerns and fears over job stability.

A construction boom

As of April, the Pew Research Center estimated that there were already 3,000 data centres in the country, with more than 1,500 others in progress.

The construction boom has been driven in large part by the growth in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector. That industry, experts say, has fed concerns about a shifting economic landscape.

“The unchecked acceleration of AI development has been causing concern across the board,” Bhaskar Chakravorti, the dean of global business at Tufts University, told Al Jazeera.

“People worry about their jobs and what it might mean from a broader economic perspective. But closer to home, people could see the physical manifestations of AI in data centres being built in their back yards, or they were hearing about it from others.”

Not only are voters afraid that AI might replace human work, but they also fear the downstream costs of data centres, according to Chakravorti.

Data centres consume large amounts of water and energy, which critics say can drive up electricity costs for nearby communities.

“Whether higher energy costs were driven by broader factors, such as the Iran war or tariffs, AI competing for space on the electricity grid was certainly part of its unpopularity,” Chakravorti said.

Voters, he added, were seeing the results “in their energy bills”.

A 2026 working paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas estimated that, as of last year, wholesale electricity prices had risen by 6.9 percent as a result of data centres.

James Mercer, founder of Metro Colo Advisory, an independent data centre advisory firm, told Al Jazeera that those anticipated costs mobilised voters in many areas.

“What they push back on is a building down the road that needs as much power as a small city, when they suspect their own electric bill will cover it,” Mercer said.

“That’s why local resistance has grown so fast: counties pausing new projects, zoning fights and data centres turning into a ballot issue.”

An election-season talking point

That popular resistance led several candidates in high-profile races to make AI and data-centre development central to their campaigns.

Among them is Democrat Sherrod Brown, who flipped a key Senate seat in Ohio, the state that accounted for the largest share of data-centre ballot initiatives this year.

Some 21 votes were taken on data centres in the state, out of a total of 47 referendums and measures that took place across the country in 2026.

Brown, a former senator, made Republican incumbent Jon Husted’s support for data-centre development a key point of attack.

“One guy has led the charge on these. That guy’s responsible, and that’s Jon Husted,” Brown told NBC News earlier this year.

In Texas, meanwhile, Democrat Gina Hinojosa called for a moratorium on new data-centre approvals until stronger protections for local communities were put in place.

Though her position worried tech investors keen on expansion in the Lone Star State, Hinojosa ultimately defeated incumbent Greg Abbott in the governor’s race.

“While Abbott had a moratorium on data centres in Texas currently, the overriding view is this would end once he got re-elected,” Dan Ives, managing director at the bank Yorkville Ives, said in an analyst note.

“Hinojosa is a known anti-data center politician and negative on the AI buildout, which makes worries around the future of the data center buildout in Texas a real issue for tech investors.”

Another successful Democratic candidate, Senator-elect James Talarico, also flipped a Republican-held seat with a pledge to increase data centre regulation.

Texas has been at the centre of growing concerns over the water demands of AI infrastructure.

The city of Corpus Christi, for example, has faced severe drought conditions, with its reservoir falling to just 8 percent of its total capacity earlier this year.

The city has been described as at risk of running out of drinking water. Talarico proposed adopting closed-loop water systems to reduce data centre consumption. He also advocated for data centre operators to fund local infrastructure improvements.

He won Corpus Christi by a 12-percentage-point margin.

In another key Senate race, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed called for the creation of a federal agency to oversee the AI industry. He bested his Republican opponent with more than 52 percent of the vote.

Looming pressures

With Democrats poised to control both chambers of Congress, the AI industry is likely to face increased scrutiny from lawmakers.

“[We are] more likely to get real regulation and oversight,” Alex Turner, a former researcher who resigned from Google DeepMind, told Al Jazeera.

“I look forward to advising any congressperson who wants to get serious about the risks from AI, no matter their party affiliation.”

Congressional leaders are increasingly treating AI as a national security and public safety threat, after a string of alarming security failures over the past six months.

In one incident, OpenAI autonomous agents escaped a controlled testing environment and infiltrated the tech start-up Hugging Face. In another, AI agents accessed bank accounts without authorisation, according to reporting from the publication Axios.

In late October, Anthropic’s Claude AI model also accessed voter data in Georgia.

Once the 120th Congress is sworn in on January 3, Democrats are expected to use the legislature’s oversight committees to conduct investigations into AI malfeasance.

On Tuesday night, as it became clear that Democrats would win majorities in Congress, Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts pledged that new probes were on the way.

“They are going to need to plant new forests for all of the subpoenas we’ll be printing,” the Democrat wrote on the social media platform X.

Another congressmember, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, posted on social media her support for more restrictions on AI growth.

“Top of the Democratic agenda on day one needs to be a pause on advanced AI development, regulation of this out-of-control industry, and a ban on artificial superintelligence,” Ansari said.

Tech companies themselves have responded to the midterm results with proposals for alleviating voter concerns.

After the election, OpenAI published a framework titled Setting a New Standard for Responsible AI Infrastructure. In it, the company pledged to “prioritize closed-loop or low-water cooling” and to “pay our own way on energy and infrastructure”.

Days before Tuesday’s contest, OpenAI also sought to rebrand its data centres as “compute campuses”.

The political shift is also hitting Wall Street. Investors increasingly see tighter oversight of AI on the horizon, and some of the sector’s biggest growth stocks have stumbled.

On Thursday, for example, chipmaker Nvidia lost $450bn in market value in a single trading day.

Despite Thursday’s losses, Nvidia rebounded on Friday, gaining 4 percent in early trading, although it remained down 6.8 percent over the previous five days.

Data-centre operators such as CoreWeave tumbled on Thursday before climbing 6.6 percent on Friday. The company remained down 16 percent over the previous five days.

The U.S. Justice Department moved Friday to voluntarily dismiss its lawsuit challenging the counting of 20,000 ballots in California, arguing the relief it sought is now impossible given Tuesday’s midterm election has concluded.

The Justice Department had sought a court order requiring state and Los Angeles County election officials to set aside the ballots, which it alleged could be from noncitizen voters. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter and a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had both rejected that request, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied a Trump administration appeal to those lower court rulings — with no noted dissents.

Carter had ruled that the government’s request was probably unconstitutional, given the Constitution gives states and Congress power over elections, not the executive, and probably ran afoul of federal law barring sweeping vetting of voter rolls in the immediate run-up to an election.

However, he had set a schedule moving forward for additional fact-finding in the case — including by appointing a special master to dig into the data the federal government was relying on to assert the 20,000 voters were potentially noncitizens.

In a filing before Carter on Friday, Assistant U.S. Atty. Julie Hamill in Los Angeles wrote that that court process was no longer necessary, as it would not provide the relief that the federal government was seeking by filing its lawsuit.

“In light of the Supreme Court’s denial, the United States is evaluating how to best ensure that American votes are protected, including by preventing vote dilution by noncitizens. In addition, by the time of this Court’s hearing on Nov. 13 in this matter, California will have already commingled the challenged ballots with lawful ones,” Hamill wrote. “There is then no way to get the challenged ballots segregated. As a result, the relief the United States sought and needed is no longer available — rendering voluntary dismissal necessary.”

Hamill wrote that the Trump administration had sought to “protect American voters and to prevent the irreparable harm of state and local election officials including illegally cast votes in the final vote tabulation,” but had “exhausted its appeals to obtain timely relief” by going to — and being denied by — the Supreme Court.

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli’s office in Los Angeles — where Hamill works — referred questions about the filing to the Justice Department.

Kiersten Pels, a Justice Department spokesperson, said the litigation at issue was “moot” but that the Trump administration “is not backing down” in its targeting of alleged noncitizen voters, including in a separate case in which it is still demanding that California “conduct proper list maintenance, including removing noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls — which will be crucial to ensure fair elections in the future.”

Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a defendant in the case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan, another defendant, said he was “pleased that the administration has accepted the clarity of the court findings” against it and ended its lawsuit.

“At each stage of this election, and in response to the Department of Justice, we have been clear that state and federal law sets well-defined standards for verifying and challenging voter eligibility,” Logan said. “Our commitment and focus remain on the fair, secure, accurate, and legal processes we are engaged in to complete and certify the election.”

California Atty. Gen Rob Bonta, in a statement, said that after losing in every court it tried, including the Supreme Court, “the Trump Administration has given up its latest unlawful effort to interfere with California’s elections and disenfranchise eligible voters.”

Bonta added: “Rest assured: California has and always will defend your fundamental right to vote.”

Tricia Webber, president of the California Assn. of Clerks and Election Officials, said state election officials “are very pleased” with the voluntary dismissal of the case — which she said “affirms that our elections are administered with the utmost integrity and care.”

“At the same time, we are under no illusions. We recognize that this issue is unlikely to go away permanently, and we remain fully prepared to continue defending California’s election administration against future challenges,” she said. “We will always stand ready to protect every eligible voter’s right to participate in a fair and secure election process.”

The administration’s filing — three days after President Trump’s party took a drubbing in the midterms — marks a sudden and unremarkable conclusion to an unprecedented court battle in the days leading up to the election, when the federal government sought permission from the courts to force state and local elections officials to set aside votes during an ongoing election.

Carter had rejected the administration’s request for immediate intervention in a blistering Oct. 28 ruling, calling its allegations about the ineligible voters “not credible” and warning that the proposed action could disenfranchise eligible voters and sow chaos in the ongoing midterm election.

“This request violates longstanding constitutional principles mandating that states have control over their elections,” Carter wrote. “If [the Trump administration’s] last-minute request for relief were granted, either party could create chaos for their own political purposes to disrupt the election process.”

While Justice Department officials characterized the relief it had requested from the court as “targeted and modest,” Carter had reached a sharply different conclusion — writing that the administration’s demands would “wreak havoc” on an ongoing election and “create a chilling effect on election workers and voters alike, and discount the votes of United States citizens.”

The reliability of the government’s list became a central issue in the litigation. Logan’s office said its review of about 200 flagged voters found that a substantial portion appeared to have been born in the United States, a finding Homeland Security officials disputed.

Election officials elsewhere in California also reported problems with the lists, including names of people who did not appear to live in their counties or to be registered voters. Justice Department officials sent letters to election officials across the state, demanding that they sequester flagged ballots and warning of potential criminal penalties if they failed to comply.

The three-judge 9th Circuit panel that heard the federal government’s appeal to Carter’s ruling — composed of two appointees of President Trump and one of President Biden — came to some of the same conclusions Carter did in a 2-1 ruling. One of the Trump appointees dissented, writing that he would have ruled for the administration.

Carter ordered an expedited hearing on the state’s and county’s motions to dismiss the case and the government’s motion for a preliminary injunction. He ordered all parties by Nov. 6 to submit witness lists, including experts, regarding the reliability of the list of voters and the methodology behind it. He ordered both sides to appear at the Nov. 13 hearing, with submitted witnesses prepared to take the stand.

Ending the litigation now will forestall that process to detail the origins of the administration’s list — which is still being used by federal prosecutors in California to target individual voters for criminal prosecution.