law

Caracas, November 10, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan National Assembly approved on Tuesday a reform of the Organic Law of the Electrical System and Service to open the electrical grid to the private sector amid a crisis of rising demand and recurring blackouts.

The new legislation stipulates that power generation, transmission, distribution, and commercialization can now “be carried out by the state-owned operating company, as well as by mixed-ownership and private companies holding the corresponding authorization.”

“The reform will allow private entities to provide electricity services,” National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez told reporters after the legislative session. “It will make self-generation possible, allowing private companies to generate and supply electricity to businesses, industries, shopping centers, etc. This will help increase supply.”

The Venezuelan parliament had preliminarily approved the reform in June. A commission incorporated adjustments to the text, which deputies reviewed across several parliamentary debates before Tuesday’s final vote. The final text, seen by Venezuelanalysis, will be published in the National Gazette in the coming days.

The updated law puts an end to the state monopoly over electricity established by former President Hugo Chávez. A 2007 law identified the sector as “strategic for the nation” and merged several companies into the National Electric Corporation (CORPOELEC). 

Under the new rules, private companies can set up new power plants, build transmission infrastructure and charge a fixed toll, or receive distribution and commercialization rights in specific areas.

In addition, they can also receive concessions of state assets for a maximum of 25 years, with the responsibility of returning them to CORPOELEC or another designated state entity at the end of the period. The state will retain exclusive control over all hydroelectric generation in the Caroní basin as well as transmission and distribution responsibilities in “strategic” areas.

The law also provides that disputes or disagreements of any kind that cannot be settled amicably by the parties may be brought before Venezuelan courts or resolved “through alternative dispute resolution mechanisms.” US licenses allowing Western corporations to deal with Venezuela have demanded that disputes be settled in the US, the UK, France, or Singapore.

Regarding oil companies, the law stipulates that they must “ensure a reliable and stable supply of electricity for the execution of primary activities” through self-generation, cogeneration, or third-party contracts designed to secure operational autonomy. Oil and independent power generation firms will also not require state authorization to generate electricity for their internal networks, unless they connect to the national grid.

Rodríguez stressed that the changes do not to amount to privatizing electricity services but rather constitute an “expansion.”

“An appropriate sanctions framework has been established, along with guarantees for private entities to participate. This is not privatization, but an expansion that allows private companies to provide services, particularly to large consumers,” he stated.

The head of the legislature added that electricity consumption tariffs will be computed in foreign currency and converted using the official exchange rate set by the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV). He also disclosed a policy of subsidies intended to shield vulnerable sectors.

“This will primarily benefit people who, because of their income level, cannot afford the full tariff, unlike industries or major retailers,” he concluded.

The legislation also establishes a National Electric System Superintendency, empowered to establish tariffs, initiate administrative investigations, and impose penalties on those who violate the law. Operators may face fines of up to 2 percent of their gross revenue for failing to comply with regulations governing electrical installations, disregarding instructions issued by competent authorities, refusing to provide requested information, or obstructing inspections.

Consumers, meanwhile, may be fined between US $50 and $10,000 for unauthorized use of electricity, with similar penalties for unauthorized consumption, and ten times larger ones for connecting equipment that causes disturbances. The same range of fines applies to tampering with, damaging, or modifying meters and supplying electricity to third parties without authorization, among other violations.

The new law also allows the Venezuelan government to grant tax breaks to private corporations at its discretion to “promote the expansion, efficiency, or environmental sustainability” of the electric system.

The electricity reform, which follows major legislative pro-business overhauls to the mining and energy sectors, comes amid a persistent electricity crisis that sees most of the country face daily blackouts, sometimes lasting up to 12 hours.

Residents have staged recurring protests. On Monday, a crowd blocked the Argimiro Gabaldón highway connecting Barcelona and Puerto La Cruz in Anzoátegui State for several hours.

The Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict (OVCS) registered 531 protests related to electricity services nationwide in September. For her part, Acting President Delcy Rodríguez has criticized the demonstrations, affirming that “burning tires does not add a single megawatt to the electric grid.”

Venezuela currently produces only around 12,000 MW, roughly 40 percent of its installed capacity, and faces a generation deficit of over 4,000 MW. Venezuelan authorities have pledged to add 1,300 MW to the grid before the end of the year and have negotiated agreements with GE Vernova, Siemens, and IMPSA to bring paralyzed power plants back online.

Targeting short-term improvements, CORPOELEC recently signed an agreement with Turkish company Karpowership to lease two power-generating vessels that would add 200 MW to the grid in western Zulia State, one of the states hardest hit by electricity shortages. 

However, Venezuelan officials have not provided additional details on the contract, including its cost, duration, and fuel supply.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.

California’s sky-high housing costs cast a dark shadow on its sunny disposition, sending some fleeing to more affordable climes.

Yet voters decisively rejected a state ballot measure that promised to make it easier and cheaper to build housing by changing the law often blamed for driving up costs: the California Environmental Quality Act. Proposition 45 even divided pro-housing groups.

So what gives? And where do we go from here?

Proposition 45 would have offered expedited environmental review and put a shot clock on legal challenges for projects defined as essential, including those involving housing, water, transportation and internet access. Supporters said it would cut costly delays, while opponents warned it would weaken environmental protections and public input.

Skeptics pointed out that state lawmakers already changed CEQA last year, exempting the lion’s share of urban infill housing from the law. They argued that means the proposition would have largely benefited low-density development on the outskirts of cities — sometimes labeled “sprawl.”

But supporters say the measure would also boost projects in cities left out of those exemptions. All types of housing, some say, are needed to dig the state out of its shortage.

For housing advocates, where they stood on the measure “ultimately depends on how you feel about exurban development” and whether the state should be making it easier to build it, said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at the UC Berkeley Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, who didn’t take a public position on the measure.

Jordan Grimes, legislative director for the Greenbelt Alliance, an environmental nonprofit that opposed the measure, is among those that see it as the wrong type of development.

According to Grimes, it increases greenhouse gas emissions as residents are forced to drive more; gobbles up natural areas and farmland to build; and requires outsize investment from taxpayers in the urban core to pay for the needed infrastructure.

“It’s definitely not climate friendly for sure,” he said. “But sprawl is also a pretty huge economic drag.”

The significant legislative changes enacted last year under Assembly Bill 130 are paying off, he said. He estimated some 18,000 units have since been permitted statewide.

“If you want to build a new apartment building in Los Angeles or Beverly Hills or Palo Alto or San Francisco, you can do that now,” he said, describing it as a “watershed moment” in the state’s urban housing production.

But many who laud the changes believe there’s more that can be done. For instance, infill projects over 20 acres don’t qualify for the CEQA exemption.

“So there’s still these massive projects where you know developers want to be able to do redevelopments of shopping malls and parking structures, but they just can’t,” said Paul Shafer, public policy manager for the nonprofit California Council for Affordable Housing, which backed the measure.

He added that there are certain rural areas that didn’t benefit from last year’s changes because projects there don’t fit the definition of infill housing.

“There’s a lot of hesitation around what greenfill looks like,” he said. “But when we’re in a 2.5-million-unit housing shortage, it really requires more than just that infill development to fill that gap.”

Shifting public opinion

A July poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 73% of likely voters would support Proposition 45. By October, voters were divided, with 50% opposed and 46% in favor, according to another survey by the nonpartisan think tank.

Experts pointed to a number of possibilities for voters’ decisions, including what some characterized as successful but potentially misleading messaging by the opposition and confusion over the complex measure. Others suggested voters rejected it based on its substance, deciding they didn’t want to fast-track some projects it covered.

Supporters raised several million dollars more than opponents, according to state campaign finance data. Yet Jason Elliott, a consultant who helped craft the measure, said proponents were outspent 2 to 1 on paid advertising, “making it hard to compete.”

What’s next

Some want to see state lawmakers take up parts of Proposition 45, including imposing timelines for review and litigation related to CEQA. The measure generally would have meant that environmental impact reports could take no more than 365 business days and lawsuits no more than 270 calendar days.

“Death by delay is a real strategy, particularly for affordable housing,” said Linda Mandolini, chief executive of Eden Housing, which develops and owns affordable housing.

For five years, she said, the nonprofit was embroiled in a series of lawsuits over a 130-unit project it’s developing in the eastern edge of the Bay Area. It’s starting construction this year, but she estimates the delays cost them $29 million.

Shafer, of California Council for Affordable Housing, said shot clocks would offer some certainty that the state’s current development process lacks. Some say it’s hard to secure financing and insurance when you don’t know how long it will take before you can break ground.

But Shafer is not optimistic that the Legislature will prioritize making such changes.

“I don’t think there’s going to be an appetite to see reforms in this area, certainly not as far-reaching as we saw in Prop. 45, for many years to come,” he said.

Not everyone sees the environmental law as the area to target.

UC Berkeley’s Elkind believes the first step to boost housing in already developed areas would be for state lawmakers to allow denser housing in communities where it’s restricted — such as permitting apartments in areas zoned for single-family homes.

“We’re really at that point where we’ve got to start kind of chainsawing through the thicket of local requirements that keep the infill housing we need from getting built,” he said. “And it’s not really about CEQA at this point.”

Trump administration awarded more than $60m each to St Louis, Missouri, and Jackson, Mississippi, in crime push.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has said that it will award the cities of St Louis, Missouri, and Jackson, Mississippi, more than $60m each to expand law enforcement resources as part of a bid to combat violent crime.

The White House stated in a social media post on Tuesday that the so-called “Model Cities Initiative” would help the municipalities increase their capacity for prosecutions and policing activities.

“The Model Cities Initiative reflects the Trump Administration’s commitment to reducing crime across the country and ensuring the safety of every American,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a press release describing the programme last month.

The initiative has said that it will distribute nearly $300m for such efforts among the cities of St Louis and Jackson, along with Jacksonville, Florida, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The Trump administration has promoted a largely punitive approach to combatting crime in cities across the country, including controversial steps such as the deployment of the National Guard to large, Democrat-led cities that have drawn accusations of executive overreach, civil liberties violations and political intimidation.

While Trump and his supporters have credited their policies with a drop in violent crime, that trend predates his return to office and has taken place in cities with a wide variety of approaches towards criminal justice across the country.

Homicides in St Louis, for example, have been falling for several years after a brief surge during the COVID-19 pandemic, and hit their lowest levels in more than a decade during the first half of 2026.

While Democratic officials have denounced Trump’s crackdowns, some Republican-led states have embraced them.

The government deployed members of several federal agencies to the city of Memphis, Tennessee, governed by Democrats at the local level but located in a Republican-led state.

The Trump administration has touted that effort as an inspiration for the Model Cities Initiative along with other cases, such as Washington, DC.

The government has hailed the Memphis deployment as a success, but some residents and civil liberties groups have accused the task force of widespread civil rights violations and excessive force.

A video released earlier this month as part of an investigation into a shooting by a member of the Tennessee National Guard, deployed in Memphis as part of Trump’s task force, showed the soldiers aiming their guns at a man as he lay dying on the street after being shot in the back.

A Northern California judge on Monday permanently barred Shasta County from implementing a voter-approved initiative that sought to dramatically reshape voting in the conservative stronghold.

Measure B, which was passed by 56% of voters in the June primary, sought to require hand-counted ballots, eliminate most mail-in voting and require residents to present government-issued photo identification to cast a ballot on election day.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber, the state’s top elections official, sued Shasta County days after the primary, arguing that Measure B violates state election laws. Shasta County Superior Court Judge Benjamin Hanna temporarily blocked the measure in August.

In his final ruling Monday, Hanna wrote that the provisions of Measure B “are wholly contrary to existing state law.”

“The regulation and administration of the electoral process is a matter of statewide concern, and Shasta County’s status as a charter county does not entitle it to enact invalid legislation simply because some in this community do not agree with the existing law,” the ruling continued.

Attorney Alexander Haberbush, who represented a group of Measure B supporters, did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment. But Haberbush told local television station KRCR that they are “reviewing every option, including an appeal.”

“Today’s ruling tells the voters of every charter county in California that they have no say over how their own elections are run. This ruling goes far further than any state law requires,” he told the station.

The battle over election integrity took hold in the mostly rural Shasta County in 2023. At the time, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors, fueled by President Trump’s unsubstantiated election fraud claims, stopped using Dominion voting machines and opted to hand-count ballots for the county’s more than 110,000 registered voters. The move quickly prompted a new state law that banned them from doing so.

The fight has continued amid Trump’s calls for the government to “nationalize” state-run elections and restrict voting by mail.

Weber in a statement Monday described Measure B as a “colossal waste of time and taxpayer funds” and an attempt to disenfranchise voters.

“Today’s decision affirms what was a forgone conclusion from the beginning,” she said. “As long as there are those willing to enact reckless, illegal, and poorly drafted laws, on behalf of Californians, we will see them in court.”

A VICTIM of rapist Russell Brand told a court she has lived with the never-ending trauma of the attack for the past 17 years.

The disgraced star’s youngest target met him when he invited her backstage at one of his stand-up comedy gigs.

He hand-picked her from a line-up of female fans at the Hammersmith Apollo in 2009.

He invited the woman, who was in her early 20s at the time, to his £2.3million home in Hampstead, North London, the following week.

He then anally raped her.

In a later text exchange she rejected his further advances, telling him: “You’ve pushed me far enough. You treated me like an animal.”

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In an emotional victim personal statement — one of four presented to Southwark crown court yesterday — the woman told how her life has been plagued by what she called the “lasting effects of trauma” from the attack.

She said: “The effects have been significant and continue to affect me today. Even now, I feel that I am living with the trauma of what happened. It is something I carry with me every day and it often feels never-ending.”

In her statement, read out by prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones KC, she told the court that she felt humiliated and overwhelmed and moved back in with her parents because she did not feel safe alone.

She described becoming hyper-vigilant, adding: “I often felt on edge and avoided certain situations.”

She added that she was left terrified that she had contracted a sexually transmitted disease from the comedian and TV presenter — and that also had a profound effect on her mental health.

In her statement, she said the thought of seeing Brand again caused her “anxiety and fear” and destroyed her career ambitions.

She told the court: “The defendant’s public profile had a significant impact on me.­

“Because of who he was and the influence he held, I did not feel confident speaking openly about what had happened.

“I did not know who I could trust or confide in.

“I felt that if I reported him, I would not be believed. His fame, wealth and influence created a power imbalance which made me feel powerless.

“I did not have the confidence to challenge someone who appeared so powerful, rich and influential.

“His public profile meant that he remained present in my life even when I wanted to move on.

“I would regularly encounter references to him in the media, which made it difficult to escape reminders of what had happened.”

The woman eventually came forward to police in 2025 after seeing he had been charged with attacking other women.

She told the court that Brand’s celebrity was a significant factor in her not contacting police about the rape for 16 years.

She added: “When I eventually reported what had happened, it was not simply because of the media documentary.

“By that stage I had become aware of the police investigation and felt that I was finally in a stronger position mentally to disclose my experience.

“Reporting what happened was something I had hoped I would eventually be able to do but it took a long time to reach that point. The investigation and criminal justice process have been extremely difficult.

“Providing personal records and access to my mobile phone felt highly intrusive and, at times, I felt as though I was the person being scrutinised and interrogated.

“Every update regarding the case brought back memories of the incident and felt like reopening old wounds.

“Rather than allowing me to move forward, updates often pulled me back into a painful period of my life.

“I have also been very anxious about attending court and being cross-examined. The thought of personal details being discussed publicly has caused me significant distress.”

The complainant also described the way Brand’s defence team labelled her an “obsessive fan” as deeply hurtful.

She responded: “That portrayal does not reflect who I am.

“I had my own ambitions, goals and aspirations.”

And she went on: “The media coverage surrounding the case has added another layer of difficulty.

“I was unprepared for the level of publicity.

“It has been extremely distressing to relive what happened and then see it discussed so widely across television, newspapers and online platforms.

“I have been worried throughout that my identity, or the identities of my family members, could become known.

“The intensity of media interest has created anxieties that are separate from the rape and has made it much harder to put the experience behind me.”

She went on: “My confidence and self-esteem have been badly affected. I regularly feel on edge and question my own judgment.

“I doubt my ability to make good decisions and no longer trust my instincts in the way I once did.

“I have lost trust in other people, particularly those I do not know well, and I often worry that I will not be listened to or believed.

“I also lost respect for myself following the incident and felt as though I had lost control over my own life. Looking back, I feel that I abandoned myself and my own needs.”

Concluding her victim personal statement, she told the court how what she called the “lasting and far-reaching” consequences of the attack had affected “almost every aspect of my life”.

She said: “Even now, I continue to experience anxiety, difficulties with trust, reduced confidence and the lasting effects of trauma.

“What happened is not something that I have simply been able to move on from.

“It remains a significant part of my life and continues to influence how I view myself, my relationships and my future.”

Brand — who clutched prayer beads in his hand — looked on emotionless as the prosecutor delivered the statement.

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), a prolific lawmaker who has reshaped California policy on a host of fronts — from housing to transgender rights — will succeed House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi as San Francisco’s representative in Congress after San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan called Wiener on Wednesday to concede, her campaign confirmed.

Wiener, 56, who is gay and reviled by some on the far right for his progressive policies and staunch LGBTQ+ advocacy work, overcame Pelosi’s endorsement of Chan in the much-watched race between Democrats, and will be the first out LGBTQ+ person to represent the bright-blue city in the House.

“In Washington I’ll bring the same determination I showed in Sacramento every single day,” Wiener said in a statement. “It’s time to deliver a better tomorrow for our city and our country.”

Wiener’s win hands Pelosi — known for her deft political instinct and sweeping influence over the Democratic Party and donor base — a rare defeat in her home city just as her nearly 40-year career in the House concludes.

The Associated Press had yet to call the race in Wiener’s favor as of late Wednesday.

But Chan, a progressive backed by labor, announced she was conceding the race in a statement, writing, “After reviewing the results and the ballots remaining to be counted, while we expect the margin to narrow significantly, we do not have a clear path to victory. I congratulate Scott Wiener on his election and wish him success in serving San Francisco.”

Chan said she was “deeply grateful” to Pelosi “for her trust and for four decades of extraordinary service that have strengthened San Francisco and our country.”

Pelosi in her own statement said Chan “brought courage, conviction and a deep love for San Francisco” to the campaign.

“As a working mom, a public servant, and an immigrant, she gave voice to families whose struggles she knows firsthand,” Pelosi said. “I was proud to support her, and I am so proud of the campaign she ran.”

Pelosi also congratulated Wiener. “Representing San Francisco is an extraordinary honor and a profound responsibility. My office stands ready to assist in the transition, and I wish him success in service for the people of our city,” she said.

Wiener thanked Chan for a “spirited and hard-fought campaign,” his campaign team, volunteers, supporters and donors for their hard work, and Pelosi — whom he hailed as “the greatest Speaker in modern American history” — saying he is “humbled to carry forward the powerful legacy of this seat.”

He also thanked San Franciscans for placing their trust in him — and making history by sending their first queer representative to Congress, something he said he never could have imagined when he first arrived in the city’s Castro neighborhood as a young man and “fell head over heels for this city.”

“San Franciscans voted for results, and we have so much work ahead: Building the millions of homes we need; moving toward true universal health care; investing in clean energy, public transit, and high-speed rail; standing up for science, education, and immigrants; making sure people — not massive corporations — decide what works for this country, including on AI; and ensuring the rule of law applies to everyone, including the President,” he said.

He said it “won’t be easy” but that voters nationwide had “delivered a powerful mandate for Democrats in Congress” to get it done.

The race, which ratcheted up when Pelosi bypassed Wiener to endorse Chan in May, just before the June primary, had divided the Democratic Party.

Chan — who immigrated to the city from Hong Kong at age 13 and has deep ties to its large Chinese and immigrant communities — was a community and legislative aide for years, including for then-Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris, before being elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2020. She has served as budget chair since 2023.

In addition to Pelosi’s imprimatur, Chan had received endorsements from major labor groups including the California Federation of Labor Unions and the California Teachers Assn.; a host of Congress members, including Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.); various progressive organizations; fellow and former supervisors; former mayor and S.F. power broker Willie Brown; and Saikat Chakrabarti, the third-place finisher in the primary.

Wiener, a former deputy city attorney and local Democratic Party chair before being elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2010 and to the state Senate in 2016, was endorsed by the state and local Democratic parties; state leaders including California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, state Senate President Pro Tempore Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara) and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister); various queer organizations; labor groups including AFSCME; more than half the city’s supervisors; and various members of Congress.

Many of Wiener’s supporters cited his legislative effectiveness — he’s the author of more than 100 laws, including some of the state’s most progressive laws on LGBTQ+ rights — and his willingness to fight hard battles, which they said is needed with President Trump in the White House.

Wiener has pushed progressive laws backing safe injection sites, extending bar hours until 4 a.m., decriminalizing psychedelic drugs, and limits on federal immigration agents in California. He has pushed for housing deregulation and development near transit hubs statewide to solve the housing and affordability crises, and pushed for artificial intelligence regulation while seeking buy-in from wealthy tech leaders — some of whom backed his campaign.

He also has passed laws protecting net neutrality, capping prescription drug costs and mandating mental health parity, ending mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, and requiring that corporations disclose their greenhouse gas emissions.

Wiener ran on his experience as a lawmaker who would be able “to fight in a smart way, and to fight in an aggressive way, to defeat Donald Trump and to lower the cost of living.”

“This is a race to succeed the most effective and operational member of Congress in modern American history,” Wiener told The Times in September. “San Francisco should send someone who actually has a track record, a proven track record, of being able to deliver.”

In backing Chan, Pelosi made a point of noting that she had spent much of her political career backing fellow women in office, and said she believed Chan — an immigrant woman — would make a mark in Congress, particularly given the political atmosphere under the Trump administration.

On Wednesday, Pelosi cheered the election of other women across the country — even if not her own chosen successor.

“When I came to Congress in 1987, there were only twelve Democratic women. We made it our mission to change that. Today, we celebrate the election of more than 100 Democratic women to the House — a tremendous joy and source of pride,” Pelosi wrote on X. “When women succeed, America succeeds!”

Australian jockey Ethan Brown has ridden Point Of Law, a horse previously owned by King Charles, to victory in this year’s Melbourne Cup, the country’s most prestigious race.

Point of Law, which was bought from the King earlier this year for an undisclosed sum, was considered an early favourite.

Brown pushed Point Of Law from the middle of the pack to take the lead with just a few hundred metres to go.

The Melbourne Cup has run in Australia since 1861, often referred to as the “race that stops a nation”. With a prize of A$10.2m ($7.04m; £5.3m), it is the country’s third richest race.

“Don’t wake me up,” said Brown, in the post-race interview.

“Just stay cool, stay patient,” Brown said, recalling his thoughts as he pushed Point Of Law to overtake Royal Supremacy from a dozen lengths behind on the home stretch.

This is a breaking news story – we’ll bring you more details as we get them.

WASHINGTON — Next week’s elections are widely seen as a referendum on President Trump, his team and his party, with most voters telling pollsters they seek a check on his power. But the midterms will also serve as a reckoning for one of the least productive sessions of Congress in a century.

A stunningly low 10% of Americans approve of the job performance of Congress, which has passed fewer bills and conducted less oversight than any of its predecessors in modern history, according to scholars of the legislative branch.

The biggest achievement of unified Republican control has also become one of its biggest liabilities. Deeply unpopular when signed, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has only grown more controversial, with most Americans still unclear on what’s in it — and those who do know largely disapproving of the law, which cut taxes for businesses and billionaires while adding trillions to the national debt.

A summer Politico poll found that just 8% of Americans believe the law has improved their bottom line. The bill cut billions of dollars for food stamps and over a trillion in health programs and Medicaid.

Two other significant bills passed by this Congress — the Epstein Files Transparency Act and a housing reform package targeting corporate purchases of single-family homes — ultimately became law over Trump’s opposition, leaving Republicans little credit for bipartisan wins.

“It’s not a partisan statement to say that the current Congress will go down in history as one of the most ineffective in history,” said Charles Stewart III, director of the Election Data and Science Lab at MIT. “It may not be the most ineffective, but it’s down there.”

Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said that congressional performance can be measured by several criteria, including the quantity and quality of legislation, its oversight of the executive branch, investigations of government and private-sector failures, and its defense of congressional powers and ethical standards.

By all accounts, he said, “the 119th Congress is an abysmal failure, perhaps the worst I have seen in well over five decades of immersion in the legislative branch.”

Senate pages walk through the halls outside the Senate chamber in the Capitol on Oct. 1, 2026. The Senate had completed its last votes in the middle of the night before going on recess through Nov. 9.

(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

A recent Fox News poll found that government corruption is voters’ top concern this year, surpassing even the economy. Yet the Republican-controlled Congress has failed to deliver meaningful oversight. The enrichment of Trump, his family, allies and aides has gone uninvestigated, while Senate Republicans continue to block legislation targeting insider trading by members of Congress.

It has been a running theme from Democrats working to unseat Republican incumbents, with Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York — slated to become speaker of the House if Democrats win control of the chamber — repeatedly characterizing the current session as a “do-nothing” Congress.

Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola speaks at a campaign event Oct. 29, 2026, in Juneau, Alaska.

(Chloe Anderson / Associated Press)

In Alaska, Mary Peltola, the Democratic nominee for Senate, accused her GOP opponent, Sen. Dan Sullivan, of doing nothing to stop Trump’s tariff policies or his war with Iran. Democrat Sherrod Brown in Ohio has attacked the Republican incumbent Jon Husted for his procedural attempts to end debate over legislation on the Epstein files. And Democrat Adam Hamilton has targeted Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas for voting for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that jeopardized funding to rural hospitals.

Defending the record of his majority, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has highlighted a decline in prescription drug prices, the elimination of “wasteful spending” on various federal programs and bipartisan housing reform. Only so much can be accomplished with a razor-thin majority in the chamber, Johnson has said.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) listens as U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) lends his support at a campaign rally on Oct. 29, 2026, in Platteville, Wis. Van Orden is in a rematch from 2024 with Democrat Rebecca Cooke for the state’s 3rd District seat.

(John Moore / Getty Images)

Trump has vowed on the campaign trail that, if kept in power, a Republican Congress would pass a $5,000 dividend to each American, despite its thin record to date.

Critics of the speaker say Johnson’s deference to Trump — and relinquishing of congressional authority to the executive branch — has unilaterally ceded power, souring voters on unified government.

But Stewart, who also co-directs a voting technology project with Caltech, said Congress’ problems run deeper than its current record.

Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) speaks during a campaign stop at the Palmetto State Armory on Oct. 30, 2026, in Columbia, S.C. Graham is running about even in the polls against her opponent, South Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Annie Andrews.

(Win McNamee / Getty Images)

“Not only is Congress not pushing back against the administration, or even innovating in policy, but its members also don’t seem especially interested in serving their constituents on the small-ball aspects of representation,” Stewart said.

“It’s hard to say members of this Congress are connecting with their constituents as they did in decades past,” he added. “We’ll see if that lack of constituency connection will have an impact on the results.”

A federal appeals court for the second time Friday denied a Trump administration request to block 20,000 ballots from California voters the administration alleges may be noncitizens — ruling that the administration had failed to show that “such extraordinary relief, during an ongoing election, is clearly required by law.”

The three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — composed of two appointees of President Trump and one of President Biden — ruled 2-1 that the U.S. Constitution gives the state and Congress the power to decide how elections are run, and that allowing the Trump administration to “misuse” federal statutes to “prescribe” how California must process ballots would “override the plain and manifest dictates of the Constitution itself.”

“Because Congress has not exercised the specific power granted to it under the Elections Clause to override California’s established laws for challenging ballots or removing ineligible voters, the State Legislature’s statutory scheme remains the only method to do so,” the judges found.

The panel’s majority — comprised of Trump appointee Mark J. Bennett and Biden appointee Gabriel P. Sanchez — wrote that “if the United States believes different procedures are necessary for vote-by-mail ballots, we believe it should take that suggestion to Congress, not the courts.”

They also wrote that separate federal law prescribes sweeping changes to voter lists 90 days prior to an election, especially given questions about the reliability of the Trump administration’s list of purported noncitizens.

“The suspect reliability of these lists found by the district court reflects the concern Congress sought to mitigate with the 90-day quiet period,” they wrote.

Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, the other Trump appointee on the panel, dissented — arguing that his colleagues erred in denying a basic request by the Trump administration to ensure only citizens are voting.

“The federal government proposes a modest remedy — stopping California from mixing the ballots of citizens and suspected noncitizens,” Bumatay wrote. “This solution would not cancel any vote but would allow time to verify the eligibility of suspected noncitizens. The district court, and now our court, denies this reasonable request.”

This article will be updated.

Voters decide four runoff contests for Superior Court seats on Nov. 3, choosing who will preside over criminal and civil cases across the region.

Seat 131

The candidates

• Donna Tryfman, a deputy public defender, serves in the major cases unit, where she handles homicide and other high-profile defendants. She also has extensive experience in juvenile cases.
• David Ross is an alternate in the Torrance branch of the public defender’s office and also works in Bellflower and Long Beach. He claims to have represented more than 10,000 clients at hearings and in trials.

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The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. rates both attorneys as “qualified” for office. Ross said his mix of legal and life experience and his time as a journalist, when he “listened to real people, gathered the facts and told objective stories,” provide a unique perspective. Tryfman has served as a Superior Court judge pro tem, handling traffic and small claims cases. She has proctored teen courts at Dorsey and Hamilton high schools.

Seat 64

The candidates

• Maria Ghobadi is an L.A. County deputy district attorney. As a child, Ghobadi fled Iran with her family during the Islamic Revolution and settled in Southern California. She joined the L.A. County district attorney’s office in 2015 and has handled misdemeanors, felonies and domestic violence cases. She’s spent seven years in the gang homicide division.
• Rhonda Haymon is an L.A. County deputy public defender. She grew up in Southern California and became an attorney in 2001. She started in the Orange County public defender’s office before moving to L.A. County, where she’s spent 23 years as a deputy public defender. She has been assigned to a restorative justice drug court and consulted on police misconduct cases.

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The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. ranked Ghobadi as “well qualified” and Haymon as “qualified.”

Seat 87

The candidates

• David DeJute, who defended President Obama against the so-called birther claims, spent a decade as vice president of litigation at Sony Pictures Entertainment. He now works in litigation at a private firm. An adjunct professor at Pepperdine’s Caruso School of Law, he’s taught ethics, antitrust, copyright and patent law. After last year’s wildfires, he returned as director of the disaster relief clinic, where he instructed students who provided pro bono legal services to victims of the Palisades and Eaton fires.
• Anthony “A.J.” Bayne’s background includes nearly two decades serving in the Compton Courthouse, where he for a time served as deputy in charge. He’s now handling serious felony cases at the Torrance branch. Bayne is an inventor, with patent-pending applications for artificial intelligence tools that automate legal workflows. One helps with closing arguments; another uses court reporter transcripts to generate cross-examination questions.

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DeJute is rated “qualified” to serve by the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. Bayne is rated a notch higher, “well qualified.”

Seat 65

The candidates

• Justin Allen Clayton is in charge of the Inglewood branch of the public defender’s office and has defended three cases with life sentences. Clayton said a priority is improving court efficiency through pretrial preparation and “firm but fair enforcement of deadlines.” Clayton said running a public defender branch office gives him a “comprehensive understanding” of the courtroom.
• Anna Slotky Reitano represented juvenile and adult clients, many of them accused of felonies, before joining the county counsel’s office. Reitano focused on mental health diversion and treatment, aiming to support rehabilitation when possible. A former child actor, she volunteers with local schools and, according to her website, mentors “future lawyers” through moot court competitions.

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The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. considers both qualified to serve.

Soon after a federal judge in Los Angeles sharply rejected a Trump administration effort to block 20,000 California ballots from voters it alleged may be noncitizens, the U.S. Justice Department announced it will appeal — leaving attorneys on both sides preparing Thursday for yet another court battle.

That was despite the lower court judge calling the request an unlawful threat to eligible voters in Tuesday’s midterm election and to free and fair American elections moving forward, and the same appellate court having already rejected the same plan days prior.

“Every day, more ballots are processed by election officials. This ongoing emergency disenfranchises American citizens through dilution,” wrote First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the lead prosecutor in L.A.

Early Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom swiped back at the Trump administration, writing, “A warning to Donald Trump: I’m deploying election lawyers to key battleground districts in California to protect every vote. And I just made it a FELONY to illegally seize ballots.”

With just days to go until polls close, the heated election war between California and the Trump administration is showing no signs of slowing down, despite multiple court orders rejecting the administration’s central effort to interfere in the midterms by accusing state and county officials of willfully turning a blind eye to voter fraud.

That’s in part because lawyers within the U.S. Justice Department have been unrelenting in their pursuit of such control, both through court orders and threats to state and county officials. It’s also because those same officials have refused to yield, denouncing the threats in recent letters back to the Justice Department as unconvincing and illegal.

“Be aware that we consider DOJ’s efforts to threaten California election officials with criminal sanctions for following federal and state law to be an effort to unlawfully intimidate both election officials and California voters, which can undermine voters’ faith in the election process,” Susan K. Blitch, counsel for Monterey County, wrote in one.

Several elections experts warned the administration is trying to sow confusion and suspicion around an election in which the Republican Party is poised to lose ground, in part so they can reject the outcome. But they also said the courts have consistently rebuffed the Trump administration, and will continue to do so through Nov. 3 and after — with the recent rulings in the case over the 20,000 flagged ballots a perfect example.

“The federal government lost in every way it could possibly lose. It lost on the law, and it lost on the facts, and it lost on the equities — [or] weighing the harms to the various parties,” said Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law.

Appeal, rebuke, appeal

Last week, Trump administration attorneys decided that U.S. District Judge David O. Carter was not ruling quickly enough on their emergency request for a temporary restraining order to block California, Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan from counting the 20,000 ballots it asserted were from “likely noncitizens” — so they appealed straight to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

On Monday, a three-judge panel there — including two appointees of President Trump and one of President Biden — denied the appeal for a lack of jurisdiction, because Carter hadn’t been given a chance to weigh in. However, two of the judges — Mark J. Bennett, one of the Trump appointees, and Gabriel P. Sanchez, the Biden appointee — also wrote separately to make clear that they would have denied the administration’s request on the merits, too, for being likely unconstitutional and in violation of federal law.

On Wednesday, Carter, an appointee of President Clinton, issued his own ruling, in which he wrote that the administration’s allegations about noncitizen voters were “not credible” and that the intervention it sought would violate a host of federal laws, sow chaos in the ongoing midterm election, likely lead to the disenfranchisement of legitimate voters and foster future political meddling in elections.

“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.”

Carter wrote that never in American history “has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch,” and that, in bringing its suit, the Trump administration was asking the court to “believe that it reigns as a sole sovereign.”

“But California and its people are sovereign, too,” Carter wrote.

The ruling — forceful, unequivocal and based on several of the same arguments made by Bennett and Sanchez — was cheered by state officials and voting rights groups. Elections experts said it squared directly with their understanding of the law, and was appropriate in the face of the Trump administration’s unprecedented, legally baseless effort to intervene in an ongoing state-run election.

Trump administration officials did not see it that way, and weren’t taking no for an answer. Justice Department lawyers promptly filed notice of appeal back to the 9th Circuit — where the case is likely, though not guaranteed, to land before the same three-judge panel that previously rejected the administration’s demands.

War of words

On Wednesday night, Newsom appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and predicted Trump will take sweeping steps to “literally suppress the vote, to set the conditions where he will then express doubt in the electoral outcome, and suggest that it was rigged.” But he also said California is fighting back and prepared.

“Right now, I am focused on getting over 1,000 poll workers, folks out there to monitor the DOJ monitors that Trump’s gonna send to try to steal this election,” Newsom said. “We have been running tabletop exercises. We have 1,000 volunteers. We have 134 election law attorneys that we’re sending out.”

On Thursday, Essayli replied to the latter deployment, writing, “You’re going to protect every legal or illegal vote? What about California citizens whose votes are being diluted by ineligible voters. Do their constitutional rights matter.”

Trump, meanwhile, asserted with no evidence that “there are hundreds of thousands of bad ballots, bad votes, in California. Millions, in my opinion.” He said California has “very corrupt elections,” and that if it had honest ones, he “would have won it by a lot.”

The remarks were just the latest in a swirling and highly public war of words between state and federal officials.

In Carter’s courtroom Tuesday, Essayli claimed the federal government has maintained a collaborative “tone” since it first demanded the state set aside ballots, and said he was surprised at how “adversarial” state elections officials had been. But Essayli and other Justice Department officials have been engaged for weeks in an aggressive back and forth with California officials online — which is highly unusual for prosecutors actively litigating related cases.

When Newsom’s office recently wrote that “Trump’s DOJ is so desperate to invent ‘widespread voter fraud,’ it sent California counties lists of people who NEVER voted — and voters from the WRONG COUNTY. Absolute clown show!,” Essayli shot back, “Hey Fraud King,” with a crown emoji. “We’re not waiting for them to vote.”

Also unusual have been the threats Justice Department attorneys have been sending to county elections officials in California, including in a series of Oct. 23 letters in which they asserted varying numbers of “likely aliens” per county, set a 48-hour deadline for the counties to cooperate with federal authorities to prove those voters are citizens.

In one letter to Kristin Connelly, head of the Contra Costa County registrar’s office, U.S. Atty. Craig Missakian flagged 407 potential noncitizens in the county, and said he was writing “to make unmistakably clear the legal implications” of processing any ballots from those voters.

On Wednesday, Thomas L. Geiger, Contra Costa County counsel, responded with his own letter, questioning the accuracy of the noncitizen claims and saying it would be “legally unsound” for Connelly to “disregard both California and federal law” in order to comply with Missakian’s demands.

Other county attorneys hit a sharper tone in their own responses. Tony Lopresti, an attorney for Santa Clara County, wrote that his county “reserves its rights to pursue all legal remedies against DOJ for its unlawful intimidation of election officials and California voters.”

Former president faces renewed death penalty demand as he appeals life sentence for insurrection.

South Korean prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for former President Yoon Suk-yeol over his failed attempt to impose military rule.

The team led by special prosecutor Cho Eun-suk renewed the demand at an appeal hearing in Seoul on Thursday, arguing that Yoon’s actions threatened South Korea‘s democracy.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment in February after being convicted of leading an insurrection.

Prosecutors had previously sought the death penalty at Yoon’s original trial in January, but the court sentenced him to life imprisonment the following month.

At Thursday’s hearing at the Seoul High Court, a prosecutor said there was “no reason to hesitate” over imposing the death penalty, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

South Korea retains the death penalty but has not carried out an execution since 1997.

Prosecutors argued that this long pause should not prevent judges from sentencing Yoon to death.

Yoon declared martial law on December 3, 2024, deploying soldiers and police to the National Assembly, South Korea’s parliament.

Lawmakers overcame a security blockade to vote down the measure, forcing the government to withdraw it about six hours after it was announced.

The lower court found that Yoon had tried to stop parliament from functioning, detain political opponents and remain in control of the country for an extended period.

Yoon’s lawyers told reporters on Thursday that he had intended to warn an opposition-controlled parliament against what he considered attempts to obstruct his government, not to establish authoritarian rule.

Speaking at the Seoul High Court on October 27, Yoon also denied seeking to establish a long-term dictatorship, according to the Hankyoreh newspaper.

The crisis led parliament to impeach Yoon in December 2024. South Korea’s Constitutional Court, which decides whether to uphold impeachments, removed him from office in April 2025.

The appeals court plans two more hearings, including Yoon’s final statement on November 5.

On October 27, 2026, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed that the PDVSA 2020 bonds and the pledge of 50.1% of the shares of CITGO Holding are valid under Venezuelan law.

The decision is Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. v. MUFG Union Bank, N.A., No. 25-2652, slip op. at 51, 60 (2d Cir. Oct. 27, 2026). This is a case that divided Venezuelan public opinion and legal circles. Much of the public debate tracked the nation’s political divide, with defenders of the bonds more commonly associated with the Maduro side and their opponents more commonly associated with the political opposition. Those who challenged the bonds argued that they were invalid because they were not approved by the National Assembly under article 150 of the 1999 Venezuelan Constitution. They were asking the courts to treat the 2020 bonds and the CITGO pledge as void from the start, so the bondholders could not enforce the notes or foreclose on the pledged CITGO shares. But the 2020 bonds did not create a debt out of nothing. They refinanced preexisting PDVSA debt. Paying what is owed should not be controversial; and the law is, or should be, what it is, no matter what political side one supports.

This case was started by a lawsuit brought in the US by PDVSA entities under the ad hoc board appointed by the interim government of Juan Guaidó, and highly promoted by Venezuelan political opponents of Maduro. The problem they faced is that PDVSA had never subjected its past debt transactions to legislative approval, whether under article 126 of the 1961 Venezuelan Constitution or article 150 of the 1999 Venezuelan Constitution. That is a fact, not a matter of opinion.

The 2015 National Assembly rejected the CITGO pledge in September 2016, but did not state that the indenture itself was a national public interest contract under article 150.

There was also no previous case holding that the contracts or indentures governing PDVSA bond issuances were national public interest contracts. The binding decisions of the Constitutional Chamber of the Venezuelan Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), as the US Court of Appeals read them, pointed in the other direction: national public interest contracts are contracts entered into by the Republic, or competent organs of the National Executive, and do not include contracts entered into by state owned companies in the Decentralized Public Administration, such as PDVSA. There were other TSJ decisions involving the Central Bank and mixed companies (in this case, allowing contracts without the National Assembly’s approval), but none decided that a PDVSA bond issuance or the CITGO pledge was a national public interest contract. 

But the lawyers hired by the interim government of Juan Guaidó argued that these bonds were different because they were secured by 50.1% of the shares of CITGO Holding, an asset of obvious importance to Venezuela. That was the novel step in the argument. There were older cases and legal writings discussing article 150 and public interest contracts, but no preexisting judicial authority had held that a PDVSA debt transaction, or a pledge of CITGO, became a national public interest contract requiring National Assembly approval. The older authorities that PDVSA invoked did not decide that proposition. What was new was not article 150 itself. It was the attempt to apply article 150 to this transaction.

The National Assembly elected in 2015 categorically rejected the CITGO pledge in a September 27, 2016 acuerdo. But that did not state that the indenture itself was a national public interest contract under article 150. That specific conclusion came in October 2019, after the transaction had closed and the controversy had fully developed, when the National Assembly stated that the 2020 Bond indenture violated article 150 because it was a national public interest contract executed with foreign companies without parliamentary authorization. The PDVSA plaintiffs, acting through the ad hoc board recognized in the United States, then submitted expert legal opinions advancing that same position.

There was no preexisting judicial holding applying article 150 to a PDVSA bond issuance or to the CITGO pledge. PDVSA’s historical practice ran the other way, and the courts ultimately rejected that application of article 150 of the Venezuelan Constitution.

The case has been litigated since 2019. The district court in New York initially ruled for the creditors under New York law. After the New York Court of Appeals held in 2024 that Venezuelan law governs the validity of the securities, the Second Circuit vacated that judgment and remanded. On remand, the district court considered additional expert legal submissions and again held that the bonds and collateral were valid, this time under Venezuelan law. The Second Circuit affirmed yesterday.

PDVSA had another argument: even if article 150 did not itself invalidate the bonds, it argued that US courts had to give effect to the National Assembly resolutions under the act of state doctrine, a rule that generally prevents US courts from questioning official sovereign acts carried out by a foreign government within its own territory. The court rejected that argument as well. Even assuming that the resolutions were sovereign acts intended to invalidate the transaction, the relevant transaction and property were outside Venezuela. The bonds, the depository arrangements and the collateral were centered abroad, particularly in New York. The court therefore held that the act of state doctrine did not require a US court to give the resolutions the extraterritorial effect PDVSA sought.

That record also matters when lawyers involved in the case later comment publicly on it. A novel litigation theory should not be described as if it had been settled Venezuelan law all along. It was not. There was no preexisting judicial holding applying article 150 to a PDVSA bond issuance or to the CITGO pledge. PDVSA’s historical practice ran the other way, and the courts ultimately rejected that application of article 150 of the Venezuelan Constitution. That history is relevant to credibility when lawyers or experts later present advocacy developed in litigation as a neutral account of what Venezuelan law clearly required from the beginning. Lawyers who participated in the case or publicly advocated its legal theory should disclose that context when commenting on it. Readers can then decide what weight to give their views.

Creditors may continue trying to collect the CITGO collateral. Whether and when they can actually reach it is a different question.

What does all of this mean in practical terms? It does not mean that the bondholders own CITGO today or can seize it tomorrow. It means that PDVSA lost its central defense to the 2020 bonds and the CITGO pledge. PDVSA cannot avoid those obligations by arguing that the Venezuelan Constitution required prior approval from the National Assembly. The bonds and the collateral are legally valid. The creditors may therefore continue trying to collect. Whether and when they can actually reach the CITGO collateral is a different question involving enforcement proceedings, US sanctions administered by OFAC and the separate Delaware proceedings involving other creditors of Venezuela.

The PDVSA entities may now ask the US Court of Appeals to rehear the case or seek rehearing by the full court, sitting en banc. They may also petition the Supreme Court of the United States for a writ of certiorari. That would be a request for discretionary review, not another appeal as of right. If the judgment stands, the case will return to the district court and the creditors can continue pursuing their contract and enforcement claims. OFAC may still control whether and when a transfer or sale involving the CITGO collateral can occur, and the separate Delaware creditor proceedings remain important.

The political argument over the PDVSA 2020 bonds may continue, but the legal argument is now much narrower. After seven years of litigation, the district court and the court of appeals, applying Venezuelan law, have concluded that the bonds and the collateral are valid. Politics may still affect when creditors get paid. It no longer supplies a persuasive legal basis for saying that the debt or the pledge never validly existed.

A federal appeals court Monday denied an emergency request from the U.S. Justice Department to step in and block California election officials from counting about 20,000 ballots from voters whose citizenship the Trump administration has questioned.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — composed of two judges appointed by President Trump and one by President Biden — ruled that it did not have jurisdiction over the request, given that a lower district court has not yet made a ruling on it.

But two of the three judges also wrote separately to make clear they also would have denied the Trump administration’s request on other grounds, if they did have jurisdiction.

In an unsigned order — joined by Judge Mark J. Bennett, one of the Trump appointees, and Judge Gabriel P. Sanchez, the Biden appointee — the court granted a request from Los Angeles County to dismiss the appeal, writing that the Trump administration “failed to allow the district court adequate opportunity to consider” its request for a temporary restraining order barring the ballots from being counted before filing its unusual appeal to the appellate panel.

The court found that the “emergency” the Trump administration asserted was in part a “self-constructed one” and that delays in the district court were partly attributable to its “own delay in filing suit, in realizing that existing California state law governs the issuance and processing of ballots, in recognizing that California has millions of registered voters and processes ballots on a schedule aligned with that scale, and in communicating to the court its desired relief.”

Both Bennett and Sanchez also each wrote a concurring opinion — in which they made clear that they would have denied the Trump administration’s request even if they did have jurisdiction, too.

Sanchez wrote that federal law would bar the court from issuing such a demand on state elections officials so close to an election.

“The United States seeks to have a federal court dictate to California the manner in which it must administer its own electoral process by segregating mail-in ballots and undertaking a citizenship verification process the State has never done before,” Sanchez wrote. “The proposed injunction would transform California’s election rules for an election that is already underway and would cause widespread confusion among voters and election officials, divert election administration resources, and ‘usher in electoral chaos.’”

Bennett wrote that he would have denied the Trump administration’s emergency request for several reasons beyond jurisdiction, including that it would be likely unconstitutional under the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which he wrote “confers broad authority only on Congress and the States, not the Executive,” and Congress has not acted to say that California’s existing laws for ensuring only U.S. citizens vote are problematic.

“Thus, under the Elections Clause, the legislature’s statutory scheme remains as the only method to do so,” Bennett wrote.

Bennett wrote that there are existing California laws to deal with the harm the Trump administration claims it is suffering, but that granting its request to intervene could “result in immense hardship” to the state “and harm the public by risking the disenfranchisement of eligible voters and putting the entire tabulation process in jeopardy.”

Bennett wrote that the Trump administration “offered no workable plan of any kind as to how the remedy it seeks could be accomplished in practice without potential catastrophic consequences to California’s ongoing election.”

Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, the other Trump appointee, dissented — arguing the Trump administration was well within its legal rights to intervene, and the appellate court did have jurisdiction to grant its request and bar the state “from accepting and processing ballots likely cast by aliens until their citizenship could be verified.”

“The question — does the federal government have the power to stop this potential attack on the integrity of our elections? Under both federal law and the Constitution, the answer must be ‘yes,’” Bumatay wrote. “Simply, the federal government has a sovereign interest in safeguarding federal elections and ensuring that the votes of noncitizens do not undermine our electoral results.”

The ruling clears the way for the lower court to proceed with a hearing scheduled Tuesday afternoon before U.S. District Judge David O. Carter in Los Angeles.

Carter, an appointee of President Clinton, previously rejected an attempt by the Trump administration to obtain California’s full voter rolls, calling that demand unlawful and a threat to democracy in January. Other federal judges made similar rulings in dozens of states across the country.

The question at issue Tuesday — and hashed over by the appellate court during oral arguments Sunday — is whether the courts should bar the state, Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan from processing and tabulating the flagged ballots until they can provide to the Trump administration proof that those individuals are citizens.

The Trump administration has argued in court filings that the federal government is suffering irreparable harm each day such counting is allowed to continue, as once California ballots are removed from their mail envelopes or cast in person, there is “no way to associate the voter with the ballot” or resegregate those ballots from others.

More than 3 million ballots have already been cast in the upcoming Nov. 3 midterm elections statewide, and more than 500,000 have already been cast in L.A. County.

Attorneys for California, Weber and Logan have argued in court filings that the administration’s demands to segregate 20,000 ballots and vet those voters for citizenship with just days to go before the election are impossible to comply with and would cause catastrophic disruptions if elections officials across the state were forced to try.

They have also said the demands are clearly unconstitutional, illegal under state and federal law, and based on federal immigration and third-party data sets that have been shown to be deeply flawed, inaccurate and inclusive of legitimate voters.

While the appellate court’s formal ruling Monday adhered closely to the technical issue of jurisdiction, its conversation Sunday did not — with both Bennett and Sanchez expressing substantial doubts about the lawfulness of the Trump administration’s request, just as they did in their separate concurrences.

Bennett grilled Matthew Donnelly, the attorney for the Justice Department, on how the executive branch’s demands squared with the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly gives states the power to set laws regarding the time, place and manner of elections and Congress — not the executive branch — oversight over those laws.

Bennett said that while the Trump administration is “unhappy” with how California law ensures voters are citizens — namely by requiring that they attest to their citizenship upon registration — the state has the right to determine its election laws under the Elections Clause of the Constitution, and Congress has not challenged its process.

“It seems to me that you want us to issue an injunction that is entirely inconsistent with the law the California Legislature has adopted pursuant to the Elections Clause,” Bennett said. “How can we do that?”

Bennett and Sanchez both questioned how the appellate court could step in and adjudicate whether to grant the Trump administration’s request to intervene in the state’s election when it is not a fact-finding body, and the district court was never given a chance to develop a record of facts — including around the dueling and contradicting claims about the origins and reliability of the federal government’s list of “likely” noncitizen voters and the state’s claims that an order forcing them to segregate out the votes at this late stage in the election would cause catastrophic harm to the election process.

Carter is sure to pick those issues back up on Tuesday.

JACKSON, Miss. — Portions of a Mississippi ban on diversity, equity and inclusion practices in public schools can go into effect after the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a lower court’s ruling that blocked sections of the law from being enforced.

The parts of the law in question prevent public schools from requiring diversity training and maintaining DEI-related programs, courses and offices. It also bans public schools from discussing a list of “divisive concepts” related to race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity and national origin. Public schools that violate the law could lose state funding.

The ban passed in April 2025 and is being challenged by a group of educators, students, parents and activists who say the law violates their 1st and 14th Amendment rights.

The plaintiffs have several weeks to file a petition for rehearing with the 5th Circuit. The law would take effect seven days after the petition deadline passes or if a petition is denied, according to McKenna Raney, an attorney representing the plaintiffs.

The 5th Circuit also ordered that the case be reassigned to a different district court judge after U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate issued a “botch job” temporary restraining order that contained artificial intelligence hallucinations, according to the Thursday ruling. The TRO predates Wingate’s August 2025 preliminary injunction, which the 5th Circuit overturned.

Additionally, the ruling provides clarity on the scope of the law, which opponents have criticized as overly vague.

The law does not apply to scholarly activities, student activities and groups or creative engagements, according to the 5th Circuit. The court also said concerns raised by the plaintiffs that the law would ban discussions of civil rights, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Ku Klux Klan, the 14th Amendment, Juneteenth and “Of Mice and Men” are incorrect.

“It is heartening to know that at the very least these specific iterations of classroom discussions that have been happening for years in Mississippi are exempted and they can continue unimpeded,” said Raney, an LGBTQ Justice Project staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi. However, Raney said the types of discussions allowed under the law are still “murky.”

Bates writes for the Associated Press.

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

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

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

Nails didn’t make the cut.

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

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

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)

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

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

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

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

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

President Trump illegally usurped Gov. Gavin Newsom’s command of the California National Guard by ordering a surge troops deployed into Los Angeles and across the state amid protests against the White House’s mass deportation program last year, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday.

The two-one decision split the president’s own appointees to the court, with Judge Eric D. Miller of Seattle siding with Judge Jennifer Sung of Portland, a Biden pick, and Judge Mark J.Bennett of Honolulu dissenting.

“The order exceeded the President’s statutory authority and encroached on Congress’s calling forth power, in violation of the constitutional separation of powers,” Sung wrote for the majority, calling Trump’s order “unconstitutional.”

The decision also appeared to foreclose what California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta called “the Trump Administration’s transparent attempt” to preserve its right to call up California troops again under the same obscure statute — a novel legal maneuver administration lawyers said let the president seize command without invoking the far stronger Insurrection Act.

The 9th Circuit trio was among the first to weigh the law last June, after Trump federalized 4,000 National Guard soldiers in response to unrest over immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.

California sued. US District Judge Charles R. Breyer quickly ruled to block the deployment. But Sung, Bennett and Miller stayed his order, finding that the California deployment could go forward under an obscure and virtually untested subsection of the law.

That decision set a “great level of deference” as the standard of review for deployments, meaning courts had very little power to test the president’s rationale for sending troops into American streets.

At the time, the decision represented one of the president’s most sweeping second-term victories: a plug-and-play legal mechanism to deploy soldiers against civilians in cities across the country.

In Portland that fall, another 9th Circuit panel stayed U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut’s order to stand down troops, using the first trio’s precedent.

The Portland decision — based in part on data the Department of Justice later admitted was false — prompted an extraordinary filing by Judge Jay Bybee, who all but pleaded with the court to rehear the case and interpret the law differently.

“There is no greater threat to the sovereignty of the states than an assertion of federal control over their domestic affairs,” Bybee wrote.

The issue quickly found its way to the Supreme Court, after a 7th Circuit panel found the president had provided “insufficient evidence” for deployment even under the 9th Circuit’s deference standard.

On Dec. 23, the Justices adopted a celebrated Georgetown scholar’s academic reading of the statute, saying it only allowed the president to commandeer national guard troops if the situation had already outmatched the standing army.

Federalized troops were ordered to leave Los Angeles in December.

On Friday, the 9th Circuit held that Trump’s claim that Los Angeles was in the grips of a rebellion last June “did not reflect a colorable assessment within a range of honest judgment.”

Using “the plain text of the statute,” and “dictionary definitions of the disputed term,” the majority found the president had not furnished evidence of a “a violent, armed, organized, open and avowed uprising against the government as a whole” — nor anything close to it.

Instead, Justice Department lawyers had relied on subsidiary definitions of “rebellion” that the 9th Circuit warned would allow the president to call up troops to quell almost any resistance, including peaceful protests.

“Resistance that is not violent, armed, organized, and against the government as a whole generally does not require a military response,” Sung wrote.

“Because Defendants have failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to legally execute the laws in California, they have not carried their burden to show that the President had the authority to federalize California’s National Guard,” Sung wrote.

Federal authorities this week teased a “separate batch” of 17,000 potential noncitizen voters in their federal court challenge to California’s handling of alleged voter fraud.

In response, Los Angeles County officials questioned the accuracy of the government’s earlier list of 20,000 alleged noncitizen voters — saying a preliminary review of a subset of those voters found evidence that nearly 40% were born in the U.S.

The claims came in filings shedding new light on the unprecedented Homeland Security inquiry into California’s voter rolls just weeks before the Nov. 3 election.

On Monday, Nicolas Bartell, a Homeland Security official, wrote in a sworn affidavit that — in addition to developing the disputed list of 20,000 “likely noncitizen” voters at the heart of the litigation — his agency has also developed a “separate batch of more than 17,000 voting records potentially tied to noncitizens.”

“Our review is ongoing as USCIS receives records on a rolling basis before the election date,” wrote Bartell, the associate director of the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

On Tuesday, Monica Flores, a top official in the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office, wrote in an affidavit that staff members had reviewed a sample of 200 registrations from the list of 20,000 voters whom the Justice Department alleged last week were “likely noncitizens.” The office found that more than half — 112 — had been canceled or were inactive, meaning no ballot was sent to those voters.

In instances where those voters’ birthplace was “meaningfully reported, 38.9% indicate that they were born in the United States, which is strong evidence of citizenship,” Flores wrote, while 71.2% showed no record of ever voting.

Flores wrote that similarly vetting the citizenship of thousands of additional voters before the election would not only be “administratively impossible and take key personnel away from their critical election duties,” but would also “risk disenfranchising voters who are validly registered.”

Also Tuesday, Rachel Evans, an attorney in the California secretary of state’s office, wrote in an affidavit that the office since August has received and been complying with grand jury subpoenas for the detailed voter records of about 300 people.

Evans’ acknowledgment came a day after federal prosecutors charged 28 people across California with federal election-related crimes, including fraudulent voter registration and making false statements in a naturalization application, and suggests federal prosecutors are pursuing criminal cases against hundreds more.

Taken together, the filings indicate that the legal battle between the Trump administration and California over alleged fraudulent voting is only just gearing up — with no end in sight before Nov. 3 — as is the political sparring over the issue.

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the lead federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, posted to X on Tuesday that Flores’ acknowledgment that her office could not possibly vet voters’ citizenship before the election was a “massive concession,” proving the federal government’s case.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said that “any credible allegation of voter fraud should be taken seriously and investigated,” but that federal officials charging just 28 people in a state with 23 million voters showed they have no evidence of widespread fraud.

“Yes, non-citizen voter registration and voting does happen in isolated instances — in California and the rest of the country alike — but it is so rare that the Trump admin is parading around town about .0001% of California voters,” Newsom’s office wrote on X.

The broader case

On Monday, Justice Department lawyers filed a request for an emergency restraining order requiring state election officials to segregate any ballots from the 20,000 voters flagged on the initial Homeland Security list until their citizenship is proved. They argued the state is violating the law — and harming the federal government — by refusing to do so.

State attorneys argued Tuesday that the federal government has no authority over California elections and seeks to violate federal law precluding voter roll purges in the 90 days before an election.

State officials wrote that the Justice Department appeared to have “individualized evidence” of noncitizenship for the 28 people it had charged, and that nothing was preventing it from working through existing “statutory channels” to block those individuals’ ballots. But they argued that it does not have evidence to back its claims against all 20,000 voters whose ballots it is seeking to sequester.

Those contentions — and Bartell’s claim of a second list of 17,000 potential noncitizen voters — only add to an already heated debate about the scope of the inquiry and its legitimacy.

In July, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin alleged in a letter to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber that there “may be as many as 190,832 noncitizens registered to vote in California,” and demanded that the state work with federal authorities to investigate. The state asked that Homeland Security first provide more information, including about its methodology for identifying that figure.

Last week, acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter wrote follow-up letters to Weber and Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County registrar’s office, asserting that 20,000 “likely noncitizens” were on state rolls, and again demanding state cooperation within 48 hours to remove them. Weber balked, arguing that federal law precludes systematic roll purges within 90 days of an election to protect eligible voters.

Weber and other state officials also questioned the drop from 190,000 to 20,000, and the reliability of the federal government’s underlying data and methodology. “What happened to the 170,000? You just got those wrong?” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta asked.

On Monday, McCotter said the 190,000 figure was “the ceiling,” inclusive of cases that federal authorities had high, medium and low confidence in, while the 20,000 figure was “the floor,” inclusive of only high confidence cases.

Potential flaws in the list have been a major point of contention among California officials, who have pointed to substantial inaccuracies in lists elsewhere, including in Nevada, where a state review found that the 185 voters whose citizenship was questioned by the Trump administration were all citizens.

Now, it appears the federal government’s disputed list of 20,000 voters won’t be the last in California.

How voters were identified

In court filings, federal officials described purchasing California voter registration information before USCIS and Homeland Security Investigations agents worked to identify any voters who are not citizens. They said that they did so in part by comparing the state data with “third party commercial data” sets and law enforcement data sets, and that they further vetted their list by culling dead people.

Essayli pointed to those descriptions to dispel arguments that federal authorities have not provided their methodology for identifying potential noncitizens on voter rolls. He said that the federal process was robust and trustworthy and that federal authorities had compiled “overwhelming evidence of tens of thousands of ineligible voters on the state’s rolls.”

Independent election experts saw it differently.

“They admitted to using some of the same tools amateur election conspiracy theorists use, like unidentified third party software, commercial lists, and public versions of [the state’s] voter roll,” Gowri Ramachandran, an election administration expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. “These amateur data matching efforts don’t get any better merely because the Department of Justice relies on them.”

“If DOJ could prove many more cases, we would have heard about it,” Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law, wrote in a blog post. “They’ve been on an aggressive hunt nationally for such fraud. It’s not surprising they’ve found little because it is a small problem.”

MIAMI — Former Cuban President Raúl Castro is facing more charges in Florida related to the 1996 downing of civilian planes flown by Miami-based exiles after the U.S. government indicted the former leader earlier this year.

Florida Atty. Gen. James Uthmeier on Monday accused Castro, 95, of directing spies to infiltrate the exile group Brothers to the Rescue and ordering the attack on their planes. The state charge of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder is based largely on a federal indictment announced in May that included charges of murder and destruction of an airplane.

It remains unclear whether Castro will ever step foot in a U.S. courtroom. Uthmeier said the arrest warrant will restrict Castro’s ability leave the island nation and prevent him from traveling to any place with an extradition agreement with the U.S.

“I’m not ignorant of the fact that Raúl Castro is an older man who’s probably not looking to march himself into Miami,” Uthmeier said. “I think others would get him before the court of law would, but at the end of the day, we stand ready to prosecute the case.”

According to the state complaint, Castro was the Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and First Vice President of Cuba when he gave the final authorization to shoot down the planes. Cuban Directorate of Intelligence agents operating as part of the Wasp Network in the Miami area and the Florida Keys infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue and reported flight plans, investigator said.

On Feb. 24, 1996, three unarmed Cessna aircraft departed Opa-Locka Airport in Miami-Dade County. Well outside Cuba’s territorial waters, Cuban MiGs destroyed two of the civilian planes with air-to-air missiles, killing the four occupants, the complaint said. Both aircraft were traveling away from Cuba and received no warning despite contact with Havana air traffic control, U.S. officials said.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel called the federal indictment earlier this year a political stunt that sought only to “justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba.” He accused the U.S. of lying and manipulating events surrounding the shootdown.

“Our historic federal indictment laid the groundwork, and James and his team have now taken the important step of bringing charges under Florida law,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason Reding Quiñones said at a news conference.

Castro took over as president from his ailing older brother Fidel Castro in 2006 before handing power to a trusted loyalist, Díaz-Canel, in 2018.

While he retired in 2021 as head of the Cuban Communist Party, he is widely believed to wield power behind the scenes, underscored by the prominence of his grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro.

Meanwhile, President Trump has been threatening military action in Cuba ever since U.S. forces captured former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Cuban government’s longtime patron.

After ousting the Venezuelan leader earlier this year, the White House ordered a blockade that choked off fuel shipments to Cuba, leading to severe blackouts, food shortages and an economic collapse across the island.

Fischer writes for the Associated Press.

Oct. 17, 2026 8:31 AM PT

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s abrupt decision to waive sanctions on Russia days before they were to take effect drew outrage Saturday from members of Congress, which had overwhelmingly passed the legislation in a bipartisan display of American support for Ukraine in the war with Russia.

Lawmakers from both parties blasted the executive order late Friday, the latest in a series of steps that the Republican president has taken drawing the United States closer to Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Trump recently announced a diesel deal with Putin to import Russian energy in a long-shot effort to curb high gas prices in the U.S. that are roiling the midterm elections on Nov. 3.

“Beyond irresponsible,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), on social media, hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed hope that the sanctions that were supposed to take effect Sunday targeting Russian’s economy could be revived.

“What part of enforcing a law passed 86-11 by the Senate does the President and his advisors not understand?” Tillis said. “It’s unconscionable that this administration is capitulating to a Russian dictator who illegally invaded Ukraine.”

Tillis said that if Trump wants to actually bring down energy prices, he should resolve the Iran war, which is largely blamed for the spike at the pump, and “not by doing a solid for Vladimir Putin.”

Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said, “Lindsey would be appalled,” referring to the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who worked endlessly on the bill before he died this summer. The bill is known as the Lindsey Graham Russian Sanctions Act.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Trump is “thumbing his nose” at Congress and “enabling Vladimir Putin to continue his war of aggression.” She urged her colleagues to take action to reverse course.

Trump’s actions come as Ukraine is bracing for a stark winter confronting Russia’s ongoing attacks on its energy infrastructure to heat homes and keep the lights on. Zelensky, who has endured a rocky relationship with Trump but stayed close to the U.S. lawmakers, urged supporters to speak out on behalf of the sanctions.

The next steps are highly uncertain with the House and Senate on recess until after election day. Trump said he was waiving the sanctions indefinitely, citing national security concerns. It is unlikely Congress would be in a position to take any action to challenge Trump’s moves until lawmakers return to Washington.

It took almost a year for Graham to persuade Trump to agree to the Russian sanctions package. It was designed to impose steep tariffs on countries that import large amounts of Russian oil and energy products and was promoted as way to halt the flow of funds fueling Putin’s four-year war against Ukraine.

But even as Zelensky had watched from the visitor gallery as the Senate advanced the package after Graham’s death, skeptics in Congress warned Trump would be unlikely to follow the bill once he had signed it into law a month ago.

Last week, a bipartisan group of senators urged the Trump administration to more quickly clamp down on Russia, particularly the “shadow fleet” of tankers that Moscow is using to transport oil and bypass America’s sanctions. The senators noted that the bulk of the new law’s provisions were to be effective Sunday.

Instead, Trump soon announced the diesel deal with Putin, saying that Russia had agreed to supply tons of fuel to the U.S., where gas prices have skyrocketed in some areas and voters saying affordability issues are a top concern.

Outraged lawmakers have pledged to stop the Trump-Putin deal.

New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee who had led opposition to the Graham bill — warning that Trump would flout the law — introduced legislation Friday that would block Trump’s diesel deal with Putin.

“At a time when the United States should be increasing pressure on the Kremlin, Donald Trump is cozying up to Putin and striking self-enriching deals instead of standing with Ukraine,” Meeks said in a statement.

He called the deal “corrupt” and said it “goes against everything the United States stands for.”

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

US president’s executive order comes two days before sanctions deadline and a week after diesel deal with Putin.

US President Donald Trump has put on hold a sweeping package of sanctions on Russia that he signed into law last month, telling Congress the pause is in the national interest.

Trump signed an executive order on Friday, two days before a deadline in the law that would put the sanctions into effect.

The law – named after Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator who died unexpectedly in July after returning from Ukraine – had passed in the House of Representatives and the Senate by large margins. The bipartisan legislation was drafted by Graham and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal.

It sought to starve Moscow of money for the war by sanctioning Russian officials, banks and a shadow fleet of tankers carrying its energy.

It also directed Trump to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on the five biggest importers of Russian oil or gas, with an exception for countries that import less than 15 percent of Russia’s natural gas exports and are taking steps to cut them.

Diesel deal and criticism

The decision to suspend the sanctions comes a week after Trump said the US had signed a deal to buy diesel from Russia to try to lower global fuel prices.

Both Republicans and Democrats, criticising the deal, said it would help Russia’s war effort without affecting fuel prices.

Democratic Representative Don Beyer said he and others had “warned” that Trump might do this, in reference to Trump’s deal with Moscow.

Beyer called on Congress to “fix this flawed law to stop Trump from capitulating to Putin and ensure that it truly supports Ukraine”.

Trump has also increasingly criticised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lately for failing to reach a deal with Russia.

As Republicans try to keep control of Congress in the November 3 midterm elections, an AP-NORC poll released on October 1 found Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the Iran war and blame him for higher prices among several other domestic policy issues.