trump

WASHINGTON — At first glance, President Trump’s decision to relax U.S. sanctions on Russia despite its continuing invasion of Ukraine was a dramatic break from principles that guided American foreign policy for most of a century.

Since the end of World War II, U.S.-Russian relations have oscillated between hostility and friendship, but one element was consistent: When Russia tried to take over one if its neighbors, the United States pushed back.

This time, though, the United States appeared to favor the aggressor, not the victim.

“The Trump administration has abandoned any pretense of being an honest broker,” Richard N. Haass, a former senior State Department official under then-President George W. Bush, wrote last week. “It has gone all in on Russia’s side.”

The break from long-standing tradition was real, but it should not have been entirely surprising.

Trump has long expressed admiration for Russia’s autocratic leader, Vladimir Putin — part of a syndrome one of his former aides, Fiona Hill, has called “autocrat envy.”

“He wants to rule like them,” she said, referring to the president’s bromances with Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and other strongmen.

Meanwhile, Trump often expresses disdain for democratically elected leaders of smaller countries, and he reserves a special loathing for the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.

He has repeatedly said Zelensky was foolish to resist Russia’s 2022 invasion because, in his view, the larger country is almost certain to win the war.

“Russia is a massive country,” he said this month. “Even if it loses a million soldiers, it still has a million more. Ukraine doesn’t have that kind of manpower.”

Moreover, Trump has long believed U.S. companies could reap an economic bonanza from Russia’s resource-rich economy. As a real estate magnate, he spent 30 years seeking deals in Moscow; in 2008, his son Donald Jr. said Russians had provided the Trump Organization “a lot of our assets.”

In the short run, the president hopes to boost Republican prospects in next week’s midterm elections by buying diesel fuel from Russia — a move aimed at lowering prices at the cost of bolstering Putin’s war economy. (It hasn’t worked; the price of diesel has risen slightly since Trump’s decision.)

But he has a longer-term goals as well. He has long believed better relations between the United States and Russia would be good for both countries, no matter who’s in power in Moscow. And he has long yearned openly for a Nobel Peace Prize — and one way might be to arrange a durable ceasefire in Ukraine.

All those factors have led Trump to overturn two major elements of traditional U.S. foreign policy.

Instead of supporting Ukraine, the victim of a foreign military invasion, he’s been pressing the Zelensky to accept Putin’s demands for territory.

“President Trump still wants a personal relationship with Putin, and he wants to change the nature of the bilateral U.S.-Russian relationship. Ukraine is in the way. So what President Trump is trying to do is get Ukraine out of the way. … President Trump wants Zelensky to capitulate,” Hill said.

“Zelensky has to want to settle this war, and if he doesn’t, I think it’s going to be a very bad thing,” Trump said last week.

As he issued that advice, Ukraine’s army was experiencing interruptions with three forms of U.S. military help: Starlink, the communications system it uses to guide its anti-drone missiles; U.S.-provided early radar warnings of Russian missile attacks; and supplies of Patriot anti-missile weapons. U.S. officials claimed the three incidents were not deliberate — but to Ukrainians, they felt like a warning.

Meanwhile, instead of putting pressure on Putin through the traditional means of economic sanctions, Trump said he was trying to entice the Russian leader to negotiate by giving him preemptive rewards.

“I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table,” he explained on Truth Social. “Great progress is being made.”

But signs of that progress were hard to find. In St. Petersburg last week, Trump’s personal envoy, Steve Witkoff, presented Putin with a ceasefire proposal that the Americans negotiated with Ukraine and European countries. A top Putin aide dismissed the document, saying it “contained little of real value.”

Instead, the Russian president offered to increase Russian fertilizer exports to U.S. farmers. And he said he hoped Trump would join him at a summit meeting in China with Xi.

Ukraine has not been invited to that meeting, which prompted Haass to resurrect an old diplomatic aphorism: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”

Haass and other veterans of U.S. negotiations with Russia fear that Putin is merely stalling for time and pocketing Trump’s concessions while he tries to grind Ukraine down with missile attacks on Kyiv and other cities.

“If Trump and Witkoff were serious, they would give Putin 15 days to say yes to their ceasefire proposal — and if he doesn’t, they would impose new and tougher sanctions,” said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. “There are still a lot of things they can do that would put Russia in a corner.”

But that has not been Trump’s inclination so far.

The irony, Hill said, is that even if Trump gets his way, that may not produce the victory he appears to expect.

“Putin and Trump are not the only actors in this,” she said. “Ukraine is not anybody’s to give. Its not Putin’s to have, and it’s not Zelensky’s. … This whole war is about Ukrainians wanting the right to determine their own future. It’s not Putin’s right or anyone else’s. It’s not Donald Trump’s to give away.”

Rapper Nikki Minaj said President Donald Trump has “changed the energy of the country” as she joined him at a Michigan rally to stump for Republicans ahead of the nationwide midterm elections.

“He’s given us a future to look forward to,” she said, after Trump praised her figure and called her on stage to speak.

Minaj has called herself Trump’s “number one fan” despite criticising some of his policies in his first term.

In Michigan, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is locked in a tight race with Republican Mike Rogers with just over a week to go before the midterms. Former President Barack Obama held a rally – one of the first in this cycle – with the Democrat on Saturday.

Democrats are also aggressively hitting the campaign trail, with close elections taking place on 3 November which will decide which party controls Congress for the rest of Trump’s presidency.

In his remarks on Sunday, Trump focused on El-Sayed’s Muslim faith and background, alleging that he will “invite jihadists” into America if he wins.

El-Sayed has criticised similar remarks by Trump as Islamophobic, saying in an ad to voters last week that the US president “thinks he can use my name and my faith to distract us from the suffering his policies are inflicting on us at the pump, at the grocery store, and at the doctor’s office”.

In Port Huron on Sunday, Minaj, wearing a gold-coloured Gucci-branded suit, led the crowd in chanting Trump’s name, and the names of Republican candidates in Michigan.

“We really need all these great people to be elected, because this is a major turning point for our country,” she said.

“She never looked more beautiful,” Trump said as she left the stage. “She gets it. She’s smart,” he added.

Earlier in his speech, Trump praised the rear end of one male Republican candidate before turning the crowd’s attention to Minaj.

“By the way, I looked at a beautiful ass before,” he segued. “Nikki Minaj. That’s hard to miss.”

He then asked her to “stand up” as the crowd cheered, and added that he hoped she was not “insulted” by his remark.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche on Sunday defended the Trump administration’s lawsuit to block certification of Alaska’s Senate results if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses the race, arguing that the legal challenge was a necessary step to avoid confusing voters in the closely watched midterm race.

Some election experts have said the move is another attempt by the Trump administration to meddle in the Nov. 3 midterm elections in the event Republicans don’t fare well. Democrats as well as some Republicans have criticized it.

Blanche, however, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that President Trump — who said Friday in reference to the lawsuit that he was “the one that said do it” — is not trying to overturn state election results “in any way, shape or form.”

“We wish that we didn’t have to do this. We hope for a resolution that works,” Blanche said.

Republicans fear that a second candidate on the ballot who is named Dan Sullivan — a retired teacher and school administrator from the tiny fishing community of Petersburg — could siphon away votes from the GOP senator and tip the outcome in favor of Democrat Mary Peltola, a former congresswoman. Because Alaska has ranked-choice voting, there are more than two candidates on the general election ballot.

A day after the lawsuit was filed Thursday, Peltola called it “just flagrant, flagrant corruption, in my opinion,” and a diversion tactic by Republicans. Alaska’s other Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski, also criticized the lawsuit in a social media post.

Trump told reporters Sunday that he believed the ballot was illegal because it was unfair and that Sen. Sullivan should be identified to voters as the sitting senator. Courts, however, have ruled otherwise, upholding both Sullivans’ spots on the ballot.

“At least let him use the name Sen. Dan Sullivan as opposed to incumbent, because a lot of people don’t know what incumbent means,” Trump said.

Alaskan voters will see “Dan S. Sullivan” identified as a “registered Republican” and “incumbent” on their ballots, while “Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.” is listed without party affiliation.

Blanche represented Trump as a personal attorney — including the case in which Trump was convicted of felony fraud — before the Republican president appointed him to lead the Department of Justice, which filed the lawsuit in Alaska. Blanche defended Trump in his election inference case before voters elected Trump to a second White House term, effectively ending the criminal prosecution.

Blanche told CNN host Dana Bash that it was “crazy” for her to ask him if Trump was trying to lay the groundwork for the same sort of election challenges that occurred before a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — the source of the election interference case, in which Trump was indicted on felony charges, and for which he was impeached.

“We are not doing anything improper. We’re not doing anything we’re not allowed to do. And we have to let the process play out,” Blanche said. “But I do think it’s important for the American people to understand that we are not — [and] President Trump is not — trying to take over a state election in any way shape or form.”

The lawsuit, Blanche said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” is meant to “put guardrails in place” to preserve possible evidence of voter confusion at the polls.

“It’s not saying, ‘Don’t certify.’ It’s saying, ‘If a court ultimately determines that it was decided because of confusion and not the will of the voters, then we do not think the states should certify.’ And that’s consistent with federal law and consistent with even Alaskan law, if that happens,” he said.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Josh Boak contributed to this report.

The ad was repugnant.

You know the one I’m talking about — Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s attack on opponent Amy Acton using her clearly troubled mother, who failed to protect Acton as a child from her rapist stepfather and instead abandoned her kids to stay with the now-deceased pedophile.

Wow. Even in 2026, that’s a lot.

The ad, released last week on the internet and set for a television blitz through the election, has sparked condemnation even from Republicans. Some anyway. President Trump and Vice President JD Vance (a close friend of Ramaswamy’s) have defended it, much to the chagrin of decent people everywhere who have labeled this a make-it-or-break-it moment for the Grand Old Party.

Trump called getting Acton’s mom on camera “hitting pay dirt.”

“Why shouldn’t somebody use that?” Trump said Friday. “To me, that’s something that’s very much fair game.”

Trump’s right, in his world anyway. His faithful may not like the ad, but it’s not a deal-breaker.

The appalled, left and right, are wrong on this one — this is not a turning point for the Republican Party or the moment it realized its soul was in the frying pan.

When Ramaswamy loses — and he’s likely going to lose, if polls are right — it won’t be because Republican voters finally believe the party has sunk too low, lost its way or lacks morals. And when the postmortem happens on the right, it won’t examine whether exploiting victims of sex abuse is a smart move. (Full disclosure: One of my relatives is an advisor of Ramaswamy.)

Instead, the ad will eventually be seen as a great gift to Donald Trump for two reasons.

First, it allows Ramaswamy — his endorsed candidate — to lose without it being the president’s fault for starting a war, tanking the economy and generally being entirely unpopular with average Americans. Get ready, because if Ramaswamy goes down, Trump will spin it that Democrats and the corrupt media misrepresented the ad and lied about Ramaswamy. Not Trump’s fault, just further proof of why his battle is righteous.

Second, it allows him to test the loyalty of his MAGA acolytes ahead of 2028, and folks, I’m sorry to say it’s a test they are likely to pass with flying colors. Vance laid this out clearly in his defense, reserving his scorn for Republicans who dared to be anything but steadfast.

“Stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days,” Vance said in response to a question about the ad. He added he was “disgusted” that his fellow Republicans were seemingly more upset about the ad “than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America.”

For all the angst about sexual abuse, even of minors, the forever Trumpers honestly don’t care as long as their candidates win and maintain power. Just ask Jeffrey Epstein’s victims. Ask E. Jean Kelly. Ask Victim A in the Matt Gaetz allegations, or Christine Blasey Ford if you can remember that far back. The list goes on.

MAGA diehards may holler and stomp about how much they hate pedophiles, but they hate Democrats more. Trump has told these voters to ignore the ad and vote Ramaswamy. I predict more of them do it than decency permits — because we’ve seen this MAGA mental split before, where they somehow set aside all of their so-called outrage when Trump tells them to do something.

These voters are clear that the Trump regime presents a real opportunity to remake the country into a conservative bastion in ways that will be hard to undo, and they will overlook even the indecency of exploiting childhood rape.

“Vivek is Great, there is no one better for Ohio. That’s a wild story,” responded one supporter on Truth Social after Trump posted a defense of the ad.

“I love how Vivek does not hesitate to call out wrongdoings,” wrote another.

Others tried to turn the topic to their conspiracies about Rep. Ilhan Omar and Michigan senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, two bogeyman of the right for their race and religion. The responses of Trumpers to his post were exactly on brand — deflecting or blaming media and disinformation for skewing the issue. (Trump and Ramaswamy are claiming that the ad isn’t about sexual abuse, but only about whether Acton is truthful.)

With that veneer of justification, it’s likely his most devout base in Ohio, led by the 20% of voters who consider themselves white evangelicals, will stick with their guy. Nearly 8 in 10 white evangelical Protestants support Trump, and they are motivated voters who have disconnected the Trump reality from the Trump promise for years.

Despite all the outrage across the country about the ad, it’s likely the final tally in Ohio will remain largely as it would have been before the kerfuffle. Ramaswamy was down in the polls before he dove into the muck of the past few days. A reliable Cook’s poll put Acton ahead 49% to 44% — one of the reasons Ramaswamy was desperate enough to try this last-ditch smear.

I’ll bet an Ohio buckeye the final count isn’t far outside that margin, with no sign of a massive drop in Republican support of Ramaswamy, despite all the posturing and hand-wringing. If he loses, it is likely more about the surging racism against Indian Americans, especially with young conservatives, than one ugly ad.

But those Republicans who denounced the ad will face the president’s punishment. The ad is not a mistake. It is an inadvertent test. By embracing the ad even as it’s disparaged nationally, the president is discovering exactly who he can, and can’t, trust as he heads into the two most difficult years of his decadelong rule — the part where he stops pretending to be anything but what he is, a corrupt and greedy man intent on maximizing power and wealth. The part where he challenges elections.

We are watching the last of the old-guard Republicans being purged thanks to the ad. Republicans who have gathered up the tattered shreds of their integrity and courage over this ad are shredding them to nothing on this moment, giving Trump insight into who might stand up to him when the protection of our democracy is on the line.

Trump has started lashing out already, making sure those potential last-round conscientious objectors are damaged.

After current Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine called for Ramaswamy to stop airing the spot, labeling it “deeply troubling,” Trump attacked him — even though DeWine said he continued to support Ramaswamy as his replacement. (DeWine is facing term limits.)

“Mike DeWine, who I unfortunately helped get elected years ago, when he was losing by 16 points prior to my doing a Rally for him was, as usual, disloyal to the Republican Party,” Trump wrote on social media.

DeWine was far from alone.

Trump’s days of conning himself into a coalition are behind him — well into his second term, is now consolidating power behind his core, public opinion be damned.

The independent voters that may indeed not vote or change votes because of the ad were just as likely to switch over gas prices or wars.

The ad was never for them, but rather just for this outrage, this push to motivate the base with just the sort of grimy bullying Trump does best — I believe him when he says he wishes he could make an ad like this. Trump will rally in Ohio this week with Ramaswamy, and it’s likely most Republicans will somehow have transmuted their outrage into support by the time he appears in person.

His base understands his support of the ad is an expression of power. His base understands the trade they are making. His base doesn’t care what happened to Acton, because she will never give them the America they want.

His base likes the ad, even if they won’t admit it.

McALLEN, Texas — The Ford Expedition rumbled to a stop and Cindy Banda’s bedazzled flip-flops landed on the asphalt of the Houston cancer center’s vast parking lot. She threaded through the rows of cars, a tally of patients who gather here to sit with chemotherapy needles or lie on radiation machines.

The elevator dinged open. A year ago in this building, surgeons removed Banda’s right breast, and she still didn’t know whether treatment had expunged the cancer from her body. Doctors had told her it would be tough to beat.

“I’m more of a positive person myself,” Banda said, now sitting with a white wristband in a dim waiting room. But the bills are harder to dismiss, and the single mother with six children in her care repeated something like a mantra. “Keep the house. Keep the cars. And just keep the kids stable.”

That’s true for many Americans, as rising healthcare costs leave more families with a sinking feeling after seeing the bill for surgery or medication. Heading into the Nov. 3 midterm elections, about half of registered voters said healthcare costs are a major problem for them and their families, up from a little more than one-third four years ago, according to a Fox News poll from September.

With party control of Congress at stake, registered voters are nearly twice as likely to say they trust Democrats over Republicans to handle healthcare, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from the same month. Those frustrations, combined with broader concerns over rising prices, have sapped support for President Trump and his Republican Party.

Banda knows how that feels. She backed Trump in each of his three campaigns, motivated by her opposition to abortion. But when cancer came, the ensuing scramble to make ends meet was painful enough to rearrange her priorities, and she started to think about voting Democratic for the first time.

The 46-year-old was ushered into a sterile room for her appointment, her phone lighted up with a text. “Please contact TD Auto Finance.”

“This one’s $1,300,” she said of the car payment bill. “I have to go back to work.”

She had been on sick leave for a year from her job selling internet service, and she needed the income to support her three children and three more she had taken in after her sister’s death.

The doctor said her reconstruction surgery could be scheduled early next year. “I was hoping for maybe December,” Banda said, “only because I’ve met my deductibles.” Come January, she would have to pay down the $7,500 again. Earlier may be possible, the doctor replied, if the skin around her surgical scar loosens.

The evening had cooled slightly by the time she walked back through the rows of parked cars, their ebb and flow marking the tide of sickness, survival and death in a small corner of a colossal healthcare industry that saves lives while taking in over $5 trillion every year.

Banda paid $8 for parking as she left.

Confronting death and debt

Two weeks later, Banda was back at work, making door-to-door rounds to sell Spectrum’s Wi-Fi in McAllen, her city along the U.S.-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley. Banda, holding blue fliers, walked along a row of storefronts, some that closed since she last was in the area.

She hadn’t had a sale and commission since October of last year, after the biopsy and diagnosis.

The doctor who gave her the news had hugged Banda, and she sobbed even though, she says, she never really sobs in front of other people. During chemo, her children took turns buzzing off her wispy hair. When her 9-year-old daughter’s hand quivered, a teenage cousin helped guide the clipper over her mother’s scalp.

Banda’s first impulse was to maintain normality, stability, for the children.

But that requires roughly $7,000 a month for utilities, mortgage, car payments and groceries, along with the two water leaks. Then, even with insurance through her job, the surgeries, chemo and radiation added up to over $25,000 that she’s been paying off, making Banda one of tens of millions of other people in the United States in medical debt.

Banda tries not to dwell on death and debt.

“It’ll consume you,” she says. She smothers those thoughts beneath her bubbly demeanor and avoids being alone. But that truce, between her insistence on positivity and the fears that it covers, is brittle.

Certain thoughts still arrive uninvited. Banda’s late sister, Melissa, didn’t have life insurance. Banda makes sure it’s a payment she never misses.

“Sometimes I think, and I shouldn’t think like this, but I’m worth more gone than here,” she said one day. “Obviously, the goal is not that, the goal is to beat it,” she continued, “to keep the house and keep the cars.”

So far she has, with the help of others.

On top of child support, the father of Banda’s 9-year-old often pays $400 a week for a nanny to help with the kids. Banda’s own father sent her $700 before for her recent Houston appointment, one of his many cash infusions. Her high school classmates, whom she hadn’t been in close touch with in decades, fundraised by selling grilled chicken, rice and beans from a roadside tent. Two GoFundMe fundraisers collected nearly $30,000, and Banda rented her late sister’s house while putting her own in forbearance.

But months of insecurity takes its own, sleepless toll. She needed to sell some internet services to catch up.

After sticking the Spectrum Wi-Fi fliers onto empty storefronts, she drove to pick up her kids from school. The following day she had a morning meeting at a barbershop for what would be her first sale back at work.

Turning on Trump

A lifelong Christian, Banda had voted her antiabortion stance in past elections. When her sister was kidnapped and murdered by her ex-husband in 2020, Banda retreated from religion. The cancer brought her back to church with an apology to God, but it also made her rethink her politics.

She voted for Trump in 2016, and his first four years seemed steady, she said, so she voted for him again in 2020. President Biden’s tenure, including a global pandemic and related inflation, felt like bedlam, so she voted for Trump to return to the White House in 2024.

But two years later and fighting an expensive disease, she had found no respite from high prices.

So when James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminary student running for U.S. Senate as a Democrat, visited one of Banda’s fundraisers — speaking about his diabetes and his work in the Texas Statehouse to lower the price of insulin — it moved her. “Imagine if he can do that for the cancer,” she said.

Talarico and his Republican opponent, state Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton, have different approaches to healthcare. Talarico wants all Americans to be able to join Medicare; Paxton proposed a $25,000 tax deduction for out-of-pocket medical expenses.

Talarico also supports a law guaranteeing abortion access nationwide, which Banda has voted against for years. But after she slid into debt to stay alive, after her grocery bills mounted and the high school had to comp the kids’ soccer gear she couldn’t afford, Banda’s antiabortion concerns have been superseded by worry about costs.

“Because it’s what I’m living,” she said. “I’m living it.”

Banda cast an early ballot for Talarico. “Never voted Democrat before today!!” she wrote in a text with blue heart emoji.

Awaiting news

Banda had just started a new cancer-targeting medication that cost $16,000 a month, reduced to $500 by insurance. By the afternoon, she was nauseated and fatigued, unable to eat. The malaise would keep her home the next day. She would miss the meeting with the barbershop to close her first deal since getting sick, though she felt confident it was in the bag.

But Banda pushed through the discomfort one evening to join her family as they replaced the flowers at her sister’s tomb.

She drove past the headstones and oak trees in the evening’s slanting light, and the family gathered around Melissa Banda’s tomb in an open-air mausoleum. There was no speech. Their eulogy was her father, Fidel Banda, methodically clipping and arranging the flowers for his daughter.

Banda walked along the wall of tombs. She will find out on election day whether the cancer is in remission or whether it’s spread to her organs.

“This one’s for me,” she said, pointing to a blank tomb next to her sister’s.

“Mom!” said her daughter with the huffiness of a 9-year-old. “Why would you say that?”

Banda smiled and added, “in a hundred years.”

Bedayn writes for the Associated Press.

LAS VEGAS — Five days after settling back into the White House, President Trump embarked on a political victory lap that took him to a rally in downtown Las Vegas.

Joined by Nevada’s Republican governor, Joe Lombardo, Trump told boisterous supporters that, as a first order of business, he’d directed every member of his Cabinet “to marshal all powers at their disposal to defeat inflation and bring down the cost of daily life.”

That hasn’t happened — not even close — and that failure is one big reason that Nevada’s governor is fighting for his political life.

Democrats, still smarting from their loss four years ago, have made Lombardo their No. 1 gubernatorial target this election season. Republicans are battling to keep their top-of-the-ticket foothold in a state that will, once more, stand at the center of the presidential campaign.

With just over a week to go — and with more than 335,000 ballots already cast — the contest could go either way.

After a career in law enforcement and eight years as sheriff of Clark County — home to Las Vegas — Lombardo made the leap to governor in 2022 in a pandemic-fueled backlash against Democratic incumbent Steve Sisolak.

Reserved by nature and a political civilian most of his life, Lombardo has spent the last four years focused on the basics — crime, education, job growth, economic development — and largely steered clear of the country’s incendiary culture wars.

Unlike other Republican lawmakers, Lombardo has also shied away from the provocations and flamboyant pugilism of the MAGA movement.

Still, Trump hangs like an anvil around Lombardo’s neck — a fact his Democratic opponent, Aaron Ford, exploits at every turn.

Appearing last week at a gas station two miles off the Las Vegas Strip, Ford cited record-high fuel prices — and the knock-on effects they’ve had on tourism, groceries and online shopping — and said Nevadans were suffering for no other reason than Trump’s “war of choice” against Iran.

“And where,” Ford asked rhetorically, as traffic whooshed past, “is our current governor? As usual, he’s at Trump’s feet, serving as his doormat.”

Nevada Democratic gubernatorial candidate and current Nevada Atty. Gen. Aaron D. Ford arrives at a get-out-the-vote event on Oct. 7 in Las Vegas.

(Ethan Miller / Getty Images)

Ford, who’s bidding to become Nevada’s first Black governor, has one of those up-by-the-bootstraps biographies that campaign consultants see as spun gold.

He grew up in Dallas in a family that struggled to stay above water and, as a single father in his early 20s, relied on Medicaid and food stamps to get by. He worked as a waiter and a teacher to pay for law school and a Ph.D. in education before moving to Nevada in 2007. After six years in the state Senate, Ford was elected in 2018 to the first of two terms as the state’s attorney general.

Like Democratic candidates everywhere, Ford has made affordability a key component of his campaign.

Standing on the sidewalk outside a Circle K — where regular was going for $5.35 a gallon — Ford squatted to sign a blown-up copy of a “letter” to Trump demanding a $2,000 “pain-at-the-pump” rebate for every Nevada household. A line was provided, obligingly but obviously unnecessarily, for Lombardo’s signature.

Four years ago, Ford noted, when gas was around $4.68 a gallon, his Republican rival wrote on social media that hard-pressed Nevadans needed “leadership that ensures our families and businesses are protected from these disastrous policies.”

“But once he got in office,” Ford said, Lombardo “stopped fighting for us in Nevada and he started working for Trump full time.”

A few hours later, at a country-themed nightclub in northwest Las Vegas, the governor took to the stage to extol his performance these last four years.

Small-business creation and job growth are up, he told a crowd of supporters gathered on the dance floor. Teachers are better paid and more people are working in Nevada than ever before. “Kicking butt,” he said, referring to either himself, Nevada or both; it wasn’t clear which. “Kicking butt.”

Also, Lombardo added, Nevada’s crime rate has fallen for both violent and property crimes — “without any help from the attorney general.”

The words “Donald” and “Trump” never passed the governor’s lips.

Lombardo has had a somewhat mixed relationship with the president.

He kept his distance during the 2024 campaign and has occasionally, selectively, taken issue with the administration since Trump returned to office. The governor, for instance, spoke out against cuts to Medicaid as well as the shuttering of wind and solar projects in Nevada.
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But Lombardo didn’t help himself in the least when Trump came to town in August for another rally, this one at the Red Rock Casino. He heaped praise on the president and defended, of all things, the care and feeding of Trump’s plutocratic pals.

“Quite often when the press and the media runs him down, they think about, you know, he’s taking care of his billionaire friends,” Lombardo said. “Those billionaire friends provide jobs. Unless you take care of them, those jobs are absent.”

Naturally, the moment showed up in a campaign ad, showing the grinning governor alongside a smirking Trump and ending with the tagline: “Joe Lombardo. For Trump, Not Nevada.”

For his part, the governor has portrayed Ford as feckless and borderline corrupt.

He’s seized on the attorney general’s abundant out-of-state travel — for official business, Ford says — to portray him as a high-flier beholden to the special interests that financed his jaunts.

Lombardo has also accused Ford of being weak on crime, citing, in particular, the case of a Nevada inmate convicted of manslaughter in the killing of a pregnant woman. Ford placed the inmate’s bid for clemency on the agenda of the state pardons board — an example, Lombardo claims, of the way Ford treats criminals.

The Democrat said he was merely following procedure and would have opposed the clemency request had he not missed the board’s meeting due to an unspecified family emergency.

With a big financial advantage and the benefit of a highly practiced campaign team, Lombardo has kept the race close despite the rough political climate. But to a considerable degree, his fate is beyond anything that Lombardo can control. The key question is how big the Democratic wave is on Nov. 3 and how strong the Trump undertow.

Those forces of red and blue — more than anything either candidate says or does — will determine the winner in this most purple of states.

WASHINGTON — N’nanba (Robin Rue Simmons) has spent years trying to answer a question that has vexed the United States since the abolition of slavery: What would it actually look like to repair the damage?

In Evanston, Ill., she helped turn that question into a $25,000 housing grant for Black residents whose families were harmed by discriminatory housing policies. Now, Rue Simmons is spreading the nation’s first municipal reparations program to more than 100 communities across the country.

But as America celebrates its 250th anniversary, there is a formidable hurdle: President Trump’s administration.

The administration’s campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and its broader efforts to curtail federal support for race-based initiatives and Black history, have prompted some institutions to reconsider or quietly scale back reparations work.

Those reversals come while at least part of the world community is reexamining the past. In March the U.N. General Assembly issued a resolution declaring the trafficking of millions of enslaved Africans “the gravest crime against humanity” and calling for reparations. More than 120 countries supported the resolution — only three voted against it — Argentina, Israel and the U.S. Fifty-two, including England and 27 members of the European Union, abstained.

“Under this administration, of course, there are many barriers to achieving that, but we still stand on federal redress as our collective north star,” Rue Simmons, the chairman of Evanston’s Reparations Committee and a former city councilwoman, told the Associated Press.

For more than 3½ centuries, the transatlantic slave trade forced an estimated 12.5 million Africans aboard ships bound for the Americas; some 1.8 million didn’t survive the journey.

Roughly 388,000 enslaved people were taken to what is now the U.S. and their enslavers maintained a system of chattel slavery, treating the enslaved and their children as property, until abolition in 1865.

Enslavement deprived generations of Black Americans their freedom and any meaningful share of the fruits of their labor. Jim Crow segregation, discrimination and systemic racism further depressed the Black population’s ability to build wealth that is still largely concentrated among white families.

From the unfulfilled promise of 40 acres and a mule, to modern-day reparations proposals, initiatives to address the legacy of slavery are entering a new era of political uncertainty.

“I don’t think that there’s been any president who’s been supportive of comprehensive Black reparations — for a long time it was just taboo to even speak the word,” said William Darity, who wrote a book on reparations with A. Kirsten Mullen.

“Now, Trump will speak the word, but with hostility,” he added.

“They want to steal your money for reparations,” Trump told his supporters during a speech in September. “Our country doesn’t have that kind of money. … The people that hate our country are asking for it, but it’s going nowhere.”

Marcus Anthony Hunter, a sociologist in African American studies at UCLA, said reparations are about atoning for the past crime of chattel slavery, even if some programs come in the form of housing grants or college scholarships instead of direct cash payments.

“It’s not even a lot of money that they are given. But it comes back to the recognition, the acknowledgment, responsibility and remedy,” he said.

The Trump administration disagrees and has entered the legal fight in Evanston to stop it from happening.

The Republican administration’s attacks on modern-day repayment efforts include a lawsuit in Evanston, which was initially filed by Judicial Watch.

Michael Bekesha, who represents the plaintiffs, says the Evanston program distributes funds based on race without specific harm identification. He argues the city’s program is unlike historical reparations programs.

“The Constitution prohibits governments from picking winners and losers based entirely on race,” Beshka told the AP.

The Justice Department this month received a federal judge’s permission to intervene in the case, alleging that the city’s actions violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and the Fair Housing Act.

Last year, the Justice Department sent a letter of warning to leaders in Asheville and Buncombe County, N.C., contemplating creating their own programs.

Kiersten Pels, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said in a statement to the AP that “race-based government benefit programs are both unconstitutional and often violate federal civil rights laws.”

“Those implementing these programs do so in violation of federal law and the federal government has an obligation to stop them,” she said.

The White House referred questions to the Justice Department.

Georgetown University was one of the leaders, offering admission consideration for the descendants of enslaved people tied to the campus’ past, an effort that has continued despite Trump’s crackdown on campus DEI efforts.

But across higher education, new efforts have come to a standstill, said Richard Cellini, who previously led a Harvard University project to identify descendants of people enslaved by Harvard’s past leaders.

“People don’t want to talk about it, they don’t want to hear about it, they’re not hiring for it,” Cellini said.

Some Virginia universities have quietly been taking steps to provide scholarships to descendants, as required under a 2021 state law. But otherwise there has been no sign of new scholarship programs being started since Trump returned to office, said Kirt von Daacke, a University of Virginia historian who leads a consortium of colleges studying slavery.

The Georgetown initiative focuses on descendants of slaves sold by Georgetown’s Jesuit priests to slaveholders in Louisiana.

The Virginia Theological Seminary makes annual cash payments to the descendants whose family members labored on its campus during slavery and Jim Crow eras. The private institution’s program is funded by an endowment started in 2019 that has grown from $1.7 million to $2.8 million. Payments to individuals vary based on the closest lineage to the family members and continue into perpetuity.

“We believe we’re the only educational institution in the United States which makes annual cash reparations payments” with no strings attached, said Nicky Burridge, the seminary’s spokeswoman.

“The moral repair, the healing aspect is as great as the monetary one,” said Ebonee Davis-Hayes, its director of reparations.

Hussein, Fields and Binkley write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — In September, just weeks before Americans were set to vote in this year’s midterm elections, a sudden panic over the dangers posed by artificial intelligence caught the White House off guard. A whistleblower had gained viral attention warning the technology could soon pose an existential threat.

President Trump was quick to dismiss concerns, evoking urgency in the U.S. race to achieve global dominance in superintelligence. He rejected calls to negotiate guardrails on the most advanced AI models with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, weeks later, during a prime opportunity to do so in Washington.

Privately, the president expressed concern that public hysteria over AI could jolt markets that have become excessively concentrated in AI-related stocks. He had already seen fresh polling that showed widespread bipartisan opposition to the boom in construction of AI data centers, a push by Trump that has cannibalized chips and energy from other sectors of the economy, driving up costs.

Now, on the campaign trail in the final days before the vote, Trump is vowing to expand a “golden age” of prosperity through the end of his presidency. But experts say his policies on AI have set the U.S. economy up for a period of tremendous risk over the next two years.

Some of the world’s leading financiers are sounding increasingly alarmed about an AI bubble. Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, has warned that AI stocks have become detached from financial fundamentals, pushing markets to precarious highs. Ken Griffin, the world’s richest hedge fund owner, said last week that AI is “almost certainly” fueling a market bubble that could be on the verge of a burst.

Economists warn that Trump has overseen fiscal policy that would give the federal government fewer tools than it has had in the past to respond to a crisis.

“Trump could easily run into a financial crisis before his term is up,” said Kenneth Rogoff, an economist at Harvard. “It is entirely plausible to have a 30% — or more — drop in the stock market, and in the context of an economy so dependent on AI, this in turn could easily lead to a recession and widespread financial distress.”

Spending on data center infrastructure last winter and spring accounted for nearly all U.S. economic growth, according to independent analyses. Without it, growth would have slowed to a mere fraction of a percentage point, leaving the economy nearly stagnant and flirting with recession.

The Nasdaq 100 has about 70% of its index weight in companies that depend on AI, from semiconductor manufacturers and Big Tech giants to cloud platforms and software providers. Anthropic, one of the top AI industry leaders, plans an initial public offering next month, while its chief rival, OpenAI, expects to go public next year.

From left, Chris Painter, president of the Model Evaluation and Threat Research, Marius Hobbhahn, CEO of Apollo Research, Paul Ohm, professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, Kurt Gaudette, senior vice president of Dragos, and Daniel Kokotajlo, executive director of the AI Futures Project, are sworn in to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Disaster Management, District of Columbia, and Census hearing titled “Rogue AI: Securing the Homeland Against AI Agent Attacks,” in Dirksen Senate Office Building on Wednesday, September 30, 2026.

(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“Because government finances are already strained, with the national debt on a patently unsustainable trajectory, there is no guarantee of a sharp drop in long-term borrowing rates for the government,” Rogoff continued. “So the options for bailing out the financial sector, or fighting recession, could be much more constrained than during the global financial crisis.”

While doubling down on the promise of an untested, frontier technology, Trump’s other economic policies may be hobbling its growth. Tariffs have raised the costs of imported chips, servers, networking equipment, metals and electrical components, and visa restrictions have tied the hands of industry leaders trying to secure the world’s best talent. Runaway federal deficits have driven long-term bond interest rates, adding pressure on AI firms already strapped with debt.

Servaas Storm, an economist closely following the AI sector at the Delft University of Technology, said the industry is already facing severe financial headwinds that could precipitate a panic.

Prices for energy, chips and minerals are driving up the cost of doing business, while early AI adopters such as Microsoft, Meta and Walmart are scaling back its use as employees spend too much time correcting errors, cleaning up low-quality output and addressing security lapses.

Slower adoption could further complicate the search for revenue, particularly for companies already struggling to monetize the technology. For now, hyperscalers are shouldering the cost of financing frontier AI labs that, as Storm put it, “do not have a credible path to profitability.”

“There is indeed an AI bubble in the stock market and in data center construction, which could pop rather soon, as rising debt loads and elevated interest rates could prove too much to sustain it,” Storm said. “That moment is not imminent, but it is approaching — and it will very likely happen before the end of Trump’s presidency.”

An economy already under duress from Trump’s other economic policies — from tariffs and tax cuts to the Iran war — could precipitate further pain, said Darrell Duffie, a finance professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Leading AI companies are already running “day-after” drills in anticipation of an AI-related crisis within the next year, according to Axios.

Americans head into election day deeply pessimistic about the economy, with 77% rating it fair or poor, according to a Fox News poll. A separate CNBC survey found that just 34% approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 35% of Republicans disapprove — a record high within his own party.

Inflation has fallen sharply from its 9% peak in 2022, during a pandemic-era surge, reaching 2.9% by the end of Biden’s presidency. Under Trump, it has climbed once again to 3.7%, driven by rising energy, transportation and housing costs — among the top concerns for voters entering next month’s vote.

Persistent inflation has forced the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates elevated, squeezing borrowers. And those rates — paired with high government spending and concerns over mounting deficits — have pressured the bond market, pushing 10-year Treasury yields to levels not seen since the early 2000s.

“Financial crises, by their nature, are virtually impossible to predict,” Duffie said, asked whether he shared concerns of a potential AI bubble.

“If we know we are going to be in a crisis soon,” he added, “markets advance the crisis to now.”

Trump says the US is considering a possible attack on Iran as soon as Sunday, or it could reach a major deal with Tehran.

BAKERSFIELD  — Top Democratic and Republican leaders are sweeping through California as the Nov. 3 election approaches, evidence of the state’s pivotal role in deciding which party will control the U.S. House of Representatives and the fate of President Trump’s final two years in office.

Seizing on their party’s momentum nationwide, Democrats rallied crowds from Orange County to the Bay Area this past week. They blamed Trump and the Republican-led Congress for rising gas and food prices, massive cuts to healthcare funding, deceitful attacks on the elections process and the vilification of immigrants.

In the Central Valley, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday evening appeared alongside Randy Villegas, a Democrat challenging Republican incumbent David Valadao of Hanford in a Latino voter-heavy district in the state’s agricultural heartland. The population of the district is one of the youngest in the country, Ocasio-Cortez told the crowd, and Gen Z and millennial voters are expected to play a pivotal role.

“We have the opportunity to take the reins,” said Ocasio-Cortez, one of the nation’s most well-known progressive leaders. “And to give direction to where our future will be headed. And I got to tell you, folks, the future is not with David Valadao.”

Recent polls show Democrats may retake control of the House in the Nov. 3 election, and they may have a chance of taking power in the U.S. Senate. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who has swung through California twice within the last month to help Republican candidates, acknowledged the challenges ahead but predicted his party would fare better than many predict.

Roughly two dozen House races across the country are expected to decide the House majority, including three competitive races in California: Those of Republican Valadao, Democratic Rep. Adam Gray in the Central Valley and the open seat of retiring Republican Rep. Darrell Issa in the San Diego area.

Democrats are hoping that the new congressional maps approved by California voters in 2025 will give them an edge. The reconfigured congressional districts approved by Proposition 50 were a response by California’s Democratic leadership to Trump urging Republicans, notably in Texas, to shift their boundaries to help the GOP hold onto control of Congress during his final two years in office.

The San Joaquin Valley district represented by Valadao, which already had a Democratic majority, added about 100,000 Fresno residents, turning it even bluer. Valadao has been a perpetual target of Democrats given their longtime voter registration edge in this area.

Aside from briefly losing the seat for one term nearly a decade ago, Valadao has hung onto the seat. He comes from a dairy farming family and is well-known in the area, winning by nearly seven percentage points in 2024, outperforming Trump.

This cycle, Democrats are hammering him for supporting Trump’s budget cuts that impacted healthcare programs, a critical issue since roughly two-thirds of the population in his district is covered by Medi-Cal, as Medicaid is known in the state, the most of any district in California, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

Valadao is among a handful of GOP members in California’s 52-member congressional delegation, the largest of any state in the nation, and among the Republicans targeted by Democrats in response to Trump’s efforts to keep his party in control of Congress.

“Donald Trump’s gerrymandering scheme is going to fail,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in Buena Park on Thursday. “It’s going to fail in Texas. It’s failing in Florida, and it’s failing in North Carolina. But I’m grateful to the people of California who decided to decisively respond and create the situation where we’ll have a fair national map.”

The party in control of the White House typically loses seats in the midterm election, and Trump and the GOP face additional headwinds because of the affordability crisis that the president promised to address when he ran for reelection in 2024. Californians face some of the highest gas and electricity prices in the country.

“The MAGA extremists are on the run because they have failed. They’ve broken every promise that they’ve made to the American people,” Jeffries said, after stumping for Rep. Derek Tran (D-Orange) at a carpenters’ union hall. “Life has not gotten more affordable. Life is far too expensive. Trump policies … have increased costs on everyday Americans by thousands of dollars per year.”

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries interacts with members of the audience after he delivered a speech during representative Derek Tran’s “Take Back the House” rally for his reelection campaign in California’s 45th Congressional District, at Carpenters Local Union 714 in Buena Park on Thursday.

(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)

Tran narrowly unseated Republican Rep. Michelle Steel in 2024, winning by just 653 votes. The recently redrawn district, which is located primarily in Orange County, could give him an edge this election.

“Prop. 50 did help me out of the battleground districts in California,” Tran said. “I got the least amount of help, but better, still better.”

On Wednesday, the Republican House speaker acknowledged his party’s hurdles while stumping for congressional candidate Kevin Lincoln in Stockton in the Central Valley.

“We’re gonna be very sober-minded about the challenge, and I want you all to know the odds that we are facing,” Johnson said.

Campaigning for Lincoln, a former Stockton mayor and an underdog in a congressional race against Democratic Rep. Gray of Merced, Johnson acknowledged that the congressional midterm will be a “very close election.” But he argued that public polling is flawed and fought back against the notion that GOP voters are dejected.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.), center left, and Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) talk to reporters after a campaign event in Bakersfield on Sept. 30.

(Jae C. Hong / AP)

“Republicans are not staying home. They are not depressed,” said Johnson, who also traveled to Bakersfield to campaign for Valadao just a few weeks ago. “They’re coming out in huge numbers, and we’re going to win because of that. You know why? Because everybody knows what’s at stake.”

Lincoln, the grandson of an immigrant and the son of a teenage mother, talked up his experiences in the military and as a pastor. He aligned himself with the “hardworking” people in the Valley, suggesting that D.C. leaders were failing the district.

“When you have a job to do, you show up, you roll up your sleeves and you get that job done, and that same standard should apply to the people that we choose to send to Washington, D.C.,” he said.

Two of California’s most powerful Democrats, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Gov. Gavin Newsom, on Friday appeared at a San Francisco union hall to rally support for Democratic congressional candidates and warn that basic rights will be at risk if Republicans stay in power in Washington. They urged voters to reject Proposition 39, the Republican-led voter identification measure that comes amid Trump’s baseless claims of widespread, illegal voting by undocumented immigrants.

Pelosi, who will retire early next year after a historic 40-year run in Congress and two stints as House speaker, criticized Trump’s “vicious, malicious” attempts to undermine elections through gerrymandering, fraud claims and attempts to mandate voter ID.

“They are putting up obstacles to participation to vote. As women, if you have your husband’s name in marriage, you’re going to have to go find your birth certificate in order to vote,” Pelosi warned of voter ID requirements. After “63 years in marriage, you think I could find my birth certificate?” Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, warned that Republicans “are ruthless” in their attempts to roll back civil rights. The outgoing governor said the 2026 midterm fight began when he and state lawmakers put Proposition 50 on last year’s November ballot.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a rally, accompanied by former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, right, members of the state’s Democratic Party, organized labor and other advocates in San Francisco on Friday.

(Heather Diehl / AP)

“Everything we have done to get us to this point is unbelievable,” he told union members in the Mission District. “You’re unbelievable, but it won’t mean anything unless we run through the tape.”

The Democrats were supporting state Sen. Mike McGuire, who is trying to flip one of Northern California’s redrawn congressional districts. He faces Rep. James Gallagher (R-Yuba City), who won a June special election to finish the term of the late Rep. Doug LaMalfa. “Prop. 50’s final chapter is almost here,” said McGuire, who has represented the rural North Coast in the Senate since 2014. “It is time to close the book on Donald Trump. It’s time to take America back.”

Seema Mehta reported from Buena Park, Nicole Nixon from San Francisco and Dakota Smith from Bakersfield.

Trump’s remarks come amid a fractious moment between the US president and the journalists who cover him.

United States President Donald Trump has confirmed he could move the White House press corps to a different location, possibly away from the executive residence.

In a social media post on Friday, Trump described reports that he planned to remove the White House press briefing room in favour of restoring a historic swimming pool located underneath as “Fake News”.

“I NEVER even thought to do such a stupid thing!” he wrote in a Truth Social post.

Trump, however, indicated he may relocate dozens of reporters who cover the White House “to a less obnoxious location”.

The New York Times on Tuesday reported that Trump had pitched his former press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on an idea to move journalists out of the White House’s storied James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. That proposal did not move forward during Leavitt’s tenure, which ended on August 27.

Trump’s remarks come amid a fractious moment between him and the journalists who cover him.

Last month, Trump banned journalists from three US-based media outlets – CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO – from the White House, a move that proponents of free speech said violated First Amendment protections.

A US federal judge ruled that the order was likely unconstitutional, forcing the White House to restore the journalists’ access. The Trump administration continues to fight the ruling.

Trump has also regularly chided and denigrated members of the media he claims cover him unfairly.

The latest incident was during an Oval Office event on Tuesday when Trump attacked The Independent’s White House Correspondent Andrew Feinberg.

“What’s wrong with you? Are you a sick person? I actually think there’s something wrong with you”, Trump said as Feinberg tried to ask a question. The moment was amplified by the White House on social media.

If Trump opts to proceed with changes to the White House press briefing room, it would be the latest in a long list of controversial projects he has ordered that would transform the property.

Since returning to power last year, the US president has demolished the White House East Wing to construct a new ballroom, installed concrete pavers over the lawn centred in the White House Rose Garden and built a helipad on the South Lawn.

The Times reported Trump told aides he wanted to bring back a West Wing indoor pool constructed in 1933 for use by President Franklin D Roosevelt, who suffered from polio and often swam, according to his presidential library, to ease soreness.

In the 1970s, former President Richard Nixon had a floor constructed above the pool to accommodate a briefing room for the growing White House press corps. The pool remains beneath the floor of the briefing room.

Leavitt confirmed during a Friday interview that Trump was “flirting” with the idea of restoring the pool.

“He just, maybe, wants to restore it to all of its glory”, Leavitt said during an appearance on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher”. “I don’t know if he’ll do it.”

The White House did not immediately return Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

With just over a week to go before election day, Nithya Raman’s endorsement for mayor from the Democratic Socialists of America’s Los Angeles chapter is in jeopardy, as members of the local and national branches tussle over the city council member’s bonafides on Palestine.

The local chapter voted to endorse Raman last month, and with that comes teams of eager doorknockers canvassing for her across the city.

The endorsement wasn’t exactly full-throated — the tally was 937 in favor and 484 against — and since then factions within the DSA have argued that she isn’t in compliance with the organization’s stance on Palestine, namely, that she doesn’t support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.

The DSA’s National Political Committee, or NPC, emailed the local’s leaders saying that they were out of compliance with “R22,” a DSA resolution that requires local chapters to inquire about a politician’s positions on the BDS movement before they are endorsed, DSA-L.A.’s co-chair Leslie Chang told The Times.

Chang acknowledged that the chapter didn’t include a question about BDS on its questionnaire for Raman before it endorsed her.

“This was an oversight,” she and co-chair Sean Wakasa wrote in an email to DSA-LA members. To the group’s national political committee, leadership wrote that Raman “has always supported the right of private citizens to engage in boycotts, including BDS.”

The Raman campaign declined to comment. At a forum last month, Raman called BDS a “legitimate form of peaceful protest” without saying whether she supports the movement.

The DSA’s national political committee, which was originally set to meet on the issue last week, is now expected to meet Monday to mull either suspending the endorsement or asking Raman to clarify her position.

Chang insists the national group has no authority to rescind an endorsement made by the L.A. chapter.

“Our endorsement of Nithya was a democratic decision made by the membership, and the NPC is violating its own bylaws by considering un-endorsement and expulsion without following proper procedure,” she said in a statement to The Times. “So we’re going to continue campaigning for our entire slate and protect our chapter’s vote by all means necessary.”

A spokesperson for the DSA national organization declined to comment.

‘City of L.A. on steroids’

As voters ready to go to the polls next month, another local race is already looming large in the background: the contest for top dog in Los Angeles County government.

Measure G, approved by a slim margin of voters in November 2024, set in motion the process of creating both a new CEO position with broad executive powers and an independent ethics commission, and it expanded the Board of Supervisors from five members to nine.

But Supervisor Kathryn Barger is now asking her fellow supervisors to take a “pause,” telling the Times in an interview that “haste makes waste” and that she is concerned about that process and the speed of its implementation. She also called into question the ethics of a sitting supervisor running for an office that is expected to pay $558,000 in total compensation.

“This position is going to change the county. We’re going to become the city of L.A. on steroids,” she said Wednesday, a day after the board’s latest meeting devolved into a contentious discussion of the county executive issue and Barger’s intention to slow down the process.

“Once again,” she added, “we are rushing to put something together, I think maybe in the hopes that no one will peel back the curtain and expose what is going on.”

At Tuesday’s board meeting, Barger committed to not run for the CEO position and called on her fellow board members to do the same. Supervisors Holly Mitchell and Hilda Solis have now publicly stated that they too will follow the pledge.

But Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, widely viewed as a potential top contender for the position, has declined to pledge not to run. Instead, she criticized Barger’s approach in an emailed statement to The Times.

“Pressuring others out of an election is political interference, no matter how many times she calls it ethics,” Horvath said, adding that voters “took this power away from politicians like Supervisor Barger because they wanted to make this choice themselves. She doesn’t get to claw it back and dress up a power grab as an ethics crusade.”

Golfing for Gates

Thirty-four years after he left his post, former Police Chief Daryl F. Gates continues to be an unexpected flashpoint in this year’s mayoral contest.

Raman said during an Oct. 13 debate that the LAPD under Gates was “the gold standard” for its noncooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Bass responded by accusing her of romanticizing a chief who presided over the mistreatment of Black and Latino residents.

Raman initially accused Bass of twisting her words. But this week, the council member began issuing apologies, telling CNN she “should not have said it.”

Although Bass has repeatedly denounced Gates’ 14-year tenure on the campaign trail, one of her biggest financial supporters has been keeping his legacy alive.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents rank and file officers and is backing Bass, has been a long-standing host of a memorial golf tournament named after Gates, who died in 2010. This year’s was billed as one of the union’s “premier fundraising events.” According to the union, proceeds go to its Officer Needs Help Fund, which helps officers and their families in times of need.

Bass’ campaign, asked about the tournament, did not immediately offer a comment. Neither did Raman and the police union.

Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed.

State of play

— WILL SHE, WON’T HE: Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath endorsed Raman on Tuesday, giving the City Council member a powerful boost in the battle for votes on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley.

Former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Rick Caruso, however, declined once again to endorse either Bass or Raman in the Nov. 3 runoff election, but expressed what he called “extreme concern” about Raman’s plans to remove Police Chief Jim McDonnell.

— VALLEY RAIL: Construction is set to begin this week on a 6.7-mile rail line linking Van Nuys and Pacoima. The nearly $4-billion project, which will run along Van Nuys Boulevard, will include 11 street-level stations and is projected to open in 2032, according to L.A. Metro, the Los Angeles County transit agency.

— TOP COP FLOP: Raman’s police chief woes continued this week when she was asked by CNN anchor Elex Michaelson to name a police chief she respects. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” she said, before Michaelson continued with another question.

— GHOST OF GASCÓN: In the homestretch of the mayor and city attorney contests, George Gascón has been conjured as a boogeyman by opponents of progressive candidates Marissa Roy and Raman.

— LET THE GAMES BEGIN? The next mayor of Los Angeles will be in the global spotlight in 2028, when L.A. plays host to the Summer Olympic Games. And if Raman prevails over Bass, that mayor will be someone who didn’t even want the Olympics here in the first place.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program did not launch any new encampment operations this week.
• On the docket next week: The DSA National Political Committee will meet Monday to discuss DSA-LA’s endorsement of Raman.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

EDINBURG, Texas — Clad in pressed jeans and cowboy hats, dozens of riders on horseback and drivers in pickups kicked up dust along a dirt road in Edinburg, near the southern tip of Texas. They were there for a cabalgata, a traditional horse procession, with a political message: Send Tejano singer Bobby Pulido to Congress.

Some were lifelong Democrats. Others had voted for President Trump two years ago. But on this Saturday, they all rode for Pulido, a Democrat trying to flip a House seat Trump carried by 18 percentage points in 2024.

Among them was David Lopez, 54, astride his brown horse, Black Jack. He voted for Trump because he saw him as a good businessman. But now, Lopez says the president’s tariffs have hurt his truck and trailer repair shop in nearby McAllen, and business is down about 20% from last year.

“I am voting Democrats all the way. Trump is no longer doing a good job,” Lopez said. “We need to find a way to make it out of this together.”

Lopez is part of a shift rippling through Latino communities across the country. Two years after helping return Trump to the White House with a Republican-controlled Congress, Latino voters are souring on the party in power, fueled by frustration over rising costs and the administration’s aggressive approach to immigration enforcement.

People cheer while listening to congressional candidate Bobby Pulido at an Oct. 16, 2026, rally in Mercedes, Texas.

In 2024, Trump won the support of 48% of Latino voters, expanding Republican gains with a group that has long leaned Democratic. Now, that support is cratering. The president’s approval rating among Latino registered voters has fallen to 24% from 38% at the start of his second term, polls show.

Among Latinos who voted for Trump, 65% say they plan to back Republicans on Nov. 3, while more than a third said they were ready to vote for a Democrat or were undecided, according to a Pew Research Center poll released this month.

More broadly, Latino voters favor Democrats in House races 51% to 24%, and those who sat out the 2024 election are leaning toward Democrats. Those shifts could help decide control of the House, in part because Republicans in Texas and Florida redrew their congressional maps betting that their 2024 gains among Latino voters would last through the midterms.

Bobby Pulido, a Latin Grammy winner and Democrat running for Texas’ 15th Congressional District, sings at the Bert Ogden Arena on Oct. 17, 2026, in Edinburg, Texas.

Nowhere is that test sharper than in the borderlands of the Rio Grande Valley, where voters say that Trump has failed to deliver on his economic promises and that his administration has gone too far on immigration enforcement, an issue they wanted addressed, but humanely.

In more than two dozen interviews in the Latino-majority region, voters say they are driven less by party loyalty and more by frustrations that they have been taken for granted, and want to elect politicians who take their votes seriously.

They say it has become harder to keep up with rising costs, including for the diesel that fuels their trucks and their weekly grocery runs. Builders say construction projects have ground to a halt as workers are detained or deported. And small-business owners say sales have dropped, either because customers are afraid to leave their homes or because tariffs have driven up their costs.

1

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1. Sebastian Guevara, 65, poses for a photo at a political rally on Oct. 16, 2026, in Mercedes, Texas. “Trump forgot about Latinos as soon as he won,” he said. 2. Luis Sustaita, 49, a mariachi musician who had voted Republican in previous years, says he will be voting for Bobby Pulido.

Nidia Olivarez, 48, and her husband, Arnulfo, 55, voted for Trump in 2024 but have grown frustrated with how he has handled the economy and immigration raids in their community. This year, they’re backing Pulido over GOP Rep. Monica De La Cruz in Texas’ 15th Congressional District. But not because they’ve had a change of heart about the Democratic Party.

“We are only voting for Pulido, not other Democrats,” Olivarez said. The couple are still unsure whether they’ll support any Republicans.

For them, the vote is personal. They’ve long loved Pulido’s Tejano music and like that he’s a familiar figure in their community. They trust him, she said. They’re less sure about the Republicans at the top of the ticket: Ken Paxton, the Senate nominee running against Democrat James Talarico, and Gov. Greg Abbott, who is seeking reelection.

“We want to see who continues to show up in the area,” Olivarez said. “That matters to us.”

People cheer during Tejano singer Bobby Pulido’s last song “Desvelado” during a concert in October in Edinburg, Texas.

Latino voters in Texas are increasingly willing to consider candidate over party, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston.

“They are not just looking for what party to align with. They want to know that they can trust the person they’re voting for,” Rottinghaus said.

That dynamic will play a role in the competitive races for Texas’ 15th, 28th and 34th congressional districts and in the Senate seat, which has proved to be one of the most expensive and high-profile contests this year. In a sign of GOP concerns, Trump and Vice President JD Vance have repeatedly traveled to Texas this month to rally voters.

In recent weeks, Trump has brushed off polls that show him losing ground with Latino voters.

“I think we are doing great, I won Hispanics,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “I’ve done more than any other Republican in history, I got tremendous Hispanics.”

In early October, Trump was asked about Latino voters who say they feel betrayed by his administration’s immigration and economic policies. His message to them was that “we have to do what we have to do,” in reference to his immigration crackdown.

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1. People dance during Bobby Pulido’s concert. 2. A man rides his horse before a parade in support of Bobby Pulido on Oct. 17, 2026, in Edinburg, Texas. 3. Bobby Pulido, in brown vest and white cowboy hat, upper left, takes a photo with rallygoers after speaking on Oct. 16, 2026, in Mercedes, Texas.

Gloria Rodriguez, a social worker in Edinburg, has seen the impact the immigration raids have had on children. Since Trump returned to the White House, she has helped coordinate services for hundreds of kids whose parents or caregivers have been detained or deported. She worries many of them will develop post-traumatic stress disorders.

“Everything they are doing with immigration is too much,” said Rodriguez, 50, who is voting for Democrats down the ballot. Her 15-year-old daughter, Angelina, says she told her mother to vote for Democrats, in part because she is scared her friends will be deported.

Luis Sustaita, 49, a mariachi who owns a music store that sells instruments to school districts, is voting Democrat this year because he says he is disheartened by the values of the modern-day Republican Party.

“There are no old-school Republicans anymore. It is all MAGA,” said Sustaita, who lives in Weslaco. “They used to be about the people. Trump is all about himself and making himself rich.”

In South Texas, Republicans and Democrats alike are trying to court voters on a more personal level. It is about identity more than political affiliation in many ways.

In the majority-Latino 15th Congressional District, Pulido’s campaign slogan is “Not team red, not team blue — South Texas I am team you.” In an interview, Pulido added that his message to Latino voters is: “I hear you loud and clear, and I believe I share values with you.”

Rodrigo Pulido, 6, with his mother, Mariana Morales, cheers as his father, Bobby Pulido, sings the last song, “Desvelado,” during his concert at the Bert Ogden Arena on Oct. 17, 2026, in Edinburg, Texas.

De La Cruz, a former insurance agent and a staunch Trump ally, said Latinos are “tired of being taken for granted” and said Pulido “has some nice records, but he’s a product of the same corrupt system that got rich and made us poorer.”

“I grew up in South Texas watching the compadre system steal from us while our families struggled to get by,” De La Cruz said in a statement. “You work hard and want a little more for your family and safe communities. I cut your taxes, protected Social Security and Medicare, stood with Border Patrol agents, and I’m fighting every day to bring down gas and grocery prices.”

Whether that message will resonate with voters will be seen on Nov. 3.

Tina Treviño, 61, said she hopes “la raza” — a term used in the Mexican American community that is widely understood as “the people” — will deliver political change to Texas. She says the system is not working for Latinos, and believes Democrats will be able to bring that change.

“It’s about Chicano power,” Treviño said. “We need that more than ever.”

BLAINE, Wash. — The Trump administration’s top border official defended plans to build a wall and other infrastructure in Texas’ Big Bend region despite mounting opposition against the project and a court-ordered pause on construction, saying his goal of fortifying the country’s borders was “non-negotiable.”

In an exclusive interview with the Associated Press, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott argued that the $46-billion wall project was justified despite a bipartisan coalition of landowners, local businesses and environmentalists who view it as a waste of taxpayer money that could be destructive to a region with historically low migrant crossings.

“Our No. 1 goal right out the gate is we have to know who and what is coming into the United States,” Scott said on Thursday. If the Big Bend region were left without a wall or other border infrastructure while other areas along the border get those fortifications, he said, “I am 100% convinced it will be completely overrun and destroyed.”

The fight over Big Bend has become a major test for how far the Republican administration is willing to go for the border wall, President Trump’s signature infrastructure project.

Scott, a former Border Patrol agent, was tapped by Trump to complete it.

His agency is responsible for executing a plan funded last summer by Republicans in Congress to line the roughly 2,000-mile border with Mexico with a mixture of 30-foot-tall steel walls, vehicle barriers, new roads and surveillance technology to prevent illegal immigration and smuggling.

The Trump administration says it is building about 12 miles a week. Scott, who gets daily progress updates, said it will be complete by the end of Trump’s second term. The primary border wall — some areas also get a secondary layer — will be done by the end of December 2027.

“We’re actually ahead of schedule,” Scott said.

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1. Charlie Angell stands on an overlook of the Rio Grande river 2. Pamela Priddy, center, holds up signs with others during a weekly protest against barriers along the border in the Big Bend region, Saturday, Sept. 26, 2026, in Study Butte, Texas. (John Locher / Ap Photo/john Locher)

Big Bend is a test for the Trump administration’s plans for the wall

The wall plan has run into resistance in places like Big Bend. The Trump administration was dealt a major setback earlier this month when a judge ordered a pause on border wall construction in the region, citing what could be a likelihood that plaintiffs “will suffer serious, irreparable harm without an injunction.” The administration has asked the Supreme Court to lift the order.

The ruling included any construction in Big Bend National Park, an area that has seen a loud bipartisan outcry, including from some Republican lawmakers.

After bulldozers were spotted in the park tearing up ground in August, Scott ordered a pause on all construction-related activity there while he went to talk to people in the region. He said the agency is making other outreach to locals to discuss how to build projects so they don’t mar the park.

“We’re talking through and figuring out what is the right solution for that area,” he said.

Scott said he can’t get into specific details on what the agency’s plans are for the park because of the numerous ongoing lawsuits, but he reiterated that the project won’t include tall steel walls.

He also said that the agency’s stated goal of protecting the country and knowing what’s coming in and going out is “non-negotiable.”

He said the region’s formidable natural barriers were not enough to prevent people from entering the country illegally through other more navigable points. And he expressed concern that cartels that control smuggling from Mexico into the U.S. would exploit any opening.

CBP has come under fire for immigration enforcement tactics

Scott leads an agency of 67,000 employees responsible for controlling who and what comes into the country through official border crossings like airports or seaports and stopping illegal smuggling and migration outside those official border crossing points.

The agency came under heavy scrutiny last year when its officers were sent into cities deep inside the country to help carry out Trump’s immigration crackdown alongside Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Agents with the Department of Homeland Security, which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol and Customs Enforcement patrol in a neighborhood after apprehending a person on Jan. 31 in St. Paul, Minn.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

As protests against an operation rocked Minneapolis, a Border Patrol officer and a CBP officer both fired shots in an encounter that killed a U.S. citizen, Alex Pretti. The shooting eventually prompted the Trump administration to wind down high-profile city-based crackdowns. A CBP officer who was the face of the missions, Gregory Bovino, who led a helicopter raid at a large apartment building and used chemical agents to confront demonstrators, retired earlier this year.

Scott said while CBP still helps ICE, it’s now less involved in immigration enforcement far from the country’s borders because ICE has since hired more officers to its ranks. Scott wouldn’t comment on the investigation into the Pretti killing, saying that it was being handled by the FBI and was ongoing. And when asked about Bovino’s tactics, he said the officer didn’t report to him during the operations.

Scott spoke to the AP just outside the border with Canada, where he met with border security representatives from other countries to share information about threats and trends. During his trip, he visited an operations center where he said Canadian and American law enforcement work together.

That border has far fewer threats than the U.S. border with Mexico. Scott said cartels in Mexico are increasingly sending drones into the United States to move contraband and keep tabs on Border Patrol agents. In Mexico, the cartels have been using drones to attack each other or Mexican law enforcement.

The Department of Homeland Security, which includes CBP, recently announced temporary flight restrictions targeting unauthorized drone activity in a zone extending a mile north of the U.S.-Mexico border as a way to counter cartels.

“We want to make sure,” Scott said, “that threat does not come into the United States.”

Santana writes for the Associated Press.

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.

WASHINGTON — First Lady Melania Trump has brokered an upcoming ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine in the war-ravaged Ukrainian city of Oleshky to allow for humanitarian aid and the evacuation of civilians, the White House announced on Friday.

The localized ceasefire is set to begin Thursday, with the American first lady saying in a news release that the situation there is “on the brink of disaster.”

The White House said Trump had initiated the discussions and that she and a representative worked directly with Russian and Ukrainian leadership to define the terms of the ceasefire.

Ukraine’s lead negotiator for the agreement thanked Trump for her involvement and said the deal would be “extremely challenging to implement.”

“Under our agreement: first a ceasefire will be put in place; second, humanitarian aid will be delivered to Oleshky; and third, civilians will be allowed to move freely out of Oleshky,” Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, said in a video message posted online. “The operation will be carried out gradually and is extremely challenging to implement. I will therefore keep Ukrainian society informed and share the results of the operation.”

Russia’s chief of the general staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, said Russian forces “will cease fire on the Kherson axis” starting at 4 a.m. TuesdayMoscow time “in connection with the humanitarian operation near Oleshky.” The Russian forces will also carry out “engineering reconnaissance” and ensure “safe movement of the humanitarian convoy” into the city, Gerasimov said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said Moscow was grateful to the first lady and that effort was discussed during the latest call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Trump, he said.

Peskov said “those who want to leave it would be able to do so.” He would not say whether those who evacuate will be taken to Russia or Ukraine-held territory. He also demurred when asked how long the evacuation will last, saying only it would likely take several days.

Saving children is first lady’s focus, president says

Melania Trump has made helping children in conflict one of her signature issues and hosted a U.N. Security Council meeting on the issue earlier this year. She has written Putin to work on efforts to reunite families with children who have been displaced by the war.

“What she wants to do is save children, and that’s her focus,” the president said of the first lady during a question-and-answer exchange with journalists in Washington.

Tensions between Washington and Kyiv are rising

The development comes as tensions have increased to new highs between the Trump administration and Ukraine’s government. Kyiv has faced restrictions on the satellite internet system that it relies on to knock down Russian attacks, with Trump and other top U.S. officials sending mixed messages about who was responsible for throttling the Elon Musk-made Starshield system.

Trump also has recently waived new Russian sanctions, reached an agreement with Russia to import diesel and pushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to make a deal to end the war that began in February 2022. In renewed efforts to revive the peace process, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff traveled to Norway this week for talks with Zelensky before meeting with Putin in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Zelensky did not mention the ceasefire in Oleshky during a remote appearance at the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank. He did note that American Patriot missile interceptors were still on hold and Starshield and Starlink speed limits were still in place.

He also spoke of the importance of the United States to renewed diplomatic efforts to end the war, including a possible joint meeting with Trump and Putin.

Dire situation in Oleshky

Food and medical supplies have been scarce for months in Oleshky, which sits on the Dnipro River that separates Ukrainian forces from the city’s Russian occupiers. There is no electricity, heat or running water. Roads leading from town are mined and dotted with burned-out cars. Drones buzz overhead.

Once a city of about 24,000 residents, Oleshky was captured by Moscow’s forces on the first day of their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Its buildings were shelled and burned, and its infrastructure damaged. In June 2023, floodwaters inundated the city after the Kakhovka Dam collapsed from an explosion that an Associated Press investigation found was likely caused by the Russian military. Hundreds of residents were killed.

Those left in the city along Ukraine’s southeastern front face death from hunger or disease as another harsh winter looms. Ukraine has appealed repeatedly for a local ceasefire to organize evacuations. Russia, as the occupying power, is obligated by international law to ensure civilians under its control have what they need to survive.

Melania Trump details the mission

Melania Trump said in the White House news release that civilian leaders from Ukraine and Russia will visit Oleshky residents to determine the level of assistance they require.

“Residents who wish to evacuate will receive coordinated support and transportation to their preferred destination,” she said. “I anticipate some will want to go to Russia, and some to Ukraine.”

Melania Trump also said “an impartial American media organization” will accompany and document Russian and Ukrainian teams on the ground throughout the process.

“This will play a significant role in ensuring that the wishes of each family are faithfully respected,” she said.

The statement did not identify the media organization.

Finley writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Seung Min Kim and Konstantin Toropin in Washington; Volodymyr Yurchuk in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.

LONG BEACH, Wash. — Tourist dollars are drying up in this small town at the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Foot traffic is down. Visitors have less to spend on souvenirs.

And beachgoers now bring packed lunches instead of stopping at Captain Bob’s Chowder Sisters, said Melissa Huddleston, waiting for customers at her sister-in-law’s shop on Sunday.

Huddleston, 60, is depressed about the state of the country, and while she’s planning to vote in the Nov. 3 midterms, she hasn’t decided who she’ll vote for. This swing district, Washington’s 3rd, is home to a tight congressional race that will help determine the balance of power in the U.S. House.

Huddleston doesn’t think anyone in Congress can really do what she wants: Bring decorum back to the national discourse and bring the economy back to life. She isn’t a particular fan of Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, the independent-leaning Democratic incumbent, nor is she persuaded by state Sen. John Braun, the Trump-endorsed Republican challenger.

“I don’t know which one is better,” Huddleston said, shaking her head. “I really don’t.”

Melissa Huddleston waits for customers at Captain Bob’s Chowder Sisters in Long Beach, Wash.

(Justine McDaniel/Los Angeles Times)

As the battle to persuade midterm voters intensifies in the election’s final stretch, its fever pitch is evident in places like this largely rural stretch of southwest Washington — a rare three-time Trump-voting district with a Democratic incumbent.

Republican-aligned groups are pouring money into flipping the district red, considering it one of the GOP’s best chances to gain a House seat in an increasingly unfavorable environment, while Democrats see retaining the district as urgent to their effort to secure control of the chamber.

The contest offers a glimpse into a purple region a time when both parties are testing strategies for winning voter loyalty — not just in the midterms but looking ahead to 2028. And the dynamic in the candidates’ race to capture swing voters reflects the national debate gripping both parties about how moderate to be.

As Democrats debate whether progressives or centrists should chart the party’s path, Gluesenkamp Perez has modeled an independent streak that has helped her win two elections but disappointed some in her own party. And as Republicans grapple with low public support for Trump, Braun has packaged his conservatism as balanced while assuring supporters that he’s rowing in the same direction as the president and party leaders.

Interviews with more than 30 voters across the district revealed a mix of support for the two candidates, largely based on partisan politics, views about Trump and concern with which party controls the House.

“This is a very pivotal time, and this area has a history of being more of a swing [district],” said Mark Maxwell, 46, of Vancouver, Washington, who planned to vote blue. “It’s a chance for our voice to be heard.”

A sign for Washington State Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, is displayed among other campaign signs near I-5, Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026, in Ridgefield, Wash.

(Lindsey Wasson/Associated Press)

The number of congressional battlegrounds nationwide has shrunk with gerrymandering and political polarization, making the district one of about two dozen races that will decide the House majority. The West’s other highly competitive contests include three in California — those of Republican Rep. David Valadao and Democratic Rep. Adam Gray in the Central Valley and the open seat of retiring Republican Rep. Darrell Issa in the San Diego area.

In southwest Washington, polling has indicated the congressional race may be essentially tied. A late September poll commissioned by Oregon Public Broadcasting had Braun up by one point. A July Emerson College poll showed the same. Earlier this month, election forecaster Cook Political Report moved the race from a toss-up rating to lean-Democrat.

‘Stubborn loyalty’

Across the district last week, left-leaning voters said they were backing Gluesenkamp Perez — some precisely because of her maverick streak.

“She’s voted against the Democrats and I know she’s voted against the Republicans, which is what one would hope,” said Helios Ovando, 69, of Battle Ground, Wash., who decided this year to volunteer for Gluesenkamp Perez’s campaign for the first time. “She’s more about the local scene.”

Ovando has been turned off by what he sees as Republicans’ adherence to the party line; Gluesenkamp Perez’s willingness to “buck the system” gives him more confidence in her integrity, he said.

July 2026 photo of Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA)at a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill.

(Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Gluesenkamp Perez, 38, who ran an auto shop with her husband before being elected to Congress, frames her mission as one built around the practical needs of her district. She argues that Democrats should break the Republican hold on rural districts and talks about reestablishing voters’ confidence that the Democratic Party is “listening to and reflective of working people.”

“When you have people come to Congress with a very stubborn loyalty to their communities, you get better federal policy,” Gluesenkamp Perez said in an interview.

“That’s the value of breaking up the monopolization of politics in rural America,” she added. “It gets you to a better place from a policy lens.”

She points to funding wins and work to mitigate pressures on public schools and housing costs in Congress. On Saturday evening, she talked to a crowd at a brewery about restoring shop class to junior high schools and creating measures that facilitate repairing rather than replacing electronics and appliances.

Gluesenkamp Perez’s independence has also earned her critics. She twice helped House Republicans advance their legislative agenda in September, angering Democratic leaders, and voted to fund the Department of Homeland Security in January. In each case, she said the packages contained secondary measures that aligned with her constituents’ values.

At a “No Kings” protest last weekend in Vancouver, the district’s urban center, several Democratic voters said they weren’t happy with Gluesenkamp Perez but still planned to back her.

Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash., speaks during an interview at a canvass launch at Recreation Park Penny Playground, Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026, in Chehalis, Wash.

(Lindsey Wasson/Associated Press)

“I will vote for her even though I don’t like her policies,” said Carol Rochat, 71, of Vancouver. “We need all the Democrats we can get, at least to get the majority, and then we’ll still work on her to try to be a little bit more progressive.”

‘Win their trust’

Gluesenkamp Perez ran against a hard-right candidate in her first two races, but this time she’s facing a less-polarizing and better-funded opponent in Braun, 59, a business owner and former Navy captain who has represented a slice of the district in the state Legislature for 13 years.

He made his pitch to a group of supporters at Long Beach’s historic train depot, framing his mission as balancing out the state’s Democratic voices in Congress and helping government “get out of the way” of its citizens.

“That’s sort of the American dream,” he said. “Government doesn’t create success for each of us, but we can set the framework for each of us to go out and find whatever success means for us.”

Braun talks about reforming tax and energy policy, funding infrastructure improvements and backing the military. He argues for balancing the federal budget, envisioning doing detailed, line-level work to find cuts that will reduce the national debt.

“He’s in line with my thinking,” said Liz Glenn, 63, of Raymond, Wash., listing Christian values, support for law enforcement and “protecting children” as some of her top concerns. A retired bookkeeper who is concerned about immigration and wants to see the House seat turn red, Glenn said she viewed maintaining a Republican majority as critical.

“It’s the only way to protect our country’s growth,” she said, adding, “Without the Republicans fighting against the perversions of the world, there’s so much non-American value being brought in.”

May 2023 photo of Washington state Sen. John Braun speaking in Olympia, Wash.

(Karen Ducey/Associated Press)

Braun told supporters that Trump’s endorsement had helped bring in financial support for his campaign. But, like other Republicans across the country, he has tried to appear independent on issues such as the war in Iran, which Braun has said the United States needs a plan to end.

“This district is a very independent district. I think it gives an opportunity to go make your case directly with the voters and win their trust … regardless of what the national picture is,” Braun said in an interview.

Pattie Gray, 66, who chairs the county Republican Party and watched Braun stump at the train depot, said Braun’s legislative and military experience made her view him as a “natural fit” for the seat.

“We need somebody who’s representing us the way we want to be represented,” Gray said. “He sees what this state needs.”

Gray, who is running for a Pacific County commissioner seat, has been door-knocking for Braun and other local Republican candidates. She’s optimistic about the chances to flip the seat, though it’s not “a shoo-in,” she said.

“We have to work really hard,” Gray said of turning out voters. “We’ve only got a couple more weeks.”

Huddleston, at the chowder shop, didn’t cast a ballot in 2024, unable to stomach supporting either party. She is motivated to vote this time because she wants to back a local Republican sheriff, whose campaign sign hung on the shop door.

But she’s upset with Trump’s brand of political divisiveness and where it has taken the country. She would prefer a Democratic majority in Congress, she said, to see if they can help fix the economy.

That might, Huddleston mused, lead her to support Gluesenkamp Perez when she fills out her ballot. But if so, it won’t be with gusto.

“Our country is horrible now,” Huddleston said. “How can you be enthusiastic about an election?”

Burnham announced the decision to approve the drilling of the Jackdaw gas field earlier this week.

Jackdaw is situated 150 miles (241km) east of Aberdeen and is operated by Adura, a joint venture between Shell and Norwegian state energy firm Equinor.

Ministers said the first gas could be produced by the end of this month, helping heat millions of homes, and also announced the creation of a new energy wealth fund.

Environmental campaigners say the decision would hamper efforts to tackle climate change and make “no meaningful difference” to UK energy security.

Based on official forecasts for the amount of gas the UK will need over the next decade, that suggests Jackdaw has the potential to meet around 1.6% of total projected national gas demand between 2026 and 2036.

Operators say it could be connected to the Great British gas network within weeks and could produce gas for the next 11 years.

Trump responded to the decision on Friday, but appeared to confuse oil and gas.

He said: “They’re opening up the North Sea oil. I’ve been after them to do that for two years.”

Trump added: “Andy is getting it done, and I guess it’s against the liberal principle, but he knows what’s right. It’s going to make UK a very wealthy country.”

Earlier this week, on Wednesday, Trump said the decision was “great news for the wealth and prosperity” of the UK.

Writing on his Truth Social platform, Trump urged the UK to go “full blast” and called the North Sea “one of the greatest and most prosperous areas of oil in the world”.

A decision is yet to be taken on whether production can begin at Rosebank, the UK’s largest known untapped oil field, which is located off the coast of Shetland in the North Atlantic.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has filed a lawsuit to block certification of the Senate race in Alaska if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses the contest while another candidate with the same name is on the ballot, kicking off what many have feared could become a lengthy battle between the U.S. government and states over certifying an election where the president’s party is struggling.

Many in both parties believe the fight could come down to Alaska, where Sullivan faces Democrat Mary Peltola. Also on the Alaska ballot is a Daniel J. Sullivan from the tiny fishing community of Petersburg. He has said he decided to run on his own, but Republicans have contended he’s a Democratic plant to siphon votes away from their candidate.

On Thursday, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in federal court in Alaska demanding that the state be blocked from certifying a Peltola win if the other Sullivan remains on the ballot. “The United States accordingly brings this lawsuit to protect the integrity of the 2026 Senate election in Alaska,” the lawsuit alleges, contending that federal law requires states to protect the integrity of federal elections.

The Alaska Supreme Court rejected previous Republican efforts to remove the other Sullivan from the ballot, and the state’s Republican officials made the decisions about how to list him on the ballot. The other Sullivan will appear without a party designation next to his name, while the senator will be listed as the Republican incumbent. Alaska’s ranked choice voting system also will allow voters to select both of the men if confused.

The Trump Department of Justice has increasingly been used to bolster the president’s political operation, targeting his enemies and filing lawsuits against Democratic-controlled states in the run up to the election. Democrats and many voting rights advocates have long feared the Trump administration will try to block certification of elections the president’s party loses much as Trump unsuccessfully tried to do when he lost the 2020 presidential election.

Earlier Thursday, U.S. Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche told reporters that was unlikely outside of extreme circumstances. “It is not DOJ’s intention to and it’s never our intention to improperly interfere with elections or the state certification process,” the attorney general told reporters in Virginia.

Derek Muller, a law professor at Notre Dame University, said the lawsuit will likely only kick in if Republicans narrowly lose the Alaska Senate race and that it does not seem to have legal merit. “The statute simply doesn’t let the Department of Justice enjoin certification,” he said.

Riccardi writes for the Associated Press.

The federal government has stopped sharing evidence with Minnesota authorities who are investigating the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers, state officials said in recent court filings.

Minnesota officials sued President Trump’s administration in March for access to materials they said they needed to independently investigate the shootings during Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis earlier this year. The Trump administration has suggested that state prosecutors don’t have jurisdiction to investigate federal officers, while Minnesota officials have said they don’t trust the federal government to investigate itself.

The state is still seeking the cell phones of the officers involved in both shootings and recordings of key interviews.

State prosecutors announced in July that the federal government had begun turning over evidence in the cases, including police body camera video and hard drives containing statements. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said at the time that the state expected to receive “all the evidence.”

But Minnesota investigators said in October court filings that the transfer of evidence stopped soon after the July announcement. Moriarty said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota told her on Sept. 10 that evidence sharing would be on pause indefinitely “in light of challenges with D.C.,” according to the documents.

State prosecutors have again asked a judge to order federal agencies to hand over the evidence, arguing they “have identified no legal authority or rational basis justifying their obstruction of state criminal investigations.”

In a reply filed Tuesday, attorneys for the Justice Department argued it’s within their discretion to decline to share information with state authorities. They cited the department’s rules for responding to record requests, known as the Touhy regulations, which apply only when formal legal proceedings are underway. The attorneys said there was no active court case when Minnesota made its requests.

Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said in a legal declaration that federal authorities still have Good’s clothing, the cell phone of the officer who killed her and interview recordings that state authorities have never been able to view.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, while she was leaving a Minneapolis protest on Jan. 7. Bystander video shows Good in the driver’s seat of an SUV, repeatedly honking the horn, when masked immigration officers order her to step out of the vehicle. She starts to pull forward, and an officer standing in front of the car fires at her windshield. The officer, now standing about an arm’s length from the open window on the driver’s side, fires twice more, according to an analysis of the videos by The Associated Press and others.

Federal officials at the time said the officer acted in self-defense.

Good’s death and that of Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse who was killed weeks later by a federal officer in Minneapolis, ignited nationwide protests against the Republican president’s immigration enforcement efforts.

No criminal charges have been filed in connection with the fatal shootings.

Evans said the federal government also has not shared a recorded statement from an officer who shot Pretti, the firearms used by the officers, their phones, projectiles and casings, and a gun taken from Pretti before he was shot.

Schoenbaum writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has alleged that elections, public benefit programs and federal grants to nonprofits are rife with fraud. Now, he is increasingly focusing on fraud in his effort to detain and deport more immigrants.

Recent, high-profile flash points include 28 lawful permanent residents accused this week of illegally voting in California and the federal investigation into Somali-born Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

The broader crusade takes many forms, including allegations of fraud in immigration applications, illegal voting by noncitizens and misuse of federal benefits by immigrants who don’t qualify.

“This administration has purposefully mischaracterized immigrants and asylum seekers as fraudsters,” said Royce Murray, a former senior official at the Department of Homeland Security under the Biden administration. That, she said, “serves a narrative that immigrants are not to be trusted and are here to take something rather than contribute, with an end goal of trying to make Americans less welcoming and more comfortable with a mass deportation agenda.”

On Tuesday, Trump and Vice President JD Vance announced a $25-million program under the Justice Department to encourage the public to report suspected fraud in the U.S. government.

The White House said the first check, for $10,000, will go to right-wing influencer Nick Shirley, who posted a video last year alleging that Somali residents in Minnesota were running fake child-care centers to collect federal subsidies. Dozens of people were convicted in connection with a sprawling, $250-million children’s food assistance scheme that predated this administration, though more charges have been announced in recent months.

Also Tuesday, administration officials launched another nationwide anti-fraud crackdown, this time targeting immigrants who they allege have illegally collected SNAP benefits. Homeland Security highlighted the arrests of five people, calling them “the opening salvo in a sustained, large-scale ICE operation.”

“From day one of my administration, we’ve waged an unprecedented war on corruption and fraud, and will not let our country be looted and plundered by thieves and pirates and foreign fraudsters and basically scum,” Trump said during a news conference announcing the Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program.

Earlier this year, the White House created a task force to eliminate fraud and the Department of Justice created a fraud enforcement division, in part, to target immigration-related offenses. Prosecutors have put aside thousands of other cases to zero in on immigration enforcement.

The focus on fraud has noticeably accelerated in the weeks leading up to the election.

In California, some of the green card holders arrested this week over voter fraud said they didn’t remember registering to vote. The daughter of one defendant, Omar Muñoz, 72, of Belize, said she wondered whether her father had been confused with his U.S.-born son of the same name, who is a registered voter.

California officials pounced on the small number of people alleged to have cast illegal ballots. Illegal voting by immigrants “is so rare that the Trump admin is parading around town about .0001% of California voters,” Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office wrote on X.

In the last seven weeks alone, the State Department said, 112 noncitizens across 20 states have been charged with illegal voting and registration offenses. Overall, since Trump returned to the White House, 155 people have been charged with voting fraud-related offenses.

Mullin and Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said earlier this month that Homeland Security agents had secured 10 convictions and detained 100 others for civil immigration violations since August.

During the Biden administration, voter fraud charges were brought in just 13 cases, Blanche added.

Studies and audits of state voter rolls have repeatedly found that voting by noncitizens is rare and hasn’t swayed any elections.

Ballot machines at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder in Norwalk this week. Early voting has started for the 2026 midterm election.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Last week, with mail-in voting already underway, the Justice Department sued California, asking a federal court to bar the state from counting the ballots of 20,000 voters who were flagged by federal officials as “likely noncitizens.” Los Angeles County officials reviewed a sample of 200 of those voter registrations and found that nearly 40% indicated they were born in the U.S.

That number of flagged ballots — 20,000 — is a substantial reduction from the 190,000 noncitizens the administration alleged were on state voter rolls earlier this year, though federal authorities this week said they had found a “separate batch of 17,000 voting records potentially tied to noncitizens.”

California leaders pointed to other states, such as Nevada, where similar accusations have proved meritless.

Murray, the former Homeland Security official, said she believes the administration is “trying to sow the seeds of doubt that the midterm outcomes will be trustworthy, so that if the Republican Party loses as badly as they’re predicted to, they can characterize it as due to fraud.”

Murray said the Trump administration has largely misconstrued what it means to commit fraud.

“Fraud is a very specific thing — it’s essentially lying,” she said. “Because you don’t get asylum does not mean you committed fraud, it just means you were ineligible.”

In September, a Homeland Security whistleblower told Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) that hundreds of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees had been tasked with quickly reviewing the voter information of thousands of people in search of suspected noncitizen voters, and were given a quota of investigating 40 subjects per day.

On Wednesday, a federal judge restricted Homeland Security agents from carrying out sweeping field operations aimed at rooting out voter fraud in nine states, including California.

It is against federal law for immigrants who are not naturalized citizens to vote or register to do so. Penalties can include fines, jail time and even deportation, though authorities rarely pursued that option.

Eric Balliet, a former special agent with Homeland Security Investigations, the criminal investigative arm of ICE, said he takes no issue with investigating fraud, but the timing of this operation and significant resources dedicated show it is “highly politically charged.”

Balliet worked for various administrations, including Trump’s first, before retiring in 2024. Homeland Security Investigations agents typically focused on transnational criminal investigations such as drug smuggling and human trafficking.

Instead of initiating investigations based on tips or specific information, agents are now taking aggregated data and using algorithms to produce suspect lists, Balliet said. That’s not how law enforcement should operate, he said, calling it a massive privacy overreach against millions of law-abiding citizens.

“It’s the epitome of Big Brother,” he said.

Beyond the allegations of voter fraud, the Trump administration has also increasingly targeted immigrants on suspicion of lying to obtain a visa, green card or citizenship.

Omar’s family fled civil war in Somalia and immigrated to the U.S. in 1995 when she was 12. After agents searched her residence this month looking for evidence that her immigration paperwork contained falsehoods, she called the allegations baseless.

Last month, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Muillin suggested the outcome of the investigation could be deportation. Years ago, the agency declined to move forward with a probe based on similar allegations against Omar, according to the Washington Post.

The congresswoman is not alone.

Emiliano Andrade-Covarrubias, 56, who died of unknown causes last week at an ICE facility in Texas, was arrested because the agency alleged he had fraudulently obtained his green card. ICE sought to deport him, saying he had failed to disclose a 2004 arrest for theft, but his daughter told the Texas Tribune that he did bring up his criminal record during the application process for his permanent residency.

Immigration lawyers say their clients are facing more intense scrutiny and that some have battled false accusations of fraud after applying for a green card or citizenship.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesperson Zach Kahler blamed the Biden administration for lax vetting that allowed bad actors to exploit immigration programs.

“These abuses are not harmless,” he wrote in a statement. “Meritless claims clog the system, drain limited resources, and delay relief for legitimate victims of crime. USCIS is taking aggressive action to identify, expose, and eliminate fraud.”

Erin O’Neil, an attorney based in Connecticut, said some of her clients are now in deportation proceedings triggered by allegations of fraud over minor inconsistencies that have no bearing on the case. In one case that resulted in a denial based on fraud, she said, the allegation was simply that her client failed to disclose a two-week work assignment in another state.

“In the past, the worst that would happen is your citizenship application would be denied,” O’Neil said. “Now we have seen through several of my clients that, not only is the citizenship application denied, but they are placed into removal proceedings.”