united states

Judge questions the Trump administration’s efforts to exert greater influence over elections process ahead of upcoming midterm vote.

A United States appeals court has expressed doubt over the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against California, which seeks to force the state to throw out mail-in ballots it has deemed likely to go to non-citizens.

Circuit Judge Mark Bennett said on Sunday that the three-judge panel would issue a decision as soon as possible, following a rare weekend oral argument.

But Bennett, an appointee of Republican President Donald Trump, voiced concern that the lawsuit would not hold up to scrutiny.

He pointed to the Elections Clause in the US Constitution, which allows states — not the federal government — to administer elections.

“It seems to me that you want us to issue an injunction that is entirely inconsistent with the law that the California legislature has adopted pursuant to the Elections Clause,” Bennett told Justice Department lawyer Matthew Donnelly. “How can we do that?”

The case is part of a larger effort under the right-wing Trump administration to crack down on alleged non-citizen voting ahead of the crucial November 3 midterm elections.

On October 15, less than three weeks before the midterm races, the Justice Department issued a complaint targeting California, a left-wing stronghold.

It asked the federal court system to set aside thousands of mail-in ballots that the government says were sent to “likely non-citizens”.

The lawsuit indicates the Trump administration sent California officials a list of 20,000 names it believes are not eligible to vote, based on citizenship.

Trump has often pushed the discredited claim that the Democratic Party is benefiting from widespread voting by non-citizens.

California has long been one of the targets for his election misinformation.

Earlier this year, Trump denounced the state’s primaries after right-wing candidates like Los Angeles mayoral hopeful Spencer Pratt felt short of his expectations.

“There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California,” he wrote on social media at the time.

He then announced that the state would be under investigation from the US attorney’s office.

Trump’s efforts have caused alarm, with critics accusing him of seeking to dampen voter turnout through intimidation and confusion.

The midterms will decide which party controls the US Congress, as well as key state and local positions.

Polls, however, predict steep odds for Republican candidates, given Trump’s souring approval ratings and dissatisfaction with issues like the cost of living and the US-Israeli war against Iran.

Voting rights advocates have warned that the Trump administration has not publicly revealed how it has compiled its list of non-citizen voters, and whistleblower reports have cast doubt on the accuracy of such lists.

In response to the October 15 lawsuit, California has countered that it has strong safeguards to prevent non-citizens from voting.

It also said that the Justice Department’s claims are based on dubious data.

“This is a sad, desperate attempt by Trump to use his politicized Justice Department to try to suppress California voters just three weeks before Election Day,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement earlier this month.

“We will continue to carry out free and fair elections in the Golden State — and call out this authoritarian as he tries every play in the dictator’s playbook.”

United States Attorney General Todd Blanche has defended the Department of Justice’s decision to sue to prevent the certification of a Republican loss in Alaska’s tight Senate race.

On Sunday, Blanche did a tour of the morning political shows in the US, making stops at CNN’s State of the Union TV programme and CBS’s Face the Nation.

In each appearance, he faced pointed questions about the legality of the Justice Department’s efforts, responding, in some cases, with open frustration.

“ Why is this controversial?” Blanche asked CNN host Dana Bash at one point. He proceeded to accuse one of the candidates in the Senate race of intentionally trying to confuse voters.

“We’re going to try to create a situation where that can be remedied,” he said. “That shouldn’t be something that is causing this shock and horror.”

But the Justice Department’s lawsuit, filed on October 22, has been the subject of bipartisan criticism.

Many have accused the administration of President Donald Trump of laying the groundwork to block a Democratic win in the race. Trump himself claimed to have authorised the lawsuit.

“I’m the one who said do it,” he told reporters on Friday.

Inside the Alaska Senate race

During the midterm elections on November 3, citizens in Alaska will be asked to vote in one of the closest Senate races in the country, one which will help decide whether Republicans maintain their majority in the chamber.

Senator Dan S Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, is seeking to defend his seat in the Senate. But he faces fierce competition from former US Representative Mary Peltola, a Democrat.

Also in the running is another candidate named Dan J Sullivan, a former Forest Service employee.

The second Sullivan’s decision to also run has raised concerns that he is a spoiler candidate, whose presence on the ballot is designed to draw votes away from the incumbent.

But the Forest Service worker has denied any such intent. Such allegations, he said, are “entirely false”.

“I am not a registered Democrat, and I have had no conversations whatsoever with the Peltola campaign about my candidacy,” the second Sullivan wrote in a letter to Alaska’s lieutenant governor before the state’s primaries.

“I have considered running for political office for over a decade. I made the decision to formally run for the United States Senate in the upcoming primary election because Senator Sullivan has routinely failed the people of Alaska, and they deserve a better representative. It is my right to do so.”

Four candidates advanced to the final round of voting after Alaska’s August primaries. They included Peltola and both Sullivans. The two men are running as Republicans.

A controversial lawsuit

The Department of Justice has argued that its lawsuit — filed less than two weeks before the midterm elections — is necessary “to protect the integrity” of the election.

Any result in the Senate race, it argues, would be “tainted by the inclusion on the ballot of Daniel J Sullivan”.

The department has therefore called on the US district court in Alaska to issue an order declaring the race’s certification “unlawful” and barring the state from “allowing such a certification to occur”.

Under the US Constitution, only states have the power to administer elections, though Congress has the right to pass regulations concerning federal votes.

It is highly unusual for a presidential administration to inject itself into issues of state election certification — and experts say such a move is likely to be deemed illegal.

Already, in June, Alaska’s Supreme Court ruled that both Sullivans could compete in the Senate race. The state’s Division of Elections has also taken steps to reduce voter confusion.

The November 3 ballot, for instance, will list Dan S Sullivan as the incumbent and as a “registered Republican”.

Dan J Sullivan, meanwhile, will have the suffix “Jr” added to his name, and his party affiliation will be left blank, despite the candidate identifying as Republican.

But in Sunday’s TV appearances, Blanche — who leads the Department of Justice and formerly served as Trump’s personal lawyer — argued that merely having two Sullivans on the ballot is a recipe for confusion.

“It is wrong,” Blanche told CNN. “Putting aside whether we’re going to win or lose in the courts, putting aside what the Alaskan Supreme Court has done, in our system we should not have a candidate who has to worry about another candidate being on the ballot for no other reason than to confuse voters.”

Blanche also denied any impropriety in Trump saying he ordered the lawsuit.

“He’s supposed to make sure that everything in this country is running right, including elections,” Blanche said.

The race for the Senate

Historically, the Department of Justice has embraced a norm of judicial independence, though critics have accused the Trump administration of wielding its prosecutorial powers for political gain.

Bash, the CNN host, raised some of those concerns, pointing to Trump’s comments accusing Democrats of cheating, as well as his history of election denialism.

The president has long denied his loss in the 2020 presidential race, and his supporters sought to block the certification of that election, notably by storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

When Bash pointed to that incident, Blanche chided her: “Oh, you’ve got to stop it with that.”

“Why are you yelling at me?” Bash responded, as the two talked over each other.

“You are not being a real person. Come on, man,” Blanche continued. “That is crazy.”

He also denied that Trump was setting the stage for a contested election if the Democrat Peltola were to win. Instead, he framed the lawsuit as setting the stage for further investigations into any eventual results.

“The relief that we’re seeking — which, again, isn’t to determine who the senator is, it’s not to try to overturn something the state is going to do — it’s just to make sure that the ballots that come in are kept in a way that may allow a court to investigate further,” Blanche said.

Speaking to CBS, Blanche also dodged a question about whether Trump personally asked him to file the lawsuit.

“I will never, ever, ever talk about communications that I have with the president of the United States. I never have, and I never will,” Blanche said.

The race to control the US Senate is expected to be a nail-biter, with the Republicans holding a slim majority at present: They have 53 seats in the 100-member chamber.

Only a third of the Senate’s seats — 35 in total — will be up for grabs in the midterm races, though, as terms in the chamber last six years and are staggered across different election years.

Trump’s Republican Party is projected to face an uphill battle to protect its congressional majorities, amid backlash against the rising cost of living and Trump’s own withering poll numbers.

Roughly seven Senate elections are considered toss-ups, including the Alaska race.

In early October, The New York Times and Siena College released a poll finding Peltola leading the incumbent Sullivan by nearly seven percentage points, one of the widest margins of any of the toss-up states.

The Nobel laureate’s homecoming follows national protests demanding free elections.

Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has successfully returned to the country after more than 10 months in exile.

Machado announced her arrival on social media on Sunday, writing, “I am here. With you.”

The current opposition leader, Edmundo Gonzalez, confirmed the news, writing on X that “our leader, my dear Maria Corina, is on Venezuelan soil”.

The Comando Con Venezuela political organisation shared footage of Machado arriving at a church in Lara, where she was greeted by supporters.

Machado first disappeared from public life after being briefly arrested in January 2025. She re-emerged last December in Norway, where she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to challenge Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro. Maduro was abducted from Caracas by the United States military in January 2026.

Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez has stood in as acting president since then, with the endorsement of US President Donald Trump, and has cooperated with his administration regarding reforms in the country, as well as a deal to grant the US control of over 65 billion barrels’ worth of Venezuela’s oil reserves.

Calls for elections to be held

Rodriguez’s presidency has extended far beyond the 90-day period she was authorised to serve following Maduro’s removal. But she has yet to call an election despite public demand and despite her promise to do so at the United Nations General Assembly in September. The US maintains that the country is not ready yet.

Earlier this week, thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets to call for elections in the first nationwide opposition protest in nearly two years.

Although the opposition is widely believed to have won Venezuela’s disputed 2024 elections, Trump has cast doubt on Machado’s abilities to lead, claiming in January that she “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country”.

Machado presented Trump with her Nobel medal when visiting him in the White House weeks later, in what she said was “a recognition for his unique commitment with our freedom”. The US leader has repeatedly voiced his desire to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize himself.

Machado has made previous unsuccessful attempts to enter Venezuela. In September, her team said she had made seven attempts in the space of a few weeks.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on X that “the conditions allowing for the safe return of Ms. Machado to Venezuela is the direct result of the U.S. supported reconciliation talks which has already seen hundreds of political prisoners freed and hundreds of political opposition figures return from exile.”

Asked to comment about Machado’s return, Trump told reporters on Sunday, “I don’t know anything about it, but I think she’s a very nice woman.”

“She gave me her Nobel Prize, so how can I say anything else? And I hope she’s safe.”

In late August, United States President Donald Trump announced a 90-day pause on certain beef tariffs, making beef cheaper to import, particularly from Brazil.

That decision was framed as a way to bring down prices for consumers, but it landed as a betrayal for many US ranchers, who were getting ready to take their cattle to market.

It is too soon to tell how the decision will ultimately affect grocery prices, but the impact on ranchers was immediate: prices at cattle auctions plummeted, temporarily lowering ranchers’ profits. The United States Cattlemen’s Association, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the Farm Bureau, all member organisations that represent ranchers, opposed the decision.

Rural Republican members of Congress also distanced themselves, but it is not yet clear how ranchers will vote in the midterms — or whether those votes will decide races.

Chad Basinger, a rancher in Pretty Prairie, Kansas, is sceptical that the imports will have a significant impact.

“I know there’s people that have said, ‘Well I’m just gonna vote for the other party’ or ‘I’m not gonna vote’ or ‘This administration’s really let me down’. So yes, there will be people that swing the other way in the midterms. But overall I don’t think it’ll be that much,” Basinger said.

Ranchers will also be weighing the administration’s other actions, Basinger said, such as the $8bn in farm relief announced in Kansas on October 19.

Basinger’s House of Representatives district in Kansas is expected to remain safely Republican in the midterms. But Kansas faces an unexpectedly tight Senate race and ranchers in House districts elsewhere may find themselves closer to the political fray: potential swing districts in Montana, Iowa, Texas and Colorado are all in cattle country.

Still, it is unlikely that ranchers alone will decide elections: ranchers — along with farmers more broadly — represent a shrinking percentage of rural voters and a smaller voting bloc in practice than in the public imagination.

America’s cattle herd is near its smallest size since 1951 and the number of ranchers has declined alongside the number of livestock. Observers worry that ongoing uncertainty fuelled by tariffs, fuel prices and drought may cause the ranching population to shrink further.

David Anderson, an agricultural economist at Texas A&M University who advises ranchers, said that high prices this year should have given ranchers the confidence to invest in the future and expand their herds. Making imports cheaper, however, may have helped nudge ranchers in the opposite direction.

“It really works against the market signal to expand and produce more domestically,” Anderson said. “That got a lot of people pretty angry.”

Tariff changes add volatility

This is not the first time that Trump’s tariffs have impacted cattle supplies. Last year, the president added a 50 percent tariff on Brazil, a key trade partner for beef, raising the cost of importing Brazilian lean beef, which is often mixed with fatty US beef to make hamburger patties, a staple in most homes.

In February, Trump allowed more tariff-free beef imports from Argentina. In August, he did the same for Brazil and Paraguay.

Both tariff changes led to swift price swings in cattle futures markets, which are often volatile in response to the news cycle.

Cattle prices also moved this year in response to more fundamental drivers of supply and demand: plant closures by meatpackers, labour shortages late last month related to ICE actions at Kansas packing plants, the second-largest in the country, and the reopening of the southern border after a closure due to New World screwworm disease.

Big picture, the shrinking US cattle herd has less to do with short-term price changes and more to do with drought cycles, which are growing more intense as warming temperatures increase evaporation.

Still, tariff changes add uncertainty. “This has been a hot topic for the last six weeks,” said Anderson. “It just adds a little more uncertainty or volatility — or worries or stress.”

This year, extra price volatility as many ranchers prepared to sell meant ranchers faced lower profits and more risk.

Basinger says that for many established ranchers, the tariff announcement was frustrating, but not existential.

“People are upset. They have a right to be upset. But they’re not going to change their strategy,” he said. For most ranchers, Basinger said, the imports would not be the biggest factor shaping decisions about their herds this year.

Where price volatility may matter more, Basinger said, is for the next generation. Most of today’s ranchers are eyeing retirement. Their heirs must decide whether to make a go of ranching or sell their family’s land. Other aspiring ranchers are also watching the industry.

“If you’re seeing your dad not make money, or somebody else not make money…it’s not easy work!” Basinger said. “It has to be very enticing for somebody to want to jump in and be like, ‘I’m gonna be a rancher and go break ice in the middle of winter when it’s cold and I could be inside’.”

Record revenue and record costs

This year, low US cattle supplies meant that ranchers commanded record-high cattle prices, despite added imports and other market shifts.

But high revenue doesn’t always mean huge profits: Many ranchers operate at a loss for years in a row. Then, they rely on a few good years to pay down debts or expand their herds.

This year, profits were lower than hoped, because ranchers also faced high costs.

Interest rates on loans are high and the war with Iran meant ranchers paid extra for fuel and fertiliser. A drought across much of America’s ranchland meant they paid more for feed.

In states such as Kansas and Nebraska, ranchers also faced destructive wildfires and aid groups like Farm Rescue coordinated hay donations.

Still, Basinger said, ranchers who raise cows and calves generally did well this year. In Kansas, he is seeing ranchers use profits to make repairs and upgrades. He said this year’s high cattle prices have been helping. “But it needs to help for a little longer to give them more of an edge,” he said.

More of an edge might mean, for example, enough money for bigger purchases, like buying land from a neighbouring ranch to make room for a growing herd.

Rangeland, however, is increasingly expensive. When it is up for sale, outside investors can often pay more than ranchers, which can mean less land for cattle. That’s just one more pressure shrinking the US herd decade after decade.

Ranchers had hoped that 2026 would be a turnaround year. So far, however, “we really don’t have much evidence of herd expansion,” Anderson said.

The settlement is the second-largest after an $880m ​deal reached by the Archdiocese of Los ​Angeles in 2024.

The Archdiocese of New York has agreed to pay more than $800m to settle the legal claims of about 1,300 survivors of sexual abuse by clergy.

New York Archbishop Ronald Hicks said on Saturday that the settlement will be formally signed on November 6 after an agreement with the plaintiffs and their lawyers.

“We are on the verge of being able to, please God, bring some measure of healing and reconciliation to all victim-survivors,” he wrote in an email sent to his priests and shared by the archdiocese’s news outlet.

“This agreement will also allow the archdiocese to turn its full attention once again to its mission of preaching the Gospel, healing the sick, caring for the poor and needy, welcoming the stranger, and educating our children,” he added.

According to The New York Times, which broke the story, each of the approximately 1,300 survivors will receive at least $250,000 from the Archdiocese of New York and potentially more depending on the severity of the abuse suffered.

The settlement is the second-largest of its kind after an $880m deal reached by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2024.

“The unanimous agreement of survivors who filed claims against the Archdiocese of New York marks a powerful moment in the pursuit of justice,” Jeff Anderson, a lawyer representing people who filed more than 1,000 claims against the Catholic Church in New York state, said in a statement.

“Through their courage, sacrifice, and determination, survivors have helped bring about a reckoning and a meaningful step toward accountability.”

Scandals and settlements

The agreement marks the end of years of negotiations with lawyers representing the plaintiffs, as the Catholic Church in the United States has been mired in sexual abuse scandals since the early 2000s.

In the 2000s, media investigations revealed that Catholic priests in the US had committed sexual abuse against thousands of children over several decades, and that church leaders had often covered up these cases or transferred the offending priests instead of reporting them to civil authorities.

Dioceses across the country have had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, and programmes have been created to compensate survivors without going to trial.

In June, the Archdiocese of San Francisco announced it had reached an agreement to pay $395m to about 530 survivors of sexual abuse committed by its clergy to settle their lawsuits.

Tehran warns that even limited strikes would trigger a response ‘several times greater’.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has blamed Washington for the unravelling of an interim deal aimed at ending the war with the United States and Israel, amid growing fears that the fighting could resume imminently.

In comments broadcast by Iranian Press TV on Saturday, But Pezeshkian also said that both sides should return to the deal and “conclude it”.

His remarks come amid growing fears that military action could resume as soon as this weekend, after US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he “may do another little Epic Fury”, using the codename of the US-Israeli war against Iran that started on February 28.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has warned that even limited strikes would trigger a response “several times greater”, according to comments reported by the semi-official Fars News Agency.

Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Ali Abdollahi said on Saturday that the US military would not be allowed in the Gulf “under any circumstances and at any time”. Abdollahi said Trump could only “dream” of seeing US forces enter the Gulf, adding that he would take his dream to the grave.

Trump has suggested he could take further military action against Iran, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he remains committed to overthrowing the country’s government.

Both leaders face elections, with Israelis set to choose their next government on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Trump’s Republican Party faces crucial midterm elections on November 3, with Democrats potentially winning control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Such an outcome would be a major blow to Trump, who still has more than two years left in his final term in the White House.

Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said on Saturday that Tehran would not “wait for permission to defend itself”, adding that the country “seeks peace but will respond to any aggression with severe consequences”.

“Our position is clear: we do not flee from dialogue for peace, and we do not hesitate in defending the country. Those who harbour the illusion of destroying Iran must correct their calculations,” Mohajerani wrote in a memo.

Her comments came as Iranian judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei met Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. The pair discussed how to tackle corruption and pursue compensation for Iranians affected by the US-Israeli war, among other issues.

Khamenei replaced his father as supreme leader after the latter was assassinated during the opening strikes of the war on February 28. He has not been seen in public since assuming the position in early March.

Parliament Speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was reported to have met Khamenei earlier this week.

Former US president says Trump ‘chose to make a series of bad decisions’, highlighting the US-Israel war on Iran.

Former United States President Barack Obama has criticised the “cruelty and corruption” during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Obama slammed Trump’s foreign policies on Saturday during a midterm election campaign rally in Ohio to support the state’s Democratic candidates.

“The current president chose to make a series of bad decisions,” the 65-year-old Democrat said. “Most importantly, he decided to start an unnecessary war that nobody asked for,” he added, referring to the US-Israel war on Iran.

Obama urged Ohioans to vote against the Republican administration, saying: “After two years of chaos and cruelty and corruption and incompetence, the likes of which we have not seen in the modern era, you get a chance to say, ‘Enough is enough’.”

Heated Ohio races

The former president also addressed the recent controversy in Ohio’s gubernatorial race surrounding an attack advertisement by Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy against Democrat Amy Acton.

“In recent days, we’ve seen there is no line he will not cross, no low he will not sink to,” Obama said of Ramaswamy. “I don’t know what’s happened where the standards of behaviour are so low that somebody could run an ad like that.”

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

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

Obama backed Acton, saying that she has “spoken movingly about her painful childhood and all she’s experienced: abuse, neglect and homelessness.”

The former president shared the rally stage with Acton and Ohio’s former Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown, who will attempt a comeback against incumbent Republican Senator Jon Husted.

Polls give Democrats a slight lead in both Ohio races, but results are expected to be close.

Two years after United States voters delivered a stunning rebuke of the country’s Democratic Party by electing Republican President Donald Trump to a second nonconsecutive term, some of the party’s midterm candidates are reassessing stances on a host of hot-button issues.

Whether they have dialled it back on issues like transgender rights or ramped up efforts to oppose Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Democrats in some of the toughest midterm battleground races are responding to voter concerns – or even breaking outright with party leadership.

Those shifts have resonated with some voters, while others have been alienated as the party tries to find its footing in Trump’s second term and wrestle away control of both houses of Congress from Republicans.

But in the time since Trump defeated former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, Democratic divisions have only grown deeper. Establishment and self-described moderates within the party have struggled to hold back a rising tide of progressive populism as voters increasingly demand stronger, bolder policies.

That movement, powered by groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, has forced a reckoning over what it means to be a Democrat in Trump’s second term, leading to significant differences among candidates on policies that often depend on where they are running.

Here’s how – and why – the party has shifted:

Democrats’ shifting views on Israel

The most notable shift among Democrats has, arguably, been on Israel.

Three years after Israel launched its genocidal war in Gaza and killed more than 74,000 Palestinians following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks, polls have suggested that Americans hold increasingly negative views on Israeli military actions.

A Pew Research Center survey conducted earlier this year suggested that 60 percent of US adults had an unfavourable opinion of Israel. That number is significantly higher – 80 percent – among US Democrats.

In response, some longtime Democratic supporters of Israel – including Senator Chris Coons, who is likely to chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee if Democrats retake control of the Senate next month – have shifted, as voters, especially younger ones, demand greater accountability from the US ally.

The moderate Delaware Democrat told Politico in an interview this month that he wants a “thorough reexamination” of the US-Israeli relationship and is even willing to impose sanctions on Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

It is a marked change in tone after Harris rejected calls to feature a Palestinian American speaker at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Earlier this year, 40 Democratic senators voted in support of a motion that disapproved proposed military sales to Israel. Only seven Democratic senators voted with Republicans to block it.

But as a new Congress may include even more progressive voices demanding the US rethink its relationship with Israel, those calls would likely be met with stiff resistance from some in the Democratic leadership, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

The New York Democrat, who would likely become majority leader if Democrats retake the Senate, has said that the US “commitment to Israel’s security and defense must be ironclad”.

Have Democrats changed their positions on transgender rights?

Following years of attacks from Republicans, Democrats in tightly contested US House or Senate races have downplayed – or outright dismissed – support for the transgender community, mostly when it comes to the participation of transgender students in school sports.

In Ohio, Democratic Representative Marcy Kaptur ran an advertisement featuring her saying, “Boys should not play in girls’ sports”. And in North Carolina, Representative Don Davis released a television commercial in which the Democrat says there “should always be a safe and fair space for women and girls in sports”.

Next door in South Carolina, Democratic Senate candidate Annie Andrews, a doctor, said in a newly released advertisement that she opposes “biological men playing in women’s sports”.

Trump’s return to the White House was fuelled, in part, by a now-famous advertisement in the 2024 campaign that highlighted Harris’s support for transgender Americans.

“Kamala is for they/them,” a narrator said in the advertisement, referring to gender neutral pronouns used by some in the transgender and nonbinary community. “President Trump is for you.”

But the reassessment of transgender rights after the commercial’s airing is not taking place in every part of the party.

On Thursday at a “Students vs Billionaires” town hall in Portland, Maine, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez addressed concerns from a transgender college student who told the New York progressive that they felt “abandoned” by Democrats.

“They’re wrong”, Ocasio-Cortez said about some members of her party. “First and foremost, I want to just let you know how shameful and sorry I am that there are people out there that scare so easily after an election”.

The congresswoman added, “The moment you compromise the rights of a trans person in America, you compromise the rights of every citizen.”

What has changed on immigration and border security?

During former US President Joe Biden’s term, Democrats encountered near-daily attacks from Republicans on the country’s immigration system.

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded more than 8 million encounters at the US-Mexico border between 2021 and 2025, fuelling concerns among some voters that the Biden administration had ignored the issue.

In Texas’s closely watched Senate race, candidate James Talarico has positioned himself as a “border security Democrat”, advocating for stronger border enforcement and comprehensive immigration reform.

Third Way, a US-based organisation that pushes for moderate policies, said stances like Talarico’s resonate better with voters because they have taken a proactive, rather than a reactionary approach.

“I remember very clearly when Harris came out and spoke at the DNC in 2024; she… said we need order at the border and to have a strong immigration system”, Third Way’s senior political adviser, Lucas Holtz, told Al Jazeera.

“The problem is, after that, the Harris campaign really did not stick with that line in the sand… They stopped taking a stand on these issues, and more voters thought that she was too far to the left.”

“[Talarico] is making the case in a lot of his ads that the Biden administration failed on securing the border… It’s putting Republicans on their back foot in some of these races.”

But among progressives, Trump’s response to the nation’s immigration issue has also prompted a strong swing to the left.

After several high-profile incidents earlier this year – including federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, shooting dead US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti  – calls to abolish, or drastically overhaul, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have gained momentum.

Left-leaning political groups and politicians have united behind a message of “abolish ICE”, which would dismantle the federal agency and end its enforcement authority.

Do Democrats support Medicare for All?

As cost-of-living issues remain paramount for voters, Democrats of all stripes have coalesced behind the need for more government intervention in the country’s healthcare system.

But how exactly the party addresses rising medical costs remains up for debate.

Some progressives, including Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, have championed policies like Medicare for All, which would expand the nation’s federal health insurance programme for seniors so all US citizens would be guaranteed healthcare.

Others running in more conservative states, like Andrews, have called for the return of Affordable Care Act subsidies that lapsed during Trump’s second term, as well as limits on health insurance companies’ profits.

Polling released by the independent health organisation KFF suggested that 66 percent of US adults now support Medicare for All, a 13-point increase from October 2020.

“Everybody’s going to have their own approach to this, but by and large, all Democrats want to move to a universal healthcare system in the best way possible”, Holtz said.

“We’re in agreement that we need to do better than what the Trump administration has done.”

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

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.

Negotiators from Ukraine, Russia and the US are expected to meet in Abu Dhabi next month.

Ukraine says restrictions on its military’s Starlink satellite connections have been lifted after more than a week of disruption that hampered drone operations against Russian forces.

Defence Minister Yevhenii Khmara said on Saturday that Starlink and Starshield connections were stable on equipment travelling above 400 kilometres per hour (250 miles per hour). He credited talks with Washington and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s diplomacy.

Ukraine relies heavily on Elon Musk’s SpaceX satellite services for communications and drone missions. However, who ordered the restrictions remains unclear, with US President Donald Trump denying responsibility while defending Elon Musk.

The disruption further strained relations between Kyiv and Washington, already under pressure over Trump’s agreement to temporarily lift sanctions on Russian diesel and allow US imports.

Trump also called earlier this month for Ukraine to have a new president, then suggested on Monday that someone other than Zelenskyy should negotiate for Kyiv. The exchanges follow their public confrontation at the White House in February 2025.

Talks planned in Abu Dhabi

The lifting of the Starlink restrictions comes as the United States seeks to revive peace negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv. Negotiators from Ukraine, Russia and the US are expected to meet in Abu Dhabi in the first half of November, more than four years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the planned negotiations on Friday, while Zelenskyy also announced agreement on technical-level meetings.

It comes as Trump credited his wife, Melania Trump, with securing a local ceasefire in Oleshky, in southern Ukraine’s Kherson region, which Russian forces have occupied since 2022.

Subsequent Ukrainian and Russian statements putting the ceasefire’s start on October 27, with the humanitarian operation planned for October 29.

Deadly attacks continue

A Russian missile strike on Lozova, in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, killed a man and wounded two others on Saturday, regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said, while in northern Ukraine, a Russian attack on Chernihiv on Friday killed a man and wounded at least 25 people, local authorities said.

Shelling in Kramatorsk killed one person and wounded six, including three children, according to Donetsk officials. In nearby Sloviansk, attacks on Friday killed a 62-year-old woman and wounded four people, Mayor Vadym Lyakh said.

Ukraine reported strikes inside Russia on Friday and overnight into Saturday, including on Togliatti’s Togliattikauchuk petrochemical plant, a major synthetic rubber producer. Mayor Ilya Sukhikh confirmed industrial damage but reported no casualties.

Ukraine also said it struck Oryol’s Proton electronics plant, which it says makes missile components. Regional Governor Andrei Klychkov reported three deaths in an attack on an unidentified facility.

Authorities in Russian-occupied Crimea reported power cuts after overnight Ukrainian attacks.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said air defences intercepted a SCALP cruise missile, four Neptune missiles and 1,297 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones over 24 hours, TASS reported. The figures could not be independently verified.

Pete Hegseth says the Pentagon dismantled 80 ‘propaganda cells’ operating under new names at 30 universities.

The United States Department of Defense has designated Confucius Institutes, Chinese-funded cultural centres on university campuses, as a threat to US national security.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the move on Friday in a video posted on social media, saying the Pentagon added the organisations to its list of institutions that threaten national security.

Washington has long accused the centres of serving as Chinese propaganda tools and has taken steps to crack down on them.

Hegseth said Confucius Institutes had operated in disguise after being restricted by Congress, calling them “sleeper organisations”.

“It turns out that 80 new propaganda cells across 30 universities had popped up using different names and different charters, but with the same mission: to steal intellectual property and to infiltrate the minds of American students,” he said.

In the video, Hegseth said that Chinese government-backed cultural programmes had infiltrated universities and reappeared in new guises despite congressional restrictions.

Over the past two months, the Pentagon has “systematically dismantled every single one of these organisations”, he said.

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Milei’s friendship with Trump

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

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

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

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

Austerity at home

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

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

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

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

With the US midterm elections approaching, the balance of power in Congress is at stake, and the outcome could shape the legacy of President Donald Trump’s second term. As Republicans face growing voter dissatisfaction, Trump’s record has become a central battleground in the fight to control Congress.

Trump faces mounting challenges, including low approval ratings, an unpopular war in Iran, high inflation and petrol prices, economic uncertainty surrounding his tariff policies, and widespread backlash over his immigration crackdown.

How does Trump’s second term measure up against the promises he made on the campaign trail?

In this interview, Mehdi Hasan goes head-to-head with Steve Cortes, a former Trump campaign adviser, who defends the president’s second-term agenda, including his economic and immigration policies, and Islamophobic rhetoric.

Joining the discussion:

Olivia Troye – Former homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to Vice President Mike Pence
Mike Nellis – Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris
Rob Arlett – Former Trump campaign chair and political commentator

HAVANA — The Caribbean island of Nevis has received a financial boost in honor of one of its most famous sons, Alexander Hamilton, who went on to become a founding father of the United States and America’s first treasury secretary.

The U.S. government this month awarded $245,000 to restore the home where some believe Hamilton once lived as the U.S. celebrates its 250th anniversary.

Hamilton was born on Nevis in the mid-18th century and spent his childhood living at his adopted father’s home in Charlestown.

The 17th-century Georgian stone building is now Hamilton House, a museum that houses documents from the famous forefather’s early years and features exhibits honoring other Caribbean personalities. But it has demanded constant repairs: time and salty air have damaged the woodwork.

Nevis Premier Mark Brantley told the Associated Press on Wednesday that he’s grateful for the funds.

“We have tried valiantly as locals to preserve these very important historical monuments,” he said.

Despite Hamilton having lived only the early part of his childhood in Nevis, the premier believes his legacy is inspiring.

“Hamilton is significant because I think it’s a demonstration of what a small island like Nevis, a little dot in the ocean, can contribute to the founding of the greatest nation in the world, the United States,” Brantley said.

The two-story, Georgian stone building that was originally built around 1680 was destroyed by an earthquake in 1840 and was last restored in 1983.

Brantley said the restoration work is important to both the U.S. and Nevis: “Hamilton remains, I think, an iconic figure for us and a figure that we can look at his legacy and inspire our own people to achieve and to know that greatness is available for all of us.”