10 days until the end of midterm voting. And Chump the sore loser is steaming mad that America is rejecting him. Glenn Thrush, Katie Rogers and Zolan Kanno-Youngs (NEW YORK TIMES) report:
The Justice Department is sharply intensifying efforts to intervene in the midterm elections, goaded by a president unfettered by even the limited restraints of his first term.
The next several weeks represent a critical moment for federal law enforcement, a test of whether a department repurposed by President Trump as an instrument of unmediated executive power will be effectively mobilized as a guarantor of his political power.
In recent weeks, the department has taken several new steps, including an extraordinary effort to invalidate any potential Democratic victory in the Alaska Senate race, that reflect Mr. Trump’s growing agitation as his party faces the possibility of losing control of Congress precipitated by his sagging popularity.
On Thursday, the department asked a federal court to block certification of the election if the incumbent, Senator Dan S. Sullivan, were to lose narrowly, claiming that the presence of another candidate with a nearly identical full name tainted the election. The move, the first of its kind in generations, came in response to the president’s rants about the issue, officials said.
Democratic groups and voting-rights advocates are seeking to join a federal lawsuit to stop the Justice Department’s effort to prevent Alaska from certifying its U.S. Senate election results if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses.
The requests come from Alaskans for Mary, the campaign for Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola, the Democratic Party’s Senate campaign committee, and a separate group including the League of Women Voters of Alaska, Common Cause and two individual voters.
Together, the groups argue that the executive branch lacks legal authority to intervene in state-run elections and is attempting an unprecedented override of state election administration with early voting already underway.
In court filings submitted Friday, the groups contend that the litigation — which President Donald Trump confirmed he personally ordered — seeks an extraordinary remedy: an investigation into whether voters who selected another candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan actually intended to vote for the incumbent senator.
Legal and election experts told NBC News that the DOJ’s case is on shaky ground.
As U.S. elections are run and certified by state and local officials, rather than the federal government, the law limits the Justice Department’s role in elections.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rated the Alaska Senate contest as a “toss-up.” The race marks a critical opportunity for Democrats to take a seat from Republicans as they vie for control of the Senate.
And POLITICO's Andrew Howard, Erin Doherty, Alec Hernandez, Samuel Benson and Lauren Fedor note:
“Boy, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. It feels like a real desperation play to me, because it has got zero basis in the law,” said Ben Ginsberg, a veteran Republican election law expert who was counsel to George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns.
Turning to Chump's war on immigrants. Chump's got quotas. To meet those quotas, it sometimes requires rounding up US citizens. Christine Zhu (NC NEWSLINE) reports:
Immigration advocates are demanding answers after a U.S. citizen said he was arrested at gunpoint by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on his way to work in Charlotte earlier this week.
Atilio Portillo, a resident of east Charlotte who owns a small construction business, told reporters during a press conference Friday that ICE agents stopped him as he was on his way to work early Wednesday morning with his brother and nephew.
The agents blocked his work truck with unmarked vehicles, broke its windows, and pointed guns at the passengers, according to Portillo. He said his requests for a warrant or explanation of the stop were denied.
Bystander video compiled by the advocacy group Siembra NC shows a man in an ICE uniform holding a a handgun while breaking Portillo’s driver’s side window. It also shows Portillo yelling, “I am a U.S. citizen” while agents put him in handcuffs.
Also on ICE, Mike Ludwig (TRUTHOUT) notes:
The Trump administration is attempting to intimidate Latino voters and naturalized citizens with the threat of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and arrests ahead of the midterm elections, democracy advocates are warning.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, has deployed federal agents in multiple states to knock on doors and demand voters verify their identities and registration as part of an “Unlawful Voter Initiative” launched in August. In response to a lawsuit filed on October 19 by labor and voting rights groups, a federal judge in California ruled the DHS initiative violates the Voting Rights Act and ordered federal agents to halt “elections-related field operations and field interviews” in California, Wisconsin, New York, Missouri, Connecticut, Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Washington.
“I look at this list of states, and I can think of some high-profile races that may be anticipated to be close in a lot of those jurisdictions,” said David Janovsky, senior policy analyst and acting director of the Constitution Project at the Project On Government Oversight, in an interview. “So, I think there is a reasonable question in all of this about how the federal government is choosing to focus these efforts, and the motivation that is behind that.”
Critical contests in these states include the tight race between Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff and Republican Rep. Mike Collins in Georgia, which could decide which party has a majority in the Senate. In California, New York, and beyond, multiple races could help to determine control of the House or pad a Democratic majority.
Markwayne Mullin is doing a great job, isn't he? Arresting US citizens, going door to door to hunt out voters. I'd love to hear him answer to that in a Senate hearing.
Markwayne Mullin, Pete Hegseth, Junior -- Chump's surrounded himself with the dumbest and the dimmest. That's how we end up with the increase in measles. Benjamin Mateus (WSWS) reports:
A 39-year-old unvaccinated woman in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, died on October 10 of what the county coroner recorded as a probable acute cardiac event due to possible complications of measles, becoming the sixth person in the state to die in an outbreak that began in late April. Coroner Jordan Conner stated that the death meets the definition established by the state Department of Health, which says it is reviewing the case.
The five earlier deaths were a newborn, a six-week-old infant, an 18-year-old, a 20-year-old and a 40-year-old woman. All six were unvaccinated, with the two infants too young to have that protection.
The United States recorded no measles death at all between 2016 and 2024, and three were reported in 2025. Pennsylvania has now recorded six since August 25, while no other state has reported a single one this year, though South Carolina has confirmed nearly a thousand cases. Yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has counted only three deaths nationally for 2026, the same number the country recorded last year, each of them marked with an asterisk, and the agency will not say in which states they occurred, though only one state has reported any.
In the face of this crisis, the CDC has confirmed 4,588 cases in its latest weekly national update, double the 2,289 recorded in all of 2025. The epicenter of the epidemic remains Pennsylvania, with 1,286 cases confirmed across 42 counties, up from 1,136 when the WSWS last reported on the outbreak, and 247 hospitalized, nearly 20 percent of those infected. The United States is expected to lose the measles elimination status it has held since 2000 when the Pan American Health Organization reviews the data next month.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Alex Padilla:
SAN DIEGO, CA – Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Rules and Administration Committee with oversight over federal elections, released the following statement following U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) threats to California elections officials in an attempt to prevent them from counting ballots sent to a list of allegedly “suspected” ineligible voters:
“This is NOT A DRILL: Donald Trump and Todd Blanche are trying to interfere in California elections. Trump’s DOJ has not provided any evidence for their claims of massive voter fraud. They’ve admitted that the data they point to is inaccurate and unreliable. No matter how many lawsuits they file or how many election officials they threaten, they do not have the authority to interfere.
“The Trump administration is afraid and desperate. Their attempts to take over our elections will fail.
“Election officials: We have your back.
“California: Your vote is your voice. Use it and let’s hold this administration accountable.”
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The following sites updated:
