Attorney General Todd Blanche says DOJ’s Alaska suit is “not saying don’t certify,” but the complaint asks a court to block certification if Sen. Dan Sullivan loses.
On CBS and CNN Sunday, Oct. 25, nine days before the election, Blanche said the suit only asks that ballots be kept so a court can decide whether voters confused the senator, a Republican, with a second candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan. He would not say whether Trump told him to file it; Trump said Friday, Oct. 23: “I’m the one that said do it.”
What Blanche said, on CBS and CNN, Sunday, Oct. 25
“Not saying don’t certify.”
The complaint · U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska
- Asks
- That the court block results “tainted by the inclusion on the ballot of Daniel J. Sullivan”
- Paragraph 44
- That the judge bar Alaska from certifying while voter intent is investigated
- Only if
- Sullivan loses but would have won had every Daniel J. vote gone to him
22 months Federal law (52 U.S.C. § 20701) already requires officials to keep federal-election records
22 days From the Nov. 3 election to Alaska’s certification target, Nov. 25
Each block is one month, drawn as 30.44 days. Both lengths start from zero; no end date is drawn.
The second Sullivan, 69, is a retired elementary school teacher from Petersburg. A Democratic-aligned super PAC, Right for Alaska, spent much of its $2.35 million boosting fringe conservative candidates, him among them, the Alaska Beacon reported; Alaska’s News Source says it has found no evidence that Democrats recruited him. DOJ’s suit argues his name could confuse voters, not that it already has. Even after a state certifies, the Senate decides who is seated: in 1974 it refused to seat New Hampshire’s certified winner, Louis Wyman.
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A 9th Circuit panel of two Trump appointees and one Biden appointee doubts it can order California to set aside the mail ballots of about 20,000 people DOJ calls likely noncitizens.
In a rare hearing Sunday, Oct. 25, the judges asked whether they can act at all before the trial judge rules. “I don’t see how we have jurisdiction,” said Judge Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee.
The roughly 20,000, by DOJ’s sworn declarations and a county check
- DOJ assumed
- Each person was mailed a ballot, because California mails one to every registered voter. It did not check each person.
- Homeland Security
- USCIS flagged about 189 records for “minor data discrepancies.”
- Los Angeles’s 200-name sample
- Nearly 40% of the records that listed a birthplace showed U.S. birth; 71.2% showed no voting history.
- Charged
- About 28 people on the list, with voting or immigration crimes
“This is not a close call,” Bennett said, Politico’s Kyle Cheney reported. The panel has not ruled. Counties must submit results by Dec. 3, and the state certifies on Dec. 11; Los Angeles County’s registrar says voters could not be notified and given a chance to respond before those deadlines.
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Trump says it is “getting to be decision time” on Iran: make a deal with Tehran or resume attacks to “finish it off.”
The war began in March, eight months ago. Trump says he has “two very different sets of intelligence reports” on Iran, and he has not said which way he will decide, or when.
Road oneMake a deal with Tehran
Road twoResume attacks to “finish it off”
What still separates a deal from renewed strikes
- Vice President JD Vance has said any deal requires an actual cut in Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity.
- Neither side has confirmed whether that demand is among Washington’s newest added conditions.
- Last month Trump rejected an Iranian offer to reopen the strait within a week if the blockade was lifted, AP reports. The blockade is still in place.
A third U.S. aircraft carrier and thousands of troops are heading to the region. In Tehran, residents are stockpiling supplies; former Iranian official Sasan Karimi said the country’s leaders “have accepted that he will attack us again, before or after the elections.”
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Israel votes Tuesday, Oct. 27, with polls showing Netanyahu’s coalition and the opposition nearly tied and Eisenkot’s party often first.
It is Israel’s first national election since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, with 39 parties running. Winning the most votes does not make a party leader prime minister: a government needs 61 of the Knesset’s 120 seats.
Netanyahu’s allies 50 seats in each poll
Eisenkot’s four-party camp 52 to 56
Arab-majority parties, counted in neither bloc 14 to 16, per Haaretz
One scale, 0 to 120 seats; a range is solid to its low end and hatched to its high end. Polls can miss: in 2022, final polls averaged 60.3 seats for Netanyahu’s bloc, and it won 64.
One camp member, Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman, refuses to serve with Netanyahu. Israel has closed West Bank crossings into Israel until after the vote, following an attack near Hebron that killed two soldiers.
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ICE deported a Houston-area man to Ghana, which put him on a flight to Mali, the country a U.S. judge barred his removal to in 2012.
A five-month 60 Minutes investigation, aired Sunday, Oct. 25, found that some third countries send U.S. deportees on to the countries where U.S. immigration judges ruled they would likely be persecuted. Its central case is Moussa Diawara, a father with no criminal record and 25 years in the U.S.
Houston area→Ghana→Mali
- A judge barred his deportation to Mali.
- ICE arrested him.
- ICE deported him to Ghana after three weeks’ detention without access to his lawyer or a judge.
- Ghanaian officials forced him onto a flight to Mali.
“I still say to myself, ‘This isn’t real.’”Moussa Diawara, to 60 Minutes
DHS told CBS that Ghana gave assurances for Diawara against persecution or torture. Under the DHS guidance in force in July, assurances the State Department found credible let ICE remove someone with no further procedure. About 25,000 of the nearly 1 million people deported in the first 18 months of Trump’s second term went to third countries, per CBS.
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Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser’s lawsuit calls a wildfire-aid denial retaliation over Tina Peters, and the White House denies it.
60 Minutes on Sunday, Oct. 25, laid out Trump’s campaign to free Peters, the former Mesa County clerk convicted over a breach of her county’s voting equipment. The White House denies politicizing disaster relief, CBS reported.
Said out loud
“If she is not released, I’m going to take harsh measures.”
Trump, who did not say what those measures would be
In FEMA’s paperwork
- December 2025
- Wildfire aid denied
- April 2026
- Colorado’s appeal rejected
- Peters
- Not mentioned in the denial letter
The state and FEMA put damage from the Lee and Elk fires and the mudslides after them at almost $27.5 million. Trump’s federal pardon of Peters, announced Dec. 11, 2025, had no effect, because she was convicted under Colorado law. Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, cut her nearly nine-year sentence in half, and she left prison on parole June 1, 2026. The suit does not ask the court to order the aid paid.