Britain’s maritime security office
Crew safe, engine-room fire out, ship sailed on. No attacker named.
01 / The probeAlaska
Alaska’s U.S. attorney confirms a criminal probe, open since July, into who put a second Dan Sullivan on the Senate ballot.
Grand jury subpoenas went to Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola’s campaign offices and to Daniel J. Sullivan’s. NBC News and The Hill count at least 36 subpoenas and preservation requests; PBS NewsHour says the number is unclear. Peltola, Daniel J. Sullivan and the DSCC deny involvement.
First choicesPeltola 47% Sullivan 44% Daniel J. Sullivan 4%
After ranked-choice transfersPeltola 51% Sullivan 49%
If every exhausted Daniel J. Sullivan ballot went to the incumbentPeltola 50% Sullivan 50%
A poll, not a result. The other 5% of first choices is not in the reported figures, so it is left empty.
Ranked-choice voting moves ballots for the last-place finisher to each voter’s next pick. DOJ’s civil suit asks a federal judge to have state officials keep apart every ballot that ranks Daniel J. Sullivan, and to block certification if Sen. Sullivan loses. The federal case is one of three. Gov. Mike Dunleavy ordered a state investigation, and the House Oversight Committee opened its own.
The lawIn Alaska, putting a second candidate with the same name on the ballot is not automatically a crime. Scott Kendall, an Alaska lawyer and former Republican operative, calls it “a nasty, dirty trick” but says that under the Alaska Supreme Court’s reading of the law, “it is not illegal.” Michael Heyman, the U.S. attorney, has not said which laws are at issue.
“I knew nothing about any other candidate on the ballot except for me and the incumbent.”Mary Peltola
Read the reporting
02 / The ballotsCalifornia
A 9th Circuit panel denies, 2-1, DOJ’s emergency bid to make California set aside the ballots of about 20,000 people it calls likely noncitizens.
Trump appointee Mark Bennett and Biden appointee Gabriel Sanchez agreed with the trial judge that DOJ’s list is not credible. They called the request “simple only in the abstract,” because hundreds of thousands of ballots are already processed and stripped of names. Trump appointee Patrick Bumatay dissented.
Up to 15,903 flagged as noncitizens at first
6,218 after DHS cut the list
185 after the next cut. Nevada officials confirmed all 185 were citizens.
Bars from zero on one scale; the ring marks the 185.
DOJ’s record in Nevada weighed against it. The 20,000 names on its California list are a small slice of the state’s 23 million voters, AP reported.
“California decided long ago that aliens can’t vote in its elections. Today, the federal government merely seeks to safeguard that decision. We should have let them try.”Judge Patrick Bumatay, dissenting
Read the reporting
03 / The subpoenasLos Angeles
A federal grand jury subpoenas at least four California election workers in a noncitizen-voting probe, and their unions sue DOJ.
Los Angeles County’s registrar office got two subpoenas on Oct. 21 and one on Oct. 24, and an Orange County election official got a similar one. A DOJ letter says they belong to a criminal investigation run by Homeland Security Investigations, the immigration agency’s criminal arm.
What the subpoenas demand
- Orange County
- Unredacted voter records for 60 people, up from 20 in September subpoenas. Three names are on both lists.CalMatters
- Los Angeles
- Correspondence and internal messages about federal noncitizen-voting demands, screening methods and steps to keep unlawful votes from being counted.
- Wednesday, Nov. 4
- The court date for the Los Angeles staff. The reporting does not say whether the Orange County official must appear.
DOJ spokeswoman Kiersten Pels said a subpoena does not make someone a target. The workers’ unions have sued DOJ, and their lawyers say a federal judge on Friday, Oct. 30 barred DOJ and DHS from threatening workers with prosecution for lawfully counting ballots. By their account, the order neither cancels the Nov. 4 appearances nor quashes the subpoenas.
Read the reporting
04 / The talksTehran
Qatari mediators are back in Tehran to push an interim U.S.-Iran deal, and Trump says the war will end “soon.”
An interim deal is a short-term agreement meant to stop a new round of war. Fox News, CNN and The Washington Post report that U.S. forces in the Middle East are being moved so Trump can restart strikes after the Tuesday, Nov. 3 midterm election.
Ceasefire, April 8Fighting again by May 4
Deal signed June 17U.S. strikes June 26
The first truce fades out because fighting had resumed by May 4.
Iran wants the U.S. to end its blockade of Iranian ports and lift oil-export sanctions first. An Iranian official rejected Qatar’s ideas, and Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi pushed Iran’s own seven-day plan, which Trump had already rejected.
At the pumpRegular gasoline averaged $4.269 a gallon on Oct. 26, against $3.035 a year earlier, per the EIA.
Read the reporting
05 / The indictmentHouston
A Harris County grand jury indicts ICE officer Mario Morales on felony assault for driving his SUV into a fleeing man.
Prosecutors say Morales, 33, deliberately drove his unmarked SUV into Miguel Parra Hernandez during a chase on Oct. 10, breaking his leg in several places. He faces 2 to 20 years if convicted. ICE says it was chasing a different man, whose daughter says he died in 2017.
What the released video shows, and where it doesn’t
- Surveillance video, per NBC
- The SUV crosses a yellow median and swerves left toward Parra Hernandez’s running path.
- Where it doesn’t show
- A truck in the foreground blocks the moment of contact. When it moves, a man is on the pavement behind the SUV.
- Body camera, per PBS/AP
- Sharp steering, a jolt, and Parra Hernandez on the ground holding his leg.
ICE calls the case “nothing more than a political stunt by Houston sanctuary politicians” and says local prosecutors have no authority over federal officers. A federal law, 28 U.S.C. § 1442, lets an officer move a state case to federal court and claim Supremacy Clause immunity there.
Read the reporting
06 / The mines · Long readStrait of Hormuz
Attackers in a speedboat damaged a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz with limpet mines, the region’s first such attack since 2019, the Financial Times says.
The attack came Thursday, Oct. 29. Britain’s maritime security office confirmed that a small boat fixed two explosives, stuck to the hull by hand, above the waterline of the Panama-flagged Louise 1. It named no attacker.
Who says what
The Financial Times
The region’s first such attack since 2019; likely a change in Iran’s tactics.
Reuters’ sources
The first successful limpet-mine strike since the war began in February. Responsibility unclear.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, per AP
Four tankers using routes it had not approved hit mines and caught fire.
The U.S. military
Denies the mine claims; says it has cleared the main shipping lanes.
30 nautical miles
A U.S. advisory tells commercial ships to keep at least that far from U.S. warships, so no escort sits alongside to stop an approaching boat. The attack’s position was not reported and is not marked. Coastlines: Natural Earth.
No investigator has released evidence tying the boat to Iranian forces. The “first since 2019” label is the FT’s own; as of 2021, the cause of a blast on the tanker Helios Ray was still under investigation.