Justice Department seeks to isolate Alaska ballots amid Senate race probe

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The U.S. Department of Justice pushed Friday for a court order to isolate certain Alaska ballots to investigate potential voter confusion, while federal officials confirmed the existence of a criminal probe over a Senate candidate who shares a name with the Republican incumbent.

The dueling developments came days before Tuesday's ranked choice general election, in a race headlined by two-term Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan and Democratic former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola. The race is among a handful nationwide expected to determine control of the Senate.

Alaska U.S. Attorney Michael Heyman told reporters in Anchorage that the investigation has been ongoing for several months, but recent revelations from The New York Times that Peltola’s campaign appeared to be involved in recruiting retired teacher Dan J. Sullivan have resulted in a “significant surge of law enforcement assets to Alaska.”

Separately, the Justice Department — as part of a lawsuit it filed last week — asked a judge to order that state elections officials isolate ballots ranking Dan J. Sullivan to investigate potential voter “confusion” with the senator. The owner of a boat dealership in the candidate's hometown of Petersburg who had donated to his campaign told The Associated Press that an FBI agent visited the business and wanted to know whether he had been misled by Dan J. Sullivan's candidacy. He said he had not and that “Everybody knows who the incumbent is.”

Alaska Assistant U.S. Attorney E. Bryan Wilson, in a filing, said the government “seeks to preserve and segregate all ballots ranking Daniel J. Sullivan for the purposes of investigating whether such ranking was the product of voter confusion, should such an investigation become necessary.”

The Department of Justice also filed with the court a list of proposed questions it seeks to compel the Peltola campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to answer as part of the civil case seeking to block certification of the Senate race if the incumbent loses. President Donald Trump has said he told the department to file the case.

State elections officials made efforts to distinguish the two Sullivans on the ballot

Peltola denied Thursday that she knew anything about the effort to put Dan J. Sullivan on the ballot: “I am not interested in tricking voters,” she said.

Democrats, including the DSCC, have repeatedly denied that they were involved in any campaign trick. Dan J. Sullivan has long denied he was running at Democrats’ behest.

The request to segregate the ballots in Alaska comes after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Justice Department’s request for California to set aside disputed ballots received in the midterm election sent to some 20,000 people the administration contends may not be U.S. citizens. California officials argued the list is highly unreliable and most likely includes many people who are U.S. citizens.

Justice Department attorneys in the Alaska case said there is a “substantial risk” that Dan J. Sullivan's candidacy “will mislead voters and ultimately result in an electoral process that lacks integrity.”

“To guard against this danger, the United States seeks an order directing Defendants to preserve and segregate all ballots ranking Daniel J. Sullivan for the purposes of investigating whether such ranking was the product of voter confusion, should such an investigation become necessary,” the filing states. It requests a decision by Monday.

Attorneys for the state in response questioned how segregation would be possible, writing that voters' ballots are commingled in the ballot box on Election Day and that election workers couldn't segregate ballots ranking Dan J. Sullivan without violating ballot secrecy protections. Ballots segregated or not wouldn't reveal any voter's reason for voting for Dan J. Sullivan, they said.

They have asked a judge to dismiss the case and said Alaska elections officials already took steps to distinguish the two Sullivans on the ballot. The senator is listed as Dan S. Sullivan, Republican and incumbent, while the challenger is listed as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., with no party affiliation. That's also how they appeared on the August open primary ballot.

Attorneys for the state also have argued that Alaska’s ranked voting system further addresses concerns about potential confusion by allowing voters to rank both Sullivans.

Timing of Justice Department announcements unusual

Heyman on Friday would not say what potential crimes authorities are looking into or the targets of the probe, but asked members of the public to come forward with tips that could help investigators.

It’s highly unusual for Justice Department officials to publicly discuss a criminal investigation or even confirm its existence. The timing of the press conference is particularly notable given the Justice Department has had a longstanding practice of avoiding taking public steps in the weeks leading up to an election that could be perceived as attempting to influence a political outcome.

Trump during a rally late Friday in Florida said Peltola and Dan J. Sullivan should be prosecuted. He noted U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche was in attendance and said, “He’s going to make his own decision.”

Trump, then addressing Blanche directly, said of decisions regarding the case, “Todd, please make your own,” and watched Blanche’s response.

Trump added: “OK, he said ‘yes.’”

Peltola, at a campaign rally in Anchorage late Friday, said she is “so deeply offended by these accusations about having any involvement with anyone else’s candidacy.” She said she doesn't need any help in winning the race outside of the support of voters.

She was asked before the rally if it was possible that someone on her campaign was involved in recruiting Dan J. Sullivan: “I have no idea,” she told KTUU. “I honestly have no idea.”

The Times story revealing the potential recruitment of Dan J. Sullivan was based partly on interviews with a former campaign manager, Elisa Rios, who was fired before the August primary. Asked about Rios by the station, Peltola said certain people are “gone for a good reason. If I could fire them again, I’d be happy to fire them again.”

Federal prosecutors this week issued dozens of grand jury subpoenas and requests to preserve records, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

Republican Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said, following The New York Times' reporting, that he'd ordered an investigation into whether any violations took place.

Meanwhile, the Alaska Democratic Party has sued state elections officials, alleging absentee in-person voting sites did not open as advertised in some rural communities. The director of the Division of Elections in a letter dated Monday said the agency signs agreements with local or tribal offices to operate the sites and that most of the 18 highlighted had opened. A message seeking comment from the state Department of Law was not immediately returned.

___

Durkin Richer reported from Washington. Bohrer reported from Juneau, Alaska. AP reporter Will Weissert contributed from Washington.

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Election forecasters shift 12 more House races toward Democrats before Tuesday

It's crunch time. With just days to go until the 2026 midterm elections, Democratic and Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives nationwide are making one last push to persuade voters in their districts — and help their party win or retain control of the chamber on Nov. 3.

The stakes are high. President Trump has enjoyed complete Republican control of Congress for the first half of his second term. Flipping the House would give Democrats the power to block parts of the president's agenda, investigate his administration and even impeach him (again).

Historically speaking, a president's party almost always loses seats when voters return to the polls to judge his first two years in office. (The average number lost since World War II? Twenty-six.) Sometimes, the backlash is so pervasive that the president's party loses seats across a wide range of competitive districts — a phenomenon known as a "wave" election.

But the past doesn't necessarily predict the future, and Republicans have certain advantages today that they didn't have before. Here's what needs to happen for each party to come out on top. 

The races to watch

The first thing to know about any House election is that while all 435 congressional districts are technically up for grabs, roughly 80% of those contests (representing about 350 seats) are not considered competitive. 

House incumbents have always had huge advantages: money and name recognition, mostly. But their head start has only widened in recent years as partisan polarization and redistricting have helped make the vast majority of congressional districts "safe" for one party. These days, incumbents tend to focus more on fending off primary challengers. The general election can be a breeze in comparison.

As a result, this year's true battleground is relatively small. According to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report's "race ratings," just 18 contests are genuine "tossups" at this point. Another 18 "lean Democratic," and 17 "lean Republican." There's also a third competitive category that includes 18 seats where Democrats are the "likely" winners, and 14 seats where the same could be said about Republicans.  

That's 85 competitive districts — again, out of 435. 

It’s clear from looking at those ratings which party is playing more defense and which is playing more offense — and where. Only 30 Democratic-held seats are considered competitive, and more than half of them (17) are "likely" to remain Democratic, according to Cook. Just four Democratic seats are toss ups. Just three are leaning Republican.

In contrast, a full 55 Republican-held seats are considered competitive — and about half of them are tossups (14) or leaning Democratic (13). 

Geographically, this year's tossups are concentrated in certain kinds of places: Rust Belt districts in states that have swung from party to party in the past (such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio); Mid-Atlantic suburbs (in states such as New York, Virginia and North Carolina) where Trump has scrambled some of the usual coalitions; and Sun Belt districts (think Florida, Texas, California and Nevada) where Latinos factor heavily. Trump carried many of these areas in 2024.

On Friday, Cook shifted another dozen of its race ratings toward Democrats — part of a pattern that has seen the outlet move a total of 75 race ratings toward Democrats over the last month.

“As the House battleground map has expanded, Democrats now have the potential to win their largest majority since 2009. President Donald Trump’s approval rating is underwater even in deep red seats that he won comfortably in 2024, and heavy spending from Republicans doesn’t appear to be moving the needle,” Cook’s House analyst wrote. “While Democrats won’t reach the 257 seats they had following President Barack Obama’s election — a high water mark for them this century — they could surpass the majorities they had following the 2006 and 2018 blue wave cycles.”

She went on to project that Democrats “will flip 12 to 25 seats, giving them as many as 240 seats in the House.”

Overall, the map gives Democrats more pickup options — which means more paths to a House majority. 

The path to a Democratic House

Senate and governor contests can be quirky — more state-specific and personality-driven. But national dynamics tend to play a larger role in shaping the composition of the incoming House. 

So it's not just a matter of who has more targets on the board. It's that the board itself tends to tilt to one side or the other, taking most of those targets with it. A recent example was the 2010 midterm election, when impatience with America's slow recovery from the 2008 financial collapse and frustration with President Barack Obama's response helped Republicans gain 64 House seats. 

Beyond the history of midterm backlash against the president's party, Democrats have two big advantages right now. One is that the current Republican majority is so minuscule — just 219 votes to 214, including an independent who caucuses with Republicans — that Democrats only need a net gain of three seats to win back the House. 

The other is that the board seems to be tilting in Democrats' favor — assuming the polls are right. 

Surveys suggest there's one underlying factor pulling the national electorate to the left: dissatisfaction with Trump. According to the data journalists at Silver Bulletin, an average of 60% of Americans currently disapprove of how Trump is handling his job vs. 37% who approve. That puts the president's net approval rating at -23% — near his all-time low.

Trump is earning even lower marks on voters' top issue this year: the cost of living. Shortly after he returned to office, roughly equal numbers of Americans approved and disapproved of how the president was handling inflation. But today — as tariffs and the Iran war help drive prices up — 70% disapprove and 25% approve. That's a 45-point gap.

President Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally at F&M Bank Arena on Oct. 10, 2026, in Clarksville, Tenn.

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Democrats aren't particularly popular. But for the party in power, it may be hard to overcome this level of dissatisfaction with the status quo. That's why, when pollsters ask their so-called generic ballot question — If an election for U.S. Congress were held today, which party's candidate would you vote for in your district? — Americans are currently giving Democrats a substantial lead of 9 percentage points, on average. 

Making matters worse for Republicans, that lead has expanded as swing voters who favored Trump in 2024 — including some Latinos and independents — say they're planning to vote Democratic.

To put a 9-point lead in perspective, Democrats were leading by an average of 7.5 points on the generic ballot at this point in 2018, with Trump as president and Republican majorities in the House and Senate. On Election Day, they picked up 41 seats and flipped the House.

If the polls are right, Democrats might win control of the House again.

The path to a Republican House

But are the polls right? Recently, Republicans have pointed to some surprising survey results on the Senate side — including Democratic leads in rural red states such as Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska — to argue that pollsters might be misjudging public sentiment. 

They're not wrong to say the polls have missed in the past. Polling errors are commonplace; they happen in most elections. But they tend to be random and to change directions from one cycle to another. The Trump era has been a little different. In each of the three presidential contests that Trump himself has competed in, the final average of polls conducted before Election Day underestimated Republicans' performance in the popular vote by an average of 3.8 percentage points, according to data journalist Nate Silver. 

The theory is that a phenomenon called nonresponse bias — in which Democratic voters are more eager or available to respond to pollsters than Republican voters — might have made Democratic support look stronger than it actually was. 

Pollsters try to adjust for this by weighting their results — that is, using statistical methods to give less weight to respondents who are overrepresented demographically and more weight to respondents who are underrepresented demographically. But it's difficult to predict in advance who will show up on Election Day. 

This time around, there are signs that rural Republicans are not responding to pollsters in certain states.

Could that mean Republican candidates in those places will outperform their polling? Possibly. But experts say it may also mean that rural Republicans are less supportive of the GOP than they were in 2024 — potentially voting Democratic or staying home on Nov. 3. 

A voter walks toward his polling place.

REUTERS / REUTERS

After all, there's been virtually no polling bias toward Democrats in Trump era elections when Trump himself wasn't on the ballot. In fact, the polls since 2016 have overestimated Republican support in midterm elections (by an average of 0.2%) and off-year, special and runoff elections (by an average of 1.3%), according to Silver. 

Either way, pollsters aren't seeing signs of this rural effect in most states — and even if they were, it might make only a minor dent in Democrats' 9-point national lead. 

Redistricting is the other Republican advantage. House redistricting efforts typically take place every 10 years, after each new census reveals changes in population distribution. But last summer, Trump successfully pushed GOP legislators in Texas to pass new congressional district boundaries five years earlier than normal to help Republicans win five additional House seats in 2026. This kicked off a tit-for-tat cycle that saw nine states adopt new congressional maps for the midterms — some to benefit Democrats, others Republicans.

Now that the dust has settled, Cook projects that Republicans could win nine seats because of redistricting (in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas), while Democrats could win five (in California and Utah). If that plays out, it would net the GOP four seats overall. 

It's not what Republicans initially hoped to gain from gerrymandering. "We're not gonna win all 13 of those redistricted seats. That's correct. We're not," GOP House Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota told Axios recently. But it's also not nothing. 

The hope for the GOP is that some combination of polling error and redistricting boost — along with a late influx of hundreds of millions of dollars to help defend districts Trump won in 2024 — will be just enough to preserve their slim House majority.

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Classified material missing from Epstein files, documents suggest

Attorney General Todd Blanche has long maintained that the so-called Epstein files, even those kept from the public, contain no secret information related to national security.

When the document releases began last winter, Blanche noted that the Epstein Files Transparency Act authorized withholding information in the interest of national security or foreign policy, but said, "no files are being withheld or redacted on that basis."

"There's not some tranche of super-secret documents about Jeffrey Epstein that we're withholding, we're actually not withholding anything based upon [national defense information]," said Blanche, who was deputy attorney general at the time.

But the contents of at least three documents in the massive tranche of files indicate classified information was included in files collected by the DOJ. 

One of the documents shows Blanche's Office of the Deputy Attorney General itself received classified material related to Epstein in March 2025. By law, material can only be classified for national security purposes. 

What exactly was classified and why remains a mystery. 

The Department of Justice says it collected 6 million pages of material and ultimately released over 3 million of those pages after reviewing for duplication, attorney-client privilege and relevance to Jeffrey Epstein. 

Congressional challenges and a lawsuit are casting doubts on the DOJ's claims and demanding the release of more documents that were held back.

Clues about classified material

Included among the Epstein files is an eight-page timeline of the FBI's New York office's initial efforts last year to track down and deliver its voluminous files to the Justice Department's Washington headquarters.

On March 25, 2025, one document shows delivery of "16 Epstein items to ODAG," referring to the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. Among them, items No. 2 and No. 6 are described as "Epstein Transparency Project - Classified Material" and "CDs with classified materials (x2)." 

The Epstein Transparency Project refers to the Justice Department's effort to review the files and redact, withhold or clear them for release. It is not clear what exactly was identified as classified. Each CD was likely capable of holding hundreds of megabytes of material.

Also in the files is an email sent that same day from the unit chief of the National Security Classification Operations Unit — an office whose role is to review FBI documents for classification or declassification. The email includes an attachment labeled "Epstein - Classified Document Memo.docx." 

The body of the email says there were three documents "identified that remain classified." One was described as an "FBI document which is classified when see-through." A redaction obscures the unit chief's description of the other two documents.

The identity of the email's recipient is also redacted.

It's also not clear whether the two documents — the email and the list — are referring to the same classified material. 

Coding system reveals missing pages

A CBS News analysis of a numerical coding system used by the DOJ to organize the Epstein files offers clues about some of the documents the department has withheld. 

The codes don't reveal what's missing, but they do show where gaps exist, raising questions about the DOJ's explanation for why documents were withheld.

Among the missing documents are pages from Epstein's own financial records collected as evidence in a federal prosecution. 

Here's how it works: Documents from the Epstein files are labeled with a string of numbers beginning with the letters EFTA stamped on the bottom right-hand corner; EFTA stands for Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Those are called Bates numbers — a common way of organizing massive document batches in legal cases. Every page receives its own number. In the Epstein files, the sequence goes from 1 to 2,858,498, which is the tally of approximately how many pages of documents were released. 

According to the DOJ, other documents — including court records and investigative files they've previously released — bring the total to over 3 million.

Alongside the Epstein files' Bates numbers are other, older coding numbers that appear on many documents. This indicates that those documents had previously been used in federal legal cases, potentially collected as part of an earlier subpoena.

For instance, Bates coding on some of the documents is from the Ghislaine Maxwell criminal case and was used to organize files given to Maxwell's legal team ahead of her 2021 trial as part of the discovery process. 

Other Bates numbers indicate documents were collected from Epstein's banks, including JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank, during the FBI's investigation into his trafficking activities. 

Similar gap analyses have been done in the past by independent researchers. 

Missing financial documents

Finding gaps in these documents is a simple process of counting. 

In tens of thousands of instances, the main EFTA number will advance by one but the other Bates numbers advance by two or more. Those gaps indicate pages that had been there before were likely removed at some point after the DOJ obtained them. 

Take the images below: The EFTA number advances by one but the JPM-SDNY and SDNY_GM numbers advance by 2, as do the page numbers from the original document. 

In another example, a series of around 4,500 images of checks from Epstein's accounts has gaps where 66 of those check images should be. Oftentimes the missing image is only the front or the back of the check, although in several cases both are missing. 

Comparing all of these numbers against the final EFTA page numbers, it is possible to calculate that there are tens of thousands of pages of documents that are missing from these sections, with no clear reason why. 

"Financial records were not a permissible category for removal," Barbara McQuade, the former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, told CBS News.

Like every federal prosecutor, she says she is very familiar with Bates numbers. "It's the reason you have Bates numbers, so you notice something like that," she said.  

The DOJ hasn't responded to CBS News' recent inquiries about the Epstein files, but it has previously said that every document required to be released by the Epstein Files Transparency Act has been released, and the remaining files were unrelated, privileged, or were duplicative.

Email gaps

Another sequence of Bates numbers that provide a map to where documents were removed appears to be from a preliminary processing of the files.

One large sequence of those have "R1" in between EFTA and the page number. 

This R1 numbering is found across approximately 995,000 released pages, between p. 61 and p. 2,214,171 in the files. Each page is also labeled with an EFTA page number. 

While the EFTAs are sequential, the R1s have gaps which range from 1 page to hundreds of pages. Each time a gap appears — for example, if the EFTA advances by 1 but the R1 advances by 2 — it's evidence that pages were removed. 

By comparing these sequences it's possible to identify gaps where documents, mostly emails, were removed between that earlier review and the final release. No partial emails turned up in the thousands of documents we examined, so the removals appear to be entire email exchanges.

Here's what a section of that looks like: 

The emails are not sequential in date and jump by days, months and years, so knowing what was removed from context is simply not possible. 

But the results of calculating the differences between the first and last of the numbers in this earlier sequence versus the later sequence is 1.2 million pages, which is the total number of identified gaps from just this one section.

Most of the documents in this section are emails to or from Jeffrey Epstein, including communication with young women who would later accuse him of abuse; email exchanges with his business associates; messages to or from his assistant, Lesley Groff; or emails sent or received by Ghislaine Maxwell.

"De-duping"

There is one possible explanation for many of the email gaps. Instructions given to DOJ attorneys working on processing the redactions state: 

"If the document is an email chain and the most-inclusive email (i.e., containing all the back-and-forth) has already been reviewed and redacted as appropriate for production, the interstitial back-and-forth can be marked as duplicates." 

In other words, all emails exchanged prior to the last email in a chain can be considered a duplicate, because the last one should include all of the messages, and eliminating the duplicates will speed up the redaction process. Once a document is marked as a duplicate, it would likely be excluded from the files. 

If that was the case, this was only partially accomplished because duplicate emails still exist throughout the files. 

There's also the possibility that errors in the process could have resulted in crucial emails mistakenly being deleted.

Lack of transparency

The review and redaction process was conducted by hundreds of DOJ attorneys working under a compressed timeline. Given the scale of the task, it's possible that pages were withheld as a result of honest mistakes. But without a roadmap to the redactions and removals, it's impossible to make that determination. 

Independent journalist Katie Phang is suing the Justice Department, seeking the release of more files as well as an explanation of redactions and removals. A federal judge has made several rulings in her favor and the DOJ is appealing those rulings. 

As part of her lawsuit, Phang is asking the court to appoint a special master to review the files.

"If it wasn't intentional, then was it gross negligence? Were you just lazy? If it was intentional then I think there's [expletive] there that they don't want people to see," Phang told CBS News. "My speculation runs an entire spectrum of reaction — but at the end of the day it just makes the DOJ look bad."  

The DOJ has acknowledged making several mistakes.

It admitted to removing, and then restoring, a photo of now Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on a 2012 visit to Epstein's island, contradicting claims Lutnick had previously made about his contacts with Epstein.

Last year, DOJ officials claimed a minute was missing from prison security video from the night Epstein died, which turned out to not be true.

"This is a case where the process has inhibited public trust in what is ultimately released, and there's a long tradition of this, whether it's the Pentagon Papers or the Epstein files," said attorney Stanley Brand, a veteran litigator and distinguished fellow in law and government at Penn State Dickinson Law.  

"This is just another piece where the government process, where making this stuff available just fuels suspicion that there's something we're not seeing, and I don't know that ever gets resolved."  

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Multiple deaths reported in high-speed train collision in Spain

MADRID, Oct 28 (Reuters) - At least 10 people were killed when two high-speed trains collided in Spain on Wednesday, the second deadly accident in less than a year on the line ‌connecting Madrid to the southern Andalusia region, regional authorities said.

Footage from regional Castilla-La Mancha Television showed a ‌derailed train with at least one carriage remaining on an elevated section of track while twisted metal, broken panels and wreckage could be ​seen strewn across an embankment beneath the line.

Miguel, a passenger travelling with several colleagues in the rear car of one of the trains, described to COPE radio the moment of the accident.

"We heard a massive roar, a truly enormous thud that went on for 10 seconds, as if the train were about to derail. Through the right-hand window, ‌we could see a wrecked train – I ⁠imagine it must have been the other one," he said.

DEATH TOLL LIKELY TO RISE

Castilla-La Mancha region spokesperson Esther Padilla said the number of casualties was likely to rise.

"The latest ⁠confirmed figure is 10 dead, but we know it is going to increase. Very likely we will be talking about a higher number," Padilla said, adding that several carriages had plunged down an embankment.

She said 147 people had been travelling ​on the ​Iryo train and 397 on the Renfe train.

The collision comes ​nine months after an accident between high-speed ‌trains belonging to the same operators on the same line that killed 46 people.

That crash in January, which occurred after a train derailed and smashed into an oncoming train near Adamuz, in Cordoba province, triggered a debate about the level of investment in railway maintenance in recent years.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's agenda, published on the Spanish government's website, had been cleared for the day. The opposition People's Party also cancelled all campaign events ahead of a ‌snap election on November 29, a spokesperson said.

"Shocked by the ​serious train accident in Toledo. My affection, solidarity, and support to ​all the victims and their families," Sanchez said ​on X.

The Renfe and Iryo trains crashed just after 9 a.m. (0800 GMT), causing two Iryo ‌wagons to derail, a spokesperson for the Castilla ​La Mancha region said, adding ​that the cause was not yet clear.

Rail operator Adif said the incident occurred on the line from Madrid to Seville.

Manuel Galan, the mayor of the nearby town of Urda, told Cadena SER that emergency ​services had asked the town council ‌to prepare emergency facilities, including a sports hall, to accommodate passengers and the injured.

(Reporting by David ​Latona, Emma Pinedo, Mireia Merino, Corina Pons, Victoria Waldersee, Benjamin Mejias and Joan Faus; Writing by ​Charlie Devereux; Editing by Toby Chopra and Alison Williams)

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Trump and Talarico draw competing crowds in an unlikely Texas battleground

President Trump and Texas Senate candidate James Talarico (D) shared their competing visions Tuesday as the two held dueling rallies in the Lone Star State one week before the midterm elections.

Trump did two rallies in Texas — the first in Corpus Christi and another in Lubbock. It’s his fourth trip to Texas to support Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton.

Talarico held his own rally in Lubbock on Tuesday. He was in Corpus Christi on Saturday.

The Texas race is one of the most contested and watched Senate races in the country. Talarico and Paxton remain close in the polls — Real Clear Polling calls the race a toss-up, with Talarico holding a slight lead.

A Democrat winning the Senate seat would be a shock — none have won a U.S. Senate race in Texas since 1988, and Trump won the state by nearly 14 percentage points in the 2024 presidential election.

Democrats are vying to take control of the House and the Senate. The party would need to win four seats to win control of the Senate.

The president started off his rally in Corpus Christi saying that Texans would defeat “Democrat Communist James Talafreako,” using the nickname he’s given to the candidate.

At both rallies, Trump criticized Talarico on a range of issues like immigration, the Second Amendment and barbecue.

“If you’re running in Texas and if you don’t like guns, and if you don’t like meat and if you don’t like oil, I think you should be losing by a lot,” Trump said at the first rally about Talarico. “Where the hell did they get this guy?” 

Trump spoke heavily about the Venezuelan oil tanker that arrived in Texas on Tuesday that is carrying oil to be refined in the state. He said that Talarico would try to take it away.

“Talafreako stated that he wants to dismantle Texas oil and gas and capitalism itself. He wants to take it apart,” Trump continued, adding that Talarico will “kill millions of Texas jobs.”

In Lubbock, Trump said Talarico “wants to get rid of your guns. He wants to get rid of your oil. Wants to get rid of your meat. He can't stand the stuff.”

Talarico has denied being vegan and said he supports the Second Amendment, but advocates for gun control.

Talarico, for his part, thanked Texans for showing up for his rally in Lubbock, just three miles away from Trump’s, invoking Trump’s nickname for him.

“That’s a lot of Talafreakos in one room,” he said.

He said Texans are “ready for change” and hit the Trump administration over the Iran war and tariffs.

“Change that will roll back these corrupt tariffs that are raising grocery prices. Change that will end this corrupt war in the Middle East, driving up gas prices,” he said. “We are done with the extremism and the corruption. We're done with the politics of division, and we are ready for something new.”

The Democratic Texan hit on Paxton, calling him the “most corrupt politician in Texas.”

“Ken Paxton is everything that's wrong with our politics,” he said. “He doesn't serve us. He serves himself.”

“Ken has spent his entire career enriching himself and his donors. I've spent my career working with both parties to cut your property taxes, lower your housing costs, and capping your insulin copays,” Talarico continued. “I have a legislative record. Ken Paxton has a criminal record.”

Paxton has never been convicted of a crime, though he has faced criminal indictments, federal investigations and impeachment while serving as the state's attorney general, but he was acquitted.

Talarico compared Paxton to “that one guy” at a Texas bar.

“He's loud. He's obnoxious. He makes everybody feel uncomfortable. He hears you say your name to the bartender and then adds his drink to your tab when you're not looking,” he said. “That's Ken Paxton. And I don't know about y'all, but I am done picking up his tab.”

“This isn't a partisan thing,” he continued. “Republicans know just as well as Democrats that there is no place for guys like Ken Paxton in Texas.”

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2 men charged over suspected Iran-linked plot at U.S. bomber base in England

LONDON (AP) — Two men were charged Tuesday with national security offenses over a suspected plot against RAF Fairford, a U.S.-run military air base in England, police and prosecutors said.

British nationals Mohmed Ahmad Abdulkarim and Nouman Essghir, both aged 24 and from London, were charged under the National Security Act, the Crown Prosecution Service said. They are due to appear in court later Tuesday.

Abdulkarim is charged with assisting Iran's intelligence service and Essghir with entering a prohibited place for a purpose prejudicial to the U.K.

RAF Fairford, in western England, has been used by American bombers to strike Iran during this year’s war.

Essghir was arrested outside the base on Sept. 27, when armed police officers and army bomb-disposal experts swarmed the rural area. Scores of residents were evacuated from their homes as police and army bomb-disposal experts searched for explosives.

Police later said they had found a quantity of an accelerant — gasoline — in vans at the scene, but no explosives.

Essghir was initially released on bail before being re-arrested last week. Abdulkarim was arrested in the past week. Six other men have been arrested and released on bail as investigations continue.

British authorities have linked Tehran to the incident, which led the U.S. to pull its bombers from RAF Fairford. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said that the apparent plot was “almost certainly” directed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

Iran has denied involvement, although it has previously said that it considers any base used to attack its territory a legitimate target.

Earlier this month, the head of Britain’s MI5 spy agency warned that both Iran and Russia were expanding their attacks against the U.K., and that the RAF Fairford incident was not unique.

Ken McCallum, who leads the U.K.’s domestic security service, said Tehran is seeking to intensify its attacks in Britain beyond the traditional targets of Iranians opposed to the country’s Islamic authorities. He said more than 50 people have been arrested over Iran-linked plots in the past year.

“We have seen a range of incidents in recent months that we believe have been directed by the Iranian state, and as the director general of MI5 said just the other week, we are working together to intervene, identify and respond to that threat,” said Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, the head of National Counter Terrorism Policing in the U.K.

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A previous version of this story incorrectly said Abdulkarim is a British-Iranian national. He is British.

This article originally appeared on Associated Press at https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/uk-prosecutors-2-men-charged-091007409.html

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Judge halts tree cutting at Trump's golf course renovation after 400-plus trees removed

A golfer walks in front of cut down trees at East Potomac Golf Links near Hains Point in Washington, DC, October 19, 2026. - Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

A federal judge extended an order blocking tree removal from a Washington, DC golf course President Donald Trump is seeking to renovate, while imposing new notice requirements on any other major changes the administration seeks to make on the golf course grounds.

The new 70-page opinion from US District Judge Ana Reyes cited Trump’s own statements about his plans for East Potomac Golf Course.

The judge said she was forced to act now in the long-simmering dispute – which came to a head in recent weeks because the administration cut down 400-plus trees on the grounds with little notice – “because the Government did what it assured all it would not do.”

The ruling is a major setback for Trump’s efforts to turn the beloved but modest public golf course into a championship level course. It also sets the stage for an appeals court battle in a case that had produced sharp confrontations between the administration and the judiciary.

The new ruling comes after a showdown between the Trump administration and the federal bench in DC during a marathon hearing last week over the president’s efforts to overhaul the course.

Tensions were ratcheted up for those proceedings when Trump posted to social media that construction would begin at the course “immediately,” while calling Reyes a “crazed lunatic.”

“The events surrounding this case have become extraordinary,” Reyes wrote Monday. The way the Trump administration rushed to chop down hundreds of trees was “concerning,” she said.

“The Government appears to have set the timing of the tree removal and late notice to impede Plaintiffs’ ability to seek Court intervention,” Reyes wrote. “And its recent actions call into question other representations it has made to the Court over these many months.”

Reyes said she was reserving judgment on whether the government purposely misled her. But she indicated she is considering issuing a preservation order for all DOJ communications regarding the tree removal – a signal she may further probe the conduct of the government’s attorneys.

Under Reyes’ order, the administration cannot take any action to cut down, alter or harm additional trees on the grounds – unless to protect public safety, and in those cases, it must give detailed notice to the court. The Trump administration must also give 10 days notice for any plans to close the golf course or if it plans to make “irreversible” alterations to the course’s design, Reyes said.

Just before midnight Monday, Trump railed on Truth Social about Reyes’ ruling, while continuing to vow he will close the course on November 15 to renovate it.

“The judge does not have the Constitutional Right to ‘ask for or receive notices,’ which are time-consuming, unnecessary, expensive, and unconstitutional. We will immediately appeal this decision,” Trump said in the post. “To have to give advanced notices to a judge who has no expertise in Golf, Architecture, Landscaping, Construction, or anything else having to do with building such a World Class Project, is not fair, appropriate, or Constitutional.”

The lawsuit was brought by historic preservationists and individual golfers who alleged the administration was violating environmental law in how it planned to carry out Trump’s wishes to renovate East Potomac Golf Course – which for decades has offered affordable golf access to DC residents. Trump’s plans for the course would likely make it far more difficult to access and expensive to play, while eliminating much of the public park space that surrounds it.

The new decision stems from the October 10 move by the administration to chop down hundreds of trees from the grounds. In the months and even days before the mass tree removal, administration officials had claimed that the proposals for Trump’s renovation were still in their infancy, and there were no imminent plans for making major changes to the course.

After chopping down more than 400 trees, the administration continued to argue that the tree removals were separate from the overhaul Trump was planning and were instead the product of a 2019 proposal to make the course look more like it did when it was first built.

Reyes had expressed deep skepticism of that explanation. She had initially issued a temporary restraining order blocking all tree removal and requiring three days’ notice of any other major changes to the course. That TRO was set to expire on Monday.

In her latest opinion, Reyes concluded that she would trust Trump’s own public statements that renovations were beginning “immediately” over what government officials had claimed in court.

The Justice Department, she wrote, “asks the Court to disbelieve repeated public comments made by the President, who has stated in no uncertain terms that DOI and Secretary Burgum have a plan to redesign the Course.”

Reyes devoted a significant portion of her opinion Monday to defending the judiciary’s ability to serve as a check on the executive branch.

“One branch may not shield itself from accountability merely by invoking separation of powers principles without any reasoning. But that is all the Government has done,” she wrote.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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