Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) has retaliated against Bloomberg News after the outlet published a report on his campaign being accused of stiffing workers of wages.

According to Semafor's Max Tani, Lawler's campaign "informed Bloomberg that it is 'revoking all RSVPs and press credentials for Bloomberg reporters,'" and "the Lawler campaign told Bloomberg any reporter who tries to attend will be 'treated as a trespasser.'"

This follows an explosive report by Bloomberg that a dozen out-of-state canvassers working for Rep. Mike Lawler’s reelection effort are suing the campaign and several consulting firms, claiming they were paid as little as a dollar for each door they knocked on, Bloomberg Law reports.

They also say they were let go after speaking up about labor practices and discrimination.

According to the complaint, filed Friday in federal court in Manhattan, recruitment materials for the New York Republican’s campaign promised weekly base pay of $1,200 to $3,000, free housing and paid travel from September through Election Day. Bloomberg describes the workers’ claim as a “bait-and-switch,” alleging the defendants advertised one deal and delivered another.

Lawler represents a key battlground House district, and is considered to be one of the most vulnerable Republican lawmakers in the House standing for re-election this week. He is challenged by Cait Conley, a former Army Major and director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council.

The Department of Justice has moved to block former special counsel Jack Smith from testifying against President Donald Trump in his $10 billion defamation case against the British Broadcasting Corporation, according to a new report.

The DOJ sent a letter to Smith's lawyers Monday alerting them that the agency would not grant Smith permission to be deposed in the case, Jeremy Barr of The Guardian reported. A judge had previously ordered Smith to sit for a deposition as early as December 11.

Trump initially sued the BBC in 2025, claiming the news outlet deceptively edited his speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021 to make it seem like he incited a mob to attack the Capitol.

"As you are aware, the Department has promulgated regulations governing third-party requests for the production of official documents and testimony," the letter reads in part, adding that the DOJ's "Touhy" regulations prevent the disclosure of "any material contained in the files of the Department."

Adam Klasfeld, editor-in-chief of All Rise News, argued in a post on X that the letter was a sign the DOJ is "[running] scared" of Smith.

"Jack Smith’s testimony was apparently contingent upon DOJ’s agreement. It seems like the end of the road," Klasfeld wrote in a separate post.

The Trump administration sparked immediate outrage after it conducted what some described as a "secret" bombing campaign on the eve of the midterm elections.

Barak Ravid, global affairs correspondent for Axios, reported Monday night that a U.S. fighter jet destroyed an Iranian weapon on Qeshm Island. The strikes mark a significant escalation in the conflict as the Trump administration braces for a midterm election where Republicans are expected to lose the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate as well.

"Senior U.S. official: A U.S. Army fighter jet conducted a self-defense strike and destroyed a surface-to-air missile launcher on Qeshm Island after the Revolutionary Guards launched an anti-aircraft missile from it," Ravid posted on X.

The move outraged Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council.

"After eight months of an illegal war, there was finally some hope that a diplomatic agreement might be within reach and this war could end through negotiations rather than spiral into the violent scenarios being threatened after the midterm elections. But these deeply alarming revelations suggest we may be heading in precisely the opposite direction," he said in a statement.

The Supreme Court dealt President Donald Trump a blow on Monday evening, refusing to intervene in favor of the Justice Department's lawsuit demanding California set aside 20,000 ballots DOJ flagged as potentially having been cast by noncitizens.

Multiple courts have found that there is no valid reason to set aside the ballots, and the DOJ itself admitted in arguments that there is a high chance their list is full of errors.

Nonetheless, the Supreme Court's denial resulted in an uproar from Trump supporters on X, with many attacking the court — and others suggesting the integrity of tomorrow's election is already doomed.

"Supreme cowards," wrote far-right lawyer and former Neil Gorsuch law clerk Mike Davis.

"The Supreme Court just DENIED the Trump admin's request to set aside 20,000 ballots in California that were flagged as potention non-citizen votes until citizenship could be verified. Unbelievable," raged Chaya Raichik, the activist behind the anti-LGBTQ LibsOfTikTok account.

"UNREAL. That means those ballots get mixed in with everyone else's on Election Day," wrote RightLine chief content officer Eric Daugherty. "A district judge, a split Ninth Circuit, Judge Boasberg, and now SCOTUS have all refused to act. Absolutely outrageous. If even a fraction of those voters turn out to be noncitizens, nobody will be able to pull those votes back out. Get out and vote TOMORROW!"

Students for Trump founder Ryan Fournier posted something very similar: "SCOTUS just shut down Trump’s emergency request to halt 20K suspected noncitizen ballots in CA. Unreal. Once they’re mixed in, they can’t be pulled out. Get out and vote TOMORROW!"

"Citizenship is not optional. The Court just told America it is. This is how elections die," wrote the account "Vitruvius Republic."

Legendary journalist Dan Rather flagged signs that President Donald Trump's behavior has Republicans "scared" of the midterms.

Trump's behavior has become increasingly erratic in recent weeks, culminating in the president's odd "rally" at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Monday, Rather argued in a new essay for his Substack, "Ready." He also pointed to Trump's Halloween party, where he bragged to reporters about all of his rich friends in attendance.

"If his weekend behavior wasn’t a head-scratcher, his Monday schedule certainly was," Rather wrote. "Trump spent his afternoon at the supposedly finished Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C. He was not making a case for Republicans, but making the case for his unquenchably self-indulgent need to reimagine the nation’s capital his way."

Rather warned Trump's behavior has become a liability for Republicans as the midterms approach. The latest Senate poll showed Democratic candidates leading their Republican counterparts across several key states.

"As Republicans, scared of losing power, realize they hitched their wagon to a dangerous, xenophobic fearmongerer, Trump must contend with what will likely be the loss of one, if not both, houses of Congress and the rubber stamp he has enjoyed for two years," Rather wrote. "His already unhinged and desperate behavior may become more so as he latches on to the last vestiges of his reign. We are already the laughingstock of the world, led by a man so marginalized that we go to bed fearing what we might wake up to."

"How much, if at all, he is to be rebuked and restrained will become clear in 24 hours or less," he added.

Right-wing commentators are telling their audiences to brace for an unnamed global catastrophe while Republicans confront the prospect of heavy midterm losses, according to The Bulwark’s Will Sommer.

“I want to tell you to prepare for impact,” Glenn Beck told his audience Wednesday, Sommer wrote.

The trend started in late October, when the U.K. urged households to hold emergency supplies and right-wing accounts presented that and older European guidance as evidence of a pattern, Sommer continued.

It grew further after a Fox News report on a Pentagon initiative called FORTRESS, meant to let domestic bases run on their own for ninety days. Dan Bongino, the far-right commentator who briefly served as President Donald Trump's FBI deputy director, told followers to take that model home, saying “make FORTRESS my house, FORTRESS my apartment.”

Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson said Trump was about to launch a nuclear war, pundit John DeSouza forecast “10 to 20 days ... of total and complete darkness,” and white supremacist Nick Fuentes suggested an AI-driven cyberattack.

Even some elected lawmakers are getting in on the action. Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) posted a video saying he’d been swamped with messages asking for inside information, and that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told him the plan was a “best practices move.” Buckley Carlson, Tucker’s brother, rejected that.

Sommer suggested that fixating on the end of the world may be easier than dwelling on a Democratic wave, and that pundits profit from prepping products. He noted Beck pointed listeners to a medication sponsor that sells ivermectin, the antiparasitic drug conspiracy theorists pitched as a COVID cure, and later told them to become ham-radio operators and avoid joining armed bands.

Iraq War veteran and national security commentator Paul Rieckhoff issued an ominous warning Monday about President Donald Trump’s behavior after the midterm elections, cautioning that the president could become even more unpredictable if Republicans suffer major losses.

Paul Rieckhoff, host of the “Independent Americans” podcast, sounded the alarm during a CNN panel discussion about Trump’s unusual election-eve speech, which focused heavily on renovations to a Washington reflecting pool and golf course.

“I think this is also what we should brace for no matter what happens tomorrow, because he is going to be all gas, no brakes, and maybe even more so,” Rieckhoff said.

“I think he may be even accepting the loss,” he added. “And a cornered animal is a dangerous animal.”

Rieckhoff raised particular concerns about Trump’s foreign policy decisions, pointing to talk of escalating military action against Iran and Cuba.

“I think we have to prepare for the unexpected and don't have a failure of imagination, because Trump never does,” he warned.

The veteran said Americans should be prepared for potentially unpredictable actions involving the country’s national security apparatus in the days following the election.

His warning Monday came as CNN White House correspondent Kristen Holmes reported that Trump has privately discussed a devastating outcome for Republicans.

“Privately to some allies and advisers, he has predicted the worst-case scenario, which is that democrats win both chambers of Congress,” Holmes reported.

She added that Trump had discussed what such an outcome could mean for his presidency, including congressional investigations and potential impeachment hearings.

"So in the next 24 hours and what comes afterward, I think we have to really be prepared, especially for the national security apparatus that he operates, to do some unpredictable and unexpected things," Rieckhoff concluded.

Republican elected officials are “attacking college voters” by cutting campus polling access, Mother Jones reported Monday — but the longer trips to vote have fueled student organizing in key battleground states.

“It essentially creates a modern-day poll tax,” North Carolina A&T student organizer Shia Rozier told the outlet.

After Republican election officials rejected an early voting site at the historically Black university, student Jimmie Holton Jr. faced paying up to $30 for a rideshare or walking 45 minutes. He joined roughly 300 students on a march to vote.

Mother Jones pointed to a 2024 study finding that three-quarters of higher education institutions lacked in-person campus voting options. Republican officials are now eliminating some remaining sites, according to the report.

In Tarrant County, Texas, Republicans cut 92 previously approved polling locations, including UT Arlington’s campus site, where more than 8,000 people voted in 2024.

Student body president Andres Morales said that decision “created a fire that I don’t think they would have realized if they hadn’t taken it away.”

“Students have mobilized with renewed energy on campus, he said, organizing voter registration drives, early voting parties, and free transportation to voting locations,” Mother Jones reported Monday.

At Ohio’s historically Black Central State University, students face six-mile trips after election officials moved their nearest voting location.

Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons, a Democrat who opposed the cuts, accused Republicans of intentionally attempting to discourage voters of color

“If you are afraid of your opponent, you should just run a great race,” Simmons said. “But disenfranchising your constituents and the voters—the blowback is not looking good for them.”

President Donald Trump's closing message to voters ahead of the 2026 midterms floored one analyst Monday.

Over the last couple of days, Trump has fielded seemingly softball questions from reporters about why voters should support Republicans in the midterms, only for Trump to change the subject to something few voters care about, according to David Pakman, host of the liberal "David Pakman Show" on YouTube. Trump gave another example on Monday when he held a small "rally" at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, where he spent the first 20 minutes talking about landscaping.

"There is something almost impressively disconnected about how, as Trump, you've got the biggest microphone in American politics, the bully pulpit. You can pick the subject. You can tell the country exactly what you want this election to be about. And what you do is you say, 'Pretend I'm on the ballot and come look at my beautiful water,'" Pakman said.

Trump just recently wrapped up a 30-day midterm tour, where he held rallies in several red states in hopes of gaining voter support. Those rallies were held at a time when some Republican candidates have publicly distanced themselves from the president because of his sinking approval rating.

Pakman also noted that Trump seemed unwilling to do the job of a president when he admitted there is a "concept" of a trade plan brewing between the U.S. and Canada, which have been in an economic dispute throughout Trump's second term.

"The distance between the performance of being the president and the work of being the president is insane, and Trump has never been interested in the actual work of being president," Pakman said.

Grand jurors in Washington on Friday refused to indict a person the Justice Department accused of casting ballots in two places in the 2024 election, The New York Times reports, citing four people briefed on the case.

The Times says the setback, along with a run of recent courtroom losses, reflects the department’s “harried push” to back up President Trump’s unproven claims of widespread fraud.

The identity of the person targeted for indictment by the DOJ remains confidential, as does the reason jurors refused to indict. However, a federal grand jury refusing to indict, known as a "no true bill," is considered extremely rare, because a prosecutor generally only has to show probable cause at this stage.

People familiar with the matter gave the Times different explanations for why the case was filed so close to Election Day, which the paper says earlier administrations avoided. One said political appointees, including U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, pushed it to answer Trump’s calls for voter-fraud prosecutions. Another said it grew out of a list from the D.C. Board of Elections identifying people who had voted twice. The U.S. attorney’s office didn’t comment.

According to the Times, the department has brought roughly 200 voter-fraud cases against individuals under Trump, compared with about a dozen under Biden, while losing dozens of suits against state and local election officials, including in California last week.

This follows a number of other high-profile failed indictments by the Trump administration, most recently against former Trump administration aide Cassidy Hutchinson, whom officials wanted to charge with lying to Congress in her January 6 testimony. As no true bills have spiked in recent months, Chief Judge James Boasberg has asked grand jury leaders to tell the court whenever they happen.

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department faced a wave of ridicule Monday after the Supreme Court rejected its last-minute attempt to force California to set aside thousands of mail-in ballots on the eve of the midterm elections.

The administration had sought to segregate roughly 20,000 ballots from voters it suspected were noncitizens, despite acknowledging significant errors in the database used to identify them.

The justices rejected the emergency request without noting any dissents, prompting critics to celebrate another legal setback for the MAGA administration hours before Election Day.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) delivered one of the harshest responses, directing his anger at Attorney General Todd Blanche

“When you betray your oath and try to enforce the rule of Trump over the rule of law, you get smacked down. This time by the Supreme Court,” Lieu wrote on X.

“Take your authoritarian s--- and shove it,” he added.

“Lawless Trump DOJ suffers a humiliating smackdown from SCOTUS,” Lawyer and writer Paula Chertok posted to her X followers.

Conspiracy theory analyst Mike Rothschild also mocked the MAGA administration’s latest legal setback.

“I see Trump's Elite Strike Force 2.0 is not faring any better than the 2020 version,” Rothschild wrote on X.

Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias celebrated what he called a “complete DEFEAT” for the Justice Department, noting that the Supreme Court had not even requested opposition briefs.

“Another victory for Elias Law Group and our clients,” Elias wrote.

Attorney Norm Eisen also took a victory lap over the high court’s ruling Monday.

“BREAKING: we won!” Eisen told his social media followers. “SCOTUS denied an injunction in our case that defeated DOJ's effort to jam it's junk list of 20,000 supposed unauthorized voters down our throats.”

CNN’s Harry Enten walked through three possible Senate outcomes the day before the midterms, saying new New York Times polls point to a “blue tsunami” — but that the range of results is wide.

Enten said The Times polls show Democrats ahead in Michigan by 11, Texas by 7, Maine and Ohio by 6, and Kansas by 5, with Alaska and Iowa at Democrats plus 1, “well within the margin of error.” He said that would turn the Senate from 47 Democrats to 54, including a flip in North Carolina, where he said Roy Cooper is “blowing the water out,” though there’s no poll from that state.

Jake Tapper raised the question of whether the polls can be trusted, noting that the Cook Political Report just moved Michigan’s Senate race from toss-up to lean Democratic, and that critics say polls underestimate Republicans.

“There it is,” Enten said. He noted that in close races in the Trump era, Republicans beat their final Senate poll average by 4.1 points, which, if repeated, would produce a 51-49 Republican Senate, and doesn’t count Susan Collins’ history of outperforming her polls in Maine.

Then he offered “one little last nugget”: in the 2022 midterms, Democrats outperformed their final poll averages in all the states. If that happened again, he said, it could mean “a complete blowout with 55 seats.”

“The bottom line is this: going into tomorrow, advantage team blue,” Enten said, “but the wide range of possibilities is right there in front of you.”

- YouTube youtu.be

Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens faced another round of ridicule Monday after turning to MAGA commentator Scott Jennings to defend her stunning endorsement of a Republican Senate candidate, just hours after a widely criticized CNN interview.

Stevens, who lost Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed, shocked her party Sunday by endorsing Republican Mike Rogers just two days before the election.

Appearing on Jennings’ show Monday, Stevens insisted she had initially tried to support El-Sayed after losing the primary but was subsequently shut out.

“I tried to do everything right,” Stevens said. “I endorsed him, and the response was, ignored! And cut off!”

She later said the Democrats were “starting to put things forward that are not in sync with the country.”

But the Michigan Democrat’s appearance on Jennings’ show on the eve of the critical midterms quickly drew another wave of criticism.

“It takes a lot to struggle through a softball Scott Jennings interview, but Haley Stevens is pulling it off,” journalist Aaron Rupar wrote on X.

Zeteo media columnist Justin Baragona suggested Stevens’ attempts to explain her endorsement were only making matters worse.

“After that disastrous Anderson Cooper interview last night, Haley Stevens has turned to The Free Press and Scott Jennings to try to clean it up,” Baragona posted Monday. “It’s not going well.”

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) offered a sarcastic prediction about Stevens’ political future.

“Next stop, Mar-A-LAGO BABY!!!!” he wrote.

“It's like they gave her Moron's questions and she's got six pre-written answers but forgot to number them,” former MS NOW host Keith Olbermann told his social media followers.

Melanie D’Arrigo, a progressive activist and former New York congressional candidate, offered her own assessment.

“There's a definite MAGA grift journey that she's embarking on,” she posted on X.

Journalist Mehdi Hasan summed up the controversy in one word: “Sheesh.”

Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reports that a military source of his gives even odds that the U.S. will strike Iran after the midterms — but says any attack would be smaller than first planned.

Klippenstein writes that President Donald Trump’s plan for a decisive attack on Iran is now in doubt. Trump said last month the U.S. would not attack before the election, but Klippenstein says target sets were drafted and forces were being positioned, including a third aircraft carrier and two amphibious groups carrying about two dozen additional F-35s.

Gulf Arab allies, he says, told Washington they would help defend themselves but would not join an offensive.

He reports the plan frayed further when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lost his majority, leaving planners unable to count on Israel until a new government forms.

In his account, Hegseth told the White House that a sea-based strike without Israel or Gulf bases remained workable. Gulf states objected to hitting energy infrastructure, and some military leaders warned that strikes on power production might violate the law of war. Hegseth responded by firing Army Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia, the top Joint Chiefs war planner, Klippenstein says.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said last week, “Their plan is insane,” and predicted “devastating escalation.”

Klippenstein says Murphy was referring to classified briefings. Citing military sources, he writes that Trump has criticized the proposed attack as “uninspired, worthless, and weak” and wants Iran’s nuclear program as its focus. He says Trump hinted on Halloween at hitting one or two remaining nuclear sites.

Additionally, Iran has threatened retaliation beyond the Middle East, and people in Trump’s orbit have discussed responding at home with a national emergency, wrote Klippenstein.

A hearing on President Donald Trump’s ballot demands drew an accusation that a Justice Department lawyer lied about his own voting, after he conceded the government’s voter list was error-prone.

Justice Department attorney Kenneth Kao told U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson on Monday that he had not needed to show his ID the last time he voted, then corrected the record and said he voted by mail this election, legal journalist Chris Geidner reported.

"This is wild," Geidner noted as the hearing was underway.

Thompson, who sits in San Francisco, was hearing the department’s bid to pause her Friday order, which bars the administration from threatening election workers with prosecution over ballots cast by people it alleges are ineligible to vote.

That reversal is what drew the accusation that Kao lied.

“[He] improperly made himself a fact witness, lied in doing so, and then corrected the record because of the lie,” University of Kansas law professor Corey Rayburn Yung posted on Bluesky about Kao’s account of his voting.

A fact witness testifies about what they saw or did, a role lawyers arguing a case generally are not supposed to take on. Attorney Gabriel Malor, who listened to the hearing, described the reversal differently, writing that Kao “sorta walks that back a little uncertainly and suggests he voted by mail this election.”

“I hope you’re not on the list,” a lawyer for the plaintiffs quipped, Malor wrote.

Earlier in the hearing, Kao had conceded a problem with the list at the center of the case.

“I think that’s a fair statement,” Kao said after Thompson asked whether he agreed that “there is a high error rate” in the government’s list of suspected noncitizen voters.

“[Kao] is conceding a ridiculous number of issues. This is an utterly insane hearing,” Malor wrote on Bluesky.

“This is what you call game over,” New York University law professor Ryan Goodman posted on Bluesky, adding that the “DOJ admission will have reverberating effects in other cases.”

Kao’s answer puts a government admission about the list’s errors on the record as the Supreme Court weighs a request built on that same list.

Earlier Monday, Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the justices to force California to set aside mail ballots from people on the list. His emergency application argued that U.S. District Judge David Carter “committed clear error in rejecting the United States’ factual contentions” when Carter denied the same request last week.

Kao argued the errors were the reason the government had asked county election officials for help, ABC7 reporter Monica Madden reported. The department maintains its investigation targets knowing violations of federal law, not workers doing their jobs.

Kao’s concession pointed to the same problem Carter had found. Carter ruled last week that DOJ offered no error rates for its list, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday let stand his finding that the process behind the list was not credible, the appeals court’s order shows.

Kao also told Thompson that DOJ had asked the Supreme Court for full review of the California case, Geidner reported. The department had instead filed an emergency request for an order while its appeal plays out, Sauer’s application shows.

Monday’s hearing is one of several court fights over the same list, each over a different use the administration has made of it. In DOJ’s own lawsuit, Carter refused to order the ballots set aside, the 9th Circuit agreed and Sauer’s request is now with the justices, court records show.

Thompson’s case, a plaintiffs’ lawyer told her, challenges threats against election workers rather than the list itself, Geidner reported.

Separately, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg on Monday barred the Department of Homeland Security from demanding that California officials segregate ballots based on the lists, Democracy Docket reported.

Thompson said she would decide by the end of Monday whether to change her order, which runs through Nov. 16. DOJ asked her to limit it to Northern California, Madden reported, a change that would leave election workers elsewhere outside its protection.

The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a fresh humiliation Monday night after it rejected an appeal to force California to set aside ballots cast by suspected illegal voters.

Earlier in the day, the Trump administration had asked the court to require California to set aside about 20,000 ballots cast by voters. However, the DOJ had admitted to lower courts that it created that list from a dataset that was chock-full of errors.

Election experts like Marc Elias, a voting rights lawyer, celebrated the court's move.

"A complete DEFEAT for Trump DOJ," Elias posted on X.

It seems that the Department of Justice's "run of relentless ineptitude" is starting to come to an end, according to one expert.

Harry Litman, a former federal prosecutor, argued in a new essay for his Substack, "Talking Feds," that the Trump administration's attempts to use the courts to thwart the 2026 midterm elections have largely failed. He pointed to the 31 unsuccessful attempts to get state voter rolls, the DOJ's attempt to seize control of California's elections, and repeated unsuccessful attempts to prosecute people for illegally voting.

"That is quite a run of relentless ineptitude: sue for the voter rolls; lose. Wave around a list of 190,000; shrink it to 20,000; demand action in 48 hours; leapfrog the judge; lose again; charge 28; subpoena the counters; get shut down. All in about three weeks," Litman argued.

"So, round one to the good guys. And round one is all but over: it’s now too late for the administration to rewrite the rules of this election—who gets a ballot, whose ballot gets set aside, who stays on the rolls," Litman wrote. "The lone holdout is California, where DOJ says it will probably go to the Supreme Court before Tuesday, asking the Justices to do on the eve of an election what every court below has refused to do."

"Of course some of these rulings, Thompson’s nationwide reach among them, could be trimmed or reversed on appeal. But that’s for later," he added. "Going into Tuesday, DOJ hasn’t laid a real glove on the democracy."

A federal judge warned the Justice Department Monday that there would be “hell to pay” for misleading his court as conflicting accounts emerged about who would monitor polls on Election Day.

“I would have to hope and assume that an officer of the court would not misrepresent the reality of who these monitors are gonna be,” U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said, Democracy Docket’s Jacob Knutson reported.

“Because if there is some type of misrepresentation — and I don’t suggest there is — obviously there’d be hell to pay.”

The stern warning came as DOJ abruptly shifted its position and said it would have “no problem” with an injunction requiring reasonable efforts to exclude sworn officers from monitoring polls.

The about-face came as the NAACP sought emergency intervention to prevent federal law enforcement officers from serving as monitors, arguing their presence would intimidate voters.

DOJ attorney Kathryn Barragan said participating employees from federal law enforcement agencies would be administrative or clerical personnel. Walton said that “appeared to be an inconsistency” with an earlier department declaration.

Trump’s DOJ also argued in the same litigation that a federal voter-intimidate prohibition “does not apply to the federal government,” according to a separate Democracy Docket report, which described it as a “dangerous new argument.”

Walton demanded more information about the monitoring operation, including how locations were selected, expressing concern about political considerations.

But he also questioned whether the NAACP had demonstrated the potential irreparable harm necessary for emergency relief.

“I do have concerns,” Walton said Monday. “But those concerns, I don’t know if they rise to the level of me being able to conclude that the plaintiffs have met that high burden of showing potential of irreparable harm.”

Reuters photographer Evan Vucci snapped a photo of Donald Trump’s disastrous comb-over "flapping like a wounded bird" in a harsh blast of wind Friday. That description serves as the ultimate metaphor for the GOP's dismal midterm performance: a frantic, uncoordinated attempt to maintain an illusion of strength that instead exposes total structural panic under the slightest pressure.

The shambles of GOP candidates and their behavior is an intricate, gravity-defying ecosystem held together entirely by aggressive back-combing, blind faith, and an industrial-grade quantity of extra-hold hairspray.

But the second the wind blows from an unexpected direction, the whole elaborate facade violently flips backward, exposing the raw, unvarnished, and deeply embarrassing reality underneath. In other words, the GOP midterms were a wild and unruly mess.

As the midterms grind toward a close, the GOP’s campaign strategy has dissolved into a wind-blown hair care disaster. Facing record-low presidential unpopularity and an electorate furious over prices from gas, groceries, health care and new homes, the party parted its political coiffure into a discolored, disjointed and disconnected disaster.

Let’s start with the discolored strands, those moments where the party’s out-of-touch economic messaging completely fails to blend in with reality. When asked about soaring, budget-crushing beef prices, Mississippi Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith nonchalantly reminded struggling mothers that they have “so many proteins to choose from.”

Her opponents, Scott Colom, ran an ad featuring a voter with a snappy reply, “Pick another protein? I'd rather pick another senator instead."

Not to be outdone, Maine Senator Susan Collins proudly defended her legislative record by bragging that she successfully removed concrete pulp and Canadian road salt from Trump's tariff lists. Her opponent, Troy Jackson, countered by retorting, "We can't eat road salt.’ It instantly exposed the roots of a campaign that seemed way more concerned with de-icing driveways than helping families afford the actual groceries inside the house.

If voters were looking to the top of the ticket for a sane way to economically fill those empty grocery carts, Trump offered up a completely looney way to do so. In a blustering blow from the buffoonish blowhard, Trump offered a split-end $5,000 "dividend check" to every American adult. It was a desperate promise that literally splits the electorate down the middle by offering relief only if Republicans win the congressional majority.

It was illegal, of course, and would drain the federal treasury by costing a hair-raising $1.2 - $1.3 trillion.

Like a bad bottle of peroxide, these tone-deaf economic answers stand out for all the wrong reasons.

The wind has shifted so commandingly in the Democrats' favor that the GOP doubled-down on getting uglier than Trump’s bulbous body, orange face, and haggard hair A New York Times story over the weekend exposed the sheer panic rippling through the conservative establishment. Lacking an actual legislative breeze to carry them, Republicans across the country have deployed an onslaught of false, crude, and deeply volatile personal attacks in the closing stretch.

Look at Kansas, where Senator Roger Marshall, who steals from the poor to give to the rich, has completely lost his grip. In a desperate bid to save his campaign, Marshall made the baseless claim that his Democratic opponent “probably is grooming” children. That’s despicable, and I’m not even going to attempt to tie that use of the word grooming back to Trump’s hair..

In Texas, the equally despicable Ken Paxton’s closing argument consists of calling Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico a “freak” and launching an onslaught of malicious attacks. In a classic Ronald Reagan, “there you go again” moment, they are frantically trying to tag Talarico with the word "vegan," treating the dietary choice like an outbreak of political hair lice.

Talarico, like Reagan, happens to have a truly great, flawless head of hair. No wonder Trump loathes him.

In Michigan, following Trump's vile lead, the party continues to target Democratic Senate nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed with blatant Islamophobia, with Trump going so far as to publicly label the doctor a “vicious, violent jihadist.”

This is all just a partial example of the party’s chaotic, wind-blown side of the comb-over. It is the political equivalent of throwing handfuls of feces against the wall to see what sticks. And there’s no one who exemplifies feces - and a bad hair day - than Vivek Ramaswamy’s ad featuring the estranged birth mother of Democratic opponent Dr. Amy Acton.

The GOP of the midterms of 2026 is no longer a serious political party; it is a chaotic collection of failing follicles reminiscent of pop culture’s greatest hair care disasters, pulling off a frantic style combination that evokes the electric-shock wigs of Phil Spector, the defensive barricade of Sia, the wind-tunneled mess of Boris Johnson, and the wild, unpredictable hairpieces of Nicolas Cage.

Instead of addressing ongoing international conflicts or offering concrete solutions for inflation, Trump and his ilk are fixating on fantastical fiction as well as Senator Jon Husted’s body — that was J.D. Vance’s answer to a voter’s question about affordability. Vance, alone, is a flapping, chirping, wounded, hideous sort of a bird.

You can only tease, layer, and spray a campaign so much before the public sees right through the senseless styling. The midterms have exposed the GOP’s platform for what it truly is: a dreadful, ungrounded comb-over of a campaign that is just one stiff breeze away from exposing all the underlying ugliness.

A legal expert sounded off that President Donald Trump's Justice Department just made a fatal admission in court that will likely doom their efforts to set aside ballots they claim are from noncitizens.

DOJ is currently trying to force California to set aside around 20,000 ballots they have determined to be likely from people who weren't legally authorized to cast a vote in the 2026 election.

But during oral argument before U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson, a lawyer for DOJ admitted it is "fair" to say the risk the list contains mistakes is "high."

This is all she wrote, according to New York University law professor and former Defense Department special counsel Ryan Goodman in a post to X.

"What you call game over. DOJ admits in court their list of alleged 20k noncitizens registered to vote in Cali has a HIGH ERROR RATE," wrote Goodman. "Case involves TRO barring DOJ threats to prosecute state election officials. DOJ admission will have reverberating effects in other cases."

So far, multiple judges who have looked at the Justice Department's effort to shut down voters in California have been severely skeptical.

Another ruling from D.C. Chief District Judge James Boasberg came to the same conclusion on Monday that the list of ballots to set aside in California is "flawed," with a number of the supposed non-citizens who voted actually being recently naturalized citizens.

CNN political director David Chalian detected a surprisingly defeatist tone from Donald Trump on Monday as the president delivered an unusual closing argument on the eve of the midterm elections that the top analyst repeatedly described as "bizarre."

Speaking with CNN anchors Boris Sanchez and Brianna Keilar, Chalian suggested Trump sounded almost resigned to the possibility of Republican losses despite spending weeks campaigning for his party.

“There was a piece of him that sounded almost a little bit dejected,” Chalian said Monday.

He pointed to Trump’s acknowledgment that the president’s party historically struggles in midterm elections.

“That fatalistic approach and his sort of fatalistic tone today was just not how you would advise anyone, a leader of a party, a president, to close out the day before an election,” Chalian said.

The CNN Washington bureau chief went on to note that CNN polling throughout the year had found nearly three-quarters of Americans believed Trump was focused on the wrong priorities.

“And this was like A through Z of that,” he added.

Chalian still credited Trump with managing an aggressive campaign schedule, noting that the 80-year-old president had held 28 rallies.

“He has leaned in and put his muscle into this,” Chalian said Monday.

But he questioned whether Trump’s efforts would ultimately help Republicans overcome his low ratings.

"I just don't know that when you're at historic unpopularity, if that is going to prove to be the right thing to do in the midterm season,” Chalian said.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C. on Monday barred the Justice Department from issuing demands that California election officials set aside ballots of voters on lists of suspected noncitizens, finding the Executive Branch likely violated the Constitution’s Elections Clause.

Chief Judge James E. Boasberg, who has frequently found himself litigating politically charged actions of the Trump administration, granted in part and denied in part a request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction brought by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) and a naturalized citizen, Pedro Trujillo.

He wrote that the executive “has intervened in California’s ongoing election with a bid to change the rules for counting mail-in ballots,” and that “the lists are flawed.”

A CHIRLA expert, whom Boasberg found “well qualified and credible,” compared the DOJ list of about 20,000 suspected noncitizens with the group’s citizen members. He found at least 22 members certainly match entries and 66 more are near-certain matches, with probabilistic matching producing 6,140 members at risk.

Boasberg found the group likely has standing, citing county officials’ reviews of the lists and the costs members and the organization have taken on.

On the merits, he said states and Congress, not the executive, control election procedures, and that 18 U.S.C. § 611(a), a criminal law on noncitizen voting, doesn’t regulate the manner of elections or override state procedures. He called DOJ’s aiding-and-abetting theory a “red herring” and said the government is attempting to “arrogate to the Executive a power that the Elections Clause commits elsewhere.”

The order bars the DOJ from issuing demands to California election officials to segregate ballots or otherwise depart from state procedures based on voters’ inclusion on the lists. Boasberg rejected the plaintiffs’ broader request as vague and set a $1 bond. He didn’t decide a pending DOJ motion to strike and seek sanctions over use of the data.

President Donald Trump's speech at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was a revealing one, according to CNN observers.

Trump held a small press conference at the pool Monday to deliver his "closing message" ahead of the midterm elections. The most recent polls showed Democrats not only retaking the House of Representatives, but also likely retaking control of the Senate as well. Democrats have said one of their primary objectives would be to impeach Trump if they were to regain power.

During the speech, Trump meandered through claims about how beautiful Washington, D.C. has become during his second administration, and pointed to the Reflecting Pool behind him as an example of it.

Hunt could barely keep it together while she discussed the "remarkable" speech during the opening segment of "The Arena."

"Laughing aside, it tells us so much," Hunt said.

"It's in front of a pet construction project that, let's be real, the team he hired botched. The average price of a gallon of gas has soared above $4 across the country. Trump was not in a battleground state alongside a Senate candidate. He was not at a big, energetic MAGA rally. Instead, it was just a man. He's in there somewhere, standing in front of a pool, asking you to love it," Hunt said.

Kristen Holmes, CNN's White House correspondent, told Hunt that sources she spoke to were surprised about the content of Trump's speech. Earlier in the day, a White House press official said that Trump would "contrast" his accomplishments against the Democrats.

Instead, viewers were treated to a meandering speech, where the first 22 minutes were dedicated to talking about his Reflecting Pool renovation project, which has been mired in scandal.

"I would say this is targeted to a very niche audience and not one that I think is probably going to be going out to vote in the midterms," Holmes said.

Insiders at CBS have reportedly accused Michigan Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers’ campaign of cutting context from a viral 60 Minutes clip of his Democratic opponent.

“CBS sources have reiterated to me it was the Mike Rogers campaign that clipped this exchange to strip away the context, not the network,” Zeteo media columnist Justin Baragona wrote on X Monday. Rogers’ campaign has not publicly responded to the claim.

Rogers posted the clip Sunday night, the night 60 Minutes aired interviews with him and Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed ahead of Tuesday’s election.

Rogers’ post quoted El-Sayed saying something the clip does not show him saying.

“[Abdul El-Sayed] says it’s ok for MEN to be in girl’s locker rooms,” Rogers wrote, then put this line in quotation marks as El-Sayed’s explanation. “Well because they are going to find out about it on the internet anyway.”

El-Sayed never says that sentence in the 70-second video Rogers shared. The nearest line in the video is his remark about having to “make do with the fact that, like, the Internet is a real thing.”

“This is all over my timeline, and it’s totally out of context,” Vanity Fair Washington correspondent Aidan McLaughlin wrote on X Monday.

“No one mentions locker rooms,” he pointed out.

“I’m not running to govern sports,” El-Sayed said later in the same answer, according to the extended interview 60 Minutes posted online.

“To me, I think it’s really important for us to fight at the state level to protect access to bathrooms, to locker rooms, to sports teams of choice for young people,” El-Sayed told Pride Source during his 2018 run for governor.

By Monday, Rogers’ post had drawn 9.6 million views on X, while McLaughlin’s post flagging the missing context had about 83,000, according to the platform’s counts. The clipped version drew more than 100 times as many views as the post disputing it, a day before Michigan votes.

The clip came from extended interviews 60 Minutes posted Sunday alongside a fact-check that said both candidates made claims “that were false, misleading or unsupported by our reporting.” Among them was Rogers’ charge that El-Sayed “wrote a letter in support for the Muslim Brotherhood.”

The network reported that El-Sayed signed a letter to Egypt’s then-president, a Brotherhood leader, and that El-Sayed denies any ties to the group. Rogers drew his clip from the same release in which the network had taken issue with his own claims about El-Sayed.

During the 2024 race, CBS News called it “false” when President Donald Trump, then a candidate, accused 60 Minutes of deceitfully editing its interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, Fox News reported.

This time, CBS sources say, the editing came from Rogers’ campaign, which CBS noted has Trump’s backing.

Rogers’ clip left out the part of the question about Islam, in a race where Trump had cast El-Sayed as a “jihadist” and Rogers had questioned his loyalty.

Before he reached sports, 60 Minutes correspondent Ross Douthat asked El-Sayed about “tension between Islam and Muslim voters and what I’m calling cultural liberalism,” including “what is taught in school,” according to the extended interview. Rogers’ clip starts after that.

On Oct. 25, a week before the interview aired, Trump told a Port Huron rally he had come “to keep a jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator,” the Associated Press reported, describing his remarks as anti-Muslim rhetoric.

“Are you for America, or are you for these terrorist groups overseas?” Rogers asked El-Sayed at their final debate, the AP reported.

According to the AP, there is no evidence that El-Sayed has any affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed, who would be the nation’s first Muslim senator, said the question was shameful, the news service reported.

Vice President JD Vance faced a wave of ridicule Monday after declaring he was tired of politicians dividing Americans against one another — prompting critics to point to his own rhetoric and that of President Donald Trump.

Speaking on the eve of the critical midterm elections, Vance railed against politicians who he claimed pit Americans against one another based on race.

“I’m sick of politicians dividing us against each other,” Vance declared. “I’m sick of politicians who say that you’re privileged if you have this skin color, but you’re disadvantaged if you have that skin color.”

The remarks quickly drew accusations of hypocrisy from critics who pointed to Vance’s own history of inflammatory claims about immigrants.

“Says guy who literally does only that,” the Tennessee Holler responded on X.

“Pot meet keetle!” added national opinion columnist Sophia A. Nelson.

“He's correct. Those who eat cats and those who eat dogs should not be pitted against one another, let alone everyone else,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote in a sarcastic reminder of Vance’s promotion of false claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.

“His entire political career has involved targeting different minority groups,” Hemant Mehta, a “Jeopardy!” champion, posted on social media Monday.

Tahra Hoops, a senior director at the Chamber of Progress, pointed to Vance’s earlier remarks about Somali immigrants.

“Minutes ago, Vance was pushing a false narrative that there are ‘illegal immigrant Somalis’ who are trying to drown out the votes of real Americans,” she wrote on X. “So. Spare me.”

Other critics turned their attention to Vance's boss.

“Dude, do you know who your boss is?” asked economics researcher Kevin Boyd.

Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan delivered an even more blistering assessment.

“Vance admitted in 2024 that he is happy to make up stories to get media attention,” he wrote in an X post. “A truly sick, dishonest, racist individual. I hope his biracial kids grow up to be ashamed of their Nazi-leaning dad.”

An elections expert said Monday that he's seen no "signs of life" from the GOP in some key races ahead of tomorrow's consequential midterm elections.

Kyle Kondik, managing editor of "Sabato's Crystal Ball" at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, said on CNN's "Countdown to Election Day" that Democrats have a reasonable chance of walking away from the midterms with control of at least 53 Senate seats. He pointed to issues like President Donald Trump's backsliding popularity and the overall strength of Democratic candidates in some races compared to their GOP counterparts.

Kondik also mentioned that his projections give Republicans "the benefit of the doubt" in some states where they have performed well historically.

"There's a world in which maybe Democrats can even get higher than 53, which again, is kind of crazy to say and not something I would have thought a month or two ago," Kondik told CNN's Boris Sanchez. "But that's just the way the cycle's developed."

Kondik's comments come on the heels of the final New York Times/Siena poll, which found Democratic candidates held an advantage over Republicans in all of the midwestern Senate races. He cautioned that Republicans still have a chance to retain the majority, but momentum seems to clearly favor the Democrats.

"We kept waiting for Republicans to show signs of consolidation and signs of life in these states where they're typically pretty dominant, and you just don't see it here at the end of the line," Kondik said.

Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers of Michigan was paid more than $420,000 while serving on the board of the MITRE Corporation, a consultancy that is now working with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on the future of U.S. warfare, according to tax filings reported by Drop Site News.

Rogers sat on MITRE’s board of trustees, at one point as chair, for six years until 2023, when he stepped down to run for Senate, the outlet says.

IRS records show his yearly pay, and MITRE’s CEO has said Rogers was recruited for his “vast national security expertise.”

MITRE is coordinating Project Meridian, which Hegseth announced Sept. 30 as a study of future warfare. Hegseth named tech tycoon Elon Musk, former GOP congressional leader Newt Gingrich, and defense entrepreneur Palmer Luckey as top officials.

Drop Site says some have raised conflict-of-interest concerns, noting that former defense officials told NPR the project could push the military toward drones and space systems built by Musk’s and Luckey’s companies. Musk is one of Rogers’ biggest backers through his America PAC.

Rogers’ support for the Iran war has been a liability as he has navigated his fight against Democratic opponent Abdul El-Sayed, the report noted. A poll cited by the outlet shows up to 67 percent of Michigan voters disapprove of the war.

In March, Rogers said the war’s end “should be conditional,” but in recent weeks he has been trying to downplay his old hawkishness, even telling Fox News “we need to start wrapping it down.”

President Donald Trump’s top Supreme Court lawyer distanced himself from Attorney General Todd Blanche’s claims about 20,000 likely noncitizen voters in California.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote three times that his office had been “informed” of the list’s findings, according to his emergency application to the justices.

Sauer filed it Monday, the day before Election Day, asking the court to order California to set aside mail ballots from people on the list until it checks their citizenship. A federal judge and a divided appeals court panel had both refused, The Associated Press reported.

Blanche put his own name behind the list. When the Justice Department sued California in October, he wrote on X that federal immigration agencies had identified the 20,000 people as “likely noncitizens” who “are on California’s voter rolls.” He added that “California has refused to comply and intends to facilitate noncitizens in voting.”

But Sauer’s filing credits those findings to others, treating Blanche's Justice Department as his client.

“In this case, this Office has been informed that the United States has identified more than 20,000 individuals who appear to be registered to vote in California,” Sauer wrote, describing them as likely noncitizens “in the United States’ view.”

Sauer’s filing says three times that his office was 'informed' of what the list found. A Raw Story review of 12 other emergency applications from his office found that wording in only one, used once before in Sept. 2026, about logistical problems with removals.

Blanche, Sauer’s boss at the Justice Department, has called the idea that the department is independent from the White House a “misperception.” “I work for President Trump,” Blanche said on New York Post columnist Miranda Devine’s podcast on Oct. 21, Mediaite reported. Sauer’s careful wording comes one level below an attorney general who says he works for the president.

One critic accused the department of a crime minutes after it announced the filing.

“This crime ... is precisely the crime Trump attempted in 2020,” national security journalist Marcy Wheeler wrote on X, responding to an Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter post announcing the filing. “Only this time, he has corrupt criminals at DOJ willing to do the crime with him.” McCotter’s post said the department would keep “pursuing every available legal avenue to protect the integrity of our elections and ensure federal law is enforced.”

The lawyer now relaying the list defended Trump in his own 2020 election case. As Trump’s personal lawyer, Sauer won him “substantial immunity from criminal prosecution” at the Supreme Court in 2024, after Trump was accused of election fraud and conspiracy over his protest of the 2020 results, CNN reported in May.

In that piece, CNN chief Supreme Court analyst Joan Biskupic described Sauer’s delivery before the justices as “quickfire, confrontational and imbued with MAGA attitude.”

A federal judge has already ordered the department to stop threatening California election officials with prosecution. U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson found on Oct. 30 that the plaintiffs were likely to show violations of federal voter-intimidation protections, the Davis Vanguard reported. The department has appealed, according to Just Security’s litigation tracker.

Sauer is asking the justices to order the ballots set aside without deciding whether the people on the list are citizens. After relaying what his office was “informed,” the filing tells the court it “need not resolve any factual disputes about whether any particular individual is a California voter and is an alien or a citizen.”

“If the Executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election due to unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger,” U.S. District Judge David O. Carter wrote in denying the request, according to the AP.

“This is a desperate attempt to tilt the electoral playing field,” Amanda Carpenter, a writer and editor at the nonprofit Protect Democracy, wrote on X on Monday.

“This is fascism,” journalist Nancy Levine Stearns wrote on X, sharing a report of the filing.

The filing notes that California keeps accepting mail ballots through Nov. 10. Carter has set a hearing with witnesses on the government’s bid for a preliminary injunction for Nov. 13, three days after that deadline, according to the tracker.

President Donald Trump chose to spend the last day before the 2026 midterm elections delivering a speech at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, for another round of complaints about his botched effort to renovate the national landmark.

During the speech, Trump joked about renaming the pool after himself, proclaimed "this is a giant piece of pool," and reiterated his old lie that the Reflecting Pool job only needed to be redone because of protesters "vandalizing" it, when in fact the lining wasn't installed correctly in the first place.

Political observers on social media had a field day with the speech.

"Trump has abandoned his message about Jon Husted's ass and is instead making lying insanely about 'vandalism' at the Reflecting Pool his closing argument," wrote S.V. Dáte of HuffPost.

"Trump is at the Reflecting Pool calling it beautiful — his own DOJ admitted it was a rushed & botched install, NOT vandalism," wrote former White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen. "You paid for that job. Davey Hearn, a 20-year park volunteer, got a bogus felony charge."

"In a bizarre two years, it really is surreal to see the president close the midterms holding up printouts to perpetuate a lie about the reflecting pool being vandalized," wrote Sam Stein of The Bulwark, calling it "proof that he is marching to the beat of his own drum."

"I can’t believe he is actually making his closing argument speech about the reflecting pool renovations," wrote podcaster and former national security staffer Tommy Vietor. "This is a bad resistance lib joke come to life."

A federal judge who caught an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in a lie over an arrest report is stressing the need to put agents on the witness stand to expose falsehoods that paperwork alone could conceal.

“Evidentiary hearings are essential tools to ensure that a rigorous record of something closer to the truth is preserved, and to hold liars to account,” U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai wrote Monday.

In a blistering 50-page opinion and order blasting Trump’s ICE, the federal judge found the agency repeatedly violated his injunction restricting unlawful warrantless arrests.

Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney described the ruling on X as encouraging other judges to summon ICE officers in for live testimony, "concluding that without direct scrutiny and cross-examination, routine lies will go unpunished."

“Written declarations are convenient, but insufficient on their own when witnesses are willing to lie,” Kasubhai wrote.

One officer portrayed an arrest as a targeted operation against someone agents had already identified. On the stand, he acknowledged that he had not known the man’s identity before the stop and blamed inaccuracies on copying another report.

But Kashubhai flatly rejected that explanation Monday.

“He lied in an official record to facilitate the impression he was conducting a lawful warrant-based arrest,” the judge wrote, finding “intentional, coordinated falsification that would in all likelihood never have been uncovered but for this evidentiary hearing.”

Kasubhai ordered expanded disclosure of Oregon arrest records and bodycam footage to plaintiffs challenging ICE’s practices.

“Defendants, through their own conduct, have lost trust,” he wrote. The judge also admonished government lawyers defending another unlawful arrest.

“Real people’s lives and liberties are at stake and they should remember that," he concluded. "Evidentiary hearings are not first-year law school examinations where one can score points with a scattershot strategy."