Todd Blanche fails to rule out DoJ weighing in on states’ election results certifying process – US politics live

Calley ⁠Means, a ⁠senior ⁠adviser to ​US health secretary ⁠Robert F Kennedy ⁠Jr ​who ‌has also ‌worked ‌in the White House to further his “Make America ‌Healthy Again” policies, has quit ​his role today, ​the Wall ​Street ​Journal (paywall) reports.

According to the WSJ’s report, Means departed his role over frustrations that the White House had stalled progress on Kennedy’s MAHA agenda, but said he would continue working to further the movement.

In a statement, Means said he was proud of the work he had done in the administration, and commended Kennedy and Donald Trump for battling against “a corrupt DC bureaucracy”.

“I leave with tremendous respect for President Trump and RFK — two historic figures who are committed to confronting a corrupt DC bureaucracy that is doing everything possible to protect the status quo,” Means said. “The past two years have seen historic policy and cultural change to confront the chronic disease crisis and healthcare incentives that profit from us being sick. This movement is in the first inning and just getting started.”

The Department ​of ​Health and ​Human Services did ​not immediately ‌respond to ​a ​Reuters request for comment.

Two administration officials have told Politico that Means’s breaking point came this week after a meeting between Kennedy and White House officials to discuss defining ultra-processed foods (a key MAHA priority) was postponed.

“That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said one of the officials. “Calley’s been pushing very, very hard for this, but it’s been a very opaque process and has been just continuously stonewalled.”

Asked by a reporter earlier whether there was any scenario in which the Department of Justice would weigh in on states’ certifying process or try to block states from certifying the election, attorney general Todd Blanche did not rule it out.

Blanche replied: “Is there any scenario? Yes, of course there’s scenarios we could all come up with.”

He added: “It is not DOJ’s intention to improperly interfere with elections or the state certification process, but to say that there’s no circumstances that we would ever do that – of course I’m not going to say that.”

Here’s the clip.

Maine Republican senator Susan Collins has distanced herself from a new radio ad attacking her Democratic opponent Troy Jackson as a “freak” and a “creep” because “he has two kids with his cousin”, saying yesterday that the ad should be taken down.

The spot, airing on Maine radio in the form of a country song, is from the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Republicans. Among the lyrics in the jingle: “If he’ll screw his own family, he’ll screw yours too.”

Collins told reporters during a campaign appearance in Lewiston that she “had nothing to do with that ad”. She added that federal law bans her from coordinating with the super PAC, but she has publicly called for it to be removed.

Previously, in a Politico story last month, Collins referenced Jackson’s relationship with a second cousin. “I’m not going to bring up the fact that the mother of his two children is his second cousin,” Collins said. “I don’t know whether people know that or not.”

In an op-ed published yesterday, Lana Pelletier, Jackson’s partner, criticized the radio ad and other attacks on her family by Collins and her supporters, saying she never thought they “would stoop this low”.

“Senator Collins has been quick to demand respect and decency for herself. My family deserved the same,” Pelletier said. “I am not a helpless woman who needs politicians to tell the world what happened in my own life. And I am not a punchline or a caricature of where I come from.”

Jackson, a former state lawmaker and lumberjack, and Pelletier are longtime partners who have two sons together.

Jackson’s deputy campaign manager, Dan Gottlieb, said yesterday that Collins owes Jackson’s family an apology.

“Susan Collins herself spread these disgusting personal attacks on Troy’s family,” he told the Associated Press. “Now she wants Mainers to believe she’s above the very attacks she helped spread.”

Democrats are hoping for a win by Jackson over the incumbent Collins as the party tries to retake the Senate.

“This race is unique in Maine history in the number of personal attacks,” Collins said yesterday.

A federal judge in California has ordered the Trump administration to halt investigations in nine states – California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin – into whether noncitizens are registered to vote.

US district court Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin in Oakland found the government’s effort is relying on data that is full of errors and that it’s leading to intimidation of groups performing voter assistance efforts. She said it should be halted until polls close on election day (3 November).

She put her ruling, which was made yesterday, on hold until tomorrow to give the administration a chance to appeal.

It comes as the administration has been hunting for noncitizen voters throughout the country in the months leading into the midterm elections. The administration has signaled that it’s a major problem, when in fact it’s extremely rare, as even its own investigations have shown.

In response to the ruling, the Department of Homeland Security issued an email statement to the Associated Press saying it’s focused on “removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of US citizens,” while adding, “We have no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be US citizens.”

Pete Hegseth reportedly signed a memo last month permitting the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to test a non-lethal “heat ray” for potential use at the US southern border.

The “heat ray”, known as the Active Denial System, is a military-grade weapon that shoots an energy beam causing “a sensation of intense heat on the surface of the skin”, according to a 2009 National Defense University case study on the weapon.

The sensation “creates an intolerable sensation and reflexive movement” such as ducking or running.

In a memo, first obtained by CNN, the US defense secretary authorized a “temporary loan” of the Active Denial System to the DHS for seven months beginning in September. The DHS can request further use of the Pentagon system if needed.

A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a statement it was “continually evaluating new technology, especially technology that can save lives while simultaneously enhancing national security effectiveness”.

It is unclear what the DHS plans to use the Active Denial System for exactly, but the memo permits the department to use it for potential operations at the US-Mexico border.

When used, the Active Denial System can produce an invisible beam of 95 gigahertz that penetrates about 1/64th of an inch into the skin, causing a burning sensation. (The system is technically not a “heat ray” because it uses millimeter waves, not infrared, Forbes reported in 2020.)

Pentagon officials have compared the feeling to a blast of heat when opening a hot oven, according to CNN. The feeling is temporary, lasting between 10 and 15 minutes.

Here’s the full story:

Reporting from Miami

Donald Trump has been ordered by a US judge to cooperate with the discovery process mandated for his lawsuit against the BBC and to sit for a deposition by 11 December – or else he could be subject to sanctions, including the possible dismissal of the $10bn lawsuit.

The lawsuit stems from a Panorama documentary aired by the BBC that spliced together comments made by Trump during a rally on 6 January 2021, before the US Capitol riot. While the broadcast was not readily available to view in Florida, Trump’s team has argued that he was personally damaged by the broadcast under Florida’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

During a lengthy hearing dealing with a variety of discovery issues, federal magistrate judge Enjoliqué Lett on Thursday also rejected a request by Trump’s legal team to prevent the seven-hour-long deposition from being videotaped, though it will only be accessible to attorneys in the case.

Lett agreed with contentions from the BBC’s lawyers that Trump’s team had not been sufficiently forthcoming in handing over internal documents relevant to the case ahead of an 18 December deadline for discovery.

“We still have a completely lopsided [situation] here on discovery. They have produced absolutely nothing of any substance,” attorney Charles Tobin, on behalf of the BBC, argued in a Miami courtroom. The documents that Trump’s team have turned over have primarily been either pulled from the internet or provided by the BBC itself.

“It strains credulity that a thorough search has been done in order to determine that all of these requests have been responded to,” Lett told Alejandro Brito, Trump’s Florida-based attorney. “The court is not satisfied that anyone is doing a thorough job.”

Before traveling to Nebraska, JD Vance fielded questions from reporters and expressed confidence in possible negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, following Steve Witkoff’s meetings with leadership of both countries in recent days.

“The reason why we haven’t struck a peace deal is because they’ve just been too apart on some of the details of that negotiation,” Vance said. “So, I think Steve re-engaged the process … He feels optimistic. I mean, the nature of these things is you take a swing at it, you see how much progress you can make, and then you go back at it, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

While Witkoff said that trilateral talks between Washington, Moscow and Kyiv “at the technical level” would follow his discussions this week, Russia still carried out a massive “demonstrative” attack on Ukraine overnight, bombarding Kyiv with ballistic missiles just hours after Putin’s meeting with Witkoff wrapped up.

The latest strikes killed at least two people and wounded 22, including four children.

Democrats lead Republicans 63% to 26% among likely voters aged 18-29, according to a new poll by Harvard’s Institute of Politics.

However, 33% of young Americans say they will definitely vote in the upcoming midterms, down from 40% who said the same ahead of both the 2018 and 2022 cycles.

In 2024, 56% of men between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for Trump while just 40% of their female peers did so. Harvard’s new poll shows that while women still favor Democrats, 66% to 21%, that number is also robust among young men: 58% to 32%.

Another key takeaway from the survey, the last before the November midterms: only 9% of 18- to 29-year-olds say the nation is generally headed in the right direction, while 62% say it is off on the wrong track and 26% say they are unsure.

Following the recent controversy around Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign ad that features Amy Acton’s estranged mother, Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the Center for Politics – a key election forecaster – has shifted the Ohio gubernatorial race from “toss up” to “leans Democratic”.

As I noted earlier, a number of Republicans, including the outgoing governor Mike DeWine, have criticized the ad, which includes Acton’s mother – who she hasn’t seen since she was removed from her care at age 12 – calling her daughter a “liar”.

Mike DeWine, the outgoing Republican governor of Ohio, has called on Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign to take down the recent ad that includes the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton.

DeWine called the campaign spot “deeply, deeply troubling” and said it was “wrong” to have run it. The governor told reporters today that he would not rescind his endorsement of Ramaswamy in the bitter gubernatorial race against Acton – who served as the health director in DeWine’s administration and guided the state through its Covid-19 pandemic response.

On Wednesday, Acton responded to the recent controversy and told a group of voters said Ramaswamy shouldn’t have “exploited” her mother.

A reminder that Acton and her brother were removed from their mother’s care when Acton was 12, after their stepfather was arrested and charged for raping her. However Arthur remained married to her husband, and they fled the state.

Meanwhile, at an event stumping for Ramaswamy in Cincinnati on Wednesday, JD Vance chided Republicans for their outrage over the ad. The vice-president said he wasn’t going to weigh in on whether the spot was “appropriate or not”. Instead his “message” for fellow elected Republicans was to “stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days”.