Trump DoJ announces arrests of 28 green card holders in California on noncitizen voting related charges – live

A new poll by Reuters shows that only 31% of Americans approve of Donald Trump's performance in office, a percentage point lower than the survey from two weeks ago and a record low for the president.

It comes as Trump embarks on another campaign sprint to help beleaguered Republicans in competitive midterm races.

When asked which party they would vote ​for if the elections were held today, some 47% of registered ‌voters in the nationwide poll picked Democrats, while 35% chose Republicans.

Trump again rebuked the idea that his move to waive sanctions for Russia last week was ultimately to hand Moscow a win.

“I'm supporting stopping the war between Russia and Ukraine,†Trump told reporters. “Frankly, Zelenskyy is not helping matters much. I think he doesn't want to stop it, but I want to see people not die.â€

In response to Zelenskyy saying that the US president is on the “wrong side of historyâ€, Trump snapped back.

“If he would have listened to me, he would have made a much better deal a long time ago, and he'd have a million people living from his side,†Trump said. “I think it's time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine …. Very little land has moved, but a million people, a tremendous number of people, are dead.â€

Ahead of leaving for a campaign rally in Wichita, Kansas, Donald Trump again claimed – without evidence – that the riots throughout France were due to mass migration.

“I told Emmanuel [Macron], you should close up your borders,†the US president said. “I've known him for probably eight or nine years. I told him as soon as I met him, I said, ‘you're making a big mistake'. We closed our borders. He didn't.â€

Attorneys for Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University student who has become the symbol of the Trump administration's crusade against pro-Palestinian speech, have petitioned the US supreme court to review his case – the final chapter in a months-long legal saga that could determine countless foreign citizens' ability to challenge their detention by US immigration authorities in federal court.

Khalil, a US permanent resident who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, was arrested in his Columbia housing in March 2025, the first of several foreign students and scholars the Trump administration targeted over their advocacy for Palestinian rights. He was detained for more than three months in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Louisiana before a federal judge in New Jersey, where he had been briefly held before ICE moved him, ordered him released while his immigration process proceeds.

“This fight is not only about whether I get to stay in this country, it's really about whether anyone in this country can speak out for Palestinians without being punished for it,†Khalil said during a press conference on Monday.

The US departments of state, justice and homeland security did not respond to requests for comment.

The government has cited an obscure McCarthy-era law to argue that Khalil and the other scholars' pro-Palestinian expression posed a threat to US foreign policy objectives.

So far, no court has fully weighed in on the constitutionality of the law, with legal arguments instead focused on whether district courts have the authority to order people released from immigration detention while their immigration cases are under way. Khalil's attorneys and immigrants rights advocates warn that if the supreme court rules the district courts lack such authority, that would effectively result in people the government has detained unconstitutionally to languish in immigration detention with no recourse, potentially for months or years.

• The justice department announced the arrest of 28 legal permanent residents in California “who are charged in criminal complaints with federal crimes, including that they fraudulently registered to vote in US elections, electoral contests in which most of them cast illegal and fraudulently obtained ballotsâ€. Non-citizen voting is extremely rare, and the 28 who have allegedly committed crimes, would be an exceptionally small fraction of the 174 million people who were registered to vote in the 2024 presidential election. The arrests come just days after the administration sued the Golden state, to prevent it from counting mail-in ballots from people the federal government has allegedly identified as “likely†noncitizens.

• New polling also shows that a majority (66%) of Americans believe Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself. Looking at that data from the Washington Post and ABC even further, 34% of Republicans believe Trump is enriching himself – a 12-point jump from last September. More here

• Meanwhile, Trump heads to Kansas today to kick off a seven-state campaign blitz this week in parts of the country he carried in 2024, as unexpectedly tight races in GOP strongholds stoke fears of sweeping Democratic gains in next month's midterms. With 15 days until the 3 November vote, Trump's rally on the outskirts of Wichita aims to shore up the incumbent Republican senator Roger Marshall, who is locked in a dead heat with his Democratic opponent Adam Hamilton. He'll follow up with rallies in the Carolinas, Iowa, Florida, Georgia and Michigan over the next six days.

• More US representatives reported today that their offices had been sent suspicious letters, after the FBI and the US Postal Inspection Service said they were investigating letters sent to state officials and election offices across the country containing an “unknown substance†last week. On Monday, congressman Suhas Subramanyam, a Virginia Democrat, said his office in Leesburg received an envelope “containing a suspicious substance†and staff were “promptly evacuatedâ€. Similarly, in Maine, Democratic representative Chellie Pingree said that her office also received “a suspicious letter consistent with those received by many other congressional and election offices in recent daysâ€.

• In a bipartisan call with GOP Senator Thom Tillis and Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine's access to Starlink satellite services “remain degraded†and “disruptions to US intelligence sharing†persist, when it comes to the “early warning of Russian ballistic missile launchesâ€. Last week, the two lawmakers called on the Pentagon's inspector general to investigate Ukraine's disruptions accessing Starshield – the military version of Starlink's satellite network built for governments and defense agencies – and in a statement today they said that Zelenskyy reiterated his “willingness to halt strikes on Russian energy facilities as President Trump has proposed, but only if [Vladimir] Putin agrees to the sameâ€.

A man who heckled the Democratic candidate for Senate Abdul El-Sayed and demanded he disavow the Muslim Brotherhood at a Michigan town hall is a former aide to the Republican senator Josh Hawley, according to congressional staff records.

At the event on Saturday, an attender who gave his name only as “Tommy†shouted from the crowd, asking whether El-Sayed would disavow the movement. El-Sayed answered: “Sure, yeah, absolutely,†then turned the question around, asking whether the man assumed he wouldn't.

Tommy said he had simply not heard El-Sayed reject the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world's oldest and most influential Islamist movements. Under Trump the US has moved to designate certain chapters of the group as foreign terrorist organizations.

Over nearly five minutes at the town hall, El-Sayed pointed to how the question shouted by Tommy carried an implication of “dual loyaltyâ€, comparing it with the doubts once raised about John F Kennedy's Catholicism, and told the room he was running for the Senate and “happen[s] to be Muslimâ€.

He then asked Tommy whether he would disavow any attempt to read religious doctrine into American law. Tommy said he would not. El-Sayed answered that it was Tommy who needed to understand the constitution, drawing cheers, and the man left the room.

The questioner has since been identified as Thomas Teepell, whose staff records show he joined Hawley's office as an intern in 2023 and rose to operations director before leaving in February. He then became political director for Philip Sarnecki's Kansas gubernatorial campaign. Sarnecki lost the Republican primary on 4 August.

Teepell is the son of the Republican strategist Timmy Teepell, a longtime adviser to Hawley and the former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. The Handbasket first reported the identification.

The question echoes a line of attack that Republicans have tried to push against El-Sayed for weeks, including when Rogers raised alleged Brotherhood ties during one of their debates.

In a bipartisan call with GOP Senator Thom Tillis and Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine's access to Starlink satellite services “remain degraded†and “disruptions to US intelligence sharing†persist, when it comes to the “early warning of Russian ballistic missile launchesâ€.

Last week, the two lawmakers called on the Pentagon's inspector general to investigate Ukraine's disruptions accessing Starshield – the military version of Starlink's satellite network built for governments and defense agencies – and in a statement today they said that Zelenskyy reiterated his “willingness to halt strikes on Russian energy facilities as President Trump has proposed, but only if [Vladimir] Putin agrees to the sameâ€.

Zelenskyy's call with Washington lawmakers comes after he said that Ukraine did not receive a warning from the US about an impending Russian missile attack on Sunday evening, as my colleague Andrew Roth reports from Kyiv. On Friday, Trump waived a sweeping package of sanctions on Russia – a move he claimed was to prevent driving Russia “away from the bargaining tableâ€.

We're getting word from more US representatives that their offices have been sent suspicious letters.

Congressman Suhas Subramanyam, a Virginia Democrat, said his office in Leesburg received an envelope “containing a suspicious substance†and staff were “promptly evacuatedâ€.

Similarly, in Maine, Democratic congresswoman Chellie Pingree said that her office also received “a suspicious letter consistent with those received by many other congressional and election offices in recent daysâ€.

A reminder that last week the FBI and the US Postal Inspection Service were investigating letters sent to state officials and election offices across the country containing an “unknown substanceâ€. On Thursday, the office of Arizona's secretary of state received a similar envelope that was opened by staff, prompting a hazmat and law enforcement response as well as evacuations at the state capitol.

In Oklahoma, state troopers determined the substance mailed to the Oklahoma state capitol complex was non-hazardous.

In Cook county, Illinois, an envelope containing only white powder was sent to Maria Pappas, the treasurer, on Thursday morning, prompting a response from local emergency responders and law enforcement.

The powder turned out to be baking powder, Pappas's office confirmed to the Guardian.

The Department of Justice has announced the arrest of 28 legal permanent residents or green card holders in California “who are charged in criminal complaints with federal crimes, including that they fraudulently registered to vote in US elections, electoral contests in which most of them cast illegal and fraudulently obtained ballotsâ€. (A reminder that, as the DoJ press release says, these are allegations, and not yet proven.)

Ahead of next month's midterms, the Trump administration has escalated its fight with the Golden state, warning on Friday that local officials who process and tabulate ballots submitted by suspected noncitizen voters are putting themselves at risk of criminal investigation and potential prosecution.

That threat came just a day after the administration sued California to prevent it from counting mail-in ballots from people the federal government has allegedly identified as “likely†noncitizens until their immigration status can be confirmed.

As my colleague Sam Levine reported on Thursday, the suit came two days after the DoJ made a specious demand to the state. On Tuesday, the department sent election officials in Los Angeles county a thumb drive with a handwritten password purporting to contain the names of non-citizens registered to vote. The department asked officials to confirm the citizenship of anyone on the list and set aside ballots from those whose status could not be confirmed. It gave the state 48 hours – an extremely narrow window – to take action. It did not provide details on how it came up with the names on the list. In its lawsuit, filed in federal court in the central district of California, the justice department said it had provided the state with more than 20,000 names of likely noncitizens.

A reminder that noncitizen voting is extremely rare and the effort to investigate noncitizen voting ahead of the midterm elections has only turned up a handful of cases so far. Today's DoJ press release, incidentally, reaffirms this, with 28 an absolutely minuscule number compared with the 174 million people who were registered to vote in the 2024 presidential election.

In Sam's piece last week, he also highlighted that the Trump administration's methodology for identifying non-citizens has come under scrutiny. Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said there could be as many as 278,000 noncitizens on the rolls in four states, including more than 190,000 in California and about 16,000 in Nevada.

Officials at the DHS refused to share their methodology with Nevada election officials and later turned over just 185 names of people it had a strong belief were noncitizens. When Nevada officials investigated, they found every one of those people was a citizen.

As we mentioned earlier, Donald Trump is heading to Kansas today to open a seven-state campaign blitz through territory he carried in 2024, as dismal polls and unexpectedly tight races in GOP strongholds stoke fears of sweeping Democratic gains in next month's midterms.

With 15 days until the 3 November vote, Trump's rally on the outskirts of Wichita aims to shore up the incumbent Republican senator Roger Marshall, who is locked in a dead heat with his Democratic opponent Adam Hamilton.

Trump won Kansas by 16 percentage points just two years ago, and the state has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932.

Yet analysts now rate it a “toss-up†and a key fundraising group for Republican senators has diverted money from North Carolina to defend a seat it once took for granted.

The University of Virginia's Center for Politics told AFP it hesitated before moving deeply conservative Kansas into “toss-up†category – its most competitive – but was swayed by signs that a “full-on Republican rescue operation appears underway for Marshallâ€.

Control of Congress may hinge on such races, with Republicans holding slender majorities in both chambers, and Democrats needing a net gain of just four seats to capture the Senate.

Over the coming six days, Trump will follow Kansas with rallies in the Carolinas, Iowa, Florida, Georgia and Michigan. All seven states backed him in 2024, though his margins in Michigan, Georgia and North Carolina were narrow.

The schedule suggests the aim is less to win over undecided voters than to fire up loyal supporters, many of whom stay at home when he's not on the ballot.

Two stops, North Carolina and Iowa, are damage control in GOP-held seats, and many national party officials have all but written off North Carolina.

Elsewhere the party is on the offensive, targeting a Democratic-held seat in Michigan, though it has struggled to make headway in Georgia.

Vice-President JD Vance is campaigning separately in North Carolina, Ohio and Nebraska. In North Carolina, sitting Republican representative, Jennifer Balkcom, is fending off a strong challenge from Democrat Jamie Ager.

At the White House today, Trump announced a new taskforce focused on women's health. However, it's worth remembering that under Joe Biden – first lady Jill Biden set up the first White House initiative of this kind in 2023.

Trump on Monday said that Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, would head up his administration's taskforce. “Susie recently won her battle against a very tough opponent, breast cancer,†the president said. “It wasn't easy. We went through it. We got her through it, and she got through it.â€

And as another reminder, since Trump returned to office, his administration has gutted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding for maternal health and fertility. The cuts to Medicaid through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act – Trump's sweeping domestic policy legislation – will also affect pre- and perinatal care for pregnant people, according to experts.

Today's new polling suggests Americans remain deeply pessimistic about the economy ahead of the midterms, with 75% rating conditions as either “not so good†or “poorâ€.

The findings also highlight the challenge facing Republicans in November: 37% of respondents said they trust Democrats more on the economy, compared with 28% who said they trust Republicans.

This comes as Trump continues his midterms campaign blitz this week. He'll head to Kansas on Monday to stump on behalf of embattled GOP incumbent Senator Roger Marshall, before back-to-back events in North Carolina, South Carolina, Iowa, Florida, Georgia and Michigan.

Today's announcement comes as billions of dollars have been scrapped from NIH research budgets. Almost 8,000 grants have been cancelled at the institute and the US National Science Foundation alone, and more than 1,000 NIH employees have been fired since Trump returned to office in 2025.

Earlier this year, my colleague Ed Pilkington, reported on the brain drain that was affecting the key agency that conducts biomedical and public health research.

A quick note that Donald Trump's executive order signing at 11am ET will be to create a new Women's Health Division at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a White House Women's Health taskforce, according to a White House official.

A reminder that Melania Trump, the first lady, will also be at the event.

The boss of a New York-based sticker company, whose staunch support for Donald Trump prompted him to record a Maga-themed rap album and call for an extension of Mount Rushmore to add the president's face, is running for Congress.

Anthony Constantino, who began a brief pro boxing career at age 40, is the Republican candidate for GOP congresswoman Elise Stefanik's seat in New York's 21st district.

While Trump won the district by 21 points in 2024, and it has been represented by a Republican in the US House of Representatives since 2015, the party's lead appears to have dwindled significantly as Constantino, 43, campaigns for voters to send him to Washington.

His lead in recent polls has fallen to single digits; one survey earlier this month put him four points behind. In September, the Cook Partisan Voting Index shifted the race from solid Republican to likely Republican. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added the district to its Red to Blue program in early October.

“I'm running for Congress. I built a company with over 1,000 people. Not an easy thing to do,†Constantino said, referring to his company, Sticker Mule. “I went pro in boxing at the age of 40. Not an easy thing to do.â€

Mike Tyson “decided to endorse meâ€, he added in an interview, claiming the former boxing world champion had only endorsed four candidates. “It's not easy to get endorsed by Mike Tyson.â€

Most political candidates lay out their agenda in lengthy publications, or campaign speeches. In December 2025, Constantino released a 20-track album – titled Thank You President Trump – which praised the president's alleged golfing prowess and described how the world purportedly loves him. It took two weeks to complete, according to a press release.

“I just realize it's good to be different, first of all,†Constantino said of the album. “Secondly, some people like listening to speeches. Other people like listening to music. Not everybody in this country wants to listen to political speeches.â€

Also on Truth Social today, Donald Trump has repeated his baseless claims that the riots sweeping France – which initially began as protests against deteriorating school infrastructure and an overstretched education system – are due to mass migration.

“The migrants have taken over France. They must CLOSE THE BORDERS, FAST!†Trump wrote on social media.

A reminder that French authorities have not linked the riots to immigrants.

Over the weekend, hundreds of thousands demonstrated throughout the country. However, chaos erupted at a number of protests, which saw buildings burned, hundreds of shops destroyed and looted and at least 2,400 people arrested.

French president Emmanuel Macron and the prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, have blamed the violence on “factious†ultra-leftwing groups.

Within the new polling from the Washington Post and ABC, 48% of respondents said they are financially worse off than when Trump returned to office in 2025.

According to the Post, that represents the highest percentage saying this about any president in this series of polls since 1986.

A majority of those surveyed – 67% – also said that Trump is not committed to protecting freedom of the press. This comes after a protracted battle to ban CNN, MS Now and Politico from the White House grounds. A federal judge has subsequently issued a preliminary injunction blocking the administration from enforcing the ban.

Meanwhile, 61 % people also said that Trump is not committed to free and fair elections, according to the poll.