U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday pushed back against suggestions that the Trump administration had ordered Elon Musk’s Starlink and its military-grade counterpart, Starshield, to limit Ukraine’s access to the satellite communications networks, saying any such decisions were up to the SpaceX founder — and not the White House.“We cannot direct a private company as to the decisions they make or not make,” Rubio told reporters on an overseas trip in Mumbai.Rubio had stated previously that “nobody” had ordered Starlink’s speed to be slowed down, adding that it just “sort of happened.”The secretary of state spoke by phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday in an effort to ease tensions.Appearing on Fox & Friends on Wednesday, Zelensky said that Starlink connectivity is still limited in Ukraine and was told by Rubio that the U.S. State Department would work to “unblock” the slowdown.What is Starshield and why is it so important to Ukraine?Ukraine soldiers set up a Starlink satellite communication terminal in the Donetsk region on Oct. 16.NurPhoto via Getty ImagesStarshield is a low-earth satellite network designed by SpaceX for government use. According to SpaceX, Starshield “leverages Starlink technology and launch capability to support national security efforts.” The Ukrainian military has been using the system for communications between its armed forces, allowing Kyiv to carry out drone strikes against Russia.Earlier this month, officials in Kyiv said they discovered that Ukraine’s access to Starshield had been throttled by SpaceX, limiting its ability to defend itself from Russian ballistic missile attacks on energy infrastructure. The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Musk ordered the slowdown after discussions with President Trump about Ukraine’s recent attacks on Russia’s diesel refineries, which Trump has blamed for skyrocketing U.S. fuel prices.Elon Musk speaks at the 2020 Satellite Conference and Exhibition in Washington.ASSOCIATED PRESS“Musk capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based network,” the Journal reported, “rendering some offensive drones and interceptor drones virtually useless.”Last week, the Telegraph reported that Musk has approached Trump with “the idea of slowing down Starlink in Ukraine,” and that Trump “agreed.” In a post on X, Musk said Starshield systems are “owned and controlled by the US government” and that “any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.”Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.Starlink is a commercial service owned and controlled by SpaceX. Usage of Starlink is limited to civilian or defensive activities…— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 14, 2026 In response, Trump denied any involvement, saying: “I don’t know if it was anybody, but it wasn’t me, and I don’t think it was Elon.” On Wednesday, Rubio insisted that neither the president nor anyone in the administration “ever requested that any changes to that system be made.”But he would not say whether the United States was aware of the decision to limit Ukraine’s access to Starshield beforehand.“I’m not going to comment on what we knew that they might or might not do,” Rubio said.“The president has nothing to do with the decisions that are made by Starlink and Starshield and by Mr. Musk,” the secretary continued. “That’s a private company. The president doesn’t run that company and can’t direct that company to do anything.”He added: “I’m telling you there was no foreknowledge, but beyond it, even if there was, we don’t control what a private company — how they decide their product can be used.”Rubio: If not for U.S., ‘there would be no Ukraine right now’A young woman reacts as she looks at her damaged home after a Russian missile attack in Kyiv on Oct. 14.Efrem Lukatsky/APThe secretary also took issue with comments by Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, one of Ukrainian Zelensky’s military advisers, who told the BBC that U.S. intelligence had also failed to give Ukraine advance warnings of incoming Russian ballistic missile strikes, resulting in the deaths of civilians.“I don’t know who this official was in the Ukrainian Government that went around saying that a bunch of people had died as a result of what America was denying them,” Rubio said. “No country in the world has done more to help Ukraine over the last four and a half years than the United States, including under the Trump administration, and that continues to be the case.”He added: “We’re no longer going to be defensive about this topic, OK? Because if it were not for the assistance of the United States, including under the Trump administration, there would be no Ukraine right now.”This article originally appeared on Yahoo News at https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/article/who-cut-ukraines-starlink-speeds-musk-and-the-white-house-offer-conflicting-accounts-185435059.html

By Diana Novak Jones Oct 21 (Reuters) – A judge in New Mexico ordered Meta Platforms to pay $25 billion on Wednesday after a jury found the company had misled consumers in a case arising from allegations that a political consulting firm involved in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign obtained data from millions of Facebook users without their consent. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said it was one of ‌the largest, if not the largest, single state verdict against the company in American history. “Facebook’s wrongdoing — over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public — goes to the heart of Facebook’s core business ‌practices,” Judge Francis Mathew wrote in his order following the verdict. Mathew found that a penalty of more than $219 billion was warranted, based on state law, but he reduced the figure to $25 billion. In a statement, C.J. Mahoney, Meta’s chief legal officer, said the company is confident it will win ​on appeal. “This ruling, and the Attorney General’s approach to this enforcement, makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico,” Mahoney said. “At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online.” The company had previously said a penalty in the billions of dollars risked violating its constitutional rights to due process and protection from excessive fines. The penalty is the largest levied against the tech giant in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. In 2019, the company was hit with a $5 billion penalty by the US Federal Trade Commission stemming from the same scandal. Six other states settled their lawsuits related to Cambridge Analytica for $459.2 million as part of a $17.1 ‌billion multistate settlement Meta reached in August to resolve states’ claims that the company’s ⁠platforms had harmed teen mental health. LAWSUIT FILED FIVE YEARS AGO New Mexico’s attorney general had sued Meta in 2021 following revelations that Cambridge Analytica had harvested personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app. The state accused Meta of lying to Facebook users in New Mexico about who had access to their data, how the company handles ⁠hate speech and misinformation posted on the platform and other internal policies. The company knew that third parties had broad access to users’ personal data, and it tolerated hate speech or other harmful content when it benefited the company’s bottom line, the state said. Cambridge Analytica, now defunct, worked for Trump’s successful presidential campaign in 2016, and gained access to the personal information from millions of Facebook accounts for the purposes of voter profiling and targeting. It obtained that information without users’ consent from a researcher who had been ​allowed ​by Facebook to deploy an app on its social media network. “It has been a long time coming holding Big Tech accountable,” Torrez told ​a press conference in Albuquerque after Wednesday’s ruling. “I think today’s judgment is a clear break ‌with that past and a very clear warning to those in this space and beyond that we intend to protect our people and protect our consumers.” Analyst Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson & Co, called the ruling costly but unlikely to impact the company’s value. “Meta is worth nearly two trillion dollars, and will likely continue to appeal these cases and drag them out,” Luria said. EXPERTS EXPECT LONG APPEAL FIGHT Legal experts and financial analysts said the penalty was likely to face a lengthy battle on appeal. Jurors on September 25 found that 26 of 29 statements made by the company and its leadership on those issues were misleading. They said the company had committed more than 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws, based on the number of Facebook users or New Mexico residents who were the audience for each misleading statement. State law allows a penalty of up to $5,000 per violation, and directs that all of the ‌money go to New Mexico’s school system, Torrez told reporters after the verdict. At a hearing on October 1, Randi McGinn, a lawyer for ​New Mexico, had asked Mathew to award the state between $35 billion and $40 billion, saying that would be supported by the US Constitution’s protections ​on due process and the jury’s verdict. “This court should speak to Meta in the only language it understands, ​which is money, and the value of its stock price,” McGinn said. In court filings, Meta urged Mathew to cap the penalties at $3.45 billion, saying a higher penalty ran the risk of ‌scaring businesses out of the state. The evidence showed that Meta does not sell ​user data and New Mexico did not prove that any consumer ​had actually been misled, the company said in court filings. Daryl Lim, an associate dean at Penn State Dickinson Law, said that while the US Constitution generally protects against excessive fines, because of the way New Mexico law is written, the large size of the penalty does not automatically mean it could be overturned. TWO JURIES SIDED WITH STATE The verdict was the second in six months by a Santa Fe jury in a ​lawsuit brought by the state of New Mexico against Meta Platforms. In the first trial, ‌which ended in March, a Santa Fe jury found Meta misled users about young users’ safety on its Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms and ordered the company to pay $375 million in civil penalties. After ​a second phase of that trial, a judge directed the company to pay $567 million into a New Mexico fund for teen mental health and ordered Meta to implement measures to protect teen ​Facebook and Instagram users in New Mexico. (Reporting by Diana Novak Jones, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Nia Williams and Aurora Ellis) This article originally appeared on Reuters at https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-ordered-pay-25-billion-172737485.html

Democrats have filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump and the Justice Department, alleging that the Trump administration is unlawfully interfering with the midterms by pressuring states to remove voters from their rolls. The complaint, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, cites the Department of Homeland Security’s recent demands that states remove alleged noncitizens from their voter rolls. The complaint argues such action is based on “shoddily compiled lists” that have “crumbled upon the barest inspection.”Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. The complaint also alleges that Trump administration officials at the Justice and Homeland Security departments have directed a “persistent stream of threats and intimidation” at state and local election officials across the country. The complaint noted that Trump himself had last week threatened to imprison California election officials if they counted mail-in ballots by people the Trump administration claimed were noncitizens. “None of this is lawful,” the complaint states. “The Executive Branch enjoys no authority to superintend state voter list maintenance, to supplant state determinations of who is qualified to vote, or to dictate who gets a ballot or whose ballot gets segregated.” The complaint, filed by three national Democratic groups and other Democratic leaders, asks a federal court to stop Trump and his administration from trying to alter states’ voter rolls and to stop pressuring and threatening election officials. In a statement Wednesday, the Justice Department said that enforcing federal election law and election integrity was a top priority. “Every action the Department has taken to protect the integrity of this year’s elections is grounded in the law and being litigated in open court. Ensuring that only eligible citizens vote and that every lawful ballot is counted a requirement of federal law,” Justice Department spokeswoman Kiersten Pels said. Asked about the lawsuit Wednesday, White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis blamed Democrats for fighting “common sense election-security measures.” “Anyone who illegally votes in our elections will be held accountable,” Bis said in an email. Trump has spent years claiming noncitizen voting is rampant, even though court reviews and independent studies have found it is rare. Many of the administration’s claims of noncitizen voting have fallen apart under scrutiny. This summer, the Department of Homeland Security asserted that up to 16,000 voters on the rolls in Nevada could be noncitizens. It later dramatically scaled back its claims and provided the state with a list of 185 suspected noncitizens. State officials checked those names and determined all of them were citizens. Earlier this month, the Justice Department sued California officials over what it claimed were more than 20,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls. California elections officials have also said those numbers are not accurate. A preliminary review of a sample of 200 of those voters found more than half were not sent ballots and many appeared to be eligible to vote, according to filings from the Registrar of Voters office in Los Angeles County. The complaint filed Tuesday was made by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, the Nevada Democratic Party, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) and Erick Jose Jimenez, a naturalized citizen and California resident. In addition to Trump and the Justice Department, the complaint also names Attorney General Todd Blanche, the Department of Homeland Security and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin as defendants. The legal challenge comes one day after elected officials in a Northern Virginia county also sued the Trump administration, alleging that administration officials have unlawfully claimed the authority to send armed federal agents to polling places. The lawsuit, filed in federal court Tuesday by the Arlington County Board, alleges that the administration’s policies threaten to disrupt the voting process and undermine trust in local election officials. The lawsuit said the potential for federal interference has forced county officials to “plan for and expend resources to address the possibility of unlawful activity and the reasonable fears of voters and election workers.” “Threatening to send armed agents to polling stations is unlawful and contravenes the bedrock values of free and fair elections we hold dear in this country,” Matt de Ferranti, chair of Arlington County’s board, said in a statement. “These statements are a clear attempt to stoke fear and undermine confidence in our elections.” Liam Bowman contributed to this report. Related ContentThis article originally appeared on Washington Post at https://washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/10/21/democrats-sue-trump-doj-over-effort-remove-voters-state-rolls/

Armed and in uniform, federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security have been knocking on doors in several states to ask residents about their immigration status — and to inquire if they have registered to vote or cast votes in past elections, a CBS News Investigation has found. The operation is part of an effort to root out potential noncitizen voters ahead of the midterms. DHS has alleged that there could be as many as 250,000 citizens illegally registered to vote, although election experts have disputed the accuracy of this figure. Just 156 people have been charged with voting-fraud related offenses since the beginning of the Trump administration, according to the Department of Justice. There are 227 million registered voters in the U.S.Critics say that sending armed federal agents to the doors of U.S. residents could be intimidating for legal voters. “What we’re seeing now is the federal government is inserting itself into the state process for verifying their voter roles in an unprecedented way,” said Jessica Marsden, a lawyer for Protect Democracy, a left-leaning advocacy group that is suing the federal agency over the door-knocking campaign. “And they are doing it in a way that seems maximally designed to scare lawful voters from participating.”The home visits ramped up in September, in the thick of the midterm campaign season, and continued over the past weekend. The Justice Department announced Monday that Homeland Security agents in California arrested more than 20 people, all of them green card holders, on allegations they had illegally registered or cast a vote. As part of that roundup, dozens of federal agents descended on the residence of a 72-year-old man from Belize, who was taken from his home in his pajamas and arrested on charges he allegedly voted illegally in the past four elections. “HSI is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found,” said a DHS spokesperson. “Under President Trump, HSI is committed to restoring integrity to our election systems and ensuring that American citizens and only American citizens are electing American leaders.”Eric Balliet, a former Homeland Security Investigations agent, said the door-knocking operation is a significant departure from traditional law enforcement activities. “In my 23 years with HSI, I never engaged in or was aware of any incident of initiative that sent Special Agents to private residences to verify the eligibility of voters,” Balliet said, who served in the federal government under multiple administrations.In June, the DHS directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to assist in deportations of alleged noncitizen voters. Homeland Security Investigations, the agency conducting the at-home visits, is one of the enforcement arms of ICE and typically focuses on criminal cross border investigations like child exploitation, drug smuggling and money laundering. Months later after the announcement, hundreds of agents were pulled off their cases and assigned to track down alleged noncitizen voters as part of a “surge” initiative, according to internal documents reviewed by CBS News. The directive, first reported by CNN, describes a “Criminal Voter Fraud ” initiative that includes “field reviews” in at least six states including California, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin. Photos and videos posted on X show agents from Homeland Security Investigations, some of whom are carrying firearms, approaching houses and knocking on doors, under captions like, “AMERICAN ELECTIONS ARE FOR AMERICANS.” One photo from Kansas City HSI’s account shows four agents at the door of a woman standing on her porch holding a child’s hand. The woman is identified in a Department of Justice press release as Mariana Alexandra Dewey, a Peruvian national who was charged with four counts of voter-fraud related crimes including illegally casting a ballot in the 2024 election. Her case has not yet been heard. Her lawyer declined to respond to CBS News’ request for comment. For civil rights advocates, the show of force has sparked concerns about the chilling effect it could have on legal voters.”It is sending the signal to a much broader community, do not show up at the polls. Do not vote,” said Dr. Carol Anderson, a professor of African American Studies at Emory University.”And so if you are somebody who has registered to vote and you’re a naturalized citizen, what you see in that community is that —  because this is not a regime that makes those discernments — that you’re gonna stay away from the voting booth.”A DHS spokesperson said, “DHS and DOJ are laser focused on prosecuting and removing aliens who vote and preventing the dilution of the votes of U.S. citizens… Those who are here legally and are not breaking other laws have nothing to fear.””Target List”In one video, agents are filmed holding a document that says, “Target List.”That list can be far reaching, said a HSI agent familiar with the initiative who asked to speak anonymously. DHS pulls from internal databases, voter rolls, and other datasets. Then employees attempt to match names against citizenship data provided by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS. In September, a USCIS whistleblower said that employees were asked to review the voter information of tens of thousands of individuals across the country, including citizens. Employees were given quotas to investigate 40 subjects a day, which is a rate of roughly 12 minutes per subject.DHS has defended the data matching program and the work USCIS has done to identify potential noncitizen voters. “Far from being rushed or untrained, these investigative efforts are conducted diligently and professionally,”  said a DHS spokesperson. “There is no quota on criminality. DHS will pursue each and every illegal voter to the fullest extent of the law .””There’s every reason to expect that there are many, many more false positives in these lists,” said Marsden. She noted that Homeland Security officials initially said they had identified nearly 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter rolls, but ultimately they were unable to provide evidence of a single illegally registered voter. This article originally appeared on CBS News at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/federal-agents-seek-noncitizen-voters/

Vice President JD Vance dismissed criticism over a controversial ad from Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign on Wednesday, slamming Republicans for appearing to care more about playing nice than winning elections.“I have to admit that I’m a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America,” Vance said at a press conference ahead of a campaign event with Ramaswamy and Ohio Sen. John Husted.Ramaswamy has faced sharp blowback across the political spectrum in recent days for the ad, which featured denunciations from the mother of Amy Acton, the Democrat with whom he is locked in a tight battle for control of the once-reliably Republican state. Acton was removed from her mother’s home after her stepfather was charged with raping her. She has long been estranged from her mother.Ramaswamy acknowledged his campaign was behind the advertisement on Tuesday, a day after it first came to light.The same day, Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, said that the advertisementwas a “desperate, disgusting attack” and “reveals exactly who Vivek Ramaswamy is at his core.”A series of high-profile Republicans have panned the ad, including Husted, who campaigned with Ramaswamy on Wednesday.”I would not have run that ad,” the Republican told The Associated Press in a statement his campaign forwarded to POLITICO.Nikki Haley, who clashed with Ramaswamy when they both ran for president in 2024, said it was proof of “what we tried to tell everyone back then.”“He’s a bad guy,” she said. “It’s a shame he continues to get away with it.”Vance, who has been on the ballot in two elections in his political career, countered criticism of the Ramaswamy spot from within his own party by noting that he, too, has faced negative ads. Ramaswamy, he said, had been called a “murderer” throughout the heated governor race.“Politics is a tough business,” he said. “And my message to my fellow elected Republicans is if you actually believe in the things you say you believe in, stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days.”The Acton and Ramaswamy campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment about Vance’s remarks.This article originally appeared on Politico at https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/21/jd-vance-ramaswamy-ohio-ad-republicans-01129287