US immigration agents often work with their faces covered and do not wear identification. [Reuters] Details of more than 41,000 personnel working for the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including thousands involved in immigration enforcement, have been leaked to the public.The leak includes names, work addresses and phone numbers of DHS staff, including agents working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection, along with descriptions of the work they do for each agency.Wednesday’s leak marks the third time in recent weeks that a government agency has been targeted by leaks or hacks.A DHS spokesperson said the agency is “aware of a potential breach and is actively working to address the situation swiftly and effectively.””We take all security threats against our employees and officers seriously and will work to ensure all are properly protected,” the spokesperson added. “We will update the public when more information is available.”The seemingly unprecedented breach of employee information was made public online. A group called the Department of Peace accessed the information from DHS, while journalist and cybersecurity researcher maia crimew alongside the website Distributed Denial of Secrets put it online.The information was put in a database named Icepick.Most of the agents included, more than 21,000 of them, work for CBP, according to the data. Nearly 6,600 work for ICE. Other records show agents with Homeland Security Investigations, the Federal Protective Service and even people working for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.The leaked information also included dozens of previously unknown operation names, the agents that led and worked on those operations, and some of the technology they used in their work, including tech provided by Cellbrite and Palantir. The groups wrote in an online statement that the the leak was not meant to be a directory of every DHS agent. Rather the aim was to replace “anonymity with accountability”, according to Emma Best, a co founder of DDoSecrets.”The leak is extraordinary but deceptive in its simplicity as it identifies the officials responsible for overseeing covert and undercover operations, the government’s hunt for leakers and the failed BlueLeaks investigation – along with key personnel in DHS’s ever-escalating rendition and deportation programs,” Best added.BlueLeaks refers to a massive leak of US police data in 2020, data from which DDoSecrets also hosted.A spokesperson for the Department of Peace pointed directly at actions by ICE agents for the group’s work to hack DHS records. “On July 17th, Markwayne Mullin said he was ‘turning up the heat’. This is what happens to ICE when you do that,” the spokesperson wrote on Wednesday.Mullin in March became Secretary of Homeland Security. The Department of Peace said it accessed the DHS agent profiles through a single sign-on service called Okta.Okta is a popular online security tool that organisations use to ensure that only people with access to internal platforms are logging on to them.A spokeswoman for Okta said the company is aware of the claims being made, but said: “Okta is secure, and we have no evidence our data or systems were compromised.”Last month, the FBI was hacked by a group called ShinyHunters, which took personal information about thousands of agents. In recent days, the Federal Election Commission, which makes public political campaign donation data, was taken offline because of a suspected hacking attempt. Public backlash to US immigration enforcement has been building as the Trump Administration has pushed a huge increase in arrests and deportations of people suspected of being in the country illegally.Immigration operations this year have repeatedly turned violent, with ICE agents shooting at more than two dozen people and killing at least nine people. Those killings include the high profile deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, both of whom were shot and killed by ICE agents this year in Minnesota, despite not being the targets of arrests.Often, ICE agents carry out enforcement actions while their faces are covered by masks and sunglasses. Immigration agents rarely identify themselves, despite being required by law to do so, and US politicians have publicly demanded DHS enforces the requirement. Since President Donald Trump returned to office in 2025, the US has enacted nearly 1 million deportations, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute. More than 70% of the deportations have been of people with no criminal record. [BBC] Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.This article originally appeared on BBC at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq8jzkpjr28vo?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Byahoo.north.america%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D

By Bo Erickson and Nandita Bose CHILLICOTHE, Ohio/MORROW, Georgia, Oct 28 (Reuters) – Neither man is on the ballot but Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic former President Barack Obama took prominent roles on the campaign trail on Wednesday, with less than a week to go before congressional races that could shift the balance of power in Washington. While Trump has been on a weeks-long campaign blitz that ‌has underlined Republican concerns about losing control of Congress for the final two years of his presidency, Obama had kept a relatively low public profile until the past week, during which he has delivered blistering ‌speeches criticizing Trump. Thirty-five of the 100 Senate seats and all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are being contested next Tuesday. Nonpartisan analysts generally favor Democrats’ chances of capturing a majority in the House, with the contest for the Senate seen as very close. On Wednesday, Obama appeared ​in Morrow, Georgia, near Atlanta, where he urged voters to support Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff, who faces a challenge from Representative Mike Collins, a Republican. While delivering the standard Democratic critique of Trump for imposing tariffs and going to war in Iran, Obama also said America’s values were on the ballot, as he recalled the vision of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., who is buried in Atlanta. “There is a moral component to the choices we face right now,” Obama said. “We are not going to fix the system that’s broken, we’re not going to unrig our economy, so long as we’ve got a culture where anything goes, where people in the highest offices of the land think it’s OK to lie and cheat and bully, ‌if we continue to have a culture where money is deemed the only measure ⁠of our worth,” Obama said. Trump’s public approval rating has fallen to a near record low, with Americans increasingly sour on the high cost of living and the Iran war, but he remains an animating force in the party and has campaigned hard to increase Republican turnout. Americans have been voting for weeks, with 40 million ballots already cast, according to the University of Florida’s ⁠Election Lab. A total of 45.9 million Americans voted early in the last midterm elections in 2022. Addressing a rally inside a modest college gymnasium in the Ohio town of Chillicothe, the president appeared with Senator Jon Husted of Ohio as he faces a challenge from Democratic former Senator Sherrod Brown. Trump attacked Brown for supporting immigration policies the president said had overwhelmed Springfield, Ohio, with Haitian migrants. “The town went to hell,” he said. Trump spread false claims during the 2024 presidential campaign that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were eating cats and dogs, allegations local ​officials ​repeatedly said were untrue. TRUMP FACES PROTESTERS Enthusiastic crowds have cheered Trump at rallies throughout the campaign, but hundreds of protesters lined Trump’s motorcade ​route in rural Chillicothe, raising banners that read, “Republican against Trump,” “Grab them by the ballot” and “GOP: Guardians ‌of pedophiles.” During the rally, protesters interrupted Trump several times, including at least one who shouted about deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “I threw Jeffrey Epstein the hell out of Mar-a-Lago,” Trump said in response. Trump and Epstein socialized in the 1990s and early 2000s, but Trump has said they later had a falling out and that he barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida. Justice Department releases from the Epstein files have included references to Trump, as well as many other prominent figures. The department has cautioned that some materials contain allegations that were unverified or uncorroborated. Protesters have interrupted Trump at virtually all his recent rallies. He typically accuses them of being paid protesters as they are carted off by security. In Cleveland on Saturday, Obama poked fun at Trump’s taste in interior decorating, saying, “He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” a chain of casual dining restaurants. Trump defended his White House decor and said ‌Obama left the property deteriorated. “The White House, I think, is the number one symbol of our country, and we can’t have a ​White House with broken windows, with broken stone that hasn’t been painted in 30 years,” Trump said in Ohio. ALASKA, MICHIGAN RACES Democrats will need ​to pick up seats in traditionally Republican-leaning states such as Ohio, Iowa or Alaska to overcome the current ​53-47 Republican majority in the Senate. The New York Times reported that aides to Mary Peltola, the Senate Democratic nominee in Alaska, worked with the campaign’s lawyers and senior staff at Senate Democrats’ ‌campaign arm to recruit two candidates who are on the ballot and could siphon votes ​from incumbent Republican US Senator Dan Sullivan. Representatives for Peltola did ​not immediately respond to requests for comment. “Mary Peltola should resign from the race. I think she should be criminally prosecuted for what she did,” Trump told reporters before departing for Ohio. In Michigan, where Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed are locked in a tight race for the Senate seat being vacated by Democratic Senator Gary Peters, both campaigns are relying on high-profile allies to energize supporters and boost turnout. Rogers spent the ​day campaigning with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas on a four-stop bus tour culminating ‌in Imlay City, a small community northeast of Detroit. El-Sayed, meanwhile, was scheduled to join Peters and fellow Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin for an evening canvassing rally in Downriver, southwest of Detroit. (Reporting by ​Bo Erickson in Chillicothe; Additional reporting by Nandita Bose and Jacob Bogage in Washington, Jarrett Renshaw in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticutt, and Michael S. Derby and Dawn Kopecki in ​New York; Writing by Jonathan Spicer and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Scott Malone, Alistair Bell, Donna Bryson and Stephen Coates) This article originally appeared on Reuters at https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/trump-obama-pound-campaign-trail-181120650.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired the Pentagon’s top military planner, a defense official said Wednesday, the latest in a series of generals to be ousted and one that comes even as President Donald Trump is weighing renewed strikes on Iran in the eight-month-long war. Army Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia was removed as head of strategy, plans and policy on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is the second general to be ousted from the post, known in military circles as the “J5,” under Hegseth. His predecessor, Lt. Gen. Joseph McGee, was forced to retire last October. The defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters, said there is no immediate replacement for Sylvia and no reason has been given for the firing. The move was reported earlier by The Atlantic. A spokesperson for the Joint Staff said “the Chairman, the Joint Staff, and the Joint Force extend our deepest gratitude to Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia and his family for their 32 years of distinguished service to our nation” and they “wish him and his family the best.” Typically, the J5 director and their staff are responsible for generating and coordinating military plans with both the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the president. Sylvia’s firing comes as Trump has repeatedly floated starting new military operations against Iran. Trump has vowed to “finish the job” in Iran after launching the war with Israel eight months ago and said new strikes are an option after the midterm elections next week. U.S. officials have told several Middle East countries and regional allies to be prepared for potential renewed military action after Tuesday’s elections as well as for the possibility that Iran will attempt to retaliate against them, two diplomats briefed on the matter said. They say Trump has not made a final decision on new strikes. A third U.S. aircraft carrier and thousands of additional troops are making their way to the region. Before arriving at the Joint Staff, Sylvia served as the commander of the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, until May 2025, according to his official biography, which has now been taken offline. He also previously served as the vice director for the J5. He is the latest in nearly two dozen generals, admirals and other military leaders to be fired, forced to retire or otherwise depart under Hegseth’s tenure — almost all of which have not been publicly explained by the Pentagon. That includes the civilian secretaries of the Army and Navy as well as some top uniformed officers for the military services. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment late Wednesday. Hegseth said last month that he ordered the military to double the cuts to the overall number of top officers to a 20% decrease to be completed by Jan. 1, 2027. There are currently roughly 800 flag and general officer positions. “I call it accountability and long overdue,” Hegseth told junior officers and enlisted leaders at the Marine Corps Base Quantico on Sept. 30. Some members of Congress have criticized cuts to the ranks of generals as a “purge” that will take years to rebuild. “He’s got some kind of like deep-seated grievance about leadership in the military,” Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., a former Navy combat pilot who has been critical of Hegseth, said last month. “He’s purging a generation of great leaders of the military, and it’s going to take a generation to recover from it.” ___ Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani in Washington and Samy Magdy in New York contributed to this report.This article originally appeared on Associated Press at https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/hegseth-fires-pentagons-top-military-024524025.html

Two right-wing provocateurs, James O’Keefe and Cam Higby, are facing election-related charges in Minnesota after posting videos of an undercover stunt intended to expose alleged deficiencies in election security. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said each man faces a count of unlawful voting and identity theft. “Elections are the bedrock of democracy and their protection is one of our highest priorities,” Moriarty said in a statement. “Individuals engaging in unlawful conduct related to our elections will be held accountable.” Hegseth directs military cyber forces to use ‘every authorized asset’ to defend midterm elections from foreign interference amid Trump’s funding cuts to election security agenciesO’Keefe, a self-proclaimed “guerilla journalist” infamous for his undercover videos, and Higby, a social media influencer, posted the video at the heart of the charges in August. It shows the two men approaching election judges at multiple voting precincts in Minneapolis wearing burqas, speaking in fake accents, and allegedly misrepresenting their identities, in an effort to expose what O’Keefe and Higby say are gaps in the rules that allow residents to vouch for the identity of other voters. The video, which remains pinned on Higby’s X account, is called “I Wore Burqa To EXPOSE Election FRAUD In Minneapolis.” No ballots were cast in the course of their efforts.Prosecutors said Wednesday that O’Keefe and Higby deceived the election judges by using the identities of real Minnesota voters “without those voters’ knowledge or permission” in violation of state law. Each count carries up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. Neither man is in custody, according to charging documents. Tim Evans/AFP via Getty Images – PHOTO: People fill their ballots during the first day of early voting for the midterm elections in Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 16, 2026. In a statement, O’Keefe called the charges “weaponized lawfare” and defended his undercover video as journalism protected by the Constitution. He vowed to fight the charges. “This is not political,” he said. “It is fundamental. It is about whether citizens still have the right to question their government.” In a post shared on X, Higby said, “No laws were broken. They want me in PRISON for exposing election vulnerabilities in their state.” O’Keefe did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Steve Simon, the state’s top election official, said in a statement that “any attempt to disrupt or deceive our election workers will not be tolerated.” The charges announced Wednesday in Minnesota are not O’Keefe’s first brush with the law. In 2010, O’Keefe pleaded guilty in Louisiana to a misdemeanor charge of entering a federal property under false pretenses after he posed as a telephone repairman to gain access to a U.S. senator’s New Orleans office. This article originally appeared on ABC News at https://abcnews.com/US/2-wing-provocateurs-facing-election-related-charges-minnesota/story?id=137646933

It was, for a while, considered one of those colorful quirks that crop up in the course of an election: the fact that not one but two candidates named Dan Sullivan will appear on the Nov. 3 ballot for U.S. senator from Alaska. One Dan Sullivan — Dan S. Sullivan — is the state’s incumbent Republican senator. He is trying to fend off a fierce challenge from former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola and secure a third term. The other Dan Sullivan — Dan J. Sullivan — is a retired teacher from a tiny fishing village along the Alaska Panhandle. He has never previously campaigned for public office, and he switched his registration from “unaffiliated” to “Republican” just before the deadline to run. (He has since switched back to unaffiliated.)But now the situation seems to be getting more serious. At President Trump’s direction, the Justice Department last week sued in federal court to block certification of the election if Sen. Dan S. Sullivan loses, alleging that retired teacher Dan J. Sullivan is a Democratic plant whose purpose is to siphon away votes. Then, on Wednesday, the New York Times published an extensive investigation that appears to substantiate that allegation, calling it “Democrats’ secret effort to stack Alaska’s ballot.””The Times has found, based on interviews and text messages, along with documents prepared for a potential lawsuit against the campaign, that not only did Ms. Peltola’s team work with people trying to recruit Mr. Sullivan to run for Senate, but the effort was much broader,” the paper wrote. “The group worked to coax other would-be spoilers into the race, to dilute the incumbent’s support and help catapult the Democrat to victory.”In response to the report, Trump called for both Peltola and the “fake” Dan Sullivan to be removed from the ballot in a post on Truth Social.YahooThe outcome of the legal dispute, if it moves forward, could have enormous national implications. Democrats need to win at least a few Senate races in historically Republican states to secure a majority in the chamber. Polls suggest Alaska is one of their best chances to turn a red seat blue. Given how close other races across the country appear to be, a legal ruling that erases a narrow Peltola victory could be the pivot point that allows the GOP to keep control of the Senate for the last two years of Trump’s presidency.How did this happen, and where do things go from here? Here’s everything you need to know to catch up and make sense of the story. How Alaska wound up with two Dan Sullivans on the ballot Ballot-stacking — the process of recruiting a spoiler candidate to help your candidate win — isn’t unheard of in politics, and the Times says it’s “generally considered legal.” But it’s a lot easier in Alaska than other states because of the unique way elections work there. When Peltola ran for reelection to the U.S. House in 2024, the state GOP backed an effort to help a second Democrat — an inmate who conducted his campaign from a New York prison — remain on the ballot. And during this year’s primaries, super PACs aligned with both parties “flooded the state with ads for fringe candidates” in an attempt to “dilute support for the mainstream candidates opposed by the groups,” according to an October Alaska Beacon report. How is any of this possible? The Last Frontier sends the top four primary candidates to the general election regardless of party — then asks voters to rank them on Election Day in order of preference. This means that candidates can claim any party affiliation on the ballot without being vetted by parties themselves. (Dan J. Sullivan initially claimed to be a Republican.) It also means that as ,long as they finish in the top four, primary candidates don’t have to earn many votes to secure their very own ballot line on Nov. 3. (Dan J. Sullivan won 4,107). For months, Republicans have questioned Dan J. Sullivan’s intentions and tried to get him tossed off the ballot. In June, the Alaska Supreme Court dismissed their arguments, ruling that neither state law nor the U.S. Constitution provided any legal basis for removing Dan J. Sullivan’s name. How the Senate candidates will appear on Alaska’s midterm ballot.elections.alaska.govThe more obscure Sullivan has “maintained that he [is] running in good faith and of his own volition, as a moderate Republican and not a secret Democrat,” as a Times profile put it in August. He said he’d voted in the past for some Alaska Republicans, including Sen. Lisa Murkowski, even though he also “acknowledged previous donations to Ms. Peltola and a handful of other Democrats,” and said he would prefer Peltola for Senate over the Republican incumbent “if it was between those two.” But according to this week’s Times report, “operatives aligned with” the Peltola campaign convinced Dan J. Sullivan to enter the race “to help Mary.” The report cited as its sources 12 people “who participated in or were told of the plan” as well as interviews with other would-be recruits and dozens of internal text messages.For the record, both Peltola’s campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which directs the party’s campaign strategy in Senate races across the country, have denied any “involvement,” and Dan J. Sullivan did not respond to the Times’s repeated requests for comment. One of the Times’s main sources — former Peltola campaign manager and longtime aide Elisa Rios, who had been planning to file a wrongful termination lawsuit — also tried to retract her statements to the paper ahead of publication. The Times story described an elaborate endeavor — which was “internally called the ballot composition project” — that “involved secret trips to far-flung Alaskan communities and the appearance of a mysterious Midwestern operative, who traversed the state using a fake name and made his pitch to would-be candidates over beers at brew pubs.” The Times also reported that the “Peltola campaign’s lawyers, as well as senior aides at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee” were “involved” with the effort.The Trump administration’s lawsuitLegal battles over the dual Dan Sullivan issue had been confined to state courts until last week. That’s when Trump’s administration filed its lawsuit aiming to have the certification of the results blocked if Peltola wins a close election that may have been affected by Dan J. Sullivan’s presence on the ballot. “Should Alaska certify any electoral results tainted by the inclusion on the ballot of Daniel J. Sullivan … the State and its officers will fail in its obligation to protect the integrity of its election,” the Department of Justice wrote in its legal filing. “I’m the one that said do it,” Trump said Friday of the lawsuit. The suit argues that a Democratic victory should be considered invalid if Peltola wins by a margin smaller than the total number of votes that Dan J. Sullivan receives — under the assumption that those votes may have come from confused voters who intended to vote for the incumbent Republican senator instead. Democrats have asked the courts to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the administration lacks “any statutory or constitutional authority to insert itself” into the state’s electoral process. Alaska’s state government, which is currently led by Republicans, has also filed to dismiss the administration’s lawsuit. On Monday, a federal judge agreed to fast-track consideration of the dispute to potentially allow it to be resolved before Election Day. Many legal experts say the lawsuit has a slim chance of success. First, it requires a very specific outcome in which Peltola wins by what would likely need to be a very thin margin. Even in that scenario, election law experts say, the appearance of confusion on the part of voters does not create legal grounds for the federal DOJ to have the results rejected.”I believe that this lawsuit is abusive in its intentions and borders on frivolous in its arguments, and that it is destined for defeat in the courts should it reach the merits,” Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, told the Alaska Beacon.Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a Harvard law professor, told the Harvard Gazette that the law the administration is relying on in its lawsuit — the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) — does not give federal authorities any power to challenge state election procedures. “The lawsuit has nothing to do with voter registration. There’s no allegation that anybody is improperly registered in Alaska; there’s no claim that Alaska isn’t in compliance with the NVRA’s requirements for voter registration,” Stephanopoulos said.More generally, experts say the lawsuit runs against the Constitution’s language granting states the power to run their own elections. “This is purely a matter of state law, and the administration has absolutely no authority to tell Alaska when or how to certify the results of its Senate election,” David Becker, a former Justice Department attorney who worked on voting rights cases, told Alaska Public Media.What’s next?The federal judge in Alaska considering Democrats’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit issued an order late Wednesday allowing their challenge to move forward. She gave the DOJ until Thursday afternoon to respond.That likely only matters in an extremely close race, which is not the recent norm in Alaska. The last time Dan S. Sullivan was on the ballot, he defeated his top challenger, independent candidate Al Gross, by 45,000 votes. The most recent Senate race, in 2022, was closer, but the top two finishers were both Republicans. Things are expected to be much tighter this time around. Peltola has held a consistent lead in the polls since the summer, but her advantage has steadily shrunk in the months leading up to Election Day. The most recent surveys have her ahead by 2 points, well within the margin for Sullivan to win. The Cook Political Report, one of the nation’s most respected election forecasters, lists the race as a toss-up. Another well-regarded forecaster, the Center for Politics, categorizes it as “leans Democrat.”This article originally appeared on Yahoo News at https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/article/alaska-democrats-linked-to-secret-effort-to-recruit-2nd-dan-sullivan-to-tip-senate-race-report-200632493.html