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The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday moved to dismiss its own lawsuit that sought to stop California from counting roughly 20,000 ballots it alleged went to noncitizens until their immigration status could be verified. The request to dismiss the case comes days after Republicans’ significant losses in the midterm elections and about a week before a scheduled hearing where a special master was slated to evaluate the accuracy of the list. California officials have previously said the list is out of date and includes legitimate voters — a sentiment that the federal judge presiding over the case echoed in his blistering order denying the federal government’s request.
Why it matters: The case was at the forefront of President Donald Trump’s administration’s effort to assert control over state-run elections across the country, which Trump has said are rife with illegal voting without providing evidence.
The backstory: The Department of Justice remains enmeshed in litigation with multiple immigrant and voting rights groups seeking to limit its use of the list of what is says are suspected noncitizens. Another controversial suit it filed in Alaska at Trump’s direction before the election to block the victory of the Democrat in that state’s Senate race was swiftly dismissed by a federal judge. The administration is appealing that ruling but has yet to file a full brief at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. California had processed roughly 9 million ballots as of early Friday, with nearly 5 million still left to be counted, according to state election officials. The motion to dismiss the lawsuit said that, by the time of the upcoming hearing, the state will have already irreparably “commingled the challenged ballots with lawful ones.”
The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday moved to dismiss its own lawsuit that sought to stop California from counting roughly 20,000 ballots it alleged went to noncitizens until their immigration status could be verified.
The request to dismiss the case comes days after Republicans’ significant losses in the midterm elections and about a week before a scheduled hearing where a special master was slated to evaluate the accuracy of the list. California officials have previously said the list is out of date and includes legitimate voters — a sentiment that the federal judge presiding over the case echoed in his blistering order denying the federal government’s request.
The case was at the forefront of President Donald Trump’s administration’s effort to assert control over state-run elections across the country, which Trump has said are rife with illegal voting without providing evidence.
The Department of Justice remains enmeshed in litigation with multiple immigrant and voting rights groups seeking to limit its use of the list of what is says are suspected noncitizens. Another controversial suit it filed in Alaska at Trump’s direction before the election to block the victory of the Democrat in that state’s Senate race was swiftly dismissed by a federal judge. The administration is appealing that ruling but has yet to file a full brief at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
California had processed roughly 9 million ballots as of early Friday, with nearly 5 million still left to be counted, according to state election officials. The motion to dismiss the lawsuit said that, by the time of the upcoming hearing, the state will have already irreparably “commingled the challenged ballots with lawful ones.”
“The relief the United States sought and needed is no longer available—rendering voluntary dismissal necessary,” the motion said.
Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, previously argued in court that the lawsuit would be irrelevant after election day, because there would be no way to sequester the ones allegedly belonging to noncitizens. The lawsuit was filed in mid-October, when ballots had been sent to all of the state’s 23 million registered voters, and after hundreds of thousands of ballots were already processed. Once a ballot is processed, it is completely anonymized.
Essayli said at the time the lawsuit was filed that his goal was to “safeguard the integrity of the election so it doesn’t have an effect on the upcoming election.”
“We want to stop the illegal voting. We don’t want to chase it later,” he said outside of court the week before the election.
California prosecutors in recent weeks have arrested over 30 noncitizens who are accused of illegally registering to vote. Some who were arrested were also accused of voting in previous elections. Elections clerks around California in the week before the election were sent subpoenas to testify before grand juries slated to convene in November. It’s not clear who is being criminally charged in those cases, but the department does not typically subpoena people whom it regards as targets of a criminal investigation to appear before a grand jury.
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter appointed the special master in late October, shortly after allowing California to proceed with elections as planned. Carter, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, argued in his blistering order that separating ballots at that late stage would risk disenfranchising citizens and warned it would “wreak havoc” on the midterm elections.
The special master would have also considered whether or not California election officials did in fact have a mechanism for separating the ballots.
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Tech giants Meta, Google, and TikTok are suing to block a landmark California law meant to protect kids’ mental health on social media platforms. The law, one of a slate of bills signed by Gov. Newsom this year to protect kids online, would block social media companies from offering “addictive” features to teens under 16.
Why now: Set to go into effect in January, the law defines addictive features as design choices like infinite scroll, autoplay, and recommendations. Those features are blamed in part for a teen mental health crisis, which the law seeks to curb.
What the tech companies argue: The three suits, filed in multiple federal courts in California this week, argue that the law would infringe on the companies’ First Amendment rights. The Meta suit, for example, says that the law undermines the “fundamental principle” of free speech by making the state “the editor, curator, and controller of online speech.” Google, which owns YouTube, similarly argues in its lawsuit that the law would “frustrate YouTube’s efforts to provide under-16 users with safe, responsible, and enriching experiences on the platform.” The companies want the courts to block the law before it takes effect.
Tech giants Meta, Google, and TikTok are suing to block a landmark California law meant to protect kids’ mental health on social media platforms.
The law, one of a slate of bills signed by Gov. Newsom this year to protect kids online, would block social media companies from offering “addictive” features to teens under 16.
Set to go into effect in January, the law defines addictive features as design choices like infinite scroll, autoplay, and recommendations. Those features are blamed in part for a teen mental health crisis, which the law seeks to curb.
The three suits, filed in multiple federal courts in California this week, argue that the law would infringe on the companies’ First Amendment rights. The Meta suit, for example, says that the law undermines the “fundamental principle” of free speech by making the state “the editor, curator, and controller of online speech.”
Google, which owns YouTube, similarly argues in its lawsuit that the law would “frustrate YouTube’s efforts to provide under-16 users with safe, responsible, and enriching experiences on the platform.”
The companies want the courts to block the law before it takes effect.
When the measure was before the California Legislature, some groups, like digital rights organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argued the law would amount to a full ban on social media for teenagers because it was so broad and the features it regulated so fundamental to the platforms. Teens would then miss out on precious online resources, the groups said.
NetChoice, a tech industry-aligned group, also criticized the law. It released a statement supporting the lawsuits, saying “the state cannot restrict minors' access to protected expression simply because it thinks the expression is bad for them.”
A supporter of the law, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said in response to the lawsuits that courts have already been “rejecting the industry’s claims that the First Amendment shields them from accountability.”
The bill’s passage was just one in a recent series of damaging moments for the tech industry, which has faced intense scrutiny over its impact on teens’ mental health. Meta agreed in August to pay as much as $17 billion as part of a settlement with 47 states that argued the company had engineered its products to be addictive to children.
A TikTok spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the suits. A Meta spokesperson declined to attach their name to a statement and CalMatters declined to publish it.
“We believe parents are best positioned to make the right decisions for their families, which is why we offer a range of protections and tools that put parents in control,” José Castañeda, a Google spokesperson, said in an email. “Overly broad laws like this actually break the systems we’ve built to help kids find high-quality, age-appropriate videos.”
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
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The 31st Conference of Parties, or COP31, starts Monday with speeches from world leaders and will later dig into how to follow through on past climate pledges.
Why it matters: A key issue this year is the implementation of promises to transition away from fossil fuels. Co-host Turkey is also pushing a separate plan that would help do that by shifting more global energy use — including transportation — to electricity generated from solar and wind power. Negotiators also will hash out how to provide promised funds to poor countries to switch to renewables, adapt to a warmer world and recover from climate-induced damage.
The backstory: Eleven years ago, the world was on track to hit 4 C (7.2 F) of warming above preindustrial levels by the end of the century. In 2015, nations set the goal of keeping warming to below 2 C (3.6 F), but with a preferred limit of 1.5 C (2.7 F), as measured over a multi-year period. Now, the world is at 1.4 C (2.5 F) of warming and is hurtling toward 2.6 C (4.7 F), the U.N. found.
Three stories about climate change are playing out like popular movie genres as United Nations climate negotiations begin in Antalya, Turkey.
There’s the horror story. Many scientists believe global warming is accelerating. Two months ago, the U.N. readjusted its decade-old goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) because the world is blowing past that threshold. The fallout from rising temperatures is felt globally, with Europe’s deadly summer heat waves and Nepal’s devastating flooding as stark examples.
There’s the love triangle. For more than a century, the world has been powered by coal, oil and gas. This love affair spurred economic development, as well as the emissions warming the planet. But renewable energy is capturing some of the world’s attention because it’s cheaper and cleaner than fossil fuels. Instead of switching from one to the other, the world is using both to meet demand from power-hungry artificial intelligence and ever-growing economic development. This isn’t helping curb climate change.
Then there’s the war movie. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine triggered a European energy shock. This year the United States and Israel bombed Iran. The conflict closed the Strait of Hormuz and sent fossil fuel prices skyrocketing, forcing nations to rethink their energy systems.
These stories are colliding as the 31st Conference of Parties, or COP31, starts Monday with speeches from world leaders and will later dig into how to follow through on past climate pledges.
A key issue this year is the implementation of promises to transition away from fossil fuels. Co-host Turkey is also pushing a separate plan that would help do that by shifting more global energy use — including transportation — to electricity generated from solar and wind power. Negotiators also will hash out how to provide promised funds to poor countries to switch to renewables, adapt to a warmer world and recover from climate-induced damage.
“It’s really the moment that we place a magnifying lens on what’s happening in the world on climate change, both good and bad,” David Waskow, international climate chief at the World Resources Institute, said.
While the U.S. is the world’s largest historic carbon polluter, it skipped last year’s COP and isn’t expected to participate this year.
“There’s always two topics in the climate negotiations that are relevant and difficult,” said Niklas Höhne, co-founder of Germany’s NewClimate Institute. “The first one is who produces emissions (and) how much. That is difficult enough. But what is even more complicated is the other issue, and that is who pays. And on this one, we are particularly in a difficult situation because the U.S., as the largest contributor, has dropped out. And there’s no other player who can jump in.”
Global climate efforts are off track
Eleven years ago, the world was on track to hit 4 C (7.2 F) of warming above preindustrial levels by the end of the century. In 2015, nations set the goal of keeping warming to below 2 C (3.6 F), but with a preferred limit of 1.5 C (2.7 F), as measured over a multi-year period.
Now, the world is at 1.4 C (2.5 F) of warming and is hurtling toward 2.6 C (4.7 F), the U.N. found.
October 2026 was the hottest October on record, and 2026 is virtually certain to end up as the second year to exceed the 1.5 degree Celsius level, behind 2024, the European climate agency Copernicus announced Friday.
“We have failed so far,” said Johan Rockström, director of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
Rockström said Earth will likely experience more extreme weather, such as floods, droughts and storms, and may soon reach “tipping points,” such as ocean currents changing and the Amazon rainforest collapsing.
It comes down to fossil fuels
Even though burning fossil fuels is the main cause of warming, it has rarely been targeted in final documents agreed upon at the conference, mostly because those decisions require consensus.
“The reason we are seeing the breach of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming is because we avoided the absolutely fundamental question of how climate change happened and what’s responsible, the source of the problem and that’s fossil fuels,” said Harjeet Singh, founding director of Satat Sampada Climate Foundation. “Unless and until we resolve the issue of fossil fuel phase out, we will not be able to deal with the problem.”
Brazil, which hosted COP30 last year, this month released a detailed voluntary roadmap for how countries could transition away from fossil fuels.
The roadmap is meant to turn the “big problem” of reducing fossil fuels into “smaller actionable solutions,” Ana Toni, who served as CEO of last year’s climate talks, said. One key thing nations must do is stop subsidizing fossil fuels, she said. The U.N. estimates fossil fuel subsidies globally hit $1.1 trillion this year.
“What’s standing in the way is not so much technology as governments and incumbent industries,” said Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics. “One cannot underestimate the power and influence of the fossil fuel industry in slowing down action.”
Climate talks bring hope and frustration
Barbados youth activist Ashley Lashley’s first COP was five years ago. She was frustrated by the lack of progress then, but hopeful because there was urgency to keep the 1.5-degree goal alive.
Lashley still attends negotiations with some hope, but she is more frustrated than ever. She said “the science has become more alarming, but yet politically we seem to be negotiating how much failure we are prepared to tolerate.”
Qiyun Woo, a Singaporean youth environmentalist, said her generation is tired of “seeing their present and futures blanketed in wildfire smoke, in devastating floods (and) landslides.”
What gives most experts hope is how cheap solar and wind energy are, along with electric car growth, strengthening the economic argument for transitioning away from fossil fuels.
“It has never been as easy to reduce emissions as it is today because, again, this year, renewable energy has been developing faster than before,” Höhne said.
Hope for progress on the sidelines
Much of the work at climate negotiations happens on the sidelines, where not everyone has to agree and some nations do more than others.
One important sideline initiative this year is Turkey’s goal of increasing electricity’s share of global energy use from 21% to 35% by 2035, preferably by using renewable power.
Mohamed Adow, a veteran COP observer and director of Power Shift Africa, said the conference is taking place at a time when the world is deeply fragmented.
“The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has intensified economic and energy security pressures,” he said. “We don’t expect this particular conference to be able to sufficiently respond to the present day challenge ... that is affecting livelihoods and economies.”
The climate talks are hindered by the continued absence of the U.S., Adow said, adding that it wasn’t fair to nations like Nepal, which have to face catastrophic destruction alone while the world’s wealthiest country and biggest polluter sits on the fence.
“A time will come when we will have to hold the U.S. accountable for the climate harms that it’s caused,” he said.
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Borenstein reported from Washington, Delgado from Bangkok and Arasu from Bengaluru, India.
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
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Make It Make Sense is LAist's elections newsletter breaking down the results of the Nov. 3 general election. You can sign up here to receive issues in your inbox through the end of November.
In today's issue:
Read on ... to see all the election results updates for today.
This is the Nov. 6 issue of Make It Make Sense, LAist's elections newsletter breaking down the results of the 2026 general election. You can sign up here to receive issues in your inbox through the end of November.
Good morning! We’re beginning to feel the drag of Election Month. Cue the 🎶 Jeopardy music 🎶. We’re still waiting for an outcome on a lot of our statewide propositions, but we’ve got some juicy tax updates (if you can call them that) and another key race call.
First, now that Nithya Raman will be L.A.’s next mayor, what happens to her current council seat that stretches from the San Fernando Valley to the Santa Monica Mountains?
LAist asked L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson’s office: “We look forward to working with Mayor-elect Raman and will discuss with her an appointment who best serves the residents of the Fourth District,” Martin Schlageter, a senior adviser to Harris-Dawson, said in a statement.
That indicates the district could avoid a special election, but who could be appointed is still very much up in the air.
Meanwhile, Raman will have to work closely with a City Council that didn’t back her bid for mayor. LAist asked the 12 members who will be working alongside her about how they plan to work with her — read what they said here.
🌴 L.A. City Council District 3
🌴 L.A. City Council District 9
🍊 O.C. Supervisors District 4
In the race for the Fourth District, Democrat and Buena Park mayor Connor Traut is leading with 50.80% of the vote over Republican Tim Shaw, a member of the O.C. Board of Education.
🍊 O.C. Supervisors District 5
Democratic incumbent Katrina Foley is still on track to keep her Fifth District seat against Republican Assemblymember Diane Dixon, with a gap that’s widened to 7,600 votes. If either Republican wins, it will change the balance of power on the Board of Supervisors.
These results are based on about 8.9 million votes counted so far statewide — more than 2.5 million in L.A. County and nearly 892,000 in Orange County.
We still have a ways to go! The California secretary of state estimates there are 4.8 million ballots left to count overall, which includes 642,000 in L.A. County and 298,270 in O.C.
This election is turning out to be a banner year for voter turnout — we’re on track to far exceed the 2022 midterms. But we won’t know the full picture until after Nov. 10, the deadline for mail-in ballots to arrive. You can check on the status of your ballot via the state’s BallotTrax system.
The next local ballot counts drop this afternoon starting around 4 p.m., but hey, we’re going into the weekend! From here on out, we’ll only be back in your inboxes when there’s major news to share — like a call on the billionaire’s tax — and we’ll focus on understanding what these results mean for your life in Southern California.
If this is your first day reading Make It Make Sense, you can get caught up on our past issues here:
Otherwise, you can keep up with the results here:
