Supreme Court Rejects Trump Bid to Make California Segregate 20,000 Ballots

The Supreme Court declined the Trump administration's emergency request to force California to segregate and not count mail ballots from more than 20,000 voters the Justice Department claims are likely noncitizens, one day before the midterm election. Solicitor General D. John Sauer had asked the justices to require the ballots be kept separate until citizenship could be verified, warning that once commingled they could not be traced; the filing went first to Justice Elena Kagan, who referred it to the full court, which denied the request without explanation. The order capped a rapid series of rulings: a federal judge in San Francisco had blocked the Justice Department from threatening criminal liability over election workers who processed the ballots, the 9th Circuit briefly sided with the administration before limits were restored, and Judge Tanya Chutkan separately barred the government from pressuring states over noncitizen-voting lists. The Justice Department said the ruling is not the end of its efforts and announced it is deploying 1,000 election monitors, including in four California counties. The case is part of a broader push to assert federal control over election administration, and it leaves the disputed ballots set to be counted as votes are tallied. Also in this briefing: US Job Openings Jump to 7.5 Million as Layoffs Drop to Lowest Level in Over a Year; Anthropic Discloses Its Financials to the Public as It Prepares for an IPO; Weeks of Flooding Displace Thousands and Sever Roads Across the Navajo Nation.

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