Good morning, it's Tuesday, Oct. 20. The Justice Department charged 28 Californians with illegal voting on Monday, and it won't rule out going after the people who process the ballots next.

Also in today's issue: Patriots stuck in Washington, Alberta stays put, $8 billion for farmers, A new NIH division, Race and middle school, A Saudi link at OpenAI, Home stills go to court.

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If you vote by mail, watch what happened Monday in a state that mails a ballot to every registered voter.

The Justice Department said Monday it has charged 28 people in California with crimes including voting as a noncitizen and falsely claiming citizenship to register. Some are green card holders, meaning legal permanent residents who can live and work here but can't vote in federal elections. And the department's No. 2 official wouldn't rule out charging a second group: the local workers who process those ballots.

All 28 came from a list of about 20,000 names the department sent California last week. It says those people were mailed ballots for Nov. 3 even though they're likely not citizens. A lawsuit filed Thursday asks a federal judge to stop the state from counting ballots from people on that list until their citizenship is confirmed. So a court could decide which mailed ballots get set aside before the count is done.

How was the list built? Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said Homeland Security matched the state's voter rolls against government records, dropped anyone with proof of citizenship, then checked the rest by hand. Los Angeles County never opened it. The list arrived on a thumb drive with the password on a sticky note, and the county clerk said that wasn't a safe way to handle voters' private data.

Now the warning to election workers. McCotter pointed to aiding and abetting, the legal rule that someone who knowingly helps another person commit a crime can be charged too. The key word is "knowingly." A worker would have to know a voter isn't a citizen.

The department's case is straightforward. Voting as a noncitizen is a federal crime, and officials say they've now charged 113 people in 20 states in seven weeks. They say California never told them the people on the list were citizens or offered to help check. Every illegal ballot, they argue, cancels out a legal one.

Critics answer with the record. Experts say noncitizen voting is extremely rare, and the department has lost more than two dozen straight court fights over the past year trying to get states' voter rolls. And one earlier list is worth knowing about. Nevada received a federal list of 185 suspected noncitizens on its rolls. State officials checked every name, and all 185 were citizens.

Trust is the real stake here. In an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released Tuesday, 7 in 10 Americans said they aren't confident President Trump would accept the midterm results if Republicans lose. Yet about two-thirds of both Democrats and Republicans said they expect the election itself to be run fairly.

Watch two things: the judge's ruling on the lawsuit, and whether any election worker is charged. If the 28 cases hold up, the department gains evidence for its argument. If a ballot counter ends up in court, the fight shifts from voters to the people who run elections, which is new ground two weeks out.

Many parents blamed themselves, or their kids, for the hours lost to the feed. But legal claims allege social media companies built in psychological triggers on purpose: intermittent rewards, endless scrolling, toxic social comparison, and recommendation engines that pull kids into content rabbit holes.

Now families are filing legal claims against platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

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Ukraine's air defenses are running thin, and the Trump administration has reportedly not approved transfers of Patriot interceptor missiles, including some that allies already paid for. Patriots are what Ukraine uses to shoot down incoming Russian ballistic missiles. Overnight strikes left roughly 550,000 families in Kyiv without power, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee statement. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said blocking air-defense supplies while easing sanctions on Russia ignores reality. A senior Pentagon official said there's been no change in policy. President Trump said Monday that "Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine." Republicans are pushing back. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas called helping Putin reckless, and Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said many Republicans won't fund Trump's agenda while he props up Russia (CBS News).

Alberta voted to stay in Canada on Monday. With more than 1 million ballots counted, about 76% chose to remain, while 23% backed starting the legal process toward a binding vote on leaving. It wasn't a vote on independence itself, but a "yes" would have opened that door. The result is a win for Prime Minister Mark Carney, who campaigned for unity amid President Trump's trade war and annexation talk. Premier Danielle Smith, who called the vote but backed staying, welcomed it. Separatist leaders say a quarter of Albertans still want a better deal from Ottawa, so the movement isn't going away. Results on the ballot's nine other questions, including one on requiring proof of citizenship to vote in provincial elections, are still being counted.

President Trump announced $8 billion for farmers at a Monday night rally in Kansas. The Agriculture Department program, called Harvest Fuel Relief, makes one-time payments based on planted acres and estimated costs, to cover part of farmers' higher fuel bills this harvest. The money comes from the Commodity Credit Corporation, a USDA account that can pay farmers without a new vote in Congress. Payment rates for major crops won't be released until November, after the Nov. 3 election. The rally was for Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, who's in a toss-up race with Democrat Adam Hamilton, a Methodist pastor. Kansas hasn't elected a Democratic senator since 1932. Supporters say farmers can't delay harvest when costs spike. Critics note the timing: the announcement came at a campaign stop for a vulnerable senator.

President Trump signed an order Monday that creates a women's health division at the National Institutes of Health, the government's main medical research agency, within 90 days. It also sets up a White House task force led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and chief of staff Susie Wiles, who announced last month that she is cancer-free. First lady Melania Trump pushed for the order, which targets maternal health, mental health and endometriosis. It also revokes President Biden's 2024 order on women's health research, saying the focus should move from studies to actual patient care. Supporters say women's conditions have been under-researched for decades. The open question is money: the order sets no funding amount, so the new division may have to compete for dollars inside NIH's existing budget.

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The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a challenge from Asian American parents over admissions to four selective magnet middle schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, a district of more than 150,000 students. The policy never mentions race. But students at wealthier schools, where Asian American kids are concentrated, must score higher on a standardized test to enter the lottery. Lower courts tossed the case because Asian American students weren't underrepresented compared with the pool of applicants. The district calls its system a colorblind lottery. The justices will decide what parents must prove to show a race-neutral policy was designed to discriminate. Three years after the court ended affirmative action in college, the ruling could shape how school districts nationwide fill their most sought-after seats.

A fired OpenAI engineer charged with bugging a company conference room was in frequent contact with a member of Saudi Arabia's royal family, according to a Justice Department filing made public Monday. Prosecutors say Abdulrahman Alfozan, a Saudi national, hid a recording device behind a TV in a room where executives met government officials. The royal family member repeatedly urged him to join a Saudi AI project. A day after his arrest, his wife and son left on a one-way, business-class flight that prosecutors say a Saudi military official paid for. He's charged with illegally intercepting conversations, and prosecutors say more serious charges may follow. OpenAI says it has no sign he took its technology or customer data. His lawyer declined to comment.

The Supreme Court will decide whether the federal government can keep banning home distilling, a rule that dates to 1868. Making liquor at home can bring up to five years in prison, and officials can seize property inside the home. Congress passed the ban when distillers were bribing tax collectors and most spirits went untaxed. A hobby distillers group sued, and a federal appeals court struck the ban down, warning that upholding it would let Congress criminalize nearly anything done at home that might hide a taxable activity. The government says home stills make tax dodging easy to conceal. Home beer brewing, by contrast, has been legal under federal law since 1979. A ruling is expected by early July.

That's how many people the Justice Department says it has charged with illegal voting or registration across 20 states in the past seven weeks, according to officials on Monday. For scale, more than 150 million Americans voted in 2024.

P.S. How should we make sure every voter is a citizen? Hit Reply — We Read Everyone.