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US officials have asked several NATO countries to "tone down their rhetoric" regarding the alleged threat posed by Russia, ?saying that recent statements by European leaders and officials have undermined the security of the continent, Reuters reported on Friday.

Citing three European officials and a US official familiar with the matter, the news agency wrote that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were delivered the messages in bilateral meetings.

It is unclear if leaders and diplomats of other European nations received the same message.

Though the Baltic states are among the smallest NATO members, their leaders have taken some of the most hostile stances toward Russia since Moscow sent troops to invade Ukraine in 2022.

The US requests come amid negotiations between Washington and Moscow that would reportedly give Moscow relief from US sanctions in exchange for an end to Ukraine's attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, including oil refineries.

At the same time, US President Donald Trump's son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner and US envoy Steve Witkoff have been discussing potential business deals with Russia under the pretext of peace negotiations. The Pentagon declined to comment on the Reuters report.

The US message came in response to comments claiming that “Russia is cornered” and resorting to “desperate measures” against Ukraine as Moscow's progress in the war has stalled, one of the sources said.

Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby was one of the US officials delivering the ?message. He reportedly told a Baltic official recently that ?there should be no “poking” the Russians.

In September, Estonian ?Prime Minister Kristen Michal referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “rat in a corner” while claiming that he was resorting to sabotage campaigns in Europe to compensate for failures on the battlefield in Ukraine.

“We are helping you. The Americans are there,” stated another European official regarding Colby's message. “Just don't be loud. Don't make noise.”

Pentagon planners are reviewing US troop levels in Europe in a “process that could see a sharp drawdown in America's troop presence on the continent,” Reuters added.

US officials have said European NATO members need to assume more responsibility for supporting Ukraine in the war with Russia, allowing Washington to increase its focus on West Asia, Latin America, and East Asia. Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine continue striking one another with missiles and drones.

Russia targeted Kiev with eight ballistic missiles and multiple drones overnight and in the morning on Thursday. The strikes killed one person and injured another in the Dniprovskyi district of the Ukrainian capital.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian drones struck the Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery in Russia's Samara Oblast Thursday morning, sparking a fire at the facility. Kiev's strikes on Russian energy infrastructure have not stopped despite Trump's requests that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky end them.

The US Department of Justice has announced the first arrests in an ongoing investigation launched in April called "Operation Ghostbusters", and the results are not surprising.

Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald held a press conference this week detailing the discovery of a fraud pipeline exploiting US college loan programs.  The underlying fraud relies on "ghost-student" schemes using stolen identities for FAFSA/aid, and has been ongoing since at least 2021. 

The investigation that grew into Operation Ghostbusters was opened by the FBI’s Richmond Field Office after a referral from the Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General.  According to the Justice Department, criminal actors allegedly stole or used personal information of U.S. citizens (often people who had never attended college) to create fraudulent FAFSA accounts. 

The scammers enroll “ghost students” at colleges and universities as fake enrollees, often through online programs.  Then, they apply for federal grants and loans and divert the aid to controlled bank accounts. 

Five suspects have been arrested in a fraud that has operated since at least 2021.  The DOJ has flagged roughly 830,840 potentially fake FSA IDs so far, though it is not yet clear how many such accounts are active vehicles for theft.  The FBI is pursuing more than 40 open cases in 2026.  

Officials estimate at least $200 million US tax dollars have been diverted through student loans for non-existent students.  

Two Kenyan nationals (Francis Mogambi and an unnamed suspect in Virginia) have been identified in running the scheme, and they have both been living in the US since at least 2024.  Officials believe they are part of a larger network of scammers based in Kenya, and they expect that these first arrests are just the beginning of an elaborate web of foreign fraud.  

Stolen funds were frequently funneled overseas, predominantly to Kenya via U.S.-based “money mules” and crypto accounts.  The countries of origin for the three money mules have not been released, but their names are Hispanic (Mabed Patricia Utate-Alberto, Patricia Arisleydi Perez and George Arturo Alfau Mendez).  

Much like the Somali daycare scandal in Minneapolis, the "ghost student" arrests are likely just a taste of a far greater threat:  Third world migrant fraud networks dug in like ticks across the US.  This is why immigration is perhaps the single most important issue facing America and the west today.  Third worlders view America as a pirate's paradise, a place to plunder wealth - They do not see America as a place to assimilate and build a new life.  

Bureaucratic bloat and a lack of immigration controls have made the US a juicy target for fleecing.  The Trump administration's efforts to address the problem are a good start, but it could take years of due diligence to undo the damage that has already been done. 

Authored by RFE/RL staff via OilPrice,

• Washington is considering lifting sanctions imposed on the Russian Direct Investment Fund in 2022.
• RDIF chief Kirill Dmitriev has become a central figure in negotiations over U.S.-Russia economic relations.
• Critics warn that removing sanctions could benefit Kremlin-linked investments without securing concessions on Ukraine.

Four days after Russia launched its all-out effort to subjugate Ukraine, the US government and other Western allies fired a broadside of financial sanctions aimed at punishing the Kremlin's wallet for the assault.

The Russian Central Bank was prominent.

So was a multibillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund that the Kremlin calls the Russian Direct Investment Fund, or RDIF.

The U.S. Treasury called it "a slush fund for President Vladimir Putin [that] is emblematic of Russia's broader kleptocracy."

After months of dormancy, US negotiators have ramped up efforts to find a negotiated settlement to end Russia's war on Ukraine -- as well as normalize frosty relations between Washington and Moscow.

The peace proposals vary. Many tilt heavily in Russia favor, something that was echoed in Putin's remarks to European leaders earlier this week.

They also include lifting sanctions on the RDIF, whose chief executive, Kirill Dmitriev, is the Kremlin's point person for talks with the Americans.

"This conversation is going on," Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yury Ushakov told Russian reporters. "It's been going on for some time, though I don't know what the result will be."

"Dmitriev is actively reaching out, in particular, and therefore the question has come up and is being discussed," Ushakov said on October 28, confirming a New York Times report a day earlier.

US sanctions experts were wary.

"Since its inception in the early 2010s, RDIF has served as a vehicle for channeling investments into companies and sectors that are strategically important to Putin," said Peter Harell, who served as a senior director on the White House National Security Council from 2021 to 2022.

"We should all be clear-eyed about what unsanctioning RDIF would mean: it would mean prioritizing American investment in Kremlin-aligned projects over supporting Ukraine," he said.

What Is The RDIF Anyway?

The fund was established in 2011 during the interim period when Putin's protege, Dmitry Medvedev, served as president, and Putin as prime minister.

It came at a time when Russian coffers were brimming with revenues from high global oil prices and fiscal planners were moving to put the country onto a rock-solid financial footing.

Back then, Russia had one traditional sovereign wealth fund that was later split into two: the Stabilization Fund and the Reserve Fund.

Both more or less helped to keep excess oil revenues from destabilizing the economy, as well as to help fill gaps in the budget; the pension system above all.

In short, nothing controversial nor particularly political.

The RDIF, however, was a slightly different beast: aimed at making targeted investments in Russian companies: construction, telecoms, finance, health care, and dairy, among others. It says to date it has made 2.3 trillion rubles ($29 billion) in investments since its inception -- with about 80 percent of that amount coming from "partner funds."

Experts say its management strategy more closely resembles a private equity fund. Among the best, publicly known investors who have bought in or partnered with RDIF: Saudi Arabia's government-based Public Investment Fund.

The RDIF had already drawn scrutiny from US regulators in 2015 -- about a year after Russia illegally annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. At the time, the fund was linked to the state investment bank VEB. The administration of President Barack Obama barred American individuals and businesses from making loans to or buying equity in RDIF.

Later, Russian authorities separated the fund from VEB, turning it into a stand-alone entity.

Iikka Korhonen, head of research at the Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies, said the fund was quite small relative to other such mechanisms.

"The size of the fund is miniscule-- on a macro scale-- and they claim they have helped to leverage lots of investments into Russia. But I don't know if they have actually done anything in a long time," he told RFE/RL.

Sputnik: The Vaccine (Not The Satellite)

The fund's highest profile investment came in 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic.

At the time, governments and private companies around the world were racing to come up with a viable vaccine for the coronavirus.

In Russia, the Kremlin prioritized the development of its own vaccine, dubbed Sputnik V, in a nod to the world's first artificial satellite.

In addition to directing money to homegrown research, the fund also aggressively promoted Sputnik V, extolling -- and at times exaggerating -- its benefits, while also criticizing Western vaccines and amplifying negative scientific results.

The fund also played a role in the shipment of 45 Russian-made ventilators that were sent to the United States in a humanitarian gesture -- but never were used for unclear reasons.

Reports at the time said US authorities were concerned because RDIF said it paid for half the shipment, something denied by the State Department. Also cited was the fact that similar models of ventilators had exploded and caught fire in Russian hospitals.

In the end, the Sputnik V vaccine was rolled out widely through Russia, though many Russians were deeply skeptical, of Sputnik V in particular, though also coronavirus vaccines in general.

Outside Russia, however, the vaccine gained less traction, overtaken by greater interest in Western vaccines.

Who is Kirill Dmitriev?

Born in Kyiv and educated at Stanford then Harvard, Dmitriev, 51, worked briefly on Wall Street, in the investment bank Goldman Sachs, and, also consulting giant McKinsey and Company.

RDIF did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment from RFE/RL.

His wife, Natalia Popova, is widely known as a close friend of Katerina Tikhonova, who is the younger of Putin's two daughters. Dmitriev sits on the board of directors for an innovation fund called Innopraktia that is headed by Tikhonova.

He was appointed RDIF's first executive when it was established. In an interview with the business newspaper Vedomosti, published in 2012, he described his philosophy toward investing.

"We don't want to rush. We're very responsible with our money and take a conservative approach to investment decisions. We don't want to invest and then see a second wave of the crisis hit and all assets, including ours, plummet in value," Dmitriev was quoted as saying.

During the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election, which ultimately was won by Donald Trump, Dmitriev was one of several Russian officials who held back-channel meetings with Trump administration confidants.

Dmitriev met with Erik Prince, founder of the private military company Blackwater and Trump campaign donor, in the Seychelles just weeks before Trump took office -- a meeting that was documented by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated the Trump administration's ties to Russian officials.

After Trump returned to the White House in 2025, Dmitriev was tapped by Putin to be the Kremlin's special economic envoy. But he also cultivated a close relationship with the White House's lead envoy, real estate developer Steve Witkoff.

Putin greeting White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner at the Kremlin earlier today. (Kirill Dmitriev also visible greeting Putin.) Witkoff has met Putin at least 6 times prior. The Americans are later scheduled to travel to Kyiv for the first time. https://t.co/utgRpw0Ek5

— Mike Eckel (@Mike_Eckel) September 5, 2026

Dmitriev has since taken on the lead role in negotiations to rebuild business relations with US companies -- and also end the Ukraine war. He's met repeatedly over the past 16 months with Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner in Moscow -- including earlier this month amid the release of a retired American schoolteacher, Stephen Hubbard, from a Russian prison.

RDIF and Dmitriev, were also instrumental in a deal, recently announced by the Trump administration, to allow Russian diesel fuel to be imported into the United States.

That deal has drawn scathing criticism from Democratic lawmakers -- and even some Republicans -- in Washington, who say it violates the spirit of a recently passed sanctions law, and several have threatened potential criminal liabilities for any American companies that import the Russian diesel.

"I think lifting sanctions without Russia giving anything in return is an example of really confused policy-making," Korhonen said.

Speaking at an energy conference in Moscow on October 16, Dmitriev criticized the US sanctions law as "misguided," and he touted other business deals he said were in the works between Moscow and Washington.

"Naturally, progress is quite difficult; there is resistance, in fact, widespread resistance, from various quarters. Yet, as the example regarding diesel demonstrates, I believe we will soon be announcing several other significant initiatives," he said. "The ice has, in fact, begun to break."

Another plenum, another record... just not the kind that goes on the economic scoreboard.

China's Communist Party wrapped up the fifth plenary session of its 20th Central Committee on Thursday after four days behind closed doors, and the Xinhua readout confirmed the expulsion of 33 senior officials, the most ever at a single plenum, 16 of them from the military. That includes Gen. Zhang Youxia, until January Xi's closest ally in uniform and the PLA's top-ranking general, whose fall we covered in real time back in "Shockwaves In Beijing: Xi Targets His Own Top General, Longtime Confidant, In Elite Purge" (Jan 24).

The party says it is "turning the blade inward" to "eliminate serious hidden dangers." Translation: nobody below Xi is safe, and the purge is accelerating going into next year's leadership congress, which the plenum formally scheduled for the second half of 2027 and where Xi is all but certain to collect a fourth term.

Using Nikkei Asia's breakdown of who fell and who rose, let's look at the casualties, the survivors, the promotions and what it all means for 2027.

"Offend Thousands Rather Than Fail 1.4 Billion"

On Friday morning Beijing sent Zhang Fuhai, deputy secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), to take a victory lap. He told reporters that Xi has led an "unprecedented" drive with the resolve to "offend thousands rather than fail 1.4 billion people," and that "the results are plain for all to see."

Well, the results are certainly plentiful. According to Zhang, authorities have punished almost 8 million people, including 963 senior officials, since the 18th Party Congress in November 2012, and 680,000 were disciplined in the first nine months of this year alone. And there is more to come: the CCDI pledged to intensify its "high-pressure deterrence" and to "leverage technology" to make it more effective, which sounds about as relaxing as it reads.

Besides the generals, the headline civilian scalps were:

• Ma Xingrui, ex-Politburo member, Xinjiang party boss and former president of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC). Expelled in July, per Reuters, on charges ranging from selling promotions to "large-scale family corruption" (and exchanges of "power for sex"), making him the third sitting Politburo member purged this term;
• Liu Jianchao, ex-head of the party's International Department and once the foreign ministry's best-known spokesman, missing from public view since August of last year and at one point tipped as the next foreign minister. As ChinaTalk pointed out, Liu also once ran Xi's global manhunt for corrupt officials, so the hunter has officially become the hunted;
• Lan Tianli, former chairman of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region government.

Look further down the list and Bloomberg's tally shows a pattern: China's aerospace and defense-industrial complex has been gutted. Besides Ma (ex-CASC), the newly confirmed names include former MIIT minister Jin Zhuanglong, CASC's former chairman Lei Fanpei and general manager Zhang Zhongyang, CASIC's former chairman Yuan Jie, and China State Shipbuilding's former chairman Wen Gang, together with former top brass of the Eastern, Northern and Western Theater Commands. In other words, the people who build China's rockets, warships and missiles, and the people who would command them in a war, have been the main source of empty chairs.

As usual, the charges were "serious violations of discipline and law," with no details. For Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, the September expulsion notice added that they were "disloyal and dishonest to the Party" and guilty of "forming cliques," while the rumor mill went considerably further back in January:

(The official notice never mentioned nuclear secrets, though as we noted in "China's Sacked Top General Accused Of Leaking Nuclear Secrets To US: Report" the day after his downfall, the WSJ report was enough to get Beijing's rumor mill working overtime.)

Two Men Standing

The single most striking number from the plenum may be two. Of the seven men who made up the Central Military Commission, the body that runs the PLA, after the 2022 Congress, only two remain: Xi himself and Zhang Shengmin. The plenum made no new appointments, so five seats are still empty.

Regular readers know this did not happen overnight. Defense minister Li Shangfu went first, then He Weidong and Miao Hua, then the October 2025 wipeout we described in "China Expels 9 Top Generals, Including Two From Communist Party Leadership, In Sweeping Purge":

And then came January, when Zhang Youxia and Joint Staff chief Liu Zhenli disappeared from a high-profile party study session. One former CIA analyst described it to the NYT at the time as "the total annihilation of the high command." 

Nine months later, that looks about right.

The one man who has gone up while everyone else went down is Zhang Shengmin, the CMC's former discipline chief, who led the military's anti-corruption work from 2018 until July of this year and was made vice chairman at last year's fourth plenum. On Thursday he was also added to the Politburo, its only military member, and as Goldman's Sydney futures desk flagged in its Friday morning comment (available to pro subs), the first new member to join between five-yearly congresses in over three decades. The last time it happened was 1994, when Jiang Zemin slotted in his associate Huang Ju.

So, in a fitting twist, the man who ran the purges is the one who gets promoted for them.

Eurasia Group's China team (analysts including Mingda Qiu) called Zhang "Xi's bridge from a purged military to a rebuilt one," while adding that "the construction is far from complete." The note continues:

"Zhang's elevation restores the norm that CMC vice chairmen sit on the Politburo, a practice that was interrupted last January with the ouster of Zhang Youxia. Promoting him now, a year before the 2027 Party Congress, suggests that Xi intends Zhang to span both sides of that transition, anchoring a hollowed-out command structure today and laying the groundwork for the rebuilt one tomorrow."

Then comes the Taiwan question, which every reader is probably asking. Eurasia's view is that "Xi continues to distrust his military leadership" and is "still vetting his top officers rather than fully relying on them or preparing for a near-term conflict," so the near-term probability of a war over Taiwan "remains very low." That's broadly where the consensus sits, although a separate camp argues that a hollowed-out PLA leans more on gray-zone coercion to show it still works, a point we discussed in "PLA Purge May Be Driving China To Rely More On Military Pressure Against Taiwan: Analysts":

Either way, a commander in chief who doesn't trust five of his six top generals enough to replace them is probably not planning an amphibious invasion any time soon. Spot the irony: a purge sold as making the PLA stronger is, for now, the best near-term argument that it is in no shape to fight.

Empty Chairs: Lowest Turnout Since The Cultural Revolution

The damage shows most clearly in the attendance sheet. Per Xinhua, just 162 of the Central Committee's 205 full members showed up this week, along with 117 alternates, for a total of 279. When the current committee was formed in October 2022, it had 376 people; the third plenum in July 2024 drew 364 and last October's fourth plenum 315.

According to Bloomberg's tally, that is the lowest attendance since the chaotic years of the Cultural Revolution and the first time turnout has fallen below 300 in Xi's 14 years in power. Put differently, roughly one in four seats in the room where China's leadership is formally chosen is empty, and this is the body that will rubber-stamp next year's lineup.

As Asia Society's Neil Thomas put it, "more empty seats underscores the plenum's focus on Xi's vision of strict internal discipline." The plenum also passed a resolution on "comprehensive and strict governance over the party," and confessed that it had "squarely confronted the grim reality that party leadership had at times weakened or hollowed out." Hollowed out, indeed.

Who Rose: Bankers, Steelmen And The '70 Hou'

To refill at least some of the seats, 10 alternates were promoted to full Central Committee membership, and, as Nikkei notes, four of them were born in 1970 or later, part of what China calls the "70 hou" generation. Their resumes have a common thread: most built their careers in state-owned industry and state banks before moving into government:

• Lu Dongliang (b. 1973): governor of coal-heavy Shanxi, former chairman of state aluminum giant Chalco;
• Liu Jie (b. 1970): governor of Zhejiang, where Xi was once party secretary and from where he has promoted a long line of lieutenants; previously president of Xiangtan Iron and Steel;
• Liu Jun (b. 1972): president and vice chair of ICBC, China's largest lender by assets, previously chair of Bank of Communications;
• Liu Qiang (b. 1971): deputy party secretary of Shandong and party boss of Jinan, previously vice president of Bank of China;
• Xing Shanping (b. 1968): Shaanxi deputy party secretary, a notable promotion for a woman in an overwhelmingly male leadership.

Two state-bank executives elevated in one sitting tells you something about where Beijing sees its next set of problems: local debt cleanup and bank recapitalization will be run by men who know the balance sheets. And managers who spent careers running Chalco and Xiangtan Steel are, presumably, very comfortable taking orders.

Succession watchers are paying attention. Xi would be 79 at the end of a fourth term in 2032, so the speculation has skipped a generation. University of Tokyo professor Shin Kawashima, who believes Xi will get another term "for sure," said he is watching "those joining the central committee and born in the 1970s" for clues on who might be next in line. Meanwhile, the people who would normally be next in line, the 1960s cohort, have been thinned out by the very purges that created these openings.

The Bigger Picture: Xi's Talent Pipeline Problem

Which brings us to the real story heading into 2027. As Bloomberg put it on the eve of the plenum, Xi now faces "a problem of his own making: his sweeping purges are draining the pipeline he needs to staff senior roles next term." The to-do list for next year's congress is long:

• Five of the seven-man Politburo Standing Committee would retire if age norms hold, and veteran foreign minister Wang Yi (73) is expected to step down;
• The CMC needs five new members, more or less from scratch;
• The Politburo itself needs restocking after three members were ousted this term, its widest purge since the Cultural Revolution.

The churn is just as visible in the provinces. Bloomberg's analysis of provincial postings shows that the average tenure of a provincial party chief has collapsed from 43 months in Xi's first term to 26.5 months in his third. Anhui and Qinghai have each had three party chiefs since October 2022, and one regional boss lasted just nine months.

Why should markets care? Because, as UC San Diego's Victor Shih told Bloomberg, "officials will have a shorter time horizon and be more inclined to deal with the latest edict from the center instead of longer issues of reform or economic growth." Oxford Economics' Sheana Yue makes the same point in economist-speak, warning that the "emphasis on political discipline could create some tensions with Beijing's economic objectives," because "local officials may prioritize political compliance over experimentation, potentially complicating the implementation of growth initiatives."

In other words, in a system where the safest career move is to do nothing, the stimulus Beijing keeps announcing has a harder time reaching the real economy, a problem that will sound very familiar to anyone who has followed China's property bust. And if anyone hoped the purge would ease once the plenum was over, Xi used a speech published this month to warn against "two-faced people" in the ranks, vowed that "sick trees" must be uprooted, and told cadres frozen by fear that "procrastination before the reshuffles" was also unacceptable. So: don't be corrupt, don't be idle, and don't make a mistake. Good luck.

American University's Joseph Torigian sums up where that leaves the system: "Since the last Party Congress, Xi has lost faith in so many Central Committee members. He is going to have to promote a lot of people next year and doesn't want to make the same mistake again. So the intensity of review and punishment will inevitably intensify."

Loyalty First, Growth Later

Back in October 2025, as the fourth plenum unveiled China's next five-year plan, the headlines were about self-reliance in science and tech. Twelve months later, the fifth plenum was almost entirely about who can be trusted, which tells you how Xi has ordered his priorities heading into 2027.

The optimistic read, and the one Beijing is selling, is that a cleaner, more disciplined party and a rebuilt PLA come out of this stronger. The more likely read, in our view, is that the purge cycle intensifies into the congress: the CMC stays half-empty while candidates get vetted (and re-vetted), provincial officials keep their heads down rather than experiment, and the bench of experienced leaders for the post-Xi era keeps shrinking, which, conveniently, makes the man at the top even harder to replace. For investors that means more top-down policy and slower transmission, and for anyone still modeling an imminent Taiwan war, a PLA leadership that its own commander in chief doesn't yet trust.

And for those of the 33 who had hoped for a quiet exit, ChinaTalk has some bad news: "Expect a few of the 33 in January's installment of the state TV documentary where fallen officials confess on camera." Prime-time viewing.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

A U.S. appeals court has rejected the Trump administration's request to stop California from counting ballots from 20,000 potential noncitizen voters.

In a 39-page ruling, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled 2-1 that it declines the administration's "invitation to contravene the Elections Clause by undermining the Constitution's plain text."

"If the United States believes different procedures are necessary for vote-by-mail ballots, we believe it should take that suggestion to Congress, not the courts," the majority stated.

A district court judge already denied that request and said that the Department of Justice's (DOJ) demands could disenfranchise citizens.

Referring to that ruling, the appeals court wrote, "As the district court found - and we discern no clear error - there is no feasible way to identify and segregate the ballots of specific individuals without potentially catastrophic effects on the entire system."

The panel rejected the government's emergency request for an injunction that would have barred the 20,000 ballots from being tallied until the voters' citizenship was verified. The midterm elections are set to be held on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

The Trump administration said it believes that the suspected noncitizens have already received mail-in ballots for the midterms and that if California officials receive those ballots, mix them with legitimate ones, and process them, illegal votes will be counted.

California officials have described the list as highly unreliable, saying it likely includes many people who are U.S. citizens.

State and county officials confirmed they lacked the mechanisms and authority to prevent non-U.S. citizens from voting in the elections, the DOJ wrote in its lawsuit earlier this month, meaning those individuals could potentially illegally vote in the election.

"As defendants continue processing ballots that cannot later be segregated or verified for eligibility, the dilution of lawful votes accelerates in real time," the DOJ said on Oct. 21 in an emergency filing to the appeals court.

Los Angeles County filed a motion asking the district judge to dismiss the lawsuit and argued that the DOJ lacked the legal standing to bring it.

"The executive, like any other plaintiff, must identify a concrete injury, actual or imminent, fairly traceable to the county's conduct and likely to be redressed by the requested relief. The complaint identifies none," the complaint stated.

The Trump administration is enhancing its scrutiny of local elections, and recently issued a raft of subpoenas in Alaska in a spoiler-candidate controversy.

In that state, campaign aides to Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola allegedly sought to recruit a third-party candidate with the same name as the Republican incumbent, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska). Peltola's campaign has denied the claims, while the state's governor and police force have confirmed an investigation.

The DOJ has also provided a list of around 400 alleged noncitizen voters to officials in Washington state. In response, Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said Thursday that his state has no capacity to confirm whether individuals are U.S. citizens when they are registered to vote.

"We don't have a system that can identify whether someone is an actual noncitizen," he said at a news conference, adding it isn't "unusual for noncitizens" to be on state voter registration lists.

President Donald Trump earlier this week said he would offer a $1 million reward for anyone who can provide information leading to the arrest and conviction of individuals engaging in voter fraud in the upcoming election or in previous ones. No additional details about the reward have been provided.