The Department of Homeland Security asked an Icelandic hosting company to take down data obtained through hack
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked an Icelandic hosting company on Thursday to take down or limit access to data related to thousands of agency personnel, saying the content put them at risk, according to the request posted online by hosting company FlokiNET.
The database “places more than 40,000 identifiable individuals at risk of harassment, stalking and physical harm”, the request said.
Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign allegedly collaborated with party operatives to confuse voters in midterms
The US justice department on Thursday is reported to have issued subpoenas in response to a report that the Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign collaborated with party operatives to get a challenger with the same name as the Republican senator Dan Sullivan on the midterm ballot.
ABC News and the Associated Press reported the subpoenas, citing sources familiar with the matter. The federal investigation comes a day after the New York Times found that the effort to recruit a second candidate named Dan Sullivan in the Senate race set to be decided on Tuesday was led by Peltola’s campaign, which had for months denied involvement.
Experts round on chancellor over ‘scattergun’ budget, saying he ducked big tax and spending decisions
John Healey has backed away from cutting the cost of welfare this parliament, amid dire warnings his first budget could lead to brutal spending cuts because of a £28bn shortfall in public finances.
Experts rounded on Healey’s steady-as-she-goes budget on Thursday, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies saying he had left himself a mountain to climb by ducking big tax and spending decisions.
Protesters in Minnesota advocate for universal healthcare. | David Berding/Getty Images for People's Action Institute
Americans want changes to their healthcare, and the candidates in this year’s midterms are making bold promises about how they are going to improve it: Medicare-for-all, or a public health insurance option, or free primary care for everyone. If Democrats win big this year, they could build up momentum to control Congress and the White House in 2029, which could leave them well-positioned to take on the thorny problem of how to fix the US health system.
Even though a meaningful attempt at reform is still years away and universal health care in any form might seem like a progressive pipe dream, the industry is not sitting idly by.
As Democrats have started to roll out policy proposals in anticipation of winning back Congress, the industry has been there to start making its case. In some campaigns, that means backing Republicans, but it also means lobbying Democratic Party leaders to hold the line against their more progressive members who want to push for far-reaching changes.
The question now is: Will their old playbook work? Can the industry convince Democrats to scale back their policy ambitions, or is their grip on Congress loosening?
“The next two years are actually quite pivotal, for doing the groundwork and all the necessary socializing, consensus-building,” said Kim Monk, a former congressional healthcare staffer who co-founded the private-sector research firm Capital Alpha Partners. “That’s the work that gets you to a point where either party decides, okay, this will be on our platform — or not.”
That will be the tug-of-war of the next two years: a PR battle waged between health companies with hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal on one side and progressive lawmakers, activists, and patient advocates on the other that will ultimately determine what’s possible in the next phase of American healthcare.
The healthcare industry doesn’t want Democrats to win too big
In the short term, the industry is hedging its bets in the face of a Democratic wave.
Private enterprise has historically backed the Republican Party, but that’s starting to shift. What the healthcare industry values above all else is balance. Democrats operating without any constraints are more likely to impose government regulations on medical companies. But full GOP control comes with its own risks, like the $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts passed as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which has already led to clinics and hospitals laying off staff or even closing facilities altogether.
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“At least for the short term, I imagine the healthcare industry would welcome control of Congress by Democrats, creating more predictability, forestalling more cuts in Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, and potentially reversing or delaying some of the cuts that have already been made,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF. “The longer-term political calculus for the healthcare industry is more complicated. Many Democrats are pushing for a bigger role for government in health care.”
In other words, while healthcare companies might welcome a Democratic House as a check on President Donald Trump’s unpredictability, they aren’t necessarily hoping for a massive blue wave that could make significant reforms a serious possibility if Democrats were to win the White House in 2028.
The industry’s MO when it looks like a wave election is brewing is to balance the scales: I reported in 2016 how, in what was looking like a good year for Democrats, the drug industry poured money into the campaigns of Republican candidates by a 6-to-1 margin in competitive races, hoping to stifle the agenda of presumed President Hillary Clinton. (Of course they, like the rest of us, are still susceptible to being wrong.)
And that’s how the industry has been approaching the 2026 election: In many of the pivotal House and Senate races, they are backing the GOP.
As healthcare journalist Merrill Goozner reported last week, the American Hospital Association PAC and PhRMA, a drug industry trade group, have given a combined $14,500 to Republican incumbent Jon Husted and none to his Democratic challenger Sherrod Brown in the historically expensive Ohio Senate race. In Maine, Republican Sen. Susan Collins has received donations from all of the major healthcare trade groups — hospitals, pharma, insurers, and doctors — while her opponent, Democrat Troy Jackson, got none. (He also has sworn off corporate PAC money.) Even in an open race without an incumbent, like the Iowa Senate campaign, the Republican candidate has scored donations from hospitals and pharma, but the Democrat has not, Goozner reported.
If Democrats take the House but not the Senate, that would immediately put a damper on their healthcare reform plans — whereas winning a Senate majority would allow them to start drafting and debating bills in both chambers with an eye toward what could actually pass if they win in 2028 too.
“If there is actually a blue tsunami next week and Democrats get 51-plus [members] in the Senate, that’s a really big deal,” Monk said. “You can’t just say this doesn’t matter because Trump’s going to veto it, because I think it very much becomes a 2028 issue.”
And even as they work to push the next Congress more to their ideological liking, the healthcare industry is preparing for the fight that comes after.
The industry is prepping its counterattacks on ambitious healthcare proposals
Each subset of the industry has its own versions of this argument: Pharma warns that price controls could stifle innovation, insurers warn that coverage mandates will increase premiums, hospitals warn that constraints on their funding could lead to closures and job losses. (There’s a well-known saying among DC insiders that every congressional district has a hospital, making every member potentially susceptible to the industry’s message that new healthcare legislation could result in their own constituents losing their jobs.)
They’ve started by trying to discredit the more sweeping health policy proposals before new members ever arrive in Washington, DC. In Texas, for instance, Republican groups have leaned on an industry-commissioned study to attack Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico for supporting Medicare-for-all, warning that it would lead to cuts for rural hospitals — at least according to an analysis produced by the Partnership for America’s Future, a coalition of industry groups that exists explicitly to oppose Medicare-for-all or a public option. They ran a similar ad against Democrat Janelle Stelson, who’s trying to topple incumbent Rep. Scott Perry in Pennsylvania.
The industry is trying to plant the idea in voters’ minds that these big, bold proposals may sound superficially appealing, but carry significant risks: You could lose your plan, you could lose your doctor, you could pay higher taxes. (And they often have their own studies to back those arguments, like the one cited in this year’s campaign, to counter the evidence offered by advocates in support of reform.) And it might work exactly like it has in the past. As John McDonough, a former congressional healthcare staffer and author of America’s Wrong Turn: US Health Care in the Neoliberal Era, put it to me, the history is clear: “Every comprehensive effort, defeat, and every incremental effort succeeds.” That is in part because of the healthcare industry’s influence and its success in framing the debate.
On top of trying to sway the competitive races, the industry is also trying to keep its most important allies within both parties happy ahead of the midterms. As the Center for Health and Democracy’s data shows, the health insurance industry PACs alone have given tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic and Republican leaders, as well as senior members of the healthcare-focused House and Senate committees.
It’s another hedge, an attempt to keep the members who will decide what’s on the agenda next year on their side. The industry supports reversing the GOP’s massive Medicaid cuts and increasing funding for the ACA marketplaces, two top-priority items for Democrats if they win Congress in the midterms. But they are hoping the party’s leaders will steer their members away from some of their more radical ideas for overhauling healthcare. Because while individual sectors within healthcare may squabble over smaller-scale reforms, the entire industry is united against plans to fundamentally change the US health system. (They are also increasingly owned by the same parent company, as consolidation in the medical sector becomes more and more common.)
“The healthcare industry is all for more people having coverage and stable government financing,” Levitt said, “but will circle the wagons to fight Medicare-for-all.”
Already, whenever Democrats start talking about their health policy ideas, the industry is ready with a response. Last month, as some Democrats announced support for a public insurance option, the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future argued it would reduce access. “A public option is not the answer to the affordability and access challenges patients and families are facing,” said the group’s executive director, Lauren Crawford Shaver.
Meanwhile, the health insurance lobbying group, AHIP, released a 40-page document in October on how to improve affordability and access, using it in part to argue against a public option because it would “stifle competition and threaten the coverage most Americans want to keep.” Centrist Democratic groups who receive industry support have said they are “preparing for war” against Medicare-for-all, according to the news outlet Sludge.
The industry is not omnipotent, however, and the debate could still change if Americans’ healthcare gets worse over the next few years. The US uninsured rate has been on the rise as pandemic protections expire and the costs of healthcare rise for millions. Unless Democrats succeed in stopping the Republican Medicaid and ACA cuts in the OBBBA, that problem is going to get worse — and that could also force Democrats to think bigger about how to fix it.
“I am not sure anyone has fully absorbed how damaging and disruptive that is going to be — including to hospitals and health systems,” Jonathan Oberlander, professor of social medicine at the University of North Carolina and the former editor of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, told me over email. “Large coverage losses will trigger great instability in health politics and perhaps open more of a window to bolder proposals.”
So, will the industry’s arguments still have juice? After the medical industry enjoyed a brief rebound in popularity during the pandemic, 50 percent of Americans say they have a negative view of it, while 37 percent have a positive view, per Gallup. And the appetite for reform is growing: 64 percent of Americans say it is the government’s responsibility to make sure that everyone has healthcare coverage — the highest share at any time, except for the late 2000s, shortly before the ACA became law.
Even the hospital industry, which has long enjoyed more public support than pharma or insurance companies, is seeing its popularity waver: A Families USA poll from August found that an overwhelming 81 percent of Americans thought hospital prices were unreasonable.
“Hospitals have done a great job of pleading poverty on Capitol Hill. ‘We’re probably the only provider who basically has to provide care to whoever shows up. We have no reason to be efficient. Just give us more money,’” Monk said. “I think that argument is wearing a little bit thin.”
The Justice Department has filed notice that President Donald Trump’s announcements that there are plans for renovating the East Potomac Golf Course and there are plans to close the park beginning Nov. 15 are accurate
US vice-president writes to top Iranian security official in sign Washington has not abandoned diplomacy
Hopes of averting a major new conflagration between Iran and the US soon after Tuesday’s midterm elections could rest on Iran’s response to a personal letter from the US vice-president, JD Vance, offering to restart diplomacy.
The letter, written after predominantly Qatari mediation, was sent to the secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council, Mohsen Rezaei on Sunday. It requires Tehran to agree to make commitments on its nuclear programme at the start of a process that would lead to the opening of the strait of Hormuz within seven days in return for US sanctions relief.
US vice-president writes to top Iranian security official in sign Washington has not abandoned diplomacy
Hopes of averting a major new conflagration between Iran and the US soon after Tuesday’s midterm elections could rest on Iran’s response to a personal letter from the US vice-president, JD Vance, offering to restart diplomacy.
The letter, written after predominantly Qatari mediation, was sent to the secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council, Mohsen Rezaei on Sunday. It requires Tehran to agree to make commitments on its nuclear programme at the start of a process that would lead to the opening of the strait of Hormuz within seven days in return for US sanctions relief.
Challenger’s identity could be approved by next week
Arsène Wenger not thought to have entered reckoning
Uefa and its allies are close to identifying a candidate to run against Gianni Infantino in the Fifa election and could select the challenger as early as next week.
The clock is ticking on efforts to oppose Infantino in March, with candidates required to confirm they are standing by 18 November, but there is growing confidence those attempts are nearing a successful resolution. Discussions with potential nominees have gained momentum despite recent setbacks that included a U-turn by the Asian Football Confederation president, Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa, who surprisingly endorsed Infantino’s push for a fourth term.
Sources tell WIRED that an Accenture employee’s personal Claude agent ran on a DOD network for two months before it was identified and the vulnerability could be patched.
The DOJ is issuing new subpoenas in a probe of Alaska's U.S. Senate race and alleged efforts by Democrats to recruit a candidate with the same name as the GOP incumbent.
Musician wrote a ‘love letter’ to Canada with a new album – and some pointed commentary about the US president
Lake Ontario, the vast body of water that straddles the US-Canada border, has gone by many names over the centuries: Lac Saint-Louis, Lacus Ontarius, Skaniadorio, Cataraqui Lake. But one thing it will never be called, says the Canadian rock star Bryan Adams, is Lake America.
In his new song Lake Ontario, Adams takes aim at the US president, Donald Trump, accusing him of “breaking the peace” between the people who live on the lake’s shores.
The ‘lake of shining waters’ is what the Iroquois called her
It’s a First Nations name – not an executive order.
Angela Eagle tells industry ‘people are sick of excuses’ as pollution levels remain high despite billions in investment
Angela Eagle, the environment secretary, has summoned water industry bosses to Whitehall after a report found that the environmental performance of the big companies has worsened despite investment.
“People are sick of excuses,” Dame Angela said, after the Environment Agency joined the Drinking Water Inspectorate, Natural Resources Wales and Ofwat for a joint report that rated eight of the nine water companies in England as “poor” or “requiring improvement”.
Former Representative Mary Peltola, Alaska’s Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, participates in the Alaska Fisheries Debate in Kodiak, Alaska, on Sept. 12, 2026. —Nathaniel Wilder—Bloomberg/Getty Images
Alaska’s Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy ordered an investigation into Democrat Mary Peltola’s Senate campaign following a report that her team helped recruit candidates to draw votes from her Republican opponent, including a man with the same name.
The announcement, posted on social media overnight, followed President Donald Trump’s call for Peltola’s prosecution and escalated Republican efforts to challenge her candidacy just days before an election that could help determine control of the Senate.
On Thursday, Trump declined to say whether Peltola should be seated if she won. “Well, you’re going to have to see what happens,” he told reporters before leaving for a rally in South Carolina. “It’s hard to believe that she could even be allowed to run.”
Peltola is challenging Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan in the Nov. 3 election. Another candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher from Petersburg, has denied running at Democrats’ behest. Alaska’s Supreme Court upheld his eligibility for the ballot earlier this year.
The dispute intensified Wednesday after a New York Times report found that Peltola's team worked with people to recruit men named Dan Sullivan to run for Senate, as well as other candidates who could draw votes away from the incumbent.
Dunleavy said the reporting provided new evidence of an effort to mislead voters and supported state election officials’ earlier findings about Daniel J. Sullivan’s candidacy.
“Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections,” the governor wrote.
Peltola, a former congresswoman, dismissed the report, arguing that it diverted attention from issues including the incumbent Sullivan’s support for the war in Iran.
“This is just another distraction. It’s another diversion,” she said during a campaign stop in Soldotna on Wednesday. “This is all stuff to sell newspapers. This is all stuff to get subscriptions.”
A spokesperson for Peltola’s campaign, Alaskans for Mary, said in an email to TIME that it “has no involvement with either Sullivan campaign.” The campaign also said it had made no assertions in federal court about how Daniel J. Sullivan’s candidacy came about or who was involved in his decision to run. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), which was also reportedly involved in the plan, told TIME in a statement that it was “not involved with Dan J. Sullivan.”
Vice President JD Vance also backed an investigation Thursday, accusing Peltola of trying to mislead voters about her campaign’s involvement. “She is trying to steal a Senate seat from the voters of Alaska, and it’s disgraceful,” he told reporters before a campaign trip to Texas.
Trump had accused Peltola and her campaign of voter fraud in a series of Truth Social posts Wednesday, calling for her removal from the ballot and prosecution.
“It was just determined that the Dumocrats in Alaska, despite their sworn statements to the contrary, put a man named Dan Sullivan on the Ballot in order to confuse the Public with respect to Highly Esteemed Senator Dan Sullivan,” Trump posted. “This is Voter Fraud at the Highest Level, and the Dumocrat Candidate, who was involved in the scheme, Mary Peltola, should be removed from the Ballot and prosecuted—So should the FAKE Dan Sullivan. Nothing else will do!”
The Times noted that ballot-stacking tactics are generally considered legal and have been used by both parties.
At Trump’s direction, the Justice Department had already filed a lawsuit seeking to block certification of the election results under specific conditions if Senator Sullivan loses, citing the potential for “voter confusion.” The department wants the results recalculated as though votes for Daniel J. Sullivan had gone to the incumbent, and certification blocked if that would change the outcome.
TIME reached out to the Justice Department for comment on how the report affects its case. Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News on Wednesday that he expected to “hear more” from the department this week as officials receive new information.
“They are cheating,” Blanche said. “They are trying to take votes away from the incumbent, not by running an election, not by running on issues, but by putting up a person with the same name, so that confuses Alaskans.”
What Peltola’s campaign reportedly did
According to the Times’ report, which was based on interviews, text messages, and documents prepared for a possible lawsuit, the Peltola campaign pursued a project known internally as “ballot composition,” which involved campaign lawyers and senior aides at the DSCC, which directs Democratic campaign strategy for Senate races nationwide.
One of the Times’ sources, Elisa Rios, Peltola’s former campaign manager who was fired during an August staff shake-up, said the operation to recruit potential spoiler candidates for the Alaska ballot began in the summer of 2025. The Times reported that Peltola’s campaign worked with a “veteran Democratic operative” named Jerid Kurtz, whom it described as having expertise in ballot maneuvering.
The Times reported that a Peltola staffer received instructions to “find as many people named Dan Sullivan in Alaska” as possible. Kurtz reportedly found a man in Petersburg named Dan Sullivan who was open to running for Senate.
Rios said Peltola wasn’t directly involved in the project but was “definitely aware.” The Times also reported that Rios later wanted to recant her statements but did not explain why.
Alaska has a nonpartisan primary system, in which voters may choose a candidate regardless of party affiliation, and the top four advance to the general election. Voters then rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate wins an initial majority, the lowest-ranking candidates are eliminated in successive rounds and their ballots transfer to voters’ next remaining choices.
The spoiler candidate tactic isn’t new
Alaska’s other Senator, Lisa Murkowski, who endorsed Sullivan but supported Peltola years ago, issued a statement Wednesday demanding that Peltola tell the “honest truth” about the apparent ballot-stacking effort.
“While some may try to write this off as just how politics works now, ballot-stacking should have no place in our electoral process,” Murkowski wrote. “Run and win on your merits: your views, your policy ideas, and your accomplishments. By contrast, recruiting candidates to manipulate the field and influence voting outcomes is simply wrong.”
Nate Adams, a spokesperson for Sullivan’s campaign, also said in a statement that “not one player in this operation has acted in good faith with Alaska voters.”
Republicans have also used similar ballot-stacking tactics. In this year’s Alaska primary, a GOP-aligned political action committee reportedly spent money to boost left-leaning fringe candidates in an attempt to pull votes from Peltola.
A GOP-linked political action committee also spent over $1 million this election cycle to boost a third-party candidate in Ohio in a bid to undermine former Senator Sherrod Brown’s comeback bid.
In Minnesota in 2020, Legal Marijuana Now Party candidate Adam Weeks told a close friend before his death that he was recruited by unnamed Republicans to pull votes away from Democrats.
The former president took issue with how President Donald Trump responded to his joke about "the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory."
John Healey aced the morning-after media round because his Martin Lewis measures left nothing to challenge him on
Maybe it had been one of the greatest acts of political genius after all. The day after the budget is usually the moment when things start to fall apart. When clued-up journalists and economists have had a chance to go through all the fine points the chancellor would rather everyone had missed. The forecasts that suggest everything is predicated on a wing and a prayer. The hidden unfunded tax cuts. The greater-than-expected spending commitments.
But on Thursday morning Andy Burnham and John Healey could afford themselves a sigh of relief. All had gone about as well as they could have hoped. It turns out that when you don’t make any massive tax or spending commitments, there isn’t a great deal to unravel. All there had been was a raft of small-scale interventions designed to help people with their personal finances. Call it the Martin Lewis budget. In fact, Healey and Lewis now seem unable to get through the day without spending some time with each other. They certainly can’t stop talking about one another. It’s becoming unhealthily co-dependent. The gods of small things.
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