Independent News Drop

KELI From Inkwell, this is the Independent News Drop. I'm Keli, with Hast.

HAST Heavy morning on elections and power. Let's go.

KELI The Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice sued California on October 15th asking a federal court to set aside more than 20,000 cast ballots — vote-by-mail votes already counted — pending individual citizenship checks. The suit names people it says are highly likely to be noncitizen aliens on a voter roll. DHS called the analysis preliminary and ongoing in the same statement where it argued that even one noncitizen ballot cancels out the vote of an American citizen. California officials say the federal data are unreliable and the demand comes too close to the election.

HAST The counter-read here is arithmetic. DHS and DOJ funneled a preliminary list of over 175,000 names down to just over 20,000 between July and mid-October — an 88 percent cut. The sworn declarations cite USCIS and HSI immigration records matched against public registration data. But read the standard of proof next to the remedy: if that matching is wrong at any rate above zero, a set-aside order cancels citizen votes by the exact mechanism the release condemns. The number to watch is whether the federal court agrees there's time to verify each person before certification. If it does, expect litigation in every state with competitive Senate or House races before Tuesday.

KELI Sticking with power and money — ProPublica and Drilled published an investigation into a secret vote by U.N. scientists in 2005 that legitimized carbon capture as climate policy. More than 100 of the world's top climate scientists were convened in Spain to finish a report on the technology. The vote was structured to block dissent — scientists who disagreed with the carbon capture framework were removed from the final authorship, and the consensus that emerged shaped decades of climate policy and fossil fuel industry strategy afterward. ProPublica traced how that hidden process became the scientific foundation for carbon capture subsidies, tax credits, and now industrial deployment, all built on a vote that wasn't public and a report that buried the skeptics.

HAST Different scale, but same mechanism — money and influence voting behind closed doors. The structural fact: that 2005 consensus became the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's official position. Governments and energy companies built policy on it. The gap is that the public never saw the vote or the dissenting voices. Watch for responses from the scientists named in the story and from climate policy groups on whether they'll demand an audit of how that framework shaped the last twenty years of climate spending.

KELI Election spending before Tuesday — the current cycle has raised north of 16 billion dollars, with ad spending in House and Senate races topping 4 billion. Mega-donors have overwhelmingly backed Republicans this time around. The money is flowing from AI, crypto, and online gambling interests according to the Intercept analysis. AIPAC has spent heavily in both parties, but the asymmetry is stark: Republican candidates are running on money from tech and finance, not traditional corporate bundlers.

HAST On a different front — Trump publicly rebuked his former attorney Alina Habba Mildon at an event at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday night. A New York Times report detailed that Habba scored an alleged 50 million dollar payout from the family of businessman Julio Herrera Velutini weeks before Velutini received a pardon from Trump. Trump told the room he thought the arrangement was terrible, and people in the room told observers he was angry she didn't give him his cut. Habba has said the payment was unrelated to her work for Trump.

KELI In Alaska, Republican Senator Dan Sullivan is doubling down — he says Democratic opponent Mary Peltola is still lying about her campaign's involvement in recruiting a retired schoolteacher named Dan Sullivan onto the ballot to split the vote. Peltola's team claims she didn't know her top aides were running the play. Sullivan says that's not credible. The Senate race there could determine which party controls the chamber after Tuesday.

HAST Quieter story from overseas — supermarket freezers in Belgium and Sweden were hit by what authorities are calling a suspected cyber-attack. One store in Sweden says temperatures on its freezers were manually set to 50 Celsius, about 122 Fahrenheit. Nobody has claimed responsibility or named a source yet.

KELI Before we close, a history marker. On this day in 1956, Nikita Khrushchev met with leaders of other Communist countries to seek advice on Hungary, selecting János Kádár as the country's next leader on Josip Broz Tito's recommendation — the beginning of the Soviet response to the Hungarian uprising that would define Cold War Europe for decades.

HAST That's the Independent News Drop. For election and campaign tools, check racer.wiki. Lawz bodycam explainers on the channel. Cards and shirts at inkwell.wiki slash cards, slash bible-shirts, slash art-shirts. Full script at inkwell.wiki slash news. From Inkwell.

KELI Before we close, something lighter from Inkwell. There's a piece asking what the Beatles songbook keeps reaching for — a world set right, meaning that holds — without pretending the band were secret prophets.

HAST An honest look, and an open door. At inkwell dot wiki, slash beatles.