TODAY’S JUSTICE DEPARTMENT story

Judge rules US attorney ‘unlawfully serving’

What happened
A federal judge disqualified acting California U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli from three Justice Department cases, ruling that he had been “unlawfully serving in that role” past a legal expiration date and without Senate confirmation. But U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright said Essayli could continue to serve as first assistant U.S. attorney, “effectively leaving him as the office’s top prosecutor,” said The Associated Press.

Who said what
Seabright’s ruling late Tuesday “represents another setback” for the White House’s effort to “extend handpicked acting U.S. attorneys beyond the 120-day limit set by federal law,” said the AP. Since August, other federal judges have disqualified Alina Habba in New Jersey and Sigal Chattah in Nevada, “though in both cases they stayed their orders” to allow appeals, said The Washington Post. Similar challenges are also pending against acting U.S. Attorneys Ryan Ellison in New Mexico and Lindsey Halligan in Virginia.

Seabright notably rejected calls to drop the three cases Essayli had worked on, saying in his order that they had been “lawfully signed by other attorneys for the government” without signs of “due process violations or other irregularities.” The ruling “creates leadership uncertainty in the nation’s largest judicial district,” said The New York Times, but since Essayli can remain on as first assistant, it’s “unclear what the practical effect” will be.

What next?
“Nothing is changing,” Essayli said on social media. “I’m not planning to go anywhere,” he told reporters yesterday. Under federal law, judges of the federal district court could appoint an interim U.S. attorney until a Senate-confirmed nominee is installed.

TODAY’S EUROPE Story

Dutch center-left rises in election as far-right falls

What happened
The center-left Democrats 66 party appeared to be the winner of yesterday’s national elections in the Netherlands. D66 was essentially tied with anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders’ far-right Party for Freedom (PVV), with 99% of votes tallied this morning. But since other parties have ruled out forming a coalition with Wilders, D66’s Rob Jetten is favored to become the youngest Dutch prime minister since World War II and the country’s first openly gay leader.

Who said what
D66 and PVV were each projected to win 26 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, a loss of 11 for the PVV and a gain of 17 for D66. “Wilders led his party to a stunning first-place finish in the last election in 2023,” Reuters said, but his “all-conservative coalition” partners blocked him from becoming prime minister and “he brought the government down in June over its refusal to adopt his hardline measures.”

“Millions of Dutch people today chose positive forces and a politics where we can look forward together again,”Jetten, 38, told cheering supporters last night. A victory by the “fervently pro-European” Jetten over the anti-EU populist Wilders would “surely go down as one of the best days Europe’s centrists have enjoyed in years,” Politico said.

What next?
“By excluding the PVV, it will now fall to parties in the political center to work together to get the majority needed to form a government,” The New York Times said. Jetten said he wanted to form a “stable and ambitious” government. But “building stable coalitions is tough,” Reuters said, “and talks are expected to take months.”

It’s not all bad

The HALO Trust recently removed its 300,000th land mine from northern Sri Lanka. The nonprofit began clearing land mines and unexploded bombs shortly after the country’s civil war ended in 2009. Workers have decontaminated 46 square miles of land, making it “safe and usable again,” said Good News Network. More than 280,000 displaced people have been able to go back home. The 300,000 milestone “represents lives saved and land returned to communities,” said Vithoozen Antony of HALO Sri Lanka.

Under the radar

France’s ‘red hands’ trial and Russian disruption

For the past two years, France has been rocked by acts of vandalism and destruction at religious and cultural locations in and around Paris. Decapitated pigs’ heads were left at area mosques. Provocatively labeled coffins for the “French soldiers of Ukraine” were displayed around the Eiffel Tower. And in a first-of-its-kind trial this week, four Bulgarians stand accused of defacing a Holocaust memorial with red handprints in 2024. The “red hands” case has drawn international attention due to allegations from French authorities that it and similar acts are the work of covert Russian agents hoping to sow discord in a Western power during a crucial phase of the Russo-Ukrainian war.

This week’s trial is the “very first” in a “series of legal cases” dealing with incidents in the past two years that authorities have successfully linked to “foreign interference operations,” French security researcher Clement Renault told Agence France-Presse. And it comes only months after British authorities sentenced six Bulgarians to prison for “belonging to a Russian espionage cell,” said Le Monde.

The “red hands” case is a “rare window” into an “escalating campaign” by Russia to “destabilize France through covert influence and psychological operations,” said Politico. France is a nation with “global weight but domestic vulnerabilities” that make it “especially susceptible” to interference, so it “presents both a prime target and a weak flank.” It’s the EU’s sole nuclear power and an economic powerhouse opposed to the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, said Kevin Limonier, the deputy director of Paris’ GEODE geopolitical research center, so Russia “considers France to be a serious adversary.”

On this day

October 30, 1974

Muhammad Ali defeated George Foreman in the “Rumble in the Jungle” in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Ali knocked out Foreman, the undisputed heavyweight champion, in eight rounds and introduced his famous rope-a-dope technique. The fight is considered one of the greatest events in sports history.

TODAY’S newspaperS

‘Catastrophic’ hit

“3 islands left partly crippled by hurricane,” The New York Times says on Thursday’s front page. “‘Catastrophic’ hit kills at least 27,” says the Miami Herald. “Caribbean begins work of rebuilding,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says. “With Trump’s favor, Nvidia becomes first $5 trillion firm,” The Washington Post says. “Fed cuts rates, Powell wary of more,” The Wall Street Journal says. “Rates cut to lowest level in 3 years,” but “shutdown’s data blackout complicates Fed’s task,” The Boston Globe says. Senate Republicans say “government shutdown talks have ‘picked up,’” says The Sacramento Bee. Senate Democrats slam “the ‘heartless’ Don” for “weaponizing hunger” in shutdown battles, says the New York Daily News.

► See the newspaper front pages

Tall tale

When pigs fly

A pig named Norbert set a Guinness World Record by skateboarding 32.8 feet in 11.32 seconds. The swift swine was taught how to skate on the streets of Buffalo Grove, Illinois, by his owner, Vincent Baran, using unsalted peanuts as treats during training. After a few sessions, Norbert was pushing himself down the road, and he has been scooting around ever since. Once he secured his record, Norbert was “rewarded handsomely with peanut-butter-covered bananas, peanuts and apples,” said Baran.

Morning Report was written and edited by Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Rafi Schwartz, Peter Weber and Kari Wilkin, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.