Evening Update: DOJ sues California over suspected noncitizen voters; Ukraine short of Patriot interceptors; cities ask Court to restore Biden deportation pause
Also: federal task forces log 1,296 Tren de Aragua arrests; Iran's IRGC threatens U.S. warships in Hormuz; Trump cancels a livestream of Nidal Hasan's planned execution.
5 PM CT video brief · 1:57Presenter voice and image generated with AI tools.Read transcript
I'm Nora Vale with your Evening Update for Thursday, October 15. DOJ sues California over more than 20,000 suspected noncitizens on voter rolls. Ukraine nearly out of Patriot interceptors; Russia ballistic strikes get through. IRGC threatens U.S. warships; CENTCOM says America and partners control Hormuz. Task forces log 1,296 Tren de Aragua arrests; nearly 350 charged. Cities ask Supreme Court to pause deal ending Biden deportation-pause rule. In national weather, from the National Weather Service: There is a Slight Risk (level 2 of 5) of severe thunderstorms over parts of the Mid-Atlantic on Friday. Thunderstorms capable of severe wind gusts and a tornado or two are possible today across parts of the middle Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, a level 2 of 5 severe storm risk. Our opinion. Clean rolls; stand firm in Hormuz; speed Patriots; keep deportation cases moving. Full stories and sources are at WorldBriefNow.com. I'm Nora Vale. Thanks for watching.
Ukraine has nearly depleted its stock of interceptors for U.S.-made Patriot air defenses just as Russia increases ballistic missile attacks, the New York Post reported Thursday, citing a CNN source who said "almost all the ballistic missiles from the last strike were not intercepted due to lack of the (interceptor) missiles." That strike hit a Ukrainian power plant and killed four people in Kyiv despite President Trump's announced energy ceasefire. Zelenskyy has publicly sought licenses to manufacture Patriot interceptors in Ukraine and said last month that Trump had green-lit them, but the Post, citing CNN, said the license deal does not appear to have come through; the United Kingdom is sending additional Storm Shadow cruise missiles, Bloomberg reported.
Islamic Revolutionary Guard chief Ali Ozmaei said Iran is "impatient to sink American warships" and told Americans that if they "think the Strait of Hormuz is open, let them come closer," CNBC reported Thursday, while U.S. Central Command said American forces and regional partners "clearly control" the waterway. The Singapore-registered GFS Pride sank after being struck in the strait, with all crew evacuated and no injuries, and Singapore's Maritime and Port Authority called the attacks "unprovoked, unjustifiable and a breach of international law"; a second Singapore-registered vessel, the GFS Giselle, was also struck, sustained hull damage, reached safe anchorage, and reported no crew injuries. Separately, U.S. consumer prices rose 3.7% in September from a year earlier, with the energy index up 5.2%, and AAA put gasoline at about $4.33 a gallon Thursday, up from about $3.08 a year earlier, CNBC reported.
The Trump administration sued California on Thursday after the state failed to review a federal list of more than 20,000 suspected noncitizens allegedly registered to vote ahead of next month's midterms, the New York Post reported. Los Angeles First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said California election officials "were given an opportunity to remove noncitizens from their voter rolls and to sequester ballots returned from suspected ineligible voters" and "refused," adding, "We are taking California to federal court to demand that the votes of American citizens not be diluted by noncitizens." Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter had given Secretary of State Shirley Weber and L.A. County Clerk Dean Logan 48 hours to review the list; Logan said his office received a password-protected thumb drive and was working with state officials on how to proceed, while Gov. Gavin Newsom called the suit a "desperate attempt" to suppress California voters.
Homeland Security Task Force data released to the Washington Examiner show federal law enforcement arrested 1,296 Tren de Aragua gang members between Jan. 20, 2025, and Oct. 8, 2026, and charged nearly 350 members and associates with federal crimes, the White House highlighted Thursday. The White House, Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice launched the task forces in 2025 to find and remove criminal rings and designated terrorist organizations embedded in U.S. communities, with particular focus on the Venezuelan gang whose members entered during the Biden-era border surge. White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis called it the largest federal campaign against transnational crime in U.S. history and linked it to falling violent crime since 2025; the State Department designated Tren de Aragua a foreign terrorist organization in February 2025.
President Trump said Nidal Hasan will still be executed by firing squad on Dec. 3, 2026, but the event will not be livestreamed to the public after survivors and others objected, Fox News reported Thursday; immediate families of the victims may still witness it in person. Trump wrote on Truth Social that streaming "might have been a strong deterrent" but that "many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die," overruling an earlier plan announced by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. Fort Hood survivor Alonzo Lunsford, shot seven times in the 2009 attack that killed 13, told Fox News Digital the decision proves "we're not barbaric" and warned footage could become propaganda for ISIS or al-Qaeda; survivor Julia Wilson said she was "ecstatic" the livestream was dropped.
Baltimore, New Haven, Columbus and an immigrant legal-services group asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to pause a consent judgment between Texas and the Justice Department that voided a 2024 Biden-era "administrative closure" rule letting immigration judges suspend some deportation cases, SCOTUSblog's Amy Howe reported. After Texas sued in Judge Reed O'Connor's court, DOJ quickly agreed the rule should be set aside; O'Connor entered a final consent judgment tossing the rule and barred a similar one, then denied the cities' attempt to intervene for lack of standing, and the Fifth Circuit refused to block the judgment while their appeal continues. The challengers call the consent judgment "egregious collusion"; a stay would temporarily restore the rule during the appeal. This is an emergency application (City of Baltimore v. Texas), not a final ruling on the merits.
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