DRULAP

washington — The Federal Aviation Administration approved a license Saturday for the launch of SpaceX’s Starship 5 on Sunday after earlier saying it did not expect to make a decision until late November.

Reuters first reported this week the faster than expected timetable after the FAA in September had suggested a much longer review. 

SpaceX is targeting Sunday for the launch and said a 30-minute launch window opens at 7 a.m. CT (1200 GMT) 

The FAA said Saturday that SpaceX had “met all safety, environmental and other licensing requirements for the suborbital test flight” for the fifth test of the Starship and has also approved the Starship 6 mission profile. 

The Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket are fully reusable systems designed to carry crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon and beyond. 

The fifth test flight of the Starship/Super Heavy from Boca Chica, Texas, includes a return to the launch site of the Super Heavy booster rocket for a catch attempt by the launch tower, and a water landing of the Starship vehicle in the Indian Ocean west of Australia. 

The FAA said if SpaceX chooses an uncontrolled entry “it must communicate that decision to the FAA prior to launch, the loss of the Starship vehicle will be considered a planned event, and a mishap investigation will not be required.” 

On Friday, the FAA approved the return to flight of the SpaceX Falcon 9 vehicle after it reviewed and accepted the SpaceX-led investigation findings and corrective actions for the mishap that occurred September 28. 

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has harshly criticized the FAA, including for proposing a $633,000 fine against SpaceX over launch issues and for the delay in approving the license for Starship 5, which the company said has been ready to launch since August. Musk has called for the resignation of FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker and threatened to sue the agency. 
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london — The National Football League’s aggressive international growth plan could include holding a Super Bowl outside the United States for the first time, Commissioner Roger Goodell said on Saturday. 

Goodell has shot down the idea in the past, but he told a fan forum in London that it’s a possibility. 

“We’ve always traditionally tried to play a Super Bowl in an NFL city — that was always sort of a reward for the cities that have NFL franchises,” he said in response to a question about moving the neutral-site game internationally. “But things change. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if that happens one day.” 

Goodell floated the idea as he outlined a plan that could include playing 16 international games every year if the regular season expands to 18 games. 

He added that he has “no doubt” that Ireland will host a game soon. He named Rio de Janeiro as a likely new host and said the Jacksonville Jaguars are considering increasing the number of games they play in London during their stadium renovations at home. 

This season’s Super Bowl — the 59th edition — will be played in New Orleans. In 2026, Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, will host, followed by SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, in 2027. Kansas City’s 25-22 overtime victory over San Francisco in the last Super Bowl was the most-watched program in U.S. television history. 

Team owners already have authorized up to eight international games, but Goodell said they could double that number — creating a scenario where all 32 teams could play an international game each year. 

The key is expanding the regular season by one game and reducing the number of preseason games to two. 

“If we do expand our season — our regular season — to an 18-and-two structure, I see us going to 16 of those games being in international markets,” Goodell said. 

He added that the plan could include a second bye week in the schedule. 

“A lot of that depends on — can we continue to make the game safer, can we continue to modify the way we conduct the offseason as well as the training camp and as well as the season, so that these guys feel comfortable being able to play that period of time,” Goodell said. 

Under that scenario, he said, the season would start around Labor Day and conclude around Presidents Day — the third Monday of February. 

Moving to an 18th game is seen as inevitable. The players union has indicated it is open to an agreement before the current labor deal expires after the 2030 season. 

There are five international games this season, and Goodell said the league wants to increase to eight “quickly.” 

Dublin has been seen as the next likely host — after Madrid gets its first game in 2025. 

“I have no doubt that we’re going to be playing in Ireland. I don’t know if it will be next year, but it’s coming soon,” Goodell said at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. 

He cited Rio de Janeiro as the possible host of the next Brazil game — Sao Paulo staged one this season. 

London, which could get a night game at some point, has hosted regular-season games since 2007 and Germany since 2022. 

“We’re looking at other markets in the other direction, toward Asia,” he said. “There’s probably more interest than we can handle.” 

Kickoff update 

Goodell expects some offseason tweaks to the new kickoff rules but on the whole said “it’s working.” 

The new rules have made kickoffs relevant again, he said, and the early data on injuries is promising. 

Just over 30% of kickoffs have been returned this season compared with 20% last season, he said. 

“With that increase in returns, it’s giving us more data to determine whether we can do it more safely. It actually is incredibly promising. We’re seeing lower impacts that have led to less severe injuries and less number of injuries. So, I think it’s working,” Goodell said. 

On average, kickoffs drives are starting just past the 29-yard line, compared with just past the 24 previously, he said. 

“I think what we’ll see ultimately is a change in the offseason,” Goodell said. “Once we know it’s a safer play, it will encourage more kickoffs. That could happen in a couple of ways. You could move the kickoff line back, so that they can’t kick it out as easily. You could also say the penalty for kicking it out is going to go to the 35 instead of where we’re at, the 30.” 

He said the “great thing” about the new system is “one little crease develops and that guy is gone. That’s what I’m looking for is that long kickoff return to return to the game. I think we had four or five last year. We’re already at that number at Week 6. That’s pretty good.” 
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WASHINGTON — U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and “possesses the physical and mental resiliency” required to serve as president, her doctor said in a letter released Saturday that summarizes her medical history and status.

Dr. Joshua Simmons, a U.S. Army colonel and physician to the vice president, wrote that Harris, 59, maintains a healthy, active lifestyle and that her most recent physical, in April, was “unremarkable.”

She “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief,” he wrote in a two-page letter.

Harris’ campaign hopes to use the moment to draw a contrast with Republican Donald Trump, who has released only limited information about his health over the years, and raise questions about his fitness to serve, according to a campaign aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Trump has released very little health information, including after his ear was grazed by a bullet during an assassination attempt in July.

Simmons, who said he has been Harris’ primary care physician for the past 3½ years, said the vice president has a history of allergies and urticaria, also known as hives, for which she has been on allergen immunotherapy for the past three years.

Simmons said Harris’ latest blood work and other test results were “unremarkable.”

Also in the report: Harris wears contact lenses for mild nearsightedness; her family history includes maternal colon cancer; she is up to date on preventive care recommendations, including having a colonoscopy and annual mammograms.

As Harris’ office released the medical report, her campaign highlighted recent media reports raising questions about Trump’s health and mental acuity and his failure to provide information about health status and medical history.

Trump, 78, eagerly questioned President Joe Biden’s health when the 81-year-old president was seeking reelection. Since Biden was replaced on the ticket with Harris, Trump’s own health has drawn more attention.

Last November, Trump marked Biden’s birthday by releasing a letter from his physician that reported the former president was in “excellent” physical and mental health.

The letter, posted on Trump’s social media platform, contained no details to support its claims — measures such as weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels, or the results of any test.
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BEIRUT — A series of U.S. airstrikes targeted several camps run by the Islamic State group in Syria in an operation the U.S. military said will disrupt the extremists from conducting attacks in the region and beyond.

The U.S. Central Command said the airstrikes were conducted Friday, without specifying in which parts of Syria. About 900 U.S. troops have been deployed in eastern Syria alongside the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that were instrumental in the fight against IS militants.

Despite their defeat, attacks by IS sleeper cells in Iraq and Syria have been on the rise over the past years, with scores of people killed or wounded.

The Islamic State group seized territory at the height of its power and declared a caliphate in large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014 but was defeated in Iraq in 2017. In March 2019, the extremists lost the last sliver of land they once controlled in eastern Syria.

The U.S. military said the strikes will disrupt the ability of the Islamic State group to plan, organize and conduct attacks against the United States, its allies and partners, as well as civilians throughout the region and beyond.

It said battle damage assessments were underway and there were no civilian casualties.

Last month, Iraq’s military said that Iraqi forces and American troops killed a senior IS commander who was wanted by the United States, as well as several other prominent militants.

At its peak, the group ruled an area half the size of the United Kingdom where it enforced its extreme interpretation of Islam, which included attacks on religious minority groups and harsh punishment of Muslims deemed to be apostates.
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chicago — With a neon-green net in hand, Annette Prince briskly walks a downtown Chicago plaza at dawn, looking left and right as she goes.

It’s not long before she spots a tiny yellow bird sitting on the concrete. It doesn’t fly away, and she quickly nets the bird, gently places it inside a paper bag and labels the bag with the date, time and place.

“This is a Nashville warbler,” said Prince, director of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, noting that the bird must have flown into a glass window pane of an adjacent building. “He must only weigh about two pennies. He’s squinting his eyes because his head hurts.”

For rescue groups like the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, this scene plays out hundreds of times each spring and fall after migrating birds fly into homes, small buildings and sometimes Chicago’s skyscrapers and other hulking buildings.

A stark sign of the risks came last fall, when 1,000 migrating birds died on a single night after flying into the glass exterior of the city’s lakefront convention center, McCormick Place. This fall, the facility unveiled new bird-safe window film on one of its glass buildings along the Lake Michigan shore.

The $1.2 million project installed tiny dots on the exterior of the Lakeside Center building, adorning enough glass to cover two football fields.

Doug Stotz, senior conservation ecologist at the nearby Field Museum, hopes the project will be a success. He estimated that just 20 birds have died after flying into the convention’s center’s glass exterior so far this fall, a hopeful sign.

“We don’t have a lot of data since this just started this fall, but at this point, it looks like it’s made a huge difference,” Stotz said.

But for the birds that collide with Chicago buildings, there is a network of people waiting to help. They also are aiming to educate officials and find solutions to improve building design, lighting and other factors in the massive number of bird collision deaths in Chicago and worldwide.

Prince said she and other volunteers walk the streets downtown to document what they can of the birds that are killed and injured.

“We have the combination of the millions of birds that pass through this area because it’s a major migratory path through the United States, on top of the amount of artificial lighting that we put out at night, which is when these birds are traveling and getting confused and attracted to the amount of glass,” Prince said.

Dead birds are often saved for scientific use, including by Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. Rescued birds are taken to local wildlife rehabilitation centers to recover, such as the DuPage Wildlife Conservation Center in suburban Illinois.

On a recent morning, veterinarian Darcy Stephenson at DuPage gave a yellow-bellied sapsucker anesthetic gas before taping its wings open for an X-ray. The bird arrived with a note from a rescue group: “Window collision.”

Examining the results, she found the bird had a broken ulna — a bone in the wing.

The center takes in about 10,000 species of animals annually and 65% of them are avian. Many are victims of window collisions and during peak migration in the fall, several hundred birds can show up in one day.

“The large chunk of these birds do actually survive and make it back into the wild once we’re able to treat them,” said Sarah Reich, head veterinarian at DuPage. “Fractures heal very, very quickly in these guys for shoulder fractures. Soft tissue trauma generally heals pretty well. The challenging cases are going to be the ones where the trauma isn’t as apparent.”

Injured birds go through a process of flight testing, then get a full physical exam by the veterinary staff and are rehabilitated before being set free.

“It’s exciting to be able to get these guys back out into the wild, especially some of those cases that we’re kind of cautiously optimistic about or maybe have an injury that we’ve never treated successfully before,” Reich said, adding that these are the cases “clinic staff get really, really excited about.”
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new orleans, louisiana — Louisiana’s Cajun and Creole heritage takes center stage this weekend when the Festivals Acadiens et Creoles marks a half-century of honoring and celebrating the culture through music, arts, food and community. 

What started as a one day concert in 1974 to entertain 150 French-speaking journalists gathered in Lafayette — considered the heart of Cajun country — has grown into a three-day event and possibly one of the largest Cajun and Zydeco festivals in the world, organizers said. And, they note, the entire event is free. 

Barry Jean Ancelet, one of the event’s organizers, said when the idea formed 50 years ago, nobody knew if anyone would even come to hear the music. 

“Cajun music at that time was largely considered ‘old people’s music,'” he said. “You’ve got to remember, we were in the throes of Rock ‘n’ Roll at the time. The people here loved it when they encountered it in dance halls, but this concert was designed to call attention to the music in a different way, to point out its value. They had to sit — not dance — and pay attention. And they ended up hearing it in a different way. It was so successful. We ended up turning it into an annual event where we could call positive attention to this important asset and get people to consider it.” 

The festival, now held annually in Lafayette’s Girard Park, brings together multi-generations of musicians and artists who annually fight to preserve a culture that continues to evolve. 

“We’ve always been about celebrating the past and handing it off to the future,” Ancelet said. “If you value and respect evolution, the culture will produce things that will continue to surprise you. It all comes out in the wash. What’s good will last and what’s not, won’t.” 

Festival co-founder Pat Mould said the festival is a “self-celebration of who we are, how we live, what we eat, the music and how we speak.” 

“If you know nothing and want to learn about the culture, this one weekend out of the year allows you to find out everything. Everything you want to know is represented at the festival. It’s a quick study of Cajun and Creole living,” he said. 

Event features homegrown talent

On tap musically for the Friday through Sunday event are performances by 60 musicians — all homegrown talent — including Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, Wayne Toups, CJ Chenier, Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas, Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band, The Revelers, Beausoleil avec Michael Doucet and The Lost Bayou Ramblers. 

On Friday, contemporary artists will pay tribute to the 1974 concert house band that included Zydeco pioneer Clifton Chenier, Cajun accordion maker Marc Savoy, the Balfa Brothers, a Cajun music ensemble of five brothers, Cajun accordion players Nathan Abshire and Blackie Forrester, and Jimmy C. Newman, a country music and Cajun singer-songwriter and long-time star of the Grand Ole Opry. 

“Get ready for Louisiana pure fun,” said Carrier, who’s scheduled to perform with his band on Sunday. “Get ready to eat some really good food and have the time of your life.” 

“People all over the word have these dates circled on their calendar,” he continued. “It’s an event that helps the younger generations continue the traditions. I’m a third generation Zydeco musician. This is a family oriented festival that brings people together of all ages.” 

A ‘celebration of everything Cajun’

Riley, who’s been performing at this festival since 1988, said he keeps returning for several reasons but especially because it helps preserve the culture. 

“It’s important to see us on stage, singing and speaking in French. That has an effect on people who come to see us and helps them fall in love with the culture,” he said. 

“There are a lot of events leading up to the weekend that focuses on the importance of the language, the culture, the food and, of course, the music. There’s none other that celebrates it like this one. I think it’s the biggest complete celebration of everything Cajun. It’s also inclusive of different generations, bands with lineage. That’s key,” he said. 

Riley, now 55, said he’s very proud that his three children play music. 

“It’s a beautiful thing for my family and others like mine,” he said. “Having your kids play with you is awesome. Most kids don’t want to have anything to do with what their parents do. Mine think what I do is fun and it is.” 

Riley said when he first started there weren’t too many young bands playing Cajun music. 

“There was real fear that the music would die off and dissipate like the language,” he said. “The opposite has happened. More young folks are preserving and playing this music than ever. The Zydeco scene down here is packed with young people. It’s super vibrant and alive. The same with the Cajun scene as well.” 
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LITHIA, Florida — Florida residents slogged through flooded streets, gathered up scattered debris and assessed damage to their homes on Friday after Hurricane Milton smashed through coastal communities and spawned a barrage of deadly tornadoes.

At least 10 people were dead, and rescuers were still saving people from swollen rivers, but many expressed relief that Milton wasn’t worse. The hurricane spared densely populated Tampa a direct hit, and the lethal storm surge that scientists feared never materialized.

Gov. Ron DeSantis warned people to not let down their guard, however, citing ongoing safety threats including downed power lines and standing water that could hide dangerous objects.

“We’re now in the period where you have fatalities that are preventable,” DeSantis said. “You have to make the proper decisions and know that there are hazards out there.”

As of Friday night, the number of customers in Florida still without power had dropped to 1.9 million, according to poweroutage.us. St. Petersburg’s 260,000 residents were told to boil water before drinking, cooking or brushing their teeth, until at least Monday.

Also Friday, the owner of a major phosphate mine disclosed that pollution spilled into Tampa Bay during the hurricane.

The Mosaic Company said in a statement that heavy rains from the storm overwhelmed a collection system at its Riverview site, pushing excess water out of a manhole and into discharges that lead to the bay. The company said the leak was fixed Thursday.

Mosaic said the spill likely exceeded a 66,245-liter minimum reporting standard, though it did not provide a figure for what the total volume might have been.

Calls and emails to Mosaic seeking additional information about Riverview and the company’s other Florida mines received no response, as did a voicemail left with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

The state has 25 such stacks containing more than 1 billion tons of phosphogypsum, a solid waste byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer mining industry that contains radium, which decays to form radon gas. Both radium and radon are radioactive and can cause cancer. Phosphogypsum may also contain toxic heavy metals and other carcinogens, such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and nickel.

Florida’s vital tourism industry has started to return to normal, meanwhile, as Walt Disney World and other theme parks reopened. The state’s busiest airport, in Orlando, resumed full operations Friday.

Arriving just two weeks after the devastating Hurricane Helene, Milton flooded barrier islands, tore the roof off the Tampa Bay Rays ‘ baseball stadium and toppled a construction crane.

Crews from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office on Friday were assisting with rescues of people, including a 92-year-old woman, who were stranded in rising waters along the Alafia River. The river is 40 kilometers long and runs from eastern Hillsborough County, east of Tampa, into Tampa Bay.

In Pinellas County, deputies used high-water vehicles to shuttle people back and forth to their homes in a flooded Palm Harbor neighborhood where waters continued to rise.

Ashley Cabrera left with her 18- and 11-year-old sons and their three dogs, Eeyore, Poe and Molly. It was the first time since Milton struck that they had been able to leave the neighborhood, and they were now headed to a hotel in Orlando.

“I’m extremely thankful that we could get out now and go for the weekend somewhere we can get a hot meal and some gas,” Cabrera said. “I thought we’d be able to get out as soon as the storm was over. These roads have never flooded like this in all the years that I’ve lived here.”

Animals were being saved, too. Cindy Evers helped rescue a large pig stuck in high water at a strip mall in Lithia, east of Tampa. She had already rescued a donkey and several goats after the storm.

“I’m high and dry where I’m at, and I have a barn and 9 acres (3.6 hectares),” Evers said, adding that she will soon start to work to find the animals’ owners.

In the Gulf Coast city of Venice, Milton left behind dozens of centimeters of sand in some beachfront condos, with one unit nearly filled. A swimming pool was packed full of sand, with only its handrails poking out.

Some warnings were heeded and lessons learned. When 2.4 meters of seawater flooded Punta Gorda during Hurricane Helene last month, 121 people had to be rescued, Mayor Lynne Matthews said. Milton brought at least 1.5 meters of flooding, but rescuers only had to save three people.

“So people listened to the evacuation order,” Matthews said.

Heaps of fruit were scattered across the ground and trees toppled over after both Milton and Hurricane Helene swept through Polk County and other orange-growing regions, Matt Joyner of trade group Florida Citrus Mutual said Friday.

Milton arrived at the start of the orange growing season, so it is still too early to evaluate the full scope of the damage.

Florida has already seen orange production diminish over the years, with the industry still recovering from hurricanes of years past while also waging an ongoing battle against a deadly greening disease. Milton could be the knockout punch for some growers, Joyce said.

In the western coastal city of Clearwater, Kelvin Glenn said it took less than an hour early Thursday for water to rise to his waist inside his apartment. He and seven children, ranging in age from 3 to 16, were trapped in the brown, foul floodwaters for about three hours before an upstairs neighbor opened their home to them.

Later that day, first responders arrived in boats to ferry them away from the building.

“Sitting in that cold, nasty water was kind of bad,” Glenn said.

Short-term survival is now turning into long-term worries. A hotel is $160 a night. Everything inside Glenn’s apartment is gone. And it can take time to get assistance.

“I ain’t going to say we’re homeless,” Glenn said. “But we’ve got to start all over again.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has enough money to deal with the immediate needs of people impacted by Helene and Milton but will need additional funding at some point, FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell said Friday.

The disaster assistance fund helps pay for the swift response to hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and other disasters. Congress recently replenished the fund with $20 billion — the same amount as last year.
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STOCKHOLM — Meta Platforms said on Friday that it had removed a network of group accounts targeting Russian speakers in Moldova ahead of the country’s October 20 election, for violation of the company’s policy on fake accounts.

Authorities in Moldova, an ex-Soviet state lying between Romania and Ukraine, said they had blocked dozens of Telegram channels and chat bots linked to a drive to pay voters to cast “no” ballots in a referendum on European Union membership held alongside the presidential election.

Pro-European President Maia Sandu is seeking a second term in the election and called the referendum on joining the 27-member bloc as the cornerstone of her policies.

The fake Meta accounts posted criticism of Sandu, pro-EU politicians and close ties between Moldova and Romania, and supported pro-Russia parties in Moldova, the company said.

The company said its operation centered on about a dozen fictitious, Russian-language news brands posing as independent entities with presence on multiple internet services, including Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram, as well as Telegram, OK.ru and TikTok.

Meta said it removed seven Facebook accounts, 23 pages, one group and 20 accounts on Instagram for violating its “coordinated inauthentic behavior policy.”

About 4,200 accounts followed one or more of the 23 pages and about 335,000 accounts followed one or more of the Instagram accounts, Meta said.

In Chisinau, the National Investigation Inspectorate said it had blocked 15 channels of the popular Telegram messaging app and 95 chat bots offering voters money. Users were told the channels “violated local laws” on political party financing.

It had traced the accounts to supporters of fugitive businessman Ilan Shor — members of the banned party bearing his name or the “Victory” electoral bloc he had set up in its place from his base of exile in Moscow.

Moldovan police said on Thursday that they searched homes of leaders linked to Shor as part of a criminal investigation into election-meddling. Police have said tens of thousands of voters were paid off via accounts in a Russian bank to derail the vote.

Shor was sentenced to 15 years in jail in absentia last year in connection with the 2014 disappearance of $1 billion from Moldovan banks. He denies allegations of trying to bribe voters.

Sandu accuses Moscow of trying to topple her government while Moscow has accused her of fomenting “Russophobia.”
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washington — The U.S. Department of Justice said Friday that it had sued the state of Virginia for violating the federal prohibition on systematic efforts to remove voters within 90 days of an election.

On August 7, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order requiring the commissioner of the Department of Elections to certify that the department was conducting “daily updates to the voter list” to remove, among other groups, people who are unable to verify that they are citizens to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

U.S. citizens who were identified and notified and did not affirm their citizenship within 14 days would be removed from the list of registered voters, the Justice Department said. It said this practice has led to citizens having their voter registrations canceled ahead of the November 5 election.

“By canceling voter registrations within 90 days of Election Day, Virginia places qualified voters in jeopardy of being removed from the rolls and creates the risk of confusion for the electorate,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke.

“Congress adopted the National Voter Registration Act’s quiet period restriction to prevent error-prone, eleventh-hour efforts that all too often disenfranchise qualified voters,” Clarke added.

The department said it was seeking injunctive relief that would restore the ability of affected eligible voters to cast their votes unimpeded on Election Day and would prohibit future violations.

Youngkin called the move politically motivated and an attempt to interfere in the election.

“With the support of our attorney general, we will defend these common sense steps that we are legally required to take with every resource available to us,” he said in a statement on Friday.

Republicans across the U.S. have pushed against noncitizen voting, which is already illegal, ahead of the November election. Some election officials have warned that the move could penalize eligible voters.
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