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CNN Headlines: Trump Unleashes Attacks On Michigan Candidate Abdul El-Sayed; Federal Judges Challenge DOJ's Role In California Vote Count; Thousands Of NFL Fans Turn Out In Paris Despite Fears Of Protest Disruptions. Aired 5:30-6a ET
Aired October 26, 2026 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[05:30:37]
BRAD SMITH, CNN ANCHOR: It is half past the hour. Let's hit the refresh button on our top stories.
Investigators in a small Oregon town are trying to figure out what sparked a massive fire that threatened to become a hazmat situation. Flames broke out Sunday. This was inside Pacific Seafood in Newport, and everyone in a one-mile radius were evacuated due to the smoke containing ammonia. But officials later said that the tanks at the plant had been stabilized and those evacuations were scaled back, and all employees have been accounted for. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
A federal appeals court is questioning the Trump administration's attempt to intervene in California's midterm vote count. The Justice Department is seeking an emergency court order to force the state to set aside ballots that were cast by suspected noncitizens. The court says it will rule on the Justice Department's request as quickly as possible. We'll have more on the hearing in just a couple of minutes.
And President Trump is in Mississippi today, the next stop on his midterm campaign blitz. Yesterday was a rally in Michigan, and he's consistently urging voters to pretend that he is on the ballot and raising the specter of rigged elections.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We got to be careful with the cheating vote counters, though. That's one thing I got to tell you, please. Will you please watch it, fellas? Especially with Benson, you got to watch it. Bad things happen with the vote counters, so we got to be careful.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SMITH: So that reference was to Michigan's Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson who is running for governor. To be clear, there is no evidence of voter counters altering election results.
Elsewhere in Michigan, President Barack Obama was campaigning for Democrats, including Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, (D) FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: After 10 years of chaos and cruelty and corruption, and incompetence --
RALLYGOERS: Yes!
OBAMA: -- tomfoolery --
RALLYGOERS: Yes!
OBAMA: -- nonsense --
RALLYGOERS: Yes!
OBAMA -- the likes of which this country has not seen in modern times, at least, you get to say enough is enough. We're voting for change right here in Michigan.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SMITH: CNN's Arlette Saenz has more in the details from both parties' efforts to win the battleground state of Michigan.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: President Donald Trump escalated his attacks against Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul EL-Sayed, trying to paint him as an extremist. The president's comments came as he campaigned for Republican candidates, including El-Sayed's Republican opponent Mike Rogers in Port Huron on Sunday. It comes as El-Sayed's Muslim faith has been at the center of political attacks in this hotly contested Michigan Senate race.
And El-Saed also pushed back on the president himself. Take a bit of a listen to what the two men had to say.
TRUMP: I'm here to keep a jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator, and that's the fact. We're not going to let that happen.
ABDUL EL-SAYED, (D) MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE: I don't care how he pronounces my name. I don't even care that he remembers my whole name because he can just go on and call me senator after November. That'll be Senator Muhammad to you, bro.
SAENZ: The Muslim Brotherhood has emerged as a flashpoint in this Senate race. Republicans have repeatedly attempted to tie El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood, though El-Sayed himself has denounced the group.
It comes as this is one of the most contentious and closely watched Senate battles this cycle. El-Sayed is still trying to win over support from Black voters. He had president -- former President Barack Obama campaign with him to help with that on Saturday. He is also facing skepticism from some Jewish Democrats who are uneasy with his campaign.
But Rogers is also facing challenges of his own, including President Donald Trump. The president's approval rating in the state is low, and this is also a state that has been grappling with the economic fallout of the war with Iran with high gas prices as well as President Trump's trade war with Canada.
Now Michigan is crucial in both parties' quest to try to claim the Senate majority in November. This is a must-win state for Democrats. They need to hold on to this blue seat or else it would complicate their path to the Senate majority. It would require them to win in even more Republican held seats, at least five. So both parties right now are making an all-out push to try to win this Senate seat over the next coming week.
[05:35:12]
Arlette Saenz, CNN, Detroit.
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SMITH: Thank you, Arlette.
Democrats are already planning what to do if they take control of the House after the midterms. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries could potentially take Mike Johnson's spot as speaker. He told CNN's Manu Raju his party is ready to force Republicans to pay for the alleged wrongs to the American people.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): We've seen unprecedented corruption unleashed on the American people. So we've made clear to folks out there, listen, if you are stealing from the American people, screwing over the American people, or shortchanging the American people, beginning on day one in the new Congress, we're going to hold the crooks accountable. We've said it, and we mean it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SMITH: Meanwhile, Democrats are rallying in Texas, where a tight race is heating up, and it's raising hopes of securing a coveted seat in the U.S. Senate. CNN's Ed Lavandera has more from the Rio Grande Valley.
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ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The top Democratic candidates running for governor and the U.S. Senate headlined a "Get Out the Vote" rally here in the Rio Grande Valley Sunday night. This was a huge rally. Several thousand people turning out to see Democratic candidate James Talarico, as well as gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa, as well as the congressional candidate Tejano singer turned congressional candidate Bobby Pulido.
These candidates really kind of hammered away at some of the issues that really seems to have resonated with this crowd -- immigration reform, the economy, as well as political corruption, really pointing the finger at of the candidates. At Elon Musk who has donated tens of millions of dollars to Republican candidates in this race.
But the candidates -- the Democratic candidates in this race know that if they have any chance of winning statewide in this state it really comes down to -- in many ways to what happens here in the Rio Grande Valley. Two years ago, in the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump did the unthinkable. He won all four major counties in this state. That hadn't been seen in as long as anyone here could remember.
So Democrats know they have to turn the tide here dramatically. And this is what those candidates are telling voters here in the final days of this campaign.
JAMES TALARICO, (D) TEXAS SENATE CANDIDATE: This is the rot at the core of our broken system. It's why so many Texans can't get ahead no matter how hard they work. It's why we can't afford the basics in this economy -- gas, groceries, utilities, healthcare -- because the system has been rigged by crooked politicians just like Ken Paxton.
GINA HINOJOSA, (D) TEXAS GOVERNOR CANDIDATE: We are in the fight of our lives, a fight we cannot afford to lose. It is the one fight. (Speaking foreign language) -- the one fight. Who does Texas belong to? Is this going to be a Texas that is by and for the people or is this the billionaire's world and we just live here?
LAVANDERA: Now there is one week left of early voting and that leads up to Election Day. So far, the turnout in the early -- in the first week of early voting has been up quite a bit since the last midterm four years ago. It hasn't quite reached presidential year levels, but there are still five days of early voting left and Election Day voting as well. But what is interesting, though, is that many people at this rally asked this crowd if they had already voted. The vast majority of people here already said they had voted.
So the question is, will this increase in the number of voters who have come out so far continue to go up, or are we seeing just people voting early? And that is why many of these candidates continue to hammer home the idea that they need to continue getting people out to the polls here in the final days of this midterm campaign.
Ed Lavandera, CNN, Weslaco, Texas.
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SMITH: All right. Thank you, Ed.
Turning back to that rare Sunday hearing in the Justice Department's lawsuit against California regarding how the state counts its votes. A three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard emergency arguments Sunday afternoon after the Justice Department ordered California election officials to identify suspected non- citizens on voter rolls and set aside more than 20,000 mail-in ballots. The judges seemed skeptical of what the Justice Department wanted California to do. Jessica Dean spoke with CNN political reporter Jeremy Herb about what
happened in the hearing.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEREMY HERB, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: Just two of the three judges today -- they really appeared ready to reject this lawsuit from the Justice Department that's seeking to have California set aside these 20,000 mail-in ballots from these alleged non-citizens. I think it's important to take a step back and how do we get here to this very extraordinary Sunday hearing.
[05:40:00]
Earlier this month, this started because the Justice Department sent Los Angeles County and the California Secretary of State a thumb drive containing the list of these 20,000 voters. This is as voting was already underway. When California responded by saying they couldn't do anything with this, the Justice Department -- they filed suit in district court.
After that the Justice Department just felt that court wasn't moving fast enough. They appealed to the appeals court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is how we ended up at today's hearing, basically asking to skip over the district court because it wasn't moving fast enough.
The justices of the -- two of the three judges today, they really did appear skeptical on multiple fronts. First was just the jurisdictional issue of why they should skip the district court, but they also raised questions about the constitutional arguments the Justice Department was making, saying that there's no reason that California should have to super -- should have to succeed its laws when the Constitution gives the -- gives elections -- the primarily the responsibility of elections to the states.
At the same time there's a lot of pointed questions that the judges made to the Justice Department about how they came up with this list of 20,000 voters. They wanted to know whether this really was a reliable list. And California's attorneys -- they questioned that in other states where we've seen these similar lists the big 10 numbers of tens of thousands of alleged noncitizen voters -- that's been really whittled down. And the Justice Department attorney struggled to give proper details on exactly how it was that they came up with this list of 20,000 voters, Jess.
JESSICA DEAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yeah, that -- and that seemed like a real question, and nobody could quite directly answer where that list even really came from.
Jeremy, underscoring here when we might know a decision on this, what's the timeline look like?
HERB: Yeah, we could find out very soon that -- one of the judges said that they wanted to get a ruling done as soon as possible. The district court -- it still has a hearing scheduled for Tuesday. So it sounded like the judges were going to try to get something together before Tuesday because one of the things they could do is send this back to the district court.
It's also worth noting this is only one of the cases the Justice Department is putting forward right now. Last week, we saw them file a suit over Alaska's election and having two Dan Sullivans on the ballot.
So I think it's safe to say, Jess, that we are going to be seeing a lot of action from DOJ related to elections in this week or so plus before Election Day.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SMITH: Police are searching for suspects after a shooting near the football stadium at Florida A&M University Saturday night. Officials say six minors are among the 11 people who were shot. A victim's grandmother was also hurt while fleeing the scene. The shooting happened just hours after a homecoming football game, but it's not clear if the attack was connected to the game. Police are investigating. We'll keep you apprised of any updates there.
Next on CNN HEADLINE EXPRESS, a U.S. Marine indicted in Japan on suspicion of murdering and robbing a woman. The latest on that case.
And a recall alert. Some of the medicines that you may be giving your pets are being recalled. We've got the details you need to know coming up on CNN HEADLINE EXPRESS.
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[05:47:22]
SMITH: The Archdiocese of New York has reached a proposed settlement with people who say that they were sexually abused by clergy members and lay leaders. Now, proposed agreements here would have the church pay more than $800 million to settle claims brought by 1,300 people. Archbishop Ronald Hicks confirmed a settlement had been reached over the weekend and would become final when all parties signed. That is expected to happen next month, and the settlement will also require the archdiocese to publish the names of the abusers and keep that list current.
Let's go around the globe to see what else is making headlines today.
We begin in Japan. That's where prosecutors have indicted an American Marine for allegedly murdering and robbing a woman earlier this month in Okinawa. Twenty-year-old Devin Jacob Ballard is accused of killing a 39-year-old woman at a hotel, according to NHK. Authorities say that he strangled her with a phone cord, then took off with her wallet. Police arrested Ballard less than 24 hours after the woman was found. Okinawa police previously told CNN Ballard denied the charges, but prosecutors have not commented.
Saudi Arabia's main airport is partially back open two weeks after a deadly attack claimed by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis. Riyadh's airport resumed operations at its key terminals on Sunday. The decision comes as the kingdom says it's still intercepting Houthi missile and drone attacks. The rebel group has vowed to continue strikes on the airport, which it claims is a military target.
Eighty-year-old Lula da Silva beat his right-wing challenger and Trump ally, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of convicted former President Jair Bolsonaro. Opinion polls leading up to Sunday's runoff had the race neck-and-neck, but after the votes were tallied, Lula da Silva had secured 51.8 percent of the vote, while Bolsonaro received just over 48 percent. And as Lula da Silva claimed victory, Bolsonaro rejected the results.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado is home after nearly a year in exile. Her advisers say that she tried seven times to return without success. She left more than 10 months ago to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. She later gave her medal to President Trump. Trump said that he did not know about her return but hoped that she was safe.
[05:50:00]
Well, the NFL drew thousands of fans to Paris Sunday. This is despite concerns that mass protests could disrupt the game. The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the New Orleans Saints 16-10 at the Stade de France. The regular season matchup came a day after hundreds of thousands of protesters marched in cities across France.
CNN Paris bureau chief Saskya Vandoorne has more.
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SASKYA VANDOORNE, CNN PARIS BUREAU CHIEF: After weeks of uncertainty over whether this game would even go ahead, the NFL has now made history in Paris today. And the atmosphere inside and outside the Stade de France was incredible. The singing, the joy, the bejeweled outfits. Some French fans said that it was a welcome break from the chaos and the unrest that has been dominating France for over a month or so.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's actually pretty cool is that to have the game during this weekend as a sort of break for everything that's been going on -- all the tensions. And yeah, it's been -- I mean, it's been a tough week for all of us so it's a nice way to sort of have a more lighter mood I would say.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The atmosphere was amazing. I feel like everybody got along, talked a little junk, but it was amazing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've seen many of the Steelers' games back in Pittsburgh and seen it in a lot of locations, but this was awesome. We loved it and it was a great time.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The crowd was insane. The vibes were really great. And you can tell the difference between like a European match and an American game, so that was really, really cool. VANDOORNE: There were real fears in the run up to this game. Was it safe to bring tens of thousands of football fans to the Stade de France? Some events around the game were canceled because of security concerns.
But yesterday, the French authorities really did throw everything they had at the protests. They deployed 70,000 police officers across France to ensure that the demonstrations remained peaceful, to avoid a repeat of what we witnessed on the Saturday, the 17th, when we saw that widespread looting, those buildings that were set on fire. And so even though 400,000 people took to the streets yesterday, it was all relatively calm. And so today, the NFL was able to have its big moment.
Saskya Vandoorne, CNN, Paris.
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SMITH: Thank you, Saskya.
Still to come on CNN HEADLINE EXPRESS, there's this. How do you rescue someone who is stuck upside down? We've got that bodycam video with your answer.
And a train heist for Hot Wheels cars. Yeah, that too. Coming up on the other side of the break on CNN HEADLINE EXPRESS.
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[05:57:05]
SMITH: In today's Money Express, major layoffs are looming at one of the nation's largest credit card companies.
Maribel Aber joins us from the NASDAQ MarketSite with that and the rest of your top Money Express headlines. What do we know here, Maribel?
MARIBEL ABER, CNN CORRESPONDENT, MONEY MATTERS: OK, Brad. American Express announced it's cutting five percent of its workforce or about 3,800 employees. The credit card giant says the cuts are part of an effort to become more efficient as it prepares for AI to take over some automation jobs. It's the latest big company to announce tech driven layoffs due to AI this year, including Microsoft and British bank Barclays. Shares fell more than 3.5 percent following news of the layoffs, which came during the company's third quarter earnings report.
And nearly 4,000 medications used to treat pets and other animals are being recalled over nationwide -- excuse me, over concerns that they may be too strong or too weak. New Jersey based Wedgewood Pharmacy announced the recall after testing found inconsistencies in the strength of some medications. The recalled products include liquids, powders, sprays, eye drops, injections used to treat dogs, cats, horses and other animals. For more information, visit fda.gov. Toy prices are jumping just in time for the holidays. The latest data
from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows toy prices saw their biggest price hike in nearly a half a century. Prices rose 4.2 percent in September, the largest one month increase in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 49-year history. Over the past 12 months, toy prices are up 6.6 percent, nearly double the inflation rate of 3.7 percent.
Wow, Brad, I was lucky if I got Barbie, I'm just saying.
SMITH: Look, this is not good news for my upcoming Lego purchases, both for others and myself.
Maribel Aber --
ABER: Yeah.
SMITH: -- thanks so much. A lot to continue to track there.
Now to check on some of the other stories that we are following and we got to start in Maryland as what played out there was frightening where police rescued a hunter who was dangling upside-down after falling from a tree stand. Police got a call about a hunter left hanging in the air on Jackson Mountain. Because the terrain was so rugged though, crews had to bring in a helicopter and a specialized ladder to get the 49-year-old man down. The rescue took about 25 minutes and medics then took him to the hospital to be treated for his injuries.
In Georgia, a high school football team's bus overturned Friday night after a crash off the highway. State troopers say the 74-year-old driver lost control on an exit ramp, hit a car, and then rolled into a ditch. Twenty-five people were taken to the hospital and all but one was treated and released. And right now, there's still no word on what caused the crash.
[06:00:00]
Finally, an alleged heist worth $54,000 in Hot Wheels. Police in Colton, California say that they recovered 350 boxes of the toy cars stolen from a train. An officer spotted the man loading the merchandise into a pickup truck during a stakeout. Now, he was arrested and faces multiple charges here. There you're seeing some of the bodycam footage from the Colton Police Department as they did their own looking into exactly what was taking place here.
Well, that does it for CNN HEADLINE EXPRESS. I'm Brad Smith. "CNN THIS MORNING WITH AUDIE CORNISH" starts right now.
