One Dan Sullivan — Dan S. Sullivan — is the state's incumbent Republican senator. He is trying to fend off a fierce challenge from former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola and secure a third term. The other Dan Sullivan — Dan J. Sullivan — is a retired teacher from a tiny fishing village along the Alaska Panhandle. He has never previously campaigned for public office, and he switched his registration from 'unaffiliated' to 'Republican' just before the deadline to run. (He has since switched back to unaffiliated.)

But now the situation seems to be getting more serious. At President Trump's direction, the Justice Department last week sued in federal court to block certification of the election if Sen. Dan S. Sullivan loses, alleging that retired teacher Dan J. Sullivan is a Democratic plant whose purpose is to siphon away votes. 

Then, on Wednesday, the New York Times published an extensive investigation that appears to substantiate that allegation, calling it 'Democrats' secret effort to stack Alaska's ballot.'

'The Times has found, based on interviews and text messages, along with documents prepared for a potential lawsuit against the campaign, that not only did Ms. Peltola's team work with people trying to recruit Mr. Sullivan to run for Senate, but the effort was much broader,' the paper wrote. 'The group worked to coax other would-be spoilers into the race, to dilute the incumbent's support and help catapult the Democrat to victory.'

In response to the report, Trump called for both Peltola and the 'fake' Dan Sullivan to be removed from the ballot in a post on Truth Social.

Yahoo

The outcome of the legal dispute, if it moves forward, could have enormous national implications. Democrats need to win at least a few Senate races in historically Republican states to secure a majority in the chamber. Polls suggest Alaska is one of their best chances to turn a red seat blue. Given how close other races across the country appear to be, a legal ruling that erases a narrow Peltola victory could be the pivot point that allows the GOP to keep control of the Senate for the last two years of Trump's presidency.

How did this happen, and where do things go from here? Here's everything you need to know to catch up and make sense of the story. 

How Alaska wound up with two Dan Sullivans on the ballot 

Ballot-stacking — the process of recruiting a spoiler candidate to help your candidate win — isn't unheard of in politics, and the Times says it's 'generally considered legal.' 

But it's a lot easier in Alaska than other states because of the unique way elections work there. When Peltola ran for reelection to the U.S. House in 2024, the state GOP backed an effort to help a second Democrat — an inmate who conducted his campaign from a New York prison — remain on the ballot. And during this year's primaries, super PACs aligned with both parties 'flooded the state with ads for fringe candidates' in an attempt to 'dilute support for the mainstream candidates opposed by the groups,' according to an October Alaska Beacon report. 

How is any of this possible? The Last Frontier sends the top four primary candidates to the general election regardless of party — then asks voters to rank them on Election Day in order of preference. This means that candidates can claim any party affiliation on the ballot without being vetted by parties themselves. (Dan J. Sullivan initially claimed to be a Republican.) It also means that as ,long as they finish in the top four, primary candidates don't have to earn many votes to secure their very own ballot line on Nov. 3. (Dan J. Sullivan won 4,107). 

For months, Republicans have questioned Dan J. Sullivan's intentions and tried to get him tossed off the ballot. In June, the Alaska Supreme Court dismissed their arguments, ruling that neither state law nor the U.S. Constitution provided any legal basis for removing Dan J. Sullivan's name. 

elections.alaska.gov

The more obscure Sullivan has 'maintained that he [is] running in good faith and of his own volition, as a moderate Republican and not a secret Democrat,' as a Times profile put it in August. He said he'd voted in the past for some Alaska Republicans, including Sen. Lisa Murkowski, even though he also 'acknowledged previous donations to Ms. Peltola and a handful of other Democrats,' and said he would prefer Peltola for Senate over the Republican incumbent 'if it was between those two.' 

But according to this week's Times report, 'operatives aligned with' the Peltola campaign convinced Dan J. Sullivan to enter the race 'to help Mary.' The report cited as its sources 12 people 'who participated in or were told of the plan' as well as interviews with other would-be recruits and dozens of internal text messages.

For the record, both Peltola's campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which directs the party's campaign strategy in Senate races across the country, have denied any 'involvement,' and Dan J. Sullivan did not respond to the Times's repeated requests for comment. One of the Times's main sources — former Peltola campaign manager and longtime aide Elisa Rios, who had been planning to file a wrongful termination lawsuit — also tried to retract her statements to the paper ahead of publication. 

The Times story described an elaborate endeavor — which was 'internally called the ballot composition project' — that 'involved secret trips to far-flung Alaskan communities and the appearance of a mysterious Midwestern operative, who traversed the state using a fake name and made his pitch to would-be candidates over beers at brew pubs.' The Times also reported that the 'Peltola campaign's lawyers, as well as senior aides at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee' were 'involved' with the effort.

The Trump administration's lawsuit

Legal battles over the dual Dan Sullivan issue had been confined to state courts until last week. That's when Trump's administration filed its lawsuit aiming to have the certification of the results blocked if Peltola wins a close election that may have been affected by Dan J. Sullivan's presence on the ballot. 

'Should Alaska certify any electoral results tainted by the inclusion on the ballot of Daniel J. Sullivan … the State and its officers will fail in its obligation to protect the integrity of its election,' the Department of Justice wrote in its legal filing. 

'I'm the one that said do it,' Trump said Friday of the lawsuit. 

The suit argues that a Democratic victory should be considered invalid if Peltola wins by a margin smaller than the total number of votes that Dan J. Sullivan receives — under the assumption that those votes may have come from confused voters who intended to vote for the incumbent Republican senator instead. 

Democrats have asked the courts to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the administration lacks 'any statutory or constitutional authority to insert itself' into the state's electoral process. Alaska's state government, which is currently led by Republicans, has also filed to dismiss the administration's lawsuit. On Monday, a federal judge agreed to fast-track consideration of the dispute to potentially allow it to be resolved before Election Day. 

Many legal experts say the lawsuit has a slim chance of success. First, it requires a very specific outcome in which Peltola wins by what would likely need to be a very thin margin. Even in that scenario, election law experts say, the appearance of confusion on the part of voters does not create legal grounds for the federal DOJ to have the results rejected.

'I believe that this lawsuit is abusive in its intentions and borders on frivolous in its arguments, and that it is destined for defeat in the courts should it reach the merits,' Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, told the Alaska Beacon.

Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a Harvard law professor, told the Harvard Gazette that the law the administration is relying on in its lawsuit — the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) — does not give federal authorities any power to challenge state election procedures. 

'The lawsuit has nothing to do with voter registration. There's no allegation that anybody is improperly registered in Alaska; there's no claim that Alaska isn't in compliance with the NVRA's requirements for voter registration,' Stephanopoulos said.

More generally, experts say the lawsuit runs against the Constitution's language granting states the power to run their own elections. 

'This is purely a matter of state law, and the administration has absolutely no authority to tell Alaska when or how to certify the results of its Senate election,' David Becker, a former Justice Department attorney who worked on voting rights cases, told Alaska Public Media.

What's next?

The federal judge in Alaska considering Democrats' motion to dismiss the lawsuit is expected to rule on whether Peltola's campaign and other groups can join the case on Wednesday. If that motion is granted, the judge said the DOJ should be ready to respond to a motion to dismiss the case by Thursday afternoon.

That likely only matters in an extremely close race, which is not the recent norm in Alaska. The last time Dan S. Sullivan was on the ballot, he defeated his top challenger, independent candidate Al Gross, by 45,000 votes. The most recent Senate race, in 2022, was closer, but the top two finishers were both Republicans. 

Things are expected to be much tighter this time around. Peltola has held a consistent lead in the polls since the summer, but her advantage has steadily shrunk in the months leading up to Election Day. The most recent surveys have her ahead by 2 points, well within the margin for Sullivan to win. The Cook Political Report, one of the nation's most respected election forecasters, lists the race as a toss-up. Another well-regarded forecaster, the Center for Politics, categorizes it as 'leans Democrat.'

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump floated nominating Ted Cruz to the Supreme Court for a future vacancy on the nation's high court, joking that the Texas Republican senator's confirmation would earn unanimous Senate support because senators from both parties would like to see him gone.

Trump, who has mentioned Cruz previously for the Supreme Court, suggested the third-term senator again at an Oct. 27 midterm campaign rally in Lubbock, Texas as the president discussed what he might do if he gets to nominate a Supreme Court justice for a fourth time over his two White House terms.

'I said, 'I have an answer to not being able to get it past the Democrats or the Republicans together,'' Trump said, referring to the confirmation fight in the Senate. 'I would pick Ted Cruz to be the next Supreme Court justice, and I wouldn't have to worry about it. I wouldn't have to make a phone call.

'The Democrats will 100% vote for it because they hate the guy and the want to get rid of him,' Trump continued. 'And the Republicans would 100% vote for it because they can't stand him, they would like to get rid of him. So I'd get 100% of the vote, and he would be a Supreme Court justice and he'd do a great job.'

More: Trump, Talarico hit different notes in dueling Texas rallies as Senate fight rages

Cruz, who was in attendance at the rally for Texas Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton, laughed and smiled from his front-row seat as Trump made the pitch.

A second season of severe weather is about to ramp up across parts of the Plains, Mid-South and Gulf Coast. While tornado activity is most prominent in the springtime, autumn can bring a secondary peak. These cool-season tornadoes skew faster, stronger and more likely to happen at night — and they can hit a more vulnerable part of the country.

There are signs November may start busy, ahead of a winter that could bring above-average tornado risk due, in large part, to a strong El Niño pattern.

Why do cool-season tornadoes happen?

Tornadoes come from thunderstorms that form when air masses clash. In the springtime, the coming summer warmth collides with the retreat of winter. There’s plenty of heat and humidity to brew tall thunderclouds.

But in the autumn, cold air encroaches more forcefully. Warmth is shunted south, and moisture is scant. Thunderstorms are more scarce, and when they do bubble up, they tend to be shallower — i.e., not as tall.

Typically, a shorter thunderstorm would be weaker. In the wintertime, however, the atmosphere compensates.

That’s because the jet stream — the river of winds in the upper atmosphere — is strongest in the wintertime. And it dips southward over the Lower 48 states, tracing a serpentine pattern of crests and thoughts that propagate eastward.

Even otherwise meager, low-topped thunderstorms tap into that jet stream energy above. Thunderstorms feel the robust wind shear, or changing winds with height, and can rotate.

It’s not unheard of to have a cool-season storm cell too short to produce lightning — maybe only 15,000 or 20,000 feet tall — that still manages to rotate and produce a tornado.

Where do they occur?

In the fall, these storms happen where it’s warmest. That means the South.

For much of the Deep South, November marks the unofficial start of a tornado season that will last until the start of summer. Tornado season is longer along the Gulf Coast than in any other part of the country.

Mississippi averages 14 tornadoes between November and February — about 37 percent of its annual total. Alabama averages a dozen tornadoes, or 30 percent of its yearly average.

Georgia and Louisiana get nearly a third of their tornadoes during the cool months, too.

How do cool-season tornadoes differ?

Cool-season tornadoes tend to have longer paths. That’s because they’re being yanked along more quickly by the jet stream aloft.

In Oklahoma, for example, wintertime tornadoes (the ones forming from November to February) have path lengths that are, on average, 46 percent longer than those during the rest of the year. In Mississippi, they’re 24 percent longer. And in Illinois, 58 percent longer.

Longer paths expose more population to potential impacts , which is why the risk of deadly tornadoes is greater in the wintertime than during the heart of summer.

Since recordkeeping began in 1950, November and December have had more killer tornadoes in the U.S. than July, August or September.

Regional vulnerabilities

Cool-season tornadoes also target areas of the Deep South and Southeast that can be more vulnerable — a region where mobile homes are common. Because there’s also less daylight, cool-season tornadoes are more likely to happen at night. That’s another factor that contributes to an increased death toll.

There’s also emerging research that suggests cool-season tornadoes may skew a bit stronger, on average, than warm-season tornadoes. Although it’s unclear if that is because their faster forward speed combines with their rotational wind speeds. Alternatively, the actual tornado vortex may be stronger.

Tornado season also lasts a long time in the South and Southeast.

Consider Louisiana — its tornado season would run from Nov. 16 to May 21. That’s 187 days, or more than half the year.By our same definition, peak tornado season in Alabama would run from Dec. 16 to May 20, although activity often perks up sooner. Mississippi would be Dec. 7 to May 14.

By comparison, in Oklahoma, peak tornado season lasts two months — about April 10 to June 13. The Sooner State gets just as many tornadoes, but the season crams its twisters into a much shorter window. In North Dakota, peak tornado season is even shorter, just 57 days.

In other words, the Great Plains have a springtime tornado frenzy. The Deep South and Southeast get a slow, painful season stretched over a longer window.

How El Niño is playing a role

This year’s cool-season tornado period may be enhanced by a strong El Niño pattern.

El Niño begins as a warming of water temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. That heats the air above, causing it to rise. In turn, key global weather systems are shuffled around.

Among them is the subtropical jet stream, which slices west to east across the Gulf of Mexico during El Niño winters. That has been known to increase cool-season tornado risk in the Deep South, especially Florida.

Florida’s deadliest tornado outbreak happened during a strong El Niño winter. On the night of Feb. 22, 1998, into the next day, intense tornadoes tore through the peninsula, including a pair of F3-strength twisters in the greater Orlando metro area. (The Fujita Tornado Intensity Scale rates wind-damage intensity on a scale of zero to 5.) Forty-two people were killed.

And next year, those stakes will be even higher as the Fed removes a rate decision from its calendar, making each meeting even more important and potentially adding another layer of uncertainty and volatility to markets.

At the October policy meeting on Wednesday, Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh announced this major change to the Fed's calendar and added that 2028 might feature only six rate decisions. The meetings themselves will remain on the calendar, but instead of the Fed debating rates, broader monetary policy topics will be on the agenda.

The Wednesday meeting saw the Fed hold rates steady, but two dissenting governors wanted a hike.

Warsh said the reasoning behind the schedule change is to 'reserve the time and space as an intellectually diverse group for strategic deliberations, for thinking anew about big questions, looking out over longer time horizons.'

We've all been wondering how the newly installed chair would reshape the Fed. Already, he's been doing that by changing the nature of the Fed's public communication.

'I don't believe in forward guidance,' Warsh said on Wednesday. His remarks echoed his move earlier this year to end the years-long practice of offering forward guidance — removing an important signal for Wall Street and Main Street alike.

Warsh himself has not contributed a 'dot' to the central bank's quarterly chart showing where individual policymakers expect short-term interest rates to go, and he doesn't plan to do so.

Now the Fed will also have fewer decisions to discuss.

Follow Hamza Shaban on X @hshaban.

The death of Hayden Panettiere has been ruled accidental, South Caroline police announced Wednesday.

Greenville Police Department said the investigation into Panettiere's death has been concluded 'based on the Medical Examiner's determination and the findings of the investigation,' and the actor's death was officially ruled accidental.

Last month, a South Carolina coroner confirmed Panettiere died from an accidental drug overdose that included fentanyl. There were no signs of trauma, the coroner's office said.

Emergency responders were called to a residence where Panettiere, 36, had been staying in Greenville, South Carolina, on the afternoon of Aug. 16. Despite 'advanced cardiac life support measures,' she was pronounced dead there, the Greenville County Coroner's Office said.'

Panettiere's on-again, off-again boyfriend Brian Hickerson and his brother Zach were at the scene of her death, according to a police report obtained by CBS News. The Hickersons made the 911 call that brought first responders to the apartment. 

Authorities, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, were investigating the circumstances of Panettiere's death. Police previously said that a preliminary investigation 'has not indicated any signs of foul play or suspicious circumstances.'

Two right-wing provocateurs, James O'Keefe and Cam Higby, are facing election-related charges in Minnesota after posting videos of an undercover stunt intended to expose alleged deficiencies in election security. 

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said each man faces a count of unlawful voting and identity theft. 

'Elections are the bedrock of democracy and their protection is one of our highest priorities,' Moriarty said in a statement. 'Individuals engaging in unlawful conduct related to our elections will be held accountable.' 

O'Keefe, a self-proclaimed 'guerilla journalist' infamous for his undercover videos, and Higby, a social media influencer, posted the video at the heart of the charges in August. It shows the two men approaching election judges at multiple voting precincts in Minneapolis wearing burqas, speaking in fake accents, and allegedly misrepresenting their identities, in an effort to expose what O'Keefe and Higby say are gaps in the rules that allow residents to vouch for the identity of other voters. 

The video, which remains pinned on Higby's X account, is called 'I Wore Burqa To EXPOSE Election FRAUD In Minneapolis.' 

No ballots were cast in the course of their efforts.

Prosecutors said Wednesday that O'Keefe and Higby deceived the election judges by using the identities of real Minnesota voters 'without those voters' knowledge or permission' in violation of state law. Each count carries up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. Neither man is in custody, according to charging documents. 

In a statement shared on X, Higby said, 'No laws were broken. They want me in PRISON for exposing election vulnerabilities in their state.' O'Keefe did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Steve Simon, the state's top election official, said in a statement that 'any attempt to disrupt or deceive our election workers will not be tolerated.' 

The charges announced Wednesday in Minnesota are not O'Keefe's first brush with the law. In 2010, O'Keefe pleaded guilty in Louisiana to a misdemeanor charge of entering a federal property under false pretenses after he posed as a telephone repairman to gain access to a U.S. senator's New Orleans office. 

Democrats in the US Congress are already planning how they would use their power if they win a majority in the House or Senate in next week's midterm elections.

Success is by no means guaranteed, even if midterms can sometimes be brutal for the incumbent party that holds the White House.

Control of the chamber, however, would give the party power to issue subpoenas - summons to testify or produce documents - as well as additional funding to launch investigations early next year.

Democrats are weighing whether to investigate senior figures in the Trump administration - and possibly the president himself. Staffers have begun assembling a list of possible investigations and witnesses, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Here are a few potential Democratic targets if the party emerges victorious on 3 November.

1. Trump's family and finances

Democrats have made it clear that lucrative deals brokered by the Trump family's vast business empire will be primary targets of any initial investigations.

'We want to make sure that [American] taxpayer dollars are being used wisely and not being stolen or pocketed because of corruption,' Virginia Democratic Representative Suhas Subramanyam, a member of the House Oversight Committee, told the BBC.

Items under consideration for investigation include ties between the administration and corporate entities - particularly cryptocurrency firms - as well as the international business dealings of the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Other topics could include the $400m (£301m) aircraft gifted by Qatar to serve as Air Force One and multimillion-dollar defence contracts awarded to firms linked to the Trump family.

'What's shocking to me is not only that this administration, cabinet officials and even the president and his family have been corrupt and self-dealing, but they've been so brazen and open about it,' Subramanyam said.

The White House has repeatedly denied any allegations of wrongdoing.

'President Trump is focused on retaining Republican majorities in Congress and doubling down on the progress he has made to lower costs for families,' White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said.

'Democrats have no agenda to improve the lives of the American people, just plans to obstruct and baselessly target President Trump's commonsense agenda,' she added.

A White House official said the administration is 'always prepared' to respond to oversight requests regardless of who is in Congress.

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2. Hegseth and the Pentagon

Democratic lawmakers have vowed to look into Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth's handling of the war with Iran that began in February - including the number of civilian casualties, munitions shortfalls, spending and claims of poorly prepared troops and facilities.

Other topics, according to a source familiar with the discussions, could include boat strikes in the Caribbean that the administration says are aimed at stopping the flow of drugs into the US.

In April, a group of House Democrats filed rare articles of impeachment against Hegseth. They cited the war in Iran and accused him of 'high crimes and misdemeanours'.

Impeachment requires only a simple majority in the House, but conviction - and removal from office - would require a two-thirds vote in the Senate. No cabinet official has ever been removed this way.

Some experts believe that the negative publicity that would come from congressional hearings could ultimately lead to Hegseth being fired or resigning from the position.

'[If] it looks bad for the White House, and it's a drag on their media attention, President Trump might be likely to cut loose those officials, because he doesn't want that bad press,' said David Miller, a political science professor and expert on the presidency at American University in Washington DC. 'In a sense that could be a win for the Democrats.'

Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer under George W Bush, told the BBC that the decision to launch the war should come under scrutiny.

'The bigger issue is this: this war was never authorised by the United States Congress, and I don't care who the secretary of defence is,' he said.

'The constitution says that Congress declares war,' he said, and lawmakers should 'haul these folks in' to answer questions.

In a statement, Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson defended Hegseth's record, calling him a 'transformative leader' who has 'slashed bureaucracy, unleashed innovation, and delivered for our warfighters'.

'By every measurable metric, the Department of War is better under Secretary Hegseth's leadership than before,' she said, using the administration's preferred name for the defence department.

3. Immigration and ICE raids

Senior Democrats - including Robert Garcia, the California Democrat tapped to lead the House Oversight Committee should the party take back the chamber - have identified immigration enforcement as a key priority for potential congressional investigations.

These could examine allegations of misconduct by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents during immigration raids across the country.

But these investigations may prove difficult and politically tricky.

In 2024, Trump campaigned on a promise of mass deportations of undocumented migrants - a message that resonated with many of his supporters.

But recent polls suggest many Americans, including those who backed Trump in that election, are uncomfortable with some of the tactics used by ICE in American cities so far this year.

It means Democrats will have to walk a fine line between opposing ICE tactics and appearing to dismiss broader immigration concerns, Painter told the BBC.

4. A third Trump impeachment

Democrats are split on the possibility of attempting to impeach Trump for a third time.

Some, such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have expressed support for an impeachment, citing what they view as an unauthorised war with Iran and other alleged impeachable offences.

Others have called for a more cautious approach, arguing that any impeachment is unlikely to end in the Senate voting to remove Trump - who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing - from office.

It is also unclear whether the party could agree on a reason to launch impeachment proceedings.

'I can do whatever I want, if I want,' Trump told reporters in the Oval Office in October, adding that he sees the impeachment efforts in his first term and the later criminal cases brought against him as 'very illegal things'.

James Comer, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told the Washington Sun news outlet in June that Democrats were 'one-trick ponies' who were 'going to go after Trump'.

There is no guarantee for Democrats that any potential investigation would end with a meaningful outcome.

But Subramanyam said their efforts would send a message.

'If we do not do something because we are scared of the optics, or we don't think it will be successful, or they stonewall us, that will be bad,' he said. 'Not just for the next two years, but for the next 20 years.'

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Governments and the private sector are deploying a wave of new technology to pinpoint methane leaks like never before. But that technological revolution is colliding with political decisions in the U.S. and Europe to weaken regulations that are designed to curb the powerful driver of climate change.

“The methane problem,� Trump said Tuesday night. “I'm officially terminating Biden's expensive and unnecessary methane regulations to save consumers and energy producers $45 billion in costs, unlock vast quantities of Texas natural gas and produce 210 million barrels of oil.�

American and European regulators alike have argued that the methane rules should be ditched or delayed because they threaten to increase the price and availability of energy, even as new technology identifies gas leaks — and bad actors — with remarkable accuracy.

The backtracking could result in more methane emissions as nations around the world are failing to meet their commitments to contain climate change.

“You can't reduce what you don't monitor,� said center-left European Parliament lawmaker Thomas Pellerin-Carlin, who opposes steps to delay the bloc’s rules.

Methane has 80 times the warming impact of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Climate scientists say controlling methane, a byproduct of producing oil, gas and coal, along with agriculture and decomposing waste, is the fastest way to arrest rising temperatures.

But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed weakening methane standards for oil and gas operators and is poised to eliminate penalties for so-called “super-emitters.� Meanwhile, the European Union is preparing to delay methane rules designed to prioritize energy imports with lower emissions.

The backsliding comes as a wave of new technologies has pinpointed the world’s largest sources of methane, making it easier than ever before to prevent the gas from escaping into the atmosphere. A sweeping study published in the journal Nature found that methane-sensing equipment on satellites detected leaks with 92% to 100% accuracy on clear days, underscoring leaps in progress.

Satellites are not the only improvement. Heat cameras can now spot leaks. Companies like Google are using artificial intelligence tools to map plumes from space. And firms are flying airplanes with a remote sensing technology that uses laser pulses, called LIDAR, to track methane.

“Ten years ago, the tools were not there. You couldn’t detect these things,� said Riley Duren, CEO of the environmental nonprofit Carbon Mapper, which uses satellites and other technologies to detect methane leaks worldwide. “Today we have more tools at our disposal than ever. It’s not a visibility challenge anymore.�

The group’s Tanager-1 satellite spotted methane leaks in a slice of the Texas Permian Basin on Oct. 10. Two days later, a new satellite named Tanager-2, which rode a SpaceX rocket into orbit this month, confirmed the Texas plume.

The bigger test is getting companies to take action.

Carbon Mapper this year has issued 460 notices to companies operating super-emitting sites in 13 U.S. states. It also works with California’s environmental regulator, the California Air Resources Board, on the only U.S. methane enforcement regime that uses satellite technology.

Only about half of the recipients responded, Duren said. When asked why, he said states have differing levels of incentives — or punishments — to fix leaks. Many lack personnel. The absence of national policy doesn’t help.

The story is similar across the world.

The United Nations Environment Programme’s Methane Alert and Response System, which issues alerts from 35 satellites to 24 nations and nine subnational governments, registered a 12% response rate in 2025.

The 141 governments that crafted methane reduction goals as part of the Paris climate agreement have done little to meet their targets: Just 20 countries have outlined steps to slash fossil fuel methane emissions, and only five have submitted quantified targets.

“It’s clear that there’s a gap between what is being committed and what is being implemented,� said Marcelo Mena-Carrasco, CEO of the Global Methane Hub, a philanthropy-backed organization working to reduce emissions. “We know this in a much better way — we know who and which companies are doing so, and so we have all the elements to maintain accountability.�

Except for enforcement regulations.

Shifting geopolitics and a growing focus on securing energy supplies have pushed climate action down many countries’ priority lists. Industry has argued that many methane policies were ill-designed, and there has been pushback to what some companies viewed as a naming and shaming approach when emissions around their operations were identified, said Antoine Halff, who co-founded Kayrros, a firm that tracks methane emissions.

The American Petroleum Institute, which represents U.S. oil and gas producers, praised Trump’s proposed rollback of the Biden-era methane limits.

“We look forward to working with the Trump administration on a more workable approach that supports American energy production, provides greater regulatory certainty and advances continued emissions reductions,� Dustin Meyer, the group’s senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs, wrote in a statement.

The current energy crisis resulting from the war in Iran has made governments anxious about taking any measures that could push up prices or curtail supply. Even though experts and the European Commission have said that the bloc’s incoming methane rules pose no risks to affordability or energy security, the fossil fuel industry, with the backing of the Trump administration, has seized on these worries to campaign for a delay — successfully.

The Commission earlier this month proposed a one-year delay to rules meant to ensure oil and gas companies monitor and report their emissions. The requirement was supposed to inform a subsequent move toward curbing imports from the most polluting gas fields. The Commission also allowed countries to suspend penalties under the regulation.

Then last week the European Parliament voted for a three-year postponement of the rules, and some EU governments are pushing for national capitals to adopt a similar delay, citing the energy crisis.

Proponents of regulation have pointed out that by patching leaks, companies retain more gas to sell on the market.

'We have independent scientific studies that show there is enough regulation-compliant gas on the market to supply the EU twice over. That means giving in to the lobbying right now is just a gift to the fossil fuel industry,� said German Green lawmaker Jutta Paulus. “After all, the gas that escapes unused is precisely what won’t end up on the market. In other words, we’re actually making the supply even scarcer rather than increasing it.�

Smaller gas producers have long argued that measures to curb methane are costly. In the current environment, even bigger players who put in place measures to address their methane footprint are less interested in pushing forward.

“The impetus toward certification of good methane and responsible gas and so on seems to be fading a bit,� said Halff. “I think this has to do with the extreme uncertainty in the market and concerns about energy security. … I think people are very comfortable pushing this discussion in the background to keep their options open in the future.�

Methane measures haven’t completely halted.

“There are definitely rollbacks in the U.S. In the EU, I would call it more of a delay than a rollback, but politically it is not the momentum that we would like to see. But I do think that in many other countries … we do have more positive success stories,� said Brandon Locke, director for global methane policy at the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit.

China, the world’s largest methane producer, has included methane emissions in its latest national climate plan and created standards, rules and measuring and verification systems to curb coal mine methane, its biggest source of emissions.

Japan and South Korea established a transparency initiative that asks liquefied natural gas suppliers to disclose their efforts to monitor and address methane leaks — though it’s based on self-reporting.

And Kazakhstan, one of the world’s super-emitters due to its aging Soviet-era equipment, has dramatically reduced its methane emissions and is creating national rules to monitor them. That program is based on the EPA super-emitter program, which was enabled by advancements that allowed satellites to track performance across wider basins, said Duren, of Carbon Mapper.

Canada’s enhanced methane regulations, which will take effect in 2028, prohibit flaring, put strict limits on venting and call for regular leak detection and repair. But they also allow oil and gas producers to determine how they’ll reduce their emissions, as long as they meet certain standards. The rules are weaker than those that were proposed during the Trudeau administration.

“Where there has been sustained long-term efforts by governments to work with industry to systematically reduce emissions, there has been significant reductions and there's lower emissions,� said Stephane Germain, president of GHGSat Inc., which operates 20 satellites that continuously monitor and orbit the Earth. “I'll point to my own backyard here — British Columbia [and] Alberta — two jurisdictions where we rarely see anything with our satellites.�

Those measures are all occurring at a time when energy demands are growing rapidly, and countries are using more coal and drilling for more oil to meet them.

The U.N.’s latest assessment of the gap between what countries have committed to do on climate and what their policies will actually deliver shows that methane emissions haven’t fallen in the five years since countries pledged to drive them down 30% by 2030.

That pledge, launched by the U.S. and EU, put methane on the map globally and mobilized billions of dollars in investment and a major new push on policy, including in China, said Rick Duke, a former deputy climate envoy at the State Department during the Biden administration.

But the results of all that attention and money have been underwhelming, said Paulus, the German member of the European Parliament who negotiated the methane law.

“We don’t need a Global Methane Pledge if no one's willing to do anything,� she said.

CORRECTION: A previous version of the story misstated the title of Marcelo Mena-Carrasco. He is the CEO of the Global Methane Hub.

Progressive Twitch streamer Hasan Piker filed a defamation lawsuit against conservative CNN commentator Scott Jennings on Tuesday, accusing him of falsely claiming Piker advocated for lynching Black Americans after airing an edited video of his remarks.

The 38-page lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., centers on an Aug. 11 episode of “The Scott Jennings Show,� in which Jennings shared clips of Piker claiming he had said, “the USA should resume lynchings against Black people.�

Piker, who threatened legal action in August over the claim and shared further context to the clips, alleges Jennings knowingly misrepresented sarcastic comments he made during his livestreams by turning it into an apparent endorsement of racial violence.

“Mr. Jennings did not merely mischaracterize something Mr. Piker said,� the complaint reads. “He took a false, fabricated, and manipulated video of Mr. Piker, added a made-up quotation that Mr. Piker never uttered, and then made accusations that went beyond even what the manipulated footage purported to show.�

During the August broadcast, Jennings warned Black voters to pay close attention before playing the clip, which included an on-screen caption attributing a statement, “Let’s go back to a better time when lynchings were happening,� to Piker.

Jennings later accused Piker of “calling for Black voters to be lynched� and referred to what he called “the Piker plan of returning our country to lynchings.�

The original footage came from an October 2024 Twitch broadcast in which Piker was reacting to a debate between two Black political commentators — one liberal and one conservative. After the conservative participant criticized “woke DAs,� Piker sarcastically suggested the commentator wanted to return to an era of racial discrimination and lynchings, according to the complaint.

“He said, ‘We need more Klansmen, OK? Can we go back to a better time when lynchings were happening?’� Piker said during the stream in reaction to the commentator’s argument.

Piker’s attorneys argue that the edited video removed the words “He said,� along with his laughter and surrounding commentary, to intentionally make it appear as though Piker was expressing his own beliefs rather than mocking someone else’s.

The dispute emerged amid the Michigan Senate race, where the edited video was circulated to criticize progressive Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed over his association with Piker.

When Jennings posted the segment on the social platform X, he referred to Piker as El-Sayed’s “best pal and campaign partner,� before accusing him of supporting racial violence.

The post has received roughly 2.5 million views as of Tuesday, according to the lawsuit, and Jennings allegedly refused to retract his statements despite receiving a written demand from Piker’s attorneys on Aug. 31.

Piker’s legal team also says the accusations damaged his reputation and threatened his ability to earn money through streaming, advertising and sponsorships.