NEWSOM WARNS CALIFORNIA JUDGES: FEDS MAY TRY TO SEIZE BALLOTS BEFORE CERTIFICATION

California Governor Gavin Newsom warned the state's top federal judges on Saturday that the Justice Department may seek warrants to seize ballots and ballot materials before midterm results are certified, Reuters reported.

Newsom said he did not know of any pending request, but asked the judges to be ready for potential attempts by the Trump administration to seize ballots during the election, according to the report.

The warning came days after a federal appeals court ruled 2-1 that the Justice Department had failed to justify its emergency bid to force California to set aside postal ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters it alleges are likely noncitizens.

An administration official said Saturday the government would likely take that fight to the Supreme Court before Tuesday's vote, Reuters reported.

Separately, a federal judge on Friday ordered the Justice Department to stop threatening to prosecute state and local election officials who do not comply with its demands over ballots allegedly cast by noncitizens.

Separately, researchers at UCLA announced Saturday that 8,880 of the roughly 20,930 names on the federal government's list are not on California's voter rolls at all, according to a news summary of the findings — a figure that undercuts the administration's claim about the scale of the problem it says it is policing.