Republican Sheriff Ordered to Return Thousands of Ballots He Stole

The California Supreme Court ordered Republican Sheriff Chad Bianco in Riverside County, California, to return ballots that he illegally seized from election officials.

The New York Times reports that Bianco took about 650,000 ballots cast in California’s 2025 special election on congressional redistricting, as part of an investigation into voter fraud that California officials called baseless. The court had already ordered Bianco to end his investigation in April while it considered the state’s case against him, and on Thursday the court ruled in two cases that the sheriff lacked the authority to take the ballots.

“I would underscore the seriousness of the violation here. This is not a case involving a few documents,” Associate Justice Goodwin H. Liu wrote in a concurrent opinion. “It involves the unlawful removal and handling by armed deputies of over 1,000 boxes of documents—and not just any documents, but the most precious documents of the citizenry in a democracy: their votes.”

Bianco claims that he received complaints from county residents that the vote count from last year’s election didn’t match the number of ballots received. The alleged discrepancy would not have affected the outcome of Proposition 50, which passed with 64 percent approval and allowed California to redraw its congressional districts to favor Democrats.

The sheriff happened to be running for governor of California at the time he began his investigation, but finished fourth in June’s primary election, failing to qualify for November’s general election. Bianco was unrepentant on Thursday, attacking Attorney General Rob Bonta, who brought one of the cases against him.

“This is about an attorney general who believes that he can stop an investigatory process into something that he doesn’t want us to know the answer to, and that was not the intention of our Founding Fathers,” Bianco said. “That was not the intention of the writers of our Constitution.”

President Trump has fueled election fraud conspiracies in the Republican Party for years, and anytime his followers don’t like election results, they attack the results as fraudulent or rigged. Bianco is one of many Republicans who keep demonstrating that these accusations are in fact confessions.

With the president and GOP polling at record lows, November’s results could have many conservatives crying foul because they can’t fathom losing. Hopefully, the courts will withstand their attempts to undermine the coming votes.

Earlier this summer, the Trump administration claimed that there were more than 15,000 noncitizens voting on Nevada’s voter rolls. Last month, that number shrank to 185. Now it’s zero—a perfect example of the administration’s frantic, fraught effort to find voter fraud that doesn’t exist.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in July that he found 15,903 noncitizen voters on Nevada’s voter rolls. The New York Times on Thursday reported that a follow-up meeting between DHS officials and Nevada election officers revealed that the number was wildly incorrect.

“So what you’re saying is the 15,000 number has not been vetted?” Nevada Secretary of State Chief Deputy C. Murphy Hebert asked in the August meeting.

“I probably wouldn’t use the sentence, ‘It hasn’t been vetted,’” Homeland Security Secretary Kimberley Vogt said. “Because definitely we’ve done something with it to get down to 15,000. So I wouldn’t say that. But it hasn’t had a full manual review of each one.” She also stated that they were not saying that only 185 people on the voter roll were noncitizens, but that those 185 definitely were. But that was wrong too.

“As for the 185 individuals, our records indicate that they were citizens,” Nevada Deputy Attorney General Greg Ott wrote in a letter to DHS this week. “You have provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise.”

Nevada election operators say they are still waiting for the list of 15,903 noncitizens, which DHS has now lowered to 6,218. But even that number may be inaccurate due to DHS’s use of “voter case numbers.”

“The number also doesn’t tell us whether an individual was born in the United States, naturalized, derived citizenship through a parent, or holds any particular immigration status,” Nevada Deputy Attorney General Greg Ott wrote. “A number that matches a voter record thus establishes only that a number exists in, or once existed in, a voter registration system.”

These baseless claims—and their debunking—may very well be happening in other states in the Trump administration’s voter fraud witch hunt.

With just weeks until the midterm elections, Senator Tommy Tuberville, who hopes to be Alabama’s next governor, is ignoring voter concerns to descend into a bizarre anti-furry frenzy.

In a series of social media posts Thursday, Tuberville refused to back down from his outrageous claims that many airline pilots, flight attendants, and air traffic controllers are part of a community of adults who pretend to be animals that have sex with each other.

“I know the deranged Democrats don’t like the fact that I called out the insane FURRY CULTURE this week. But the truth is, there is an ALARMING number of these DERANGED people working in our airline industry,” the Alabama Republican wrote on X. “Don’t believe me? Just a few months ago, PILOTS were MEOWING and BARKING at each other over the radio at DCA.”

Tuberville included a link to an NBC report from April that featured audio of two pilots doing just that: meowing and barking. (The report indicates the pilots were just joking around.)

In another post, Tuberville complained about an “Aviation Furs Meet-up” at the Furry Migration convention in Minneapolis earlier this month. “Ask yourself … would you be comfortable with a MENTALLY ILL FURRY being your pilot?” he wrote on X.

Tuberville’s anti-furry frenzy began during an address on the Senate floor Wednesday. “Lord help us. It’s terrifying when you think about this,” Tuberville said. “When you walk onto a commercial flight, it’s possible that the pilot flying your plane could have a deranged fetish of dressing up like an animal.”

The Alabama Republican falsely claimed there was a disturbing trend of violence on the left, specifically stemming from transgender people and furries—and mentioned Tyler Robinson and Thomas Crooks as examples (neither man is trans, nor have they given any indication of being a furry).

It should go without saying that being transgender has nothing to do with being a furry, and being transgender and/or a furry has nothing to do with political violence. In reality, right-wing attacks account for the majority of domestic terrorism, and most mass shootings are committed by white cisgender men. Tuberville’s comments only serve to antagonize transgender people and sexual minorities, who are already targets for the Trump administration.

Similarly, his claims of a secret furry community embedded within the airline industry are unsubstantiated.

Meanwhile, Tuberville has faced widespread criticism for sidelining actual issues.

As the average price of diesel reached $6.15 in Alabama this week, Tuberville claimed that prices had been high before, would go up and down, and insisted that “people will deal with it.”

Senate Republicans have once again refused to rein in President Trump’s war on Iran, voting 49–50 to block a war powers resolution on Thursday, choosing to allow the president to continue his $45 billion failed effort.

The razor-thin margin saw four Republicans vote against the president’s war: Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, and Thom Tillis. Senator John Fetterman was the only Democrat to vote against the resolution, while Democratic Senator Angela Alsobrooks missed the vote, ensuring that four Republican votes was not enough to sink the resolution.

The last time the Senate attempted to pass the Iran war powers resolution, in June, Trump yelled at Republican Senator Bill Cassidy afterward for breaking ranks—and he subsequently changed his vote, sinking the resolution. The war has gotten even worse since then, with gas prices still high, the Strait of Hormuz still closed, and sailors trying to commit suicide—all as midterms draw near. Still, many Republicans are boisterous and confident about the war, even as the vast majority of Americans are not.

The measure is largely symbolic, and yet most Republicans still did not want to vote in favor.

Police arrested dozens of protesters who filled the streets around the United Nations Thursday in advance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before the U.N. General Assembly. 

Those arrested included Daraliza Chevalier, the Democratic nominee for New York’s 13th congressional district, New York City Council member Chi Ossé, Chelsea Manning, Linda Sarsour, and celebrities including Hannah Eindbinder, Susan Sarandon, and comedian Caleb Hearon. They were among at least 100 protesters detained by police, organizers told The Guardian.

The protest, which was led by Jewish Voice for Peace, included other famous celebrities, as well, including Elliot Page, Chris Rabb, and Cynthia Nixon, though it is unclear if they were also arrested.  

Prior to her arrest, Chevalier told PIX11 News that “Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal who belongs at The Hague, and it cannot be that he comes to our city unchallenged.”

“So many New Yorkers refuse to be complicit in a genocide,” Chevalier said. “If the police officers tell us to disperse, I will not be leaving, which will likely mean that I will be arrested today. I think it is deeply ironic that a man who is wanted by the International Criminal Court has not faced justice, has not been arrested, and that our government has refused to actually act on that warrant as he has committed the most heinous and atrocious crimes against humanity within our lifetimes.”

The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu almost two years ago, but since the U.S. is not a signatory to the court, he is able to travel to the country without fear of arrest or prosecution. The Trump administration instead sanctioned the court in February 2025, and plans to take further measures in the coming days against anyone who engages in financial transactions with the ICC. Shortly after the arrests of protesters, Netanyahu found himself speaking to a sparse audience, as many delegates chose to leave the U.N. building rather than listen to his speech.