Why Chad Bianco Is Not a Trustworthy Investigator of Elections; How the Conflict in Iran Is Disrupting Helium Supplies–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: March 30, 2026

Indy Digest: March 30, 2026

Riverside County’s elections processes continue to garner national headlines—because our election-denier sheriff/gubernatorial candidate continues to follow the playbook of the president he fervently supports.

Here’s the latest news as of this writing, compliments of the Los Angeles Times:

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who is a leading Republican candidate for governor, said Monday that he had paused his controversial investigation into unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, which was facing mounting legal challenges and ethical concerns.

In a statement Monday, Bianco said the probe was “on hold” because of “politically motivated lawsuits and court filings.”

It was a major reversal for the outspoken Trump supporter, who had defended the investigation—and broadened its scope—just last week. Bianco’s employees have seized more than 650,000 ballots cast in Riverside County during November’s election.

Bianco didn’t provide comment beyond the media statement or say when the probe might be restarted.

To recap what Bianco’s investigation is about, here’s a summary from Democracy Docket:

Earlier this month, Bianco seized the ballots and hastily began his own recount based on reports of a large discrepancy between ballots cast and ballots counted. On March 24, he seized an additional 426 boxes of ballot materials, according to a petition from the California Attorney General’s office.

County officials have publicly explained that the alleged discrepancy likely results from a volunteer group’s misunderstanding of how votes are tabulated. 

But the volunteers apparently weren’t just going it alone. According to the Los Angeles Times, Shasta County Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis, an outspoken elections skeptic, traveled to Riverside County to work with the group behind the vote discrepancy allegations.

You may ask: What’s the harm in Bianco doing an investigation? If everything was legit, the investigation won’t turn up any shenanigans, correct?

Well, even if you put aside the facts that no sheriff has ever done something like this in state history; the “irregularities” being cited are sensibly explained by people who are voting experts; and Bianco is in the midst of a heated and close election race, you’re left with this: Bianco is a fervent, unabashed Trump supporter. And Trump has made it very clear he’s willing to do whatever it takes to assure future elections go his way.

Earlier today Wired posted a piece headlined “This Is How Trump Is Already Threatening the Midterms: WIRED surveyed the ways the Trump administration is working to manipulate this year’s midterm elections.” The lede:

President Donald Trump’s rhetorical war on elections has seemed to only get more serious with time.

Over the past couple of months, he’s told podcaster turned FBI deputy director turned podcaster Dan Bongino that Republicans “should take over the voting” in 15 places and “ought to nationalize the voting.” He told Reuters that “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.” And he told NBC he will only accept the midterm results “if the elections are honest.” On Truth Social, he slammed the Supreme Court because “they wouldn’t even call out The Rigged Presidential Election of 2020.” …

Now, with Trump laser-focused on an anti-voting bill called Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America, which would disenfranchise millions of Americans, what was already clear has become glaringly obvious: The Trump administration appears to be threatening the midterm elections. Trump isn’t even hiding the real reason why he wants the SAVE bill signed into law: “[Democrats] know if we get this, they probably won’t win an election for 50 years, maybe longer.”

As polls show that the Republican party could lose the House and the Senate, Trump and his allies are quite openly engaged in a concerted and widespread effort to undermine trust in elections and, seemingly, to lay the foundations for baseless claims of rigged midterm elections in November.

Trump’s campaign has included the weaponization of the Department of Justice and the FBI, the undermining of laws designed to protect voters, the redrawing of voting maps to disenfranchise minorities, the installation of election deniers in key positions of power within the government, and the emboldening of election officials at all levels across the country to pursue an anti-voting agenda with impunity.

Wired expertly lays out the ways in which Trump is doing all he can to swing future elections. He’s most certainly not trustworthy—and that calls into question the trustworthiness of his fervent supporters, too. Like Chad Bianco.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• The Washington Post headline is far from surprising, but it’s depressing: “Trump officials cite white supremacists in bid to end birthright citizenship.” Details: “Alexander Porter Morse, a Confederate officer during the Civil War and a Louisiana attorney, argued for legalized segregation in the landmark 1896 Supreme Court case that established the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine and buttressed Jim Crow laws. He is again playing a key role in a monumental case to be argued before the justices Wednesday: The Trump administration has tapped Morse as an authority in its push to upend long-settled law that virtually everyone born in the United States is a citizen. Over a century ago, Morse was among a trio of thinkers who spearheaded a failed effort—steeped in anti-Black and anti-Chinese racism — to erase birthright citizenship. The Trump administration is reviving their arguments to make its case today, some legal scholars say. … Lucy Salyer, a University of New Hampshire history professor who has written on Morse and others, said she was struck that the Trump administration had chosen to elevate those figures and their ideas: ‘If you know the history and the broader context of what they were trying to achieve, it does ring alarm bells.’”

• Propublica looks at the president’s pardon of an owner of various nursing homes. Despite his wrongdoing, he’s now free—and his victims have not gotten a dime: “(Doris) Coulson’s death and the circumstances surrounding it led her family to file a lawsuit against Skyline and its owner, the New Jersey businessman Joseph Schwartz, alleging that cost-cutting at Hillview left Coulson without the care she needed. It was one of several lawsuits tied to patient outcomes as Schwartz’s empire expanded and then unraveled, with much of the chain collapsing by 2018. Schwartz didn’t contest the case, and a judge in 2020 awarded nearly $19 million in damages. Coulson’s family has never been able to collect. … Coulson’s civil action was one of several efforts to hold Schwartz accountable for what happened at his nursing homes. In perhaps the most sweeping move, federal prosecutors in New Jersey charged Schwartz with orchestrating a $39 million payroll tax scheme connected to his nursing home empire. He pleaded guilty last April to failure to pay the IRS taxes withheld from employees and failing to file a financial report for his employees’ benefit plan. A federal judge sentenced him to three years in prison. But Schwartz served just three months. In November, President Donald Trump granted him a full pardon, negating his criminal conviction—part of a series of clemency decisions in the president’s second term that have benefited well-connected defendants, including political allies with access to the White House and individuals like Schwartz who had spent heavily on lobbyists.”

• Marine species in many places are suffering due to pollution by humans. Here’s an example, via CBS News: “Sharks in the Bahamas are consuming substances including caffeine, painkillers and even cocaine, according to a new study by marine scientists who say it could potentially impact the animals’ health and behavior. The research team, made up of marine biologists and scientists from a variety of international programs, analyzed blood samples from 85 sharks of five different species. The sharks were captured about four miles off the coast of a remote island and their blood levels were tested for 24 legal and illegal drugs. Twenty-eight of the sharks had detectable levels of caffeine, two common over-the-counter anti-inflammatory painkillers, or, in one instance, cocaine in their blood, according to the study. Some tested positive for more than one substance. Medications, illicit drugs and other substances are ‘increasingly recognized as contaminants of emerging concern’ in oceans and other bodies of water, the researchers said. They noted areas that are ‘undergoing rapid urbanization and tourism-driven development’ are especially at risk. This is the first study looking at the effect of these contaminants on sharks in the Bahamas, the researchers said.”

• The war (or whatever we’re calling it) in Iran is having a major impact on helium supplies. CNBC explains why that’s a problem: “A byproduct of natural gas production, helium is crucial to semiconductor manufacturing and the world’s second largest supplier has seen its export capacity hamstrung by Iranian strikes. Qatar, which owns part of the world’s largest gas field, provided over 30% of the market in 2025, according to S&P Global. That’s a big gap to fill. ‘The shutdown of Qatar helium production due to the US-Iran military conflict has removed roughly a third of global helium supply and shifted the market from oversupplied to undersupplied,’ Deutsche Bank analysts said in a note from March 12. Prices have surged since, and while many market watchers are optimistic about chipmakers retaining access to the material, a drawn-out conflict will mean helium buyers are forced to scramble to maintain supply chains.” In a related vein, here’s a HuffPost piece pointing out that helium is important in medical tests like MRIs.

• We have not used the phrase “COVID variant” in this newsletter in quite a while—but there is now a new variant worth knowing about. Scientific American reports: “A new variant of the virus that causes COVID is spreading in the U.S. The ‘Cicada’ variant, officially known as BA.3.2, was first detected in South Africa in November 2024. But infection rates in the U.S. have been slowly rising since last fall, according to a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. Cicada is notable because it has a highly mutated genetic sequence that some experts fear could enable it to evade some of our immunity from vaccination or a past COVID infection. … The BA.3.2 variant has around 70 to 75 mutations in the genetic sequence of its spike protein (the protein the virus uses to infect cells) relative to the strains that were included in last fall’s COVID vaccines: the JN.1 variant and its descendent LP.8.1. … Still, Cicada accounts for only a tiny fraction of COVID cases in the U.S.—fewer than 0.2 percent of sequences collected from December 1, 2025, through February 11, 2026. And it hasn’t been linked with higher COVID cases overall. While COVID is no longer as serious as it was during the pandemic’s early years, it nonetheless caused an estimated 390,000 to 550,000 hospitalizations and 45,000 to 64,000 deaths during the 2024–2025 respiratory virus season—and preliminary estimates of 110,000 to 210,00 hospitalizations and 12,000 to 37,000 deaths between October 1, 2025, and March 21, 2026—according to CDC data.”

• And finally … today’s recall news involves … ready-to-eat pizzas and focaccias! People.com says: “A food recall affecting thousands of ready-to-eat pizza and bread products has been issued after health officials warned they may contain metal fragments. Food manufacturer Bakkavor voluntarily initiated the recall on Jan. 19, according to a release from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The recall was classified as a Class II recall on March 23, meaning the products could cause ‘temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences,’ per the FDA’s website. The recall stated that the issue was traced back to slow-roasted tomatoes, supplied by an ingredient vendor, which were found to potentially contain metal fragments. The recall impacts more than 25,000 cases of products, including HelloFresh Basil Pesto & Mozzarella Pizza and roasted tomato and parmesan focaccia bread sold under several brand names. Brands included in the recall are HelloFresh, Frederik’s by Meijer, Fresh & Simple, Harris Teeter and Trader Joe’s, according to the FDA.”

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