A Big Day for Election-Conspiracy Theorists; Some State Universities Refuse to Disclose Athlete-Pay Data–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Aug. 24, 2026

Indy Digest: Aug. 24, 2026

It’s been a big day for elections news.

First up: The U.S. Supreme Court tentatively OK’d a move to tighten up mail-in voting by the Trump administration. The Washington Post (gift link) reports:

A divided Supreme Court on Monday eased the path for an executive order by President Donald Trump that would impose sweeping new restrictions on mail-in balloting for November’s midterm elections, but the complex and fast-moving legal fight is not over.

The executive order would bar the U.S. Postal Service from sending mail-in ballots to voters not on lists of citizens created by federal agencies. States also would be obligated to send the ballots in envelopes that can be tracked to thwart fraud.

Trump has falsely claimed that noncitizens are voting in large numbers, but studies have found that it happens infrequently. He blamed such fraud in part for his loss in the 2020 presidential election.

With just over two months to go before pivotal elections, the high court’s ruling — which overturned a lower court judge’s block of the president’s order— won’t be the last word on whether it will be allowed to go forward.

The case now returns to the lower courts, and a key part of the executive order remains blocked because of a ruling in separate litigation that must also be resolved for the order to go into effect before November.

The piece later says: “The high court’s decision was not on the merits of the executive order but on a narrower legal question: whether 23 states and the District of Columbia had been harmed by the executive order and their challenge to the order met the legal bar.”

In other words, today’s ruling could eventually become a big deal … or not. And since this year’s elections are getting close, time is very tight.

The key things here: 1) Yet again, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a somewhat questionable ruling in the president’s favor. Yet again, the conservative majority and the liberal minority saw things VERY differently. 2) All of the things Trump and co. are doing in the name of election security and non-citizen voting have nothing to do with election security and non-citizen voting, because there’s no evidence non-citizens are voting in any meaningful number, and there’s a ton of evidence that our elections are quite secure.

Next up: Remember when our county sheriff—who, at the time, was running for governor—took a bunch of ballots, purportedly to investigate discrepancy claims that were … questionable, to put it kindly?

Well, the California Supreme Court is looking into the matter, and heard arguments today. The Associated Press says:

The high court heard oral arguments Monday regarding Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s seizure of approximately 650,000 ballots from a November 2025 special election on redistricting. The measure passed in the county by roughly 80,000 votes.

Bianco in March seized 1,000 boxes of election materials to investigate a complaint from a local citizens group that the count was off—though not by an amount that would’ve changed the outcome. Local election officials had previously said the complaint was unfounded. Bianco was running for governor at the time.

Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta immediately launched a legal challenge in March, arguing the sheriff has no authority over election materials and warning the seizure was designed to sow distrust in elections. He ordered Bianco to return the ballots, but Bianco did not. …

Chad Dunn, legal director and co-founder of the UCLA Voting Rights Project, told the court there are mechanisms to contest election results, and Bianco failed to follow them. …

Bradley Hertz, who represented Bianco, argued the sheriff had a legal duty to open an investigation after receiving a complaint and he followed the penal code to carry out that investigation, first issuing search warrants in February.

Hertz said Bianco has not returned the ballots to the registrar of voters because those ballots are “evidence.”

“Evidence.” Sigh.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Both the editor and the publisher of Stars and Stripes—the military publication which has long been allowed to report independently, without Pentagon interference—were fired late last week. The New York Times (gift link) says: “The Defense Department on Friday fired the publisher and the editor in chief of Stars and Stripes, a government-funded news outlet that reports on the U.S. military, according to a senior Pentagon official and the dismissed journalists. The firings raised questions about the Pentagon’s willingness to ensure the editorial integrity of the publication that has reported extensively on difficulties faced by military communities as the war in Iran has dragged on. The terminations came about 10 days after Stars and Stripes journalists reported on hardships that Navy sailors were facing on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier whose deployment was extended to nine months amid the war. … Federal regulations and Pentagon policy had emphasized editorial integrity of Stars and Stripes for decades, requiring ‘a free flow of news and information to its readership without news management or censorship.’ But in January, the Pentagon rescinded that regulation. Its chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, said in a social media post that Stars and Stripes, which is primarily read by U.S. service members and their families, must ‘refocus its content away from woke distractions.’”

• According to the Wired magazine headline, “Meta’s Big Reckoning Is Here.” Wired explains how the latest court case could “force significant changes to core features of Facebook and Instagram”: “The plaintiffs in this case are 29 state attorneys general. They’re claiming that Meta violated a federal privacy law protecting children, known as COPPA, by improperly collecting personal information about children under 13 without parental consent. The lead AGs, which span four states—California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey—also say that Meta made deceptive statements about its platform that were likely to mislead consumers. Meta maintains that it satisfied COPPA law requirements in those states, and denies that its statements about how its apps work were deceptive or misleading. … Megan O’Neill, the deputy attorney general at the California Department of Justice, kicked off the opening statements, laying out how the state AGs believe Meta deliberately hooked kids on its apps and harvested their data. O’Neill emphasized that throughout the trial, the jury would be shown just ‘how many features work both individually and together to keep people in the apps. To draw them in and keep them in for longer. Meta has used these features to draw kids onto the apps, and to keep them coming back.’”

• Democrats dominate California politics—and that means that sometimes, great ideas pushed by Republicans get ignored. Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton explains: “Legislators wearing red jerseys have proposed to: Make the California secretary of state officially nonpartisan. Rip off the seemingly inevitable blue jersey and replace it with a neutral referee’s garb; (and) similarly, seize the job of writing official ballot proposition titles and summaries from the partisan attorney general and hand it to the nonpartisan, universally trusted Legislative Analyst’s Office. Both ideas, of course, were dead on arrival when introduced in the Democratic-dominated state Legislature, which is about to wrap up a two-year session. But both make good government sense and promote democracy, which the Democratic Party claims it’s fighting for against the President Trump-led GOP. … California Republicans pushing to neutralize the office argue that Democratic incumbent Shirley Weber has taken public policy positions that echo her party’s stands. Shock! This is America. She has a right—a democratic duty—to take any position vocally that she desires. But it’s logical for the secretary of state to officially operate as a political nonpartisan—as does the state superintendent of public instruction and all county voter registrars, who actually administer the elections and count votes.”

• Our partners at Calmatters joined forces with other statewide journalism outlets in the West to report two in-depth pieces looking at recent changes in federal wildfire-righting policies. Here’s one; here’s the other. A snippet: “This dangerous fire season hit as the Trump administration has reshaped how America fights wildfire—consolidating crews from across Interior Department agencies into a new U.S. Wildland Fire Service. The new agency and the U.S. Forest Service are pursuing ‘full suppression’ of every new blaze. Administration officials say the aggressive approach is essential to protect firefighters and communities during a hazardous summer in an abnormally hot and dry West. Critics, though, worry it could worsen a long-standing problem: Decades of extinguishing wildfires and climate change-induced drought have left Western forests full of dry fuels, contributing to conditions that can produce catastrophic fires. Making full suppression the default response, they argue, could perpetuate that problem while demanding more firefighting resources than the government has available. … Federal officials dispute that the reorganization played any role in the deaths of firefighters this year. And while officials in several Western states say the new fire service has so far caused few disruptions on the ground, interviews with former government officials, firefighters and researchers show there are concerns about what the administration’s broader changes could mean for how the country lives with fire over the long term.”

• Also from Calmatters: Colleges—including taxpayer-funded colleges and universities, like UCLA—can now directly pay athletes. However, some state universities are refusing to disclose specifics regarding the payments … so Calmatters is suing to get them: “Last fall, CalMatters submitted records requests to 16 University of California and California State University campuses, seeking information about payments to their Division I athletes, but many schools provided little or no information in response. The lawsuit states that taxpayers are entitled to know the names of players who have received money and the teams they play on. … UCLA and UC Berkeley, which have the most competitive and most lucrative athletics programs among the state’s public universities, initially rejected CalMatters’ records requests. … After meeting with attorneys at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, which represented CalMatters, both universities provided some records, which give a first-of-its-kind glimpse into the new dynamics of college sports. They each said they spent about $20.5 million paying athletes in the 2025-26 academic year, which is the maximum amount allowed. UCLA said it paid 229 athletes. UC Berkeley said it paid 147. Neither UCLA nor UC Berkeley said which players or teams received the money—even as other universities were more forthcoming. ‘We’re simply asking these public institutions to follow the law,’ said CalMatters CEO Neil Chase, ‘and explain what’s being done with tens of millions of taxpayer dollars.’”

• And finally … today’s recall news involves … again, eye drops! The New York Times (gift link) reports: “Nearly 40,000 bottles of eye drops are being recalled across the country over concerns related to potential contamination, federal safety regulators said. Prestige Brand Holdings, of Tarrytown, N.Y., issued the voluntary recall of 39,060 bottles of Clear Eyes Maximum Itchy Eye Relief eye drops because of a ‘lack of assurance of sterility,’ according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The recall, which began on July 29 and is continuing, involves 15-millimeter bottles with a lot code of 2552A and an expiration date of Sept. 30, 2027. ‘Consumer safety is our No. 1 priority,’ Phil Terpolilli, a spokesman for the company, said in an email on Sunday. He said one lot was recalled because of ‘a potential for contamination identified during the manufacturing process.’ Mr. Terpolilli did not elaborate on what type of contamination nor did the FDA.”

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