The Science Behind ‘Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely’; Bianco’s Ballot Seizure Is Ruled Illegal–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Sept. 24, 2026

Indy Digest: Sept. 24, 2026

Because of the firehose gusher of news coming at us, you may have missed ProPublica’s latest humdinger of an investigation.

It involves Maine Sen. Susan Collins—who is currently fighting for her political life in a cloooose re-election race. Published on Tuesday, the piece’s headline is: “The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins—Until Trump Got in the Way.” It involves a defense contractor, Navatek, and its CEO, Martin Kao. The piece is pretty damning, and I highly recommend you give it a read. Here’s the gist:

Of all the politicians Navatek courted under Kao’s leadership, Collins was its most important patron. The senator’s office steered government contracts worth millions toward the company while her campaign was pumping Kao and his network for donations, according to emails seen by ProPublica. Sometimes they cut checks within 24 hours of the annual defense spending bill, which funds military contracts, clearing a key Senate hurdle.

Collins’ post-publication response to the piece is covered in a second ProPublica story, headlined “Susan Collins Dismissed Our Reporting as Old News. Some of Her Claims Aren’t True.” A snippet:

Collins: “The Biden-led Justice Department and FBI totally cleared my office, my campaign and me five years ago of these seven-year-old allegations.”

An FBI spokesperson told ProPublica the agency had investigated claims against Collins years ago “and ultimately found nothing implicating Senator Collins or Senator Collins’ campaign.”

But the investigation at the center of ProPublica’s story was based on claims Kao made between 2022 through 2024—not seven years ago, as Collins states. That investigation did not conclude under President Joe Biden but under Trump, in 2025, after his administration purged the agents and Department of Justice attorneys assigned to the case.

Collins is, of course, innocent until proven guilty. But this got me thinking of the famous quote from Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

We’ve seen oh-so-many instances of powerful people—in politics and in business, both locally and beyond—doing illegal, immoral and crazy things, and I wondered: Is there any science behind Lord Acton’s claim—in other words, is there hard evidence that power does, in fact, corrupt?

It turns out there is—and it’s covered in a fascinating Aug. 21 piece in BBC’s Science Focus Magazine. This, too, is highly recommended reading. A snippet:

Power is quite the tonic. Attaining it doesn’t just affect a person’s behaviour or decision-making. It has a biological effect, leading to changes in a person’s brain and the flux of hormones in their body.

“Research shows that when people are put into positions of power, especially in non-crisis situations, their testosterone goes up, but their cortisol [a stress hormone] goes down,” (says Adam Galinsky, professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia Business School in New York). “It’s very disinhibiting. It allows people to move forward, but without stress or fear.” …

Galinsky’s research showed that, when you ask someone to recall a time when they had power, their voice becomes steadier and louder, and fluctuates less in pitch.

“Other research has shown that before a stressful situation like giving a speech, if you recall a time of power, your heart rate drops and you actually deliver a better speech,” he says. “It helps people write better job applications and do better in job interviews. It boosts people’s optimism, confidence. It helps them see the big picture, helps them be more visionary.”

In other words, power can be positive. … But then comes the dark side. When the brakes are off, people are more impulsive. Other people’s perspectives and feelings can become shrouded, or the social costs of a particular action or behaviour might be minimised.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• The California Supreme Court has ruled against Chad Bianco regarding his seizure of ballots. Our partners at CalMatters report: “Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco broke the law when he seized more than 650,000 ballots and created ‘a substantial risk to election integrity,’ California’s Supreme Court ruled on Thursday morning. The justices ruled unanimously that Bianco must return the ballots to the county’s top election administrator and ‘refrain from further handling’ them. In a second ruling, the court also held that Bianco broke the law when he ignored directives from the state’s attorney general to hold off on his plans to execute a search warrant to seize the ballots last March. Bianco’s argument ‘overlooks that allowing law enforcement unfettered access to ballots, or the ability to handle and count them in secret based on unregulated protocols, itself creates a substantial risk to election integrity,’ Guerrero wrote. ‘There is no need to introduce this risk because the Elections Code already contains its own comprehensive procedures for recounting and examining ballots, including for law enforcement purposes, without exposing them to alteration or tampering—unlike the unlawful seizure that occurred here,’ the ruling read.“

• CNN, Politico and MS NOW again have White House access after a court ruling. The Associated Press says: “Three news organizations banned from the White House for days were back on Thursday after a judge handed them a victory in an extraordinary showdown between President Donald Trump and media outlets whose coverage he dislikes. On a chaotic day at the White House gates and in court, CNN, MS NOW and Politico journalists were initially denied entry but allowed back in by early afternoon. The developments played out as Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited Trump in Washington. A Secret Service agent had confiscated the journalists’ credentials on Thursday morning, the news outlets said in a court filing. They asked for an immediate hearing to address what seemed to be the White House ignoring the court’s order. But the White House said in its own filing, shortly after reporters were allowed back in, that it had taken time to reinstate disabled badges.”

• The super El Niño could take a lot of lives—including a lot in California. The Los Angeles Times says: “Scientists are forecasting more than 450,000 deaths because of intense heat generated by El Niño in the coming months, according to a new study from the Climate Impact Lab. And that’s in addition to the people likely to be killed by other climatic effects such as drought, wildfire and flooding. Most of those heat deaths are expected in Africa and Southeast Asia, but about 3,500 are anticipated in the U.S. About 1,000 are expected in California, said one of the study’s authors, Tamma Carleton, assistant professor of agricultural and resource economics at UC Berkeley. Roughly 450 are likely in Los Angeles and San Diego, she said. … That news comes as local and state leaders are scrambling to prepare for the projected effects of this ‘super El Niño,’ potentially the most intense warming of the water on the surface of the Pacific Ocean on record. A study published recently in the journal Science examines temperature data from more than 900 years of coral records from the Galápagos and suggests that El Niños have become much stronger since people started warming the planet through fossil fuel emissions.”

• In other climate-change news, it appears that Trump’s mess in Iran is having an unintended positive effect (among many negative ones). The Washington Post (gift link) reports: “The Trump agenda has inadvertently dealt a sizable blow against global warming. His war on Iran, now in its seventh month, has led to a plunge in the consumption of oil and gas around the world as fighting disrupts production and transportation. Analysts had initially forecast that the shortages would be just a blip in the global economy, with the conflict winding down quickly and fuel exports ramping right back up to where they were. That is not how things are playing out. The shortages have gone on for so long that they are aggressively driving down how much carbon is being released into the atmosphere, a Washington Post analysis of data from the International Energy Agency shows. People worldwide are using significantly less oil and gas, which means less climate pollution.”

• A bevy of lawsuits against GLP-1 manufacturers claim the drugs can cause vision loss. ABC News says: “Dozens of Americans have filed personal injury lawsuits against the makers of popular GLP-1 drugs, like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro, claiming they were not properly warned of the risk of a rare type of sudden vision loss, called nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION, when taking the medications. Researchers have been studying a possible link between GLP-1 drugs and this eye condition in recent years after a possible safety signal was reported from a single health center in Boston in 2024, but so far, no study has proven these drugs are the cause. … Although a rare condition overall, Dr. John Chen, a professor of ophthalmology and neurology at Mayo Clinic, said, ‘NAION is the most common acute optic neuropathy in patients over the age of 50. It’s essentially a lack of blood flow to the optic nerve, where patients typically have pretty acute onset of painless vision loss.’ That vision loss is usually permanent, and there is no specific treatment for the condition at this time, Chen told ABC News.”

• And finally … today’s recall news is a biggie, and it involves a LOT of meat. The New York Times (gift link) reports: “More than 167,000 pounds of raw pork, beef and goat products are being recalled nationwide because they were produced without proper inspection, federal safety regulators said. No confirmed illnesses or injuries related to the meat products have been reported. The Department of Agriculture issued the alert on Tuesday after discovering that Star Meat Delivery Inc., a company based in North Carolina, had used a false mark of inspection. Meat inspected by federal authorities carries a mark stating that it has been examined, alongside an establishment number—‘EST’—that identifies the plant where the product was produced. The affected items carry the label ‘EST. 1363’ and should be considered falsely labeled and unsafe to eat, according to the department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. The recalled items include beef ribs, pork chorizo, pork chops and cuts of goat.”

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