The Brief

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s investigators had no insider tipsters, no witnesses and no independent analyses from forensic experts when they approached a local judge and asked to take the unprecedented step of seizing hundreds of thousands of ballots.

Instead, the evidence they showed Judge Jay Kiel were claims from a group that one independent elections expert described as the equivalent of “flat earthers” alleging possible voter fraud. The county’s top elections official says their claims of miscounted ballots are based on flawed and incomplete data.

Kiel, whom Bianco endorsed when he was running for the bench, signed the search warrants anyway, allowing the sheriff to take the highly unusual step of seizing 650,000 ballots from California’s 2025 election amid his own campaign for governor.

Until this week, the warrants were secret with Bianco, a Republican, contending they reflected “normal law enforcement” and Kiel keeping them under seal.

That changed Wednesday when a different Riverside County judge and the California Supreme Court ordered them opened after CalMatters and other news organizations petitioned for their disclosure.

After reviewing the documents, experts had mixed opinions on whether Bianco’s investigators had enough evidence of probable cause to justify the raid. Some said the lack of evidence in the investigators’ affidavits raises troubling questions about how easy it was for Bianco to seize the ballots with the appearance of judicial oversight.

Bianco said he didn’t care what independent experts had to say about his investigators’ warrants, and he blamed the media and California Attorney General Rob Bonta for trying to politicize the sheriff’s investigation.

“We took the information to a judge, and the judge agreed; it's really as simple as that,” he said. “Why not just get to the bottom of it and see what the difference in the numbers were?”

Cristine Soto DeBerry, a former prosecutor who heads the nonprofit Prosecutors Alliance Action, said she was troubled by how much the sheriff relied on an activist group’s claims without trying to first verify them before obtaining the warrants.

“This entire course of conduct concerns me,” said Soto DeBerry, whose group advocates for criminal justice reform. “Elections are a sacred institution in this country. We have not seen sheriffs seizing ballots in this country until 2026 and it is being done in a very casual, procedural manner instead of with the kind of care that I’d expect we would use around something so important. And I think that applies to everybody who was involved here.”

Carl Luna, director of the Institute for Civil Civic Engagement at the University of San Diego, criticized the citizens’ group that deputies cited in the warrants and questioned Bianco’s integrity.

“They are the political equivalent of flat earthers who refuse to look at any facts that do not support their unsupportable views,” said Luna in an email to CalMatters. “The fact that Sheriff Bianco, an elected representative of the people of Riverside County, is using this group’s baseless allegations of fraud as what amounts to a campaign stunt is … evidence to question his fitness to lead the state.”

But Paul Pfingst, a former San Diego County district attorney and the former president of the California District Attorneys Association, said he thought the information presented in the affidavits was enough to meet probable cause.

“I think it exceeds it by a lot,” he said, pointing to the court paperwork, which says the county registrar of voters had not answered questions from an activist.

“In the absence of an explanation by the registrar of voters,” said Pfingst, “and unless someone can explain how … such a large discrepancy could occur, it is reasonable for law enforcement to determine whether the discrepancy is the result of electoral fraud or ballot fraud.”

Pfingst said it wasn't necessary for investigators from the sheriff’s department to get an explanation from county election officials before seeking the warrants.

Art Tinoco, the county’s registrar of voters, publicly rejected the activist group’s claims. He told county supervisors on Feb. 10 – before Kiel signed the last two of the warrants – that the activist group making the allegations didn’t understand the data they were looking through.

“Did the Nov. 4, 2025, statewide special election have a 45,896-ballot discrepancy between ballots cast and ballots counted?” Tinoco told the supervisors, according to the Riverside Press Enterprise. “The answer to that is no.”

CalMatters requested an interview with Tinoco on Thursday. County Chief Executive Officer Jeff Van Wagenen responded with a statement saying that no county officials would comment due to the pending litigation.

A spokesperson for Riverside County Superior Court said Kiel couldn’t comment due to rules prohibiting judges from discussing pending cases.

Court halted Bianco's investigation

The search warrants were unsealed on Wednesday, the same day that the California Supreme Court halted Bianco’s ballot investigation, which he previously characterized as a “fact-finding mission” intended “just as much to prove the election is accurate as it is to show otherwise.”

That ruling was in response to legal challenges from Bonta and UCLA Voting Rights Project contesting the seizure and recount.

In lawsuits, Bonta argued that Bianco failed to show that probable cause or evidence of a crime existed — a step that’s required to obtain a search warrant. He called it an attempt to undermine public confidence in elections.

Bonta’s office responded to an interview request Thursday with an emailed statement saying the office is working to “prevent the misuse of criminal investigative tools for partisan fishing expeditions.”

“Our focus is on the sheriff’s responsibilities under the law — to provide sufficient evidence of probable cause in obtaining criminal search warrants, to allow (the) Riverside (registrar of voters) to retain physical custody of the ballots as required by the elections code, and to follow the Attorney General’s lawful directives, all of which he failed to do,” the email read.

Claims from outside group

The newly released records show that the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department was in contact with a citizens’ group that believed they found possible voter fraud after surfacing a roughly 46,000-vote discrepancy between the number of ballots cast versus the number ballots certified, according to Riverside County Sheriff Department investigator Robert Castellanos in a sworn affidavit.

The last of the three warrants Kiel signed was filed on March 19, roughly three weeks after the state Justice Department ordered the Riverside County Sheriff Department to pause its work and share any information that could substantiate its concerns. By that point, the sheriff’s department had already recounted 12,561 ballots, according to Castellanos’s affidavit.

Castellanos’s affidavits do not have a signature from a prosecutor at the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office, suggesting prosecutors may not have reviewed the sheriff’s office warrant requests. It’s a common practice in California for a deputy district attorney to review local law enforcement search warrants to ensure investigators are on sound legal footing before presenting their evidence to a judge. The DA’s office didn’t return a message from CalMatters Thursday.

In an interview, Greg Langworthy said he wasn’t a conspiracy theorist and insisted his group, which calls itself the Riverside County Election Integrity Team, found enough evidence of vote-count discrepancies to warrant further investigation based on the registrar of voters’ own records.

“There’s no doubt that there is a discrepancy, and that's supported by his own records,” he said. “That’s why we say the sheriff is duty bound to investigate. I think all of them are duty bound to investigate.”

Allegations of voter fraud in Trump era

Groups like Langworthy’s are increasingly common, as President Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again movement spread unfounded allegations of rampant voter fraud.

Across the country, there’s been “an increasing appetite for seizing materials for the sake of simply seizing materials,” said Stephen Richer, the Republican former elected recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona. Richer was running his county’s elections office in 2020, when Trump falsely accused him of overseeing a “rigged election,” leading to death threats.

“I have a lot of experience with independent election fraud hunters and they almost universally have no experience in election administration,” he said. “I think it’s also important when ethically and responsibly submitting an affidavit for probable cause that you assess the credibility of the witnesses.”

Leonard Moty, a former Redding police chief and Republican supervisor in Shasta County where similar allegations of election impropriety have become common, described the warrants as “pretty light” after reviewing them at CalMatters’ request.

He said he would have liked to have seen a more specific allegation with supporting evidence in the warrant before taking the matter to a judge.

Instead, the warrants focused on allegations from activists.

“Statements don’t really mean much, particularly with this issue where on both sides people are saying what they want to say,” Moty said. “I would have wanted to see some actual evidence of votes not being counted.”

State Sen. Tom Umberg, a Democrat from Santa Ana who used to be a federal prosecutor, also reviewed the warrants at CalMatters request.

He said he’d never seen warrants before that didn’t identify a specific law investigators suspected may have been broken, nor did they present evidence that investigators had verified the reliability of the group making the allegations.

After reading the warrants, Umberg said he was considering writing legislation “to make sure that elections are not interfered with, that ballots are not seized based on some conspiracy theory.”

“This election is going to be a test of our democracy,” Umberg said. “And if it doesn't go the way the president thinks it should go, I am gravely concerned that he will use whatever levers of power he has, federally as well as locally, to undermine that election.”

Cayla Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow.

CalMatters Deputy Editor Adam Ashton contributed to this story.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Wide-open land on L.A.’s Westside is rare. And where it does exist, it’s extremely expensive. But Santa Monica will soon get a chance to redevelop an amount of land unprecedented in the city’s recent history.

The Santa Monica Airport is set to close at the end of 2028. Residents have supported turning it into a park. Proponents of that approach say all 227 acres should be reserved for green space.

But with rents out of reach for many Westside workers, others are fighting to set aside some land for affordable housing.

“If we don’t do it here, I don't know where we’ll get it done in such big numbers,” said Ralph Mechur, a member of the pro-housing group Cloverfield Commons and a proponent of a measure now aiming to qualify for the November ballot.

The ballot initiative would ask Santa Monica voters to approve using 25% of the airport’s land for 3,000 units of low- and moderate-income housing. The other 75% would be kept as a park.

But park proponents don’t want to sacrifice any of the airport land.

“It's not to do with housing, per se,” said Frank Gruber with the Santa Monica Great Park Coalition. “Somebody could say to me, we need 20 acres to build a laboratory that will guarantee that we will cure cancer — we'd still be opposed to it.

“This land, every square foot, we think of as precious for the park,” he said.

Little affordable housing leads to long commutes

The competing visions for the future of the Santa Monica Airport highlight tensions over creating more affordable housing in wealthy communities where thousands of people work, but can’t afford to live.

One of those workers is Luis Martinez. He spends up to 90 minutes commuting from his home in Canoga Park to his job as a server and bartender at Santa Monica’s Fairmont Miramar Hotel.

Martinez recently worked eight days in a row, picking up shifts from co-workers. It was great for his paycheck, he said, but all those hours stuck in traffic were not great for his wife and 2-year-old son.

“He doesn't see me as much, because I'm always working,” Martinez said. “The time is what makes him miss me. It puts a strain on us.”

Luis Martinez spends hours behind the wheel each day he commutes from his home in Canoga Park to his job in Santa Monica.

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Martinez’s family moved into their one-bedroom apartment three years ago with a monthly rent of $1,900. At the time, he said, they would have needed to spend at least $2,800 to rent a comparable apartment near the Fairmont.

“I cannot afford that,” he said. “I know it's a good place to raise a family. I would love to live there if I could afford it.

Who would live in proposed airport housing?

Martinez belongs to the union Unite Here Local 11, which is helping to collect signatures to qualify the measure for the November ballot.

The measure would ask voters to make half of the 3,000 apartments available to renters earning up to 80% of the area’s median income. The rest would be reserved for middle-income workers earning up to 120% of the area median. If the apartments were built today, L.A. County's current income limits would disqualify individuals earning more than $89,550 and families of four earning more than $127,900.

“It begins to provide housing for our kids, our grandkids, possibly your teachers, janitors, cooks and hotel workers who might be priced out of lower-income affordable housing,” said Mechur, who supports the ballot initiative.

A "for lease" sign hangs on the exterior of an apartment building in Santa Monica.

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In 2014, more than 60% percent of Santa Monica voters supported Measure LC, which instructed the city to “prohibit new development on airport land, except for parks, public open spaces and public recreational facilities.”

But that measure left open the possibility to change plans through another public vote. In the current cycle of state-mandated housing goals, Santa Monica must plan to allow about 6,100 units of affordable housing by 2029.

“Here's an opportunity to build up to 3,000 units in one time period, to help reach numbers that will provide housing for people who need to be in Santa Monica,” Mechur said.

The airport’s history — and future

Planes have been taking off at the Santa Monica Airport site for more than a century. Pilots who flew in and out of the airport include Amelia Earhart and the first team to aerially circumnavigate the globe.

During World War II, the nearby Douglas Aircraft Company built military planes. To provide aerial camouflage during the war, the entire airport was covered with chicken wire, on which Hollywood set designers built lightweight structures made to look like rows of suburban homes.

But by the 1970s, nearby residents were lodging frequent complaints about noise and pollution. After decades of arguments, the Federal Aviation Administration agreed in 2017 to let Santa Monica close the airport after Dec. 31, 2028.

Frank Gruber stands on the observation deck of the Santa Monica Airport, overlooking land he envisions turning into a sprawling public park.

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Frank Gruber, one of the park supporters, said the aviation industry tried to fight closure of the airport by telling residents it could end up being used for high-rise developments. He said changing plans now could reopen the question of keeping the airport.

Plus, Gruber argued, this land is not a great location now that the city has changed policies to encourage affordable housing elsewhere.

“There's no provision for putting schools there,” Gruber said. “There's no provision for supermarkets. They're basically creating isolated super blocks, to use that urbanism kind of expression, where people would be car dependent. It just doesn't make sense.”

‘We want to be part of that community, too’

The ballot measure would not include specific plans for funding new housing. It would only change land use to allow residential development. Proponents say because the city owns the land, housing revenue could help fund park facilities, which the city also needs to budget for.

While driving through slow-crawling traffic along the Sepulveda Pass, Luis Martinez — the Fairmont hotel worker — said his Westside roots run deep.

Martinez grew up in South L.A., but he would wake up early to attend Paul Revere Charter Middle School and Palisades Charter High School. Later, he studied at Santa Monica College.

“I grew up being in traffic,” Martinez said. “I grew up commuting.”

Luis Martinez stands in front of the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, where he has worked for eight years.

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After eight years of working at the Fairmont Hotel, he said he feels even more connected to Santa Monica. And he believes workers like him deserve a chance to live there.

“It's such a good environment for kids to grow up, and I want my kid to be a part of that,” Martinez said. “Everyone's very involved in what happens in Santa Monica. They're very informed. They're very pro-Santa Monica. It's its own community. Just know that we want to be part of that community, too.”

Ballot initiative proponents need to turn in 7,038 valid signatures by mid-June to qualify for the November ballot.

A new analysis of alerts sent during the Eaton Fire found “no failure” by emergency officials to issue timely evacuation orders to areas west of Lake Avenue in Altadena.

The timing of alerts to neighborhoods west of Lake, where all but one of 19 deaths in that fire occurred, has been under scrutiny since the January 2025 fire.

The independent report by Citygate Associates was commissioned by the L.A. County Fire Department at the start of this year and was released Monday.

Its conclusions are similar to those of after-action reports from other firms — that officials did the best they could amid unprecedented fire conditions and strained resources.

“While the report provides an honest account of our operations, we recognize that no investigation can truly capture the horror and tragedy residents endured,” said L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone in a prepared statement. “My focus is to ensure that the lessons learned from the Eaton and Palisades fires are turned into lasting changes that will better protect our residents and neighborhoods into the future.”

Altadena resident Zaire Calvin — whose sister died in the fire and whose own home burned down — said the report feels like another “slap in the face.” He said he wanted to see details on any mistakes that may have been made. But reading the report, he felt blame was once again largely placed on unprecedented fire conditions.

“A  community that's already down, a community that's fighting for their lives, a community that's fighting all of the people trying to take property from them — at some point you just want accountability,” Calvin said.

L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents Altadena, said in a prepared statement that the “investigation should not be interpreted as dismissing the experiences of residents. Public trust requires both accountability and a willingness to learn from every aspect of a disaster response.”

Citygate Associates, which produced an after-action report on the 2018 Woolsey Fire, used interviews, operational records, dispatch records and internal communications to analyze decisionmaking between 9 p.m. on Jan. 7, 2025, and 6 a.m. the following day.

Some of the main findings include the following:

• With aircraft grounded by  high winds, “Incident Command was forced to fight a fire while blind to its movements.” 
• Evacuation decisions were not based on “race, age or socioeconomics.” 
• “Evacuation planners who created the evacuation zone areas well before the fire tried to use, where possible, major north/south and east/west streets. … Thus, Lake Avenue was a natural, very long street that could be utilized as an anchor for creating evacuation zones.” 
• Other fire timeline reviews cite reports of fire moving westward between 11 p.m. and just before midnight, but Citygate staffers write that strained resources were focused on the eastern front of the fire at that time, which was the direction the fire was initially spreading, and that “fire progression maps … do not show the the Eaton Fire directly impacting western neighborhoods at that time.” 
• The fire initially spread westward more slowly, and did not escalate significantly until early in the morning on Jan. 8.
• Reports of fires before 1 a.m. west of Lake Avenue were likely a result of downed power lines.
• By 2 a.m., radio reports indicated embers were being cast deeper into Altadena. 
• Discussions to expand evacuation orders west started at 2:18 a.m., with evacuation orders being sent to residents west of Lake by 3:25 a.m. 
• The main fire front crossed west of Lake Avenue by about 5:15 a.m. 

Find the full report here. 

Huntington Beach must pay $50,000 for each month it continues to fail to comply with the state’s mandate to zone for more housing, according to a recent court ruling. For several years now, the city has been waging a court battle against the state's order to make way for 40,000 new homes.

The judge ruled that the city should be penalized $10,000 per month going back to January 2025, and then fined $50,000 per month, starting next month, until the city gets a compliant housing element approved.

The backstory

State law requires California cities and counties to plan for enough housing to meet the expected demand over an eight-year time period, including for low-income housing. Huntington Beach, citing its independence as a charter city, has fought its most recent housing allocation all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to review the case last year.

Does the state require cities to actually build that many homes?

No. Cities are not required to actually build housing, but rather to make sure their zoning and land use codes accommodate the amount of housing assigned to them through what’s known as the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA).

What does the city say?

In a statement, Casey McKeon, the city’s mayor, said the city “strongly opposes these penalties and will continue fighting for the rights of our residents and for the principle of local control against ongoing efforts by the Attorney General to centralize land use authority in Sacramento.”

Is Huntington Beach an outlier?

Yes. Huntington Beach is an outlier in its aggressive fight against the state housing mandates. More than 90% of California’s 539 jurisdictions are in compliance with the state requirement to plan for the amount of housing assigned to them through the latest RHNA cycle.

What’s next?

The city recently posted draft revisions to its housing plan — for the first time since 2021. That’s significant because the city’s efforts to come into state compliance have been paused for years.

One complication with compliance: Huntington Beach residents voted to require any major changes to the city’s zoning, including its state-mandated housing plan, to be put up for a public vote. That could mean more delays in coming into state compliance, and consequently, more fines, at a time when the city is facing a budget crunch.

During a press conference following a shooting at the San Diego Islamic Center, San Diego Police Department Chief Scott Wahl confirmed three adult victims at the center and the two suspects are dead.

Police said the suspects were found dead in the vehicle nearby. They were 17 and 19 years old. The motivation behind the shooting is unknown at this time.

Wahl said in 28 years, this is the most dynamic and impressive response he's seen in policing with help coming from agencies all over the county.

Imam of the Islamic Center of San Diego Taha Hassane said the center stands in solidarity "with all of the families in our community here and all the mosques and places of worship" in San Diego.

"This is something that we never expected, and I would also like to thank all the people who contacted us from all over the country and overseas to offer their condolences."

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria was also present at the news conference.

"We will do anything it takes to make sure you feel safe in this city," Gloria said.

In a statement, the Council on American-Islamic Relations-San Diego Executive Director Tazheen Nizam said:

“We strongly condemn this horrifying act of violence at the Islamic Center of San Diego. Our thoughts are with everyone impacted by this attack. No one should ever fear for their safety while attending prayers or studying at an elementary school. We are working to learn more about this incident and we encourage everyone to keep this community in your prayers."

The active shooter situation was reported at 11:43 a.m. at ICSD in the 7000 block of Eckstrom Avenue in Clairemont, according to SDPD.

The department is asking people to avoid the area.

A reunification location for those impacted by the incident has been established at 4125 Hathaway Street.

According to our news partner ABC 10News, authorities shut down northbound and southbound Interstate 805 at Balboa Avenue due to the law enforcement activity.

The San Diego Unified School District confirmed several campuses were placed on lock down. SDUSD spokesperson James Canning said lockdowns are gradually being lifted but schools closest to the Islamic Center will be the last to have their lockdowns lifted.

The Islamic Center is the largest mosque in San Diego County. The center holds five daily prayers.