election

REDDING — At a Board of Supervisors meeting in rural Shasta County last month, Clint Curtis dropped a bombshell: A sheriff way down in Riverside was going to confiscate all the ballots from a recent election.

Curtis, the county registrar of voters, was the first to announce the planned ballot seizure. Even the sheriff himself, Chad Bianco, had not publicly revealed his intentions.

Later, as Bianco’s move grabbed headlines — he is a leading Republican candidate for governor — Curtis’ behind-the-scenes maneuvering remained largely unknown. The registrar had worked with the Riverside County citizens group whose fraud allegations had sparked Bianco’s investigation, even traveling 600 miles south to speak on their behalf.

Shasta County Clerk and Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis poses last month in the new election observation room at the elections office in Redding.

In his short time in Shasta County, Curtis, whose claims about rigged voting machines stretch back to the early 2000s, has solidified his position as a torchbearer of the election denialism movement, vowing to take his message about untrustworthy machines and potential fraud across California and beyond.

Critics here say he has steadily disenfranchised voters. He has eliminated nine of the vast county’s 13 ballot drop boxes, telling The Times he did not trust ballots in the hands of “little old ladies running all over” to collect them. And he has advocated for a local ballot initiative that would limit elections to one day, eliminate most voting by mail and require voter ID as well as a hand count of ballots.

Curtis also has accused his predecessors in the registrar’s office, without evidence, of election fraud and has called for federal authorities to raid the office he now runs.

“Do I think ballots were stuffed? Yes. Have I contacted the DOJ? Yes,” Curtis said at the Feb. 24 Shasta County supervisors’ meeting just before announcing Bianco’s planned ballot seizure.

Curtis, a 67-year-old attorney, was appointed by the Shasta County supervisors last April. He lived in Florida then, had no previous ties to the area and had never run an election.

He got the job based largely on two stated qualifications: He wanted to hand-count votes. And he had worked with Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive and pro-Trump conspiracy theorist.

In his public job interview, Curtis promised to grill local elections staffers to “find out what they know.”

Now Curtis is running for election himself, trying to keep his job in this Northern California county where a majority of the supervisors were so swept up in President Trump’s discredited election fraud claims that they ditched their Dominion voting machines in 2023 and opted to hand-count ballots (quickly prompting a new state law that banned them from doing so).

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Curtis says he is running to make elections more transparent by questioning the status quo and hanging cameras everywhere to capture election workers’ every move.

“Republicans love me,” Curtis told The Times. “The Democrats are pretty good. And then I have these crazy socialist people that just hate me.”

Beliefs aside, Curtis has quickly become a colorful local character.

He took a lie detector test to attest that he didn’t rig the November election. He chose as his number two a heavy metal guitarist from San Francisco — stage name “Turmoil” — who is a progressive Democrat.

And last September, surveillance cameras captured him pushing an antique metal safe through the Shasta County elections office on a Saturday while his wife assisted with a pulling harness. Curtis wore blue jeans — and no shirt.

He said he moved the safe, which contained odds and ends, on a hot day to make more room for election observers.

Curtis first gained national attention for election skepticism in December 2004, in testimony before Congress.

He had been working as a computer programmer in Florida and was brought in as an expert witness by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, who were reeling over President George W. Bush’s defeat of John Kerry a few weeks earlier and furious about an error with an electronic voting machine that gave Bush extra votes in Ohio.

Curtis claimed that he had written “a prototype” of software that would allow cheaters to alter votes using “invisible buttons” on touch-screen balloting machines. His claims were largely dismissed. But he continues to tout his congressional testimony to cast himself as an expert on election malfeasance.

A woman passes by a “Greetings From Redding” mural on Feb. 25.

After testifying, he unsuccessfully ran for office multiple times in Florida. He refused to concede after one loss, alleging the machines were rigged.

In Shasta County, he saw a chance for redemption.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Board of Supervisors gained a hard-right majority supported by anti-vaxxers, secessionists, members of a local militia and pro-Trump election deniers.

In 2022, someone hung a trail camera — the kind hunters use to track wildlife — behind the elections office to monitor the staff. Some observers yelled at staffers and got in the face of Cathy Darling Allen, the longtime registrar, who installed a 7-foot metal fence to keep them at bay.

Joanna Francescut, who worked in the elections office for 17 years, is running to be county registrar.

Darling Allen clashed with the supervisors as they pushed to hand-count votes, a process she argued would be slow, expensive and prone to error. She retired in 2024, citing health reasons.

Her successor resigned after less than a year. The supervisors appointed Curtis in a 3-2 vote, passing over Joanna Francescut, who had worked in the elections office since 2008 and was Darling Allen’s number two.

Days later, Curtis fired Francescut. She is now running against him in the June 2 election.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former senior trial attorney overseeing voting enforcement for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, called Curtis a “nationally known conspiracy theorist.”

“I can’t imagine bringing in someone who is neither an election administrator nor a Californian for a job like that and basically chasing out experienced election officials whose work had withstood scrutiny for decades,” Becker said. “The voters of Shasta County, unfortunately, are paying the price.”

Curtis has accused Francescut and other elections staffers of stuffing ballots to sabotage conservative Republicans.

“I want to laugh because it’s that ridiculous,” Francescut, 43, said of the allegations.

“People that work in this field, they’re doing this work because they care about elections,” she said. “They want the community to be better. They want what both sides want — transparent and accurate elections.”

During her 17-year tenure, the elections office got little public attention. But “once 2020 hit, people went from completely trusting us to, the day after election day, calling and yelling at our staff so much that we couldn’t get the work done to count ballots,” she said.

Curtis was a favorite of then-board chairman Kevin Crye, a hard-right supervisor who enlisted Lindell to support the county’s crusade against Dominion. Crye had survived a 2024 recall effort by just 50 votes.

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1. Carl Bott, co-owner of KCNR 96.5 FM, interviews Joanna Francescut on Feb. 25, 2026, in Redding, Calif. 2. Joanna Francescut’s campaign manager, Mary Williams, wears an orange button that reads “Vote for Jo for County Clerk” as Francescut waits in the offices of talk radio station KCNR.

Citing that close margin, Curtis said he believed recent elections were rigged because Republicans were not winning by large enough margins in a county where registered Republicans greatly outnumber Democrats.

In a letter to the U.S. Justice Department, Curtis said he had learned of lax security and potential ballot stuffing in 2024, the year of the attempted recall against Crye. Curtis sent a copy of the letter to Trump and requested a federal investigation because “the destruction of these ballots is nearing.”

In 2019 and 2024, a Shasta County grand jury investigated local election procedures and found no wrongdoing.

“How does it make me feel? Really angry,” Darling Allen, who is advising Francescut’s campaign, said of Curtis’ allegations. “It calls into question the integrity and character of every single person who worked in the elections department.”

To replace Francescut, Curtis hired Brent Turner, the guitarist from San Francisco. He is a longtime election reform activist who has pushed for nonproprietary open-source voting systems with software code that can be examined by anyone.

Turner described their partnership as: “Republican and Democrat team up to fight outdated software for elections. Oh, my!”

“We have to have the adult conversation in the United States that if the systems are loose enough to allow people — in this case, we’re talking about even people internal to the system — to cheat, they might cheat,” Turner said.

Last October, Secretary of State Shirley Weber wrote to Curtis, asking him to detail planned changes to voting procedures. He responded with a 15-page letter.

Election observers, he wrote, were “treated like invaders … corralled behind spiked fences.” And drivers who picked up ballots from drop boxes sometimes left them in their vehicles. Under his watch, he wrote, “no detours or even bathroom breaks are allowed.”

A woman exits the Cottonwood Post Office in Shasta County.

Curtis told Weber that someone had carved death threats on his vehicle and left “antifa” business cards on his windshield wipers.

Weber’s communications team said in an email that her office “continues to monitor new election processes proposed by Shasta (or any county) County to ensure they do not violate state law.”

In his letter to Weber, Curtis promised to take a lie detector test after each election. Answering pre-written questions he had submitted, Curtis said in a January polygraph test that he did not change the results of the November election and believed a predecessor had rigged previous contests, according to a summary obtained by The Times.

The examiner wrote that he “was likely telling the truth.”

Inside the elections office, Curtis created a large room, decked out with American flags, for citizens to observe the vote-counting process.

More than a dozen large TV monitors display close-up video, also streamed online, of election workers’ hands inserting ballots into machines. On June 2, those workers will sit beneath iPhones hung overhead to record them while observers are positioned on barstools a few inches behind them.

The new public observation room at the Shasta County elections office is decorated with American flags.

Curtis has been traveling across California to tout his methods. He told The Times he has spoken about his video setup in Kern and San Joaquin counties and discussed it with candidates for state office.

And he advised the Riverside County citizens group that claimed to have found an overcount of 45,896 ballots in the November election for Proposition 50, which redrew the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats.

Art Tinoco, the Riverside County registrar of voters, has refuted that number — saying it was based on a misunderstanding of raw data that had not been fully processed.

After Bianco last week announced that his office had seized more than 650,000 ballots, Curtis appeared on the social media broadcast of a right-wing election integrity advocate who called him “the stealth behind the scenes in making that happen.”

Curtis smiled and repeated what he has been espousing since the early 2000s: “You can’t really trust a computer.”

March 23 (UPI) — A sheriff in Riverside, Calif., has seized more than 650,000 ballots from a 2025 state election that allowed the state to redistrict to gain five congressional seats.

Sheriff Chad Bianco, who is running for California governor, said Friday that he is investigating allegations by an activist group that alleged the reported tallies don’t match the ballots.

“This investigation is simple,” he said at a press conference. “Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes reported.”

The election Bianco is investigating is the special election for Proposition 50, asking voters for endorsement to redraw the congressional districts in response to other Republican-led states, like Texas, redrawing their districts to pick up seats.

Californians voted to redistrict, and it was not a close election: 7.4 million in favor to 4.1 million.

A group called Riverside Election Integrity Team called for the investigation saying its examination of records shows about 45,000 more ballots were counted than received, Bianco said.

Local election officials said those allegations were based on a misunderstanding of how ballots are officially counted, the Palm Springs Desert Sun reported.

“County election staff follow detailed procedures established by state and federal law to protect the integrity of the vote and to ensure that every eligible ballot is processed and counted in accordance with those legal requirements,” Riverside County Executive Officer Jeff Van Wagenen said in a statement.

Bianco seized the ballots with two warrants signed by a judge. California Attorney General Rob Bonta sent Bianco a letter March 6 alleging, “my office has serious concerns as to whether probable cause existed to support the issuance of the warrants and whether your office presented the magistrate with all material evidence as required by law.”

Bonta also alleged that Bianco’s office is not qualified to count ballots and the investigation “sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections.”

Bianco replied: “A judge approved the warrant, so Bonta’s opinion means absolutely nothing.”

Bianco also said Friday that he would give the investigation to a judge-appointed special master.

Democrats and Republicans in the state have said the investigation is baseless.

“It looks to me like it’s a politically motivated effort,” Jon Fleischman, former executive director of the California Republican Party, told The New York Times. “It’s awfully coincidental that he would be taking this high-profile and extreme of an action literally two months before he’s facing a statewide election.”

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a Democrat, said Bianco’s claims are not supported by the evidence.

“The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office has taken actions based on allegations that lack credible evidence and risk undermining public confidence in our elections,” Weber said in a statement on Friday.

“Investigations into election processes must be conducted by those with the appropriate legal authority and subject matter expertise. Similar claims raised in other states by individuals without election administration experience have been thoroughly reviewed and debunked.”

Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat running for governor, said Bianco is trying to gain national exposure.

“What we’re seeing from Chad Bianco is a dangerous abuse of power and no different from what we’re seeing from Donald Trump and the extreme Republican efforts to disenfranchise voters nationally,” Villaraigosa said in a statement.

“Seizing hundreds of thousands of ballots without credible evidence is an attack on the very foundation of our democracy. If you’re willing to undermine free and fair elections for MAGA stardom, you have no business holding public office.”

Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff and a leading Republican candidate for governor, has seized more than 650,000 ballots from last November’s election as part of an investigation that he called a “fact-finding mission” to determine if they were fraudulently counted.

Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, the state’s top law enforcement official, has sharply criticized the probe, which he called “unprecedented in both scope and scale.”

In a March 4 letter to the sheriff, Bonta said the seizure of the ballots “sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections.” He threatened to seek legal recourse if Bianco does not halt his investigation.

Bianco said Friday that his investigators are looking into allegations by a local citizens group that “did their own audit” and found that the county’s tally was falsely inflated by more than 45,000 votes — a claim that local election officials have emphatically rejected.

Here is what we know.

Why were ballots taken?

According to Bonta’s office, Bianco’s department on Feb. 26 took about 1,000 boxes of ballot materials in Riverside County related to the November election for Proposition 50, which temporarily redrew the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats in response to partisan redistricting in Republican states, including Texas.

Bianco said that it’s his “constitutional duty” to investigate a potential crime and that he is not trying to change the election results.

The investigation includes all of the ballots cast in the county, where Proposition 50 passed with 56% of the vote, a margin of more than 82,000 ballots. Statewide, it passed with 64% of the vote, a margin of more than 3.3 million ballots.

Bianco said he had been contacted by “a group of citizen volunteers” that said it performed an audit finding that 45,896 more ballots were counted than were cast. He did not name the group, but the allegations match those made by a group called the Riverside Election Integrity Team.

In a February presentation to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco disputed the group’s allegations and said they were based on a misunderstanding of raw data that had not been fully processed.

The actual discrepancy, Tinoco said, was 103 votes — a variance of 0.016%.

How did the sheriff get the ballots?

Bianco said his department served the registrar with a warrant “approved and signed by a judge” on Feb. 9.

According to Bonta’s office, an additional warrant was issued on Feb. 23. Bianco said the warrants are now sealed.

In the March 4 letter to Bianco, the attorney general said he had “serious concerns” about whether the sheriff had probable cause to seize the election materials.

Bonta questioned whether Bianco had concealed information from the magistrate judge who approved the warrants, including details from the registrar’s analysis of the citizen group’s allegations.

An official from Bonta’s office told The Times that the attorney general “found out in the middle of the week that [Bianco] was going to execute the warrants on a Friday.” Bonta’s office asked the sheriff to slow down and share information about the investigation, but “instead of waiting, he actually moved it up” and seized the ballots sooner than planned, said the official, who would only speak on background.

Bianco said a Riverside County Superior Court judge ordered the appointment of a special master to oversee the ballot count. His investigators had already begun counting, but the tally would start over under the court’s guidance, Bianco said.

The ballots would have soon been destroyed

California law requires county officials to keep election materials — including ballots and voter identification envelopes — for 22 months for elections involving a federal office and for six months for all other contests.

The materials must be sealed and then destroyed at the end of the retention period.

The Proposition 50 election took place on Nov. 4, so the ballots are scheduled to be destroyed in May.

Why investigate now?

Political observers say that Bianco — a leading gubernatorial candidate — appears to be vying for attention from President Trump and his supporters.

Kim Nalder, a political science professor and director of the Project for an Informed Electorate at Sacramento State, said the investigation appears to be “an electoral ploy.”

“At this stage in the election, most voters haven’t really tuned into the gubernatorial race, and there are a ton of candidates,” she said. “People who don’t know his background will know now. This is clear signaling.”

Trump has repeatedly called on the federal government to “nationalize” state-run elections. He remains fixated on his 2020 election loss and has falsely claimed widespread fraud.

In January, the FBI raided the elections office in Fulton County, Ga., seizing 2020 presidential election records. And this month, the Republican leader of Arizona’s state Senate said he had handed over 2020 election records to the FBI, complying with a federal grand jury subpoena for records related to a controversial audit of the election in Maricopa County.

Bianco is an outspoken Trump supporter.

A poll released last week by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times showed Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton leading the crowded field of gubernatorial candidates by slim margins, with the Democratic vote split among multiple candidates in a left-leaning state.

The top two vote getters, regardless of party, will advance to the November election.

Bianco said the investigation was “not a recount” for Proposition 50 and had nothing to do with his campaign for governor.

WASHINGTON — Californians may be forced to put their ballots in the mail well before election day to be certain they will be counted.

That’s the likely outcome of a Republican challenge to mail ballots that came before the Supreme Court on Monday.

The court’s six conservatives sounded ready to rule that federal law requires that ballots must be received by election day if they are to be counted as legal.

In the 19th century, Congress set a national day for federal elections on a Tuesday in early November, but it did not say how or when states would count their ballots. The Constitution leaves it to states to decide the “times, places and manners for holding elections.”

California and 13 other states count mail ballots that were cast before or on election day but arrive a few days late. And most states accept late ballots from members of the military who are stationed overseas.

By law, California counts mail ballots that arrive within seven days of election day. In 2024, more than 406,000 of these late-arriving ballots were counted in California, about 2.5% of the total.

Other Western states — Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Alaska — also count late-arriving mail ballots.

But President Trump has repeatedly claimed that voting by mail leads to fraud, and the Republican National Committee has gone to court to challenge the state laws that allow for counting the legally cast ballots of citizens which are postmarked on time but arrive late.

GOP lawyers argued that the phrase “election day” has always meant ballots must be in the hands of election officials on that day. In their questions and comments, all six conservatives agreed.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. saw a real prospect of fraud. There could be “a big stash of ballots” that arrive late and “flip the outcome,” he said.

Democrats and election law experts say that the proposed new rule conflicts with more than a century of practice, because most states allowed for some people to vote by mail if they were traveling on election day. They argued that election day is like the federal tax day of April 15. While tax returns must be postmarked then, the tax returns are legal even if they arrive at the Internal Revenue Service a few days later.

The GOP filed its challenge in Mississippi, which accepts ballots that arrive up to five days after election day. A district judge rejected the claim, but a 5th Circuit Court panel with three Trump appointees ruled that ballots are illegal if they are not received by election day.

The case before the court is Watson vs. Republican National Committee.

California has been criticized for taking weeks to count all the votes, but that issue was not raised in this case.

Governing liberals edge ahead of opposition conservatives in a race too close to call, according to exit poll.

Slovenia’s governing Freedom Movement (GS) is on track to win a parliamentary election but will need to find more coalition partners to form a government, according to an exit poll.

GS was set to secure 29.9 percent of the votes, or 30 seats in the country’s 90-seat parliament, in a dip from its previous result of 41 seats, according to the poll, published by TV Slovenia and Pop TV on Sunday.

The opposition Slovenian Democratic Party, led by populist Janez Jansa, is expected to come second and secure 27 seats in parliament, according to the Mediana polling agency.

As he voted, incumbent Prime Minister Robert Golob, 59, called on citizens to cast their ballots.

“Democracy and Slovenia’s sovereignty cannot be taken for granted any more,” he told reporters.

Jansa welcomed the exit poll results and said he would wait for the final result.

“If someone wants a government like the one we’ve had so far, then they are probably satisfied with what these parallel results indicate,” Jansa said.

“Whoever wants change will likely have to wait for the final results, just as we will, and then we will analyse the situation. But we have done everything that was within our power,” he said.

The opposition party leader has served as prime minister three times, most recently from 2020 to 2022.

Ahead of the vote, the election had been marred by controversy after a report last week alleged that Jansa met with officials from the Israeli spy firm Black Cube in December.

Golob told journalists after the report: “The fact that … foreign services are interfering in the elections of a democratic member state of the European Union is something unheard of.”

Voters choosing between incumbent PM Robert Golob and pro-Trump Janez Jansa, with neither likely to win parliamentary majority.

Slovenians are voting in a tight parliamentary election, as incumbent liberal Prime Minister Robert Golob takes on right-wing populist Janez Jansa, who is eyeing a comeback.

Polls opened at 7am local time (06:00 GMT) on Sunday and will close at 7pm (18:00 GMT), with exit poll results to be released after voting.

A return of Jansa, an admirer of United States President Donald Trump, could see the former Yugoslav nation, a European Union member of two million people, take an illiberal turn again after four years of centre-left rule under 59-year-old Golob.

Neither is likely to win a parliamentary majority in the vote, which could be decided by smaller coalition partners.

Latest opinion polls confirm Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) and Golob’s Freedom Movement (GS) are set for a close race after an eleventh-hour campaign drama involving allegations of foreign meddling and corruption.

The last government of three-time premier Jansa, who is pro-Israel and an ally of nationalist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, saw mass protests and EU criticism over rule-of-law concerns.

Under Golob, a political newcomer when he took over from Jansa in 2022, Slovenia legalised same-sex marriage and became one of the few EU countries to describe Israel’s war in Gaza as genocide.

Analysts say Jansa, 67, has a devoted voter base, and the lower the turnout, the higher the chances of him winning the election.

At stake is the domestic and foreign agenda of Slovenia, where the outgoing government focused on social and health reforms but delivered mixed results, resulting in a fall in popularity for Golob’s governing coalition.

Jansa has promised to introduce tax breaks for businesses and cut funding for civil society, welfare and media.

Slovenia, an Alpine country with a developed industrial base, emerged stronger from the collapse of Yugoslavia than other states such as Serbia or Bosnia and Herzegovina, which have been held back by war, economic sanctions and political infighting.

Jansa would also likely change Golob’s foreign policy under which Slovenia was one of the few European countries that recognised an independent Palestinian state and last year imposed an arms embargo on Israel.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who is a leading Republican candidate for governor, has seized more than 650,000 ballots from last November’s election and is investigating whether they were fraudulently counted.

“This investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes recorded,” Bianco said at a news conference Friday.

The unusual probe drew a sharp rebuke from California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who said in a statement Friday that it is “unprecedented in both scope and scale” and appears “not to be based on facts or evidence.”

“There is no indication, anywhere in the United States, of widespread voter fraud,” Bonta said. “Counts, recounts, hand counts, audits, and court cases all support this.”

According to Bonta’s office, Bianco’s department on Feb. 26 seized about 1,000 boxes of ballot materials in Riverside County related to the November election for Proposition 50, which temporarily redrew the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats in response to partisan redistricting in Republican states, including Texas.

The sheriff said his investigators are looking into allegations by a local citizens group that “did their own audit” and found that the county’s tally was falsely inflated by more than 45,000 votes — a claim that local election officials have rejected.

President Trump, who remains fixated on his 2020 election loss, continues to amplify election conspiracy theories and has repeatedly called for the federal government to “nationalize” state-run elections to counter what he says is widespread fraud.

Bonta and California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, both Democrats, have vowed to fight federal interference that could affect voting in California, including efforts to seize election records, as the FBI recently did in Georgia.

Bianco is an outspoken Trump supporter who said in an endorsement video in 2024 that, after 30 years of putting criminals in jail, he figured it was “time to put a felon in the White House — Trump 2024, baby” — referencing Trump’s conviction by a New York jury for falsifying business records while paying hush money to a porn actor.

Bianco’s investigation, which includes all the ballots cast in Riverside County in November, raises questions about how he would handle the election denialism movement if elected governor.

A poll released last week by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times showed Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton leading the crowded field of gubernatorial candidates by slim margins, in a left-leaning state.

Last fall, Proposition 50 passed in Riverside County with 56% of the vote — a margin of more than 82,000 ballots.

A citizens group called the Riverside Election Integrity Team has said it performed an audit finding that 45,896 more ballots were counted than were cast.

In a lengthy February presentation to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco disputed that figure, saying it was based on a misunderstanding of raw data that had not been fully processed.

The actual discrepancy, Tinoco said, was 103 votes, a variance of 0.016% that was far below what he said was the state’s preferred 2% margin of error for certifying results.

Bianco on Friday said that there “is no acceptable error, small or large, in our elections.”

The sheriff did not name the Riverside Election Integrity Team, but his description of the allegations brought to him by “a group of citizen volunteers” matched theirs.

Bianco said the investigation was “not a recount” for the Proposition 50 contest and was “just as much to prove the election is accurate as it is to show otherwise — we will not know until the count is complete.”

Bonta said his office has “attempted to work cooperatively” with the Sheriff’s Department to understand the basis for the probe. The sheriff, Bonta said, “has delayed, stonewalled, and otherwise refused to work with us in good faith” and failed to provide most of the requested documents.

“We’re concerned that there is not sufficient justification for seizing every ballot that was cast in this very largely populated county,” an official in Bonta’s office said in an interview Friday night.

In a March 4 letter to Bianco, the attorney general cited Bianco’s plan to use Sheriff’s Department staffers, “who are not trained and have no experience,” to count the ballots.

“Let me be clear: this is unacceptable,” Bonta wrote. “Your decision to seize ballots and begin counting them based on vague, unsubstantiated allegations about irregularities in the November special election results sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections. You are also flagrantly violating my directives.”

At his news conference Friday, Bianco fired back by calling Bonta “an embarrassment to law enforcement.”

A Riverside County Superior Court judge, Bianco said, has ordered the appointment of a special master to oversee the ballot count.

In a statement Friday, Secretary of State Weber said “the Sheriff’s assertion that his deputies know how to count is admirable. The fact remains that he and his deputies are not elections officials and they do not have expertise in election administration.”

SACRAMENTO — Californians have never been forced to choose between Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris, two homegrown political darlings, during any election.

But if the state’s registered Democrats picked now, Newsom would trounce Harris as their party’s next nominee for president and have the edge over other Democratic contenders, according to a poll released Friday by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times.

Twenty-eight percent of the California Democrats who were surveyed selected the governor as their top choice in the 2028 presidential election. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) followed with 14% and former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg received 11%. Harris came in fourth, with only 9% of voters in her own state naming her as their preferred Democratic nominee.

“It’s quite a positive result for Newsom,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley IGS Poll. “He’s separated himself from the rest of the pack, and especially when you compare him to the other major Californian in the considerations, he’s three times as much as Kamala. That’s quite impressive.”

The political careers of the governor and former vice president have orbited each other but never crossed since Newsom was sworn in as San Francisco’s mayor and Harris as the city’s district attorney on the same day in 2004. Now the two Bay Area natives are both flirting with the 2028 presidential contest as they travel the country promoting their life stories on respective book tours.

It’s early days and neither politician has said they will or won’t launch official campaigns for the Oval Office. The possibility remains that Californians might finally see a matchup that the two Democrats have long avoided.

Newsom set his sights on the governor’s office in 2010 before dropping out and running for lieutenant governor, a largely powerless post in which he served in the shadow of Gov. Jerry Brown for eight years. Harris won election that year as California attorney general.

Harris’ and Newsom’s paths diverged again when she chose to run for U.S. Senate in a 2016 contest to replace former Sen. Barbara Boxer and he announced his candidacy for governor in the 2018 election.

When Harris jumped into the 2020 and 2024 races for the White House, Newsom said he wouldn’t run against her. He’s discredited the idea that the two politicians have some kind of a sibling rivalry and noted that their trajectories ran adjacent and never collided.

Newsom was asked again last month whether he would vie against Harris in a presidential contest. The governor said he hasn’t “gotten in the way of her ambition ever,” and he doesn’t imagine that he would in the future. His answer changed when he was pressed to respond specifically to the potential for 2028.

“That’s fate. I don’t, I don’t know,” Newsom said to CNN’s Dana Bash, throwing up his hands. “You know, you can only control what you can control.”

Newsom and Harris had greater support from Black and Latino voters than white and Asian American Democrats in the new poll. She performed well among Democrats younger than 30 compared with other age groups, while Newsom fared better with older Democrats. More women selected Newsom as their first or second choice than they did Harris.

Neither California heavyweight performed particularly great among Democratic voters in the Bay Area, which DiCamillo called a curious finding for two politicians from the region. Support was higher for Harris and Newsom in almost every other region of the state.

DiCamillo believes the presence of Ocasio-Cortez on the list probably pulled some support from Harris. California voters in other recent polls were also sour on a third presidential run by Harris.

An Institute of Governmental Studies poll in August gauged interest in the potential candidacy of Newsom and Harris. About 45% of the state’s registered voters said they were enthusiastic about Newsom running, compared with 36% for Harris. Almost two-third of voters in that survey, and half of Democrats, said Harris should not run for president again.

Although Newsom clearly beat the field of candidates in the most recent poll, DiCamillo said receiving support from a little more than a quarter of those surveyed in his own backyard isn’t exactly wonderful. The governor’s approval rating is also down.

The poll found that 48% of California registered voters say they approve of the job Newsom is doing, with the same share disapproving of his performance. That marks a drop from 51% approval the last time DiCamillo asked in August. Disapproval also climbed, by 5 percentage points.

Voters held positive opinions about Newsom’s participation in international conferences, which was described in the poll as the governor “offering an alternative to the policies being promoted by President Trump on issues like climate change and the economy.” The poll found 59% of statewide registered voters approve and 37% disapprove.

Cristina G. Mora, co-director of the poll, said the results suggest Newsom’s more aggressive stance with Trump seems to resonate in his own state.

“Though Californians may hold mixed views on his gubernatorial tenure, they overwhelmingly see him as the strongest counter to Trump and MAGA candidates,” Mora said. “Harris’s earlier presidential defeat, compounded by persistent voter biases against women and candidates of color, may also be shaping these early numbers.”

The Berkeley IGS/Times poll surveyed 5,019 California registered voters online in English and Spanish from March 9 to 14. The results are estimated to have a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points in either direction in the overall sample, and larger numbers for subgroups.

SACRAMENTO — A new poll shows California voters are sharply divided over two brewing statewide ballot measures stirring up the nation’s partisan and economic divides: a one-time tax on billionaires to pay for mostly healthcare and a voter ID mandate that includes citizenship verification.

The survey conducted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times showed 52% of registered voters supported the billionaire’s tax, while 33% said they opposed it. Fifteen percent were undecided.

Support for the voter ID measure was more evenly split, with 44% of voters in support, 45% opposed and the remainder undecided.

The pair of statewide proposals, which have yet to qualify for California’s November ballot, emanated from opposite sides of California’s political spectrum. Organized labor and progressives are pushing hard for a new wealth tax in response to Republican cuts to federal healthcare programs, and the GOP-led call for additional voter restrictions comes in the wake of President Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Poll director Mark DiCamillo said he “was a little surprised” by the results given how much attention each measure has already received.

“Just from reading the press accounts of these initiatives, I thought they would both be well ahead. There’s been a lot of discussion about them and advocates seem to be very confident in their chances of passage, but the polls seem to indicate otherwise,” he said.

The divisions over each measure fell largely along partisan and ideological lines.

On the billionaire’s tax initiative, 72% of Democratic voters said they would support the measure if the election were held today — and the same percentage of Republicans oppose it. A slim majority — 51% — of voters who are unaffiliated or registered with another party support the wealth tax, while 30% said they oppose it, with the remainder undecided.

Republican voters overwhelmingly support the voter ID initiative, with 91% saying they would vote for it. More than two-thirds of Democratic voters, 68%, said they would oppose the measure. No party preference voters appeared evenly split.

Neither ballot measure has officially qualified for the November ballot thus far, though proponents of the voter ID measure said this month that they turned in 1.3 million voter signatures to elections officials, well above the 875,000 required to qualify. Proponents of the new tax on billionaires have until June 24 to submit signatures to elections officials.

The billionaire tax has generated national news coverage and widespread debate over whether it would benefit low-income Californians or end up hurting the state’s tax base as billionaires move out of the state to avoid paying it.

The proposal is backed by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, which represents 120,000 workers in California. Union leaders say that the tax would raise $100 billion to backfill steep cuts to federal healthcare programs under a sweeping tax and spending bill approved by the Republican-controlled Congress and signed in the summer by Trump.

The measure would impose a one-time 5% tax on the assets of California residents who are worth $1 billion or more, with options to pay it over multiple years.

According to SEIU-UHW, the new tax would apply to around 200 people in the state, though several wealthy tech leaders have made moves to change their residences and avoid paying the tax should it pass. In recent months, Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and others have bought up lavish beachfront estates and new commercial office spaces in South Florida.

Some of those billionaires are also ponying up to defeat the measure. Brin, who according to Forbes is the world’s third-richest person, has contributed $45 million to a new ballot measure committee called Building a Better California, which is pushing an alternative statewide ballot measure that could scrap the billionaire’s tax.

Brandon Castillo, a veteran ballot measure campaign strategist who is not working on either of the two measures, said even though it’s currently polling above 50%, the billionaire’s tax is starting out “in a really shaky position.”

“This is not a very strong place to start,” he said. “That’s not to say they can’t keep this thing over 50%, but when you’re starting just barely above 50% and you have a tsunami of money and a huge campaign against you, it’s really hard to keep yourself at that level.”

Though previous public opinion polls at the state and national levels have shown broad support for requiring proof of citizenship to vote in elections, even among Democrats, the new Berkeley poll showed liberal voters are skeptical of the measure.

Proponents of voter ID contend that such laws prevent election fraud and, along with proof of citizenship mandates, prevent noncitizens from voting. Opponents say ID requirements threaten the fundamental constitutional rights of Americans who do not have the documentation readily available, and that the restrictions are unnecessary given that voting by noncitizens is rare and already outlawed in the U.S.

Under current law, Californians are not required to show or provide identification when casting a ballot in person or by mail. They are required to provide identification when registering to vote, and must swear under penalty of perjury, a felony, that they are eligible to vote and a U.S. citizen.

The poll showed that slim majorities of predominantly Spanish-speaking voters, voters who were born in another country and first-generation immigrants support the voter ID measure. A plurality of Latino voters also favor it, with 44% in support and 41% opposed.

But DiCamillo cautioned against reading too much into those numbers, noting that awareness of the measure is still relatively low.

“I’ve always seen in my history of measuring Latino voters’ support that they are relatively late deciders on most ballot measures,” he said. “How they break will be critical. I would say we’ll have to look at how they feel when we do our final preelection poll.”

Voter ID laws are also a top priority of Trump, who has pressured the Senate into taking up the SAVE Act, which would impose nationwide requirements for proof of citizenship to vote and already has passed the House of Representatives.

Castillo said Trump’s support could sway Democratic and liberal-leaning independents to vote against the measure.

Both DiCamillo and Castillo noted that with the November election still seven months away, voters are not paying much attention and those on either side of each ballot measure have not launched major campaigns yet.

“I suspect by the time election day comes around, these awareness numbers on the billionaire’s tax certainly are going to be much higher,” Castillo said. “You’re going to see 80-90% of voters familiar with it, just because they’re going to be inundated with advertising and earned media between now and November.”

The Berkeley IGS/Times poll surveyed 5,019 registered California voters online in English and Spanish from March 9 to 14. The results are estimated to have a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points in either direction in the overall sample, and larger numbers for subgroups.

For months, the senior U.S. senator from Montana pondered his political future.

Or so he said.

Wrapping up his second term and facing a glide path to a third, Steve Daines unexpectedly opted this month against seeking reelection, saying in an aw-shucksy video he planned to spend more time back home in Montana and enjoy more cherished moments with his seven grandkids.

Notably, after long “wrestling with this decision,” Daines announced his intent a scant two minutes after the deadline passed for candidates to put their names on the ballot. March 4 at 5:02 p.m local time, to be precise.

More notable still, Daines’ preferred successor, Republican former U.S. Atty. Kurt Alme, jumped into the race at 4:52 p.m. that very same day.

There are relay runners who might learn a thing or two from their timing and coordination.

As part of the seamless handoff, Alme was swiftly endorsed by President Trump, Montana’s Republican governor, Greg Gianforte, and its other Republican senator, Tim Sheehy, for all intents settling the GOP contest and, quite likely, choosing the state’s next member of the U.S. Senate.

Never mind what voters might have wished, or other prospective candidates might have had in mind.

“There are a lot of Republicans in the state, folks with political ambitions, who are extremely peeved right now,” said Kal Munis, a Montana native and political science professor at Auburn University, who closely tracks politics in his home state.

Moreover, Munis said, with enough notice a heavy-hitting Democrat might have entered the contest, instead of the lowly bunch now running hopeless campaigns.

Montana, which has a rich Democratic history, has become a solidly Republican state, though the makeover took some time to complete.

As recently as 2008, Barack Obama made a serious run there, losing to John McCain by less than 3 percentage points. Montana had a Democratic governor until Gianforte was elected in 2020 and a Democratic U.S. senator until Jon Tester was defeated in 2024.

Still, while Daines’ seat hardly appeared at great risk for the GOP, a fight for the party’s nomination might have been a costly distraction, diverting money and attention that could go elsewhere as Republican prospects for the midterm election grow increasingly dim. (An unpopular war and shaky economy that’s been knee-capped by a sudden spike in oil prices will do that.)

Of all people, Daines certainly appreciates the bigger political picture, having led Republicans’ Senate campaign committee during the 2024 cycle. So he and his allies short-circuited the election process by laying hands on Alme, who stepped down as U.S. attorney to sidle into the Senate.

Seth Bodnar was among those who quite rightly criticized Daines for, as Bodnar put it, having “so little respect for Montana Republicans that he withdrew at the last minute to coronate his handpicked successor instead of giving them a voice at the ballot box.”

It just goes to show, Bodnar suggested, “the disgusting arrogance of Washington politicians and their party bosses who trade power back and forth like candy.”

Bodnar, the former president of the University of Montana, is running for Senate as an independent, conspicuously steering clear of the toxic Democratic brand. There is speculation the high-handed behavior of Daines, Trump and other Republicans might be enough to give Bodnar’s steep-odds candidacy a decent shot in November.

Munis, for one, is doubtful.

“There are a number of activist types who are deeply angered by this,” he said. “But when it comes to tallying votes in an election, that’s just a drop in the bucket.”

Unfortunately, Daines’ scheming, stick-it-to-the-voters approach isn’t just a Montana Republican thing.

Democratic Rep. Chuy Garcia of Illinois announced in the fall that he would not seek a fifth term this year. The last-second move — which came after Garcia had earlier filed paperwork to run for reelection — made it so his chief of staff and preferred successor, Patty Garcia (no relation), was the only major Democrat to appear on the ballot, virtually guaranteeing her election in November.

The cynical maneuver so disgusted Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a maverick Democrat from rural Washington state, that she defied party leaders and introduced a resolution rebuking Garcia.

His actions were “beneath the dignity of his office and incompatible with the spirit of the Constitution,” said Gluesenkamp Perez, who was jeered and booed by fellow Democrats during the floor debate for having the temerity — heavens to Betsy! — to put principle above knee-jerk partisanship. The measure passed the House, 236 to 183, with only 22 Democrats joining Gluesenkamp Perez in support.

In California, the law prevents incumbents from pulling off the kind of underhanded stunt that Garcia and Daines managed. That’s because the filing deadline is automatically extended for an extra five days whenever a sitting lawmaker opts against seeking another term.

So, for instance, when Rep. Darrell Issa suddenly announced this month he would not run for reelection, he endorsed his favored replacement, San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond, but couldn’t grease the process to see to it that Desmond takes his place.

Legislators in other states should pass a law like the one in California to prevent the undemocratic shenanigans that in effect neutered voters in Montana and the Chicago area.

That is, if they truly believe elections matter and voters should have a choice and not stand by powerless as their government representatives are anointed from on high.

WASHINGTON — Republicans launched an unprecedented effort on Tuesday to hold the Senate floor and talk for days about a bill that they know won’t pass — an attempt to capture public attention on legislation requiring stricter voter registration rules as President Trump pressures Congress to act before November’s midterm elections.

The talkathon could last a week or longer, potentially through the weekend, as Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) tries to navigate Trump’s insistence on the issue and Democrats’ united opposition. Trump has urged Thune to scrap the legislative filibuster, which triggers a 60-vote threshold in the 100-member Senate, or find another workaround to pass the bill, but Thune has repeatedly said he doesn’t have the votes to do that.

Instead, Republicans intend to make a long, noisy show of support for the legislation, which would require Americans to prove they are U.S. citizens before they register to vote and to show identification at the polls, among other things. It’s a risky strategy, with no guarantee it will be enough for Trump, who has said he won’t sign other bills until the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act — also known as the SAVE America Act or the SAVE Act — is passed.

The floor debate is expected to eventually end with a failed vote. Republicans need 60 votes to advance the bill to a final vote, but they hold 53 seats, and all 45 Democrats and both independents, who caucus with the Democrats, oppose it.

The debate will “put Democrats on the record,” Thune said. He added that “how it ends remains to be seen.”

The Senate voted 51 to 48 Tuesday to begin the debate, with Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski the only Republican voting against moving forward on the bill.

In a social media post on Tuesday morning, Trump issued a warning to any Republican who doesn’t support the bill: “I WILL NEVER (EVER!) ENDORSE ANYONE WHO VOTES AGAINST ‘SAVE AMERICA!!!’”

Creating strict voter registration rules

Trump says, without evidence, that Democrats can only win in the midterms if they cheat and explicitly said Republicans need the SAVE America Act to win in November. The House passed the legislation earlier this year, but the Senate turned to other issues as it became evident that Republicans didn’t have the votes to pass it.

But Trump made clear he wasn’t satisfied and pushed the Senate to act. The Republican president has said he won’t sign other legislation, including a bipartisan housing bill backed by the White House, until the voting bill passes.

The bill contains a slew of provisions that Trump and his most loyal supporters have pushed as part of a broad effort to assert federal control over elections. It would require voters nationwide to provide proof of citizenship when they register and to show accepted voter identification when casting a ballot.

It would also create new penalties for election workers who register voters without proof of citizenship and require states to hand voter data over to the Department of Homeland Security so federal officials could screen for voters who are in the country illegally.

Trump also wants new provisions added to the bill, including a ban on most mail-in ballots.

“It’ll guarantee the midterms,” Trump said of the bill last week. “If you don’t get it, big trouble.”

Democratic opposition to the bill is firm

Democrats and many groups that champion voter access say there is little evidence of noncitizens voting and say the bill would disenfranchise millions of voters — including Republicans — by creating new burdens to prove citizenship.

It is already illegal to vote if you are not a U.S. citizen, but the bill would lay out strict new rules for paperwork that most people would have to present in person to register to vote. Opponents of the measure say those documents are not always readily available for many people and argue that it would kill voter registration efforts and unfairly penalize young people who are registering to vote for the first time, married women who change their last name and people who cannot travel to present their documents, among other groups.

While Republicans have focused on the bill’s new requirements to show identification when they show up to vote, Democrats say they are most concerned that the legislation would allow the federal government to take voters off the rolls.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that Democrats are not opposed to voter identification but “this is about purging the voter rolls in a massive way, so you never even get the chance to show a voter ID when you showed up to vote.”

Expect a show on the Senate floor

Trump, backed by Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, has pushed for a talking filibuster, which would force Democrats to talk for days or weeks to delay passage of the bill. But Thune and the larger GOP conference rejected that idea, arguing that it would end in failure after giving Democrats a stage and the opportunity to offer endless amendments, potentially adding their priorities to the bill.

Republicans are instead taking over the floor with their own speeches, proceeding under regular order but operating outside the normal time limits that are customary when debating legislation. Democrats are expected to answer with their own procedural hijinks, potentially forcing Republicans to come to the floor at all hours for votes, meaning they will need to stay close to the Senate for the duration.

Lee said last week that it’s unclear how it will all play out. He said he thinks Trump “understands that we need to put in an aggressive effort here.”

“And a lot of that,” he said, “is going to have to be determined in real time as we go about it.”

The extent of Trump’s satisfaction with the process, Lee said, “will depend on whether, in his view, we gave it everything we have.”

On Monday night, Lee was rallying voters in Trump’s base on X.

“Once we’re on this bill,” he wrote, “we must stay on it until it’s passed into law.”

Jalonick writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — An advocacy group hoping to expand support for child and elder care is planning to spend $50 million to back Democrats in congressional races, tying the costs of caregiving to the nation’s affordability debate.

The Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy, created a decade ago, aims to make caregiver issues more salient in elections. The announcement comes as the cost of child care continues to rise and as waiting lists for federal child-care subsidies, which support working families in poverty, continue to grow.

Sondra Goldschein, executive director of the campaign and its political action committee, said child care and elder care are important to the affordability conversation, especially as child-care costs exceed what families pay for housing. Then there is the pressure on the “sandwich generation,” composed of middle-aged people who are caring simultaneously for their own children and parents.

“When child care can cost more than your rent or a mortgage, or you have to sacrifice a paycheck in order to be able to take care of a loved one,” that can motivate how people vote, said Goldschein. “Each election cycle, we see candidates recognizing that more and more.”

She hopes the message will resonate as families face a slew of rising costs, including climbing gas prices driven by a war in Iran that is unpopular with many voters.

The campaign plans to pour support for Democrats into Senate races in North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Maine and Ohio and into House races in Iowa and Pennsylvania. It is also slated to dispatch volunteers to talk with voters about caregiving.

The National Republican Congressional Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Republicans have begun to back child care as an issue crucial to growing the workforce, but their proposals tend to be less dramatic than those offered by Democrats. Last year, through President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, Republicans made an estimated 4 million more families eligible for a child-care tax credit. The law also increased child-care aid for military families and tax credits for employers who provide child care to their workers.

Before 2020, many candidates rarely spoke about child care. But the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the child-care industry’s precarity and necessity. Preschools and child-care centers were pressed to stay open so parents in front-line jobs — such as those in healthcare — could return to work.

Then-President Biden successfully persuaded Congress in 2021 to pass $39 billion in aid for child care, allowing states to offer support to more families and subsidizing wages for child-care workers. Later that year, Biden sought to create nationwide universal pre-kindergarten and to vastly expand child-care subsidies for families so that none would pay more than 7% of their household income for care. But the proposal narrowly failed in Congress. Since then, the pandemic aid has dried up and families are feeling the pinch of rising costs.

Now, several candidates have centered their campaigns around child-care affordability. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who won election after pledging to make the city more affordable for middle-class residents, ran on universal child care. Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey and Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia won elections after pledging to expand child-care subsidies.

Candidates this election cycle are running on universal child-care pledges. They include Democrats Janeese Lewis George, who is running for mayor in Washington, D.C., and Francesca Hong, a gubernatorial candidate in Wisconsin. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is up for reelection this year, has pledged to support Mamdani’s ambitions and eventually to expand universal child care statewide.

Neither the White House nor the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees federal child-care programs, responded to requests for comment. In his 2024 campaign, during an address to the Economic Club of New York, Trump said increasing foreign tariffs would “take care” of the expense of child care. That plan, thus far, has not materialized.

In Trump’s current term, the administration has largely focused on cracking down on fraud, after a viral video alleged Somali-run child-care centers in Minneapolis were billing the government for children they weren’t caring for.

While there have been prosecutions stemming from child-care subsidy fraud, the Minneapolis video’s central claims were disproven by state inspectors. Nonetheless, the Trump administration attempted to freeze child-care funding for Minnesota and five other Democratic-led states until a court ordered the funding to be released.

Balingit writes for the Associated Press.

Vietnamese elect members of parliament from a list of candidates ⁠almost exclusively fielded by the governing party.

Voters in Vietnam are casting their ballots for members of the National Assembly, the country’s top legislative body, which serves mainly to ratify decisions by the governing Communist Party.

Nearly 93 percent of the 864 parliamentary candidates in Sunday’s election are Communist Party members, while 7.5 percent are independents, according to the national election council, down from 8.5 percent in 2021.

The five-yearly elections in the tightly controlled one-party state will see more than 73 million voters elect 500 members of the National Assembly and representatives for local councils.

The Communist Party, which has ruled the Southeast Asian nation of 100 million people unopposed for decades, holds 97 percent of the parliamentary seats.

Voters expressed hope their representatives would continue modernising Vietnam, whose booming economy is undergoing major reforms introduced by top leader To Lam.

Red-and-yellow banners fluttered from lampposts and traffic lights in the capital, Hanoi, where well-dressed senior citizens were some of the first to vote.

“I do expect top leaders after this election will make major changes to make our country better,” Nguyen Thi Kim, 73, told the AFP news agency at a polling station set up in a community room of a high-rise residential block in Hanoi.

But in a country where major policies and projects are decided by senior cadres, many citizens feel lukewarm about elections. “I don’t think who wins will have any impact on my life,” said a woman, who gave her name as Huyen, in Hanoi.

Most polling stations are scheduled to close at 7pm (12:00 GMT), with results expected on March 23, parliament Chairman Tran Thanh Man told local media.

The opening plenary session of the National Assembly is scheduled for early April, when ⁠lawmakers are expected to approve the state’s top leaders previously nominated by the party, including the president and the prime minister.

The party confirmed Lam as its general secretary, Vietnam’s most powerful position, during ⁠its five-yearly congress in January, when it also selected the 19 members of ⁠the Politburo, its top decision-making body.

After voting on Sunday morning in Hanoi, Lam said on live television that the election aimed “to choose the most prestigious people to continue leading the country to more development”.

First-time voter Nguyen Kim Chi, 18, said she cast her ballot in the capital for “all the young” candidates.

“I know top positions are already set,” she added, “but I still hope my votes count.”

Fans of the musical “Hamilton” know three things about the nation’s first Treasury secretary because of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s brilliance. First, that Alexander Hamilton cheated on his wife, Eliza. Second, he was killed by the vice president, Aaron Burr. Third, and most importantly, he was considered a highly principled man. And when it came to the topic of nationalizing elections, do you know how this Revolutionary War vet and founding father characterized doing so?

A threat.

Referring to corruptible public officials, Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers: No 59: “With so effectual a weapon in their hands as the exclusive power of regulating elections for the national government, a combination of a few such men, in a few of the most considerable States, where the temptation will always be the strongest, might accomplish the destruction of the Union, by seizing the opportunity of some casual dissatisfaction among the people to discontinue the choice.”

Hamilton’s prescient views became the framework for the Election Clause in the Constitution. And since returning to the White House, President Trump has been searching for ways to usurp it. Last month he made calls to nationalize elections. This month he’s at it again.

He’s also pushing Congress to pass his so-called SAVE Act, which would require voters to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote. It sounds innocuous until you realize a driver’s license isn’t good enough; a passport would often be required. But half the country doesn’t have a passport, and it costs roughly $200 and a few weeks to get one. The logistical burden is unreasonable and cruel: Consider that this year, during primary season, we’ve already witnessed natural disaster — such as the tornadoes that recently ripped through the Midwest or the fires in Texas — upend entire communities. Many people would not have been able to vote, simply because they had been separated from their papers during the disaster.

The financial obstacles that would be created by the SAVE Act are at least as onerous: Why would Congress choose to financially burden voters — with what is essentially an unlawful poll tax — at a time when the unemployment rate and gas prices are up and the approval rating for nearly everyone in office is down? There are a couple of reasons. One is that the party controlling Congress hopes to suppress voting in order to defy the will of the American majority and cling to power.

Another reason lawmakers support this terrible bill is simply that Trump wants it. Some Republicans in office are so afraid of angering a vengeful president that they would rather entertain his authoritarian tendencies than go through the fire of his opposition during a primary.

For politicians such as Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who this week changed his long-held position on the filibuster in order to push the SAVE Act, it’s simply about political survival. He needs the president’s endorsement heading into the runoff for his Senate seat.

Trump has called the election overhaul bill his top priority — not the war he started with Iran, not returning the billions collected from illegal tariffs, not justice for Jeffrey Epstein’s victims. Before there was a Constitution, there was a warning, written by Hamilton and other founders, whose concerns about nationalized elections are well documented and have proved to be well founded.

You would think a nation in the midst of beating its proverbial chest about our 250th birthday would take more heed from the country’s founders. But nope: This week Florida state lawmakers, in an attempt to appease their state’s most powerful resident, passed an election overhaul law that mirrors the federal SAVE Act. More red states are likely to follow, not because a national wave of voter fraud has been unearthed by authorities, but because the authorities want to stay in the good graces of someone who has yet to prove any widespread fraud other than his own.

The party that famously railed against “the bridge to nowhere” is now offering bills that solve nonexistent problems. Or in some cases, creating problems, particularly for women who changed their names after marriage so their state IDs don’t match their birth certificates.

Cornyn is not alone in exchanging his principles for Trump’s favor; he’s just the most recent. However, the manner in which he announced his flip flop was particularly tone deaf.

“If a man takes a swing at you and barely misses, that doesn’t make him a pacifist — it just means he has bad aim,” Cornyn wrote in an op-ed about the bill for the New York Post, the newspaper founded by Hamilton in 1801. “Standing still and giving him a second free swing wouldn’t be wise or honorable: it would be foolish.”

In 2016, then-candidate Trump took his first big swing at our elections when he implied — without evidence — that his opponent, Sen. Ted Cruz, had rigged the election after losing to him in the Iowa Republican caucus. Reportedly Trump even tried to get the state’s party chair to overturn the result. He’s been throwing jabs at our elections ever since. The Jan. 6 riot was a haymaker that barely missed. Given the president’s propensity to hand out Trump 2028 hats, it seems passing the SAVE Act would be, in Cornyn’s words, setting voters up to stand there while Trump takes another swing at our democracy.

YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow

Voters in the Republic of Congo will choose their next president on Sunday, although longtime leader Dennis Sassou Nguesso is likely to be elected unchallenged, analysts say.

The central African nation, which has been led almost continuously by Nguesso for more than 40 years, is one of the most politically repressive in the world, with Freedom House giving it a 17 out of 100 rating for freedom.

The country is Africa’s third-largest oil exporter. It sells between 236,000 and 252,000 barrels per day, alongside copper and diamonds.

Congo is also highly biodiverse. Sprawling expanses of tropical rainforest in the country form part of the Congo Basin – the second-largest rainforest network in the world after the Amazon. The Nouabale-Ndoki National Park in the north is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is home to elephants, endangered lowland gorillas, and chimpanzees.

Still, the country of 6 million people is racked by economic woes. Corruption and mismanagement, analysts say, contribute to Congo being 171st of 193 countries on the United Nations Human Development Index.

A fractured political opposition, meanwhile, has only allowed Nguesso’s governing Congolese Labour Party (PCT) to consolidate power over the years, although a newcomer is raising hopes.

Here’s what we know about Sunday’s polls:

When do polls open?

Polls will open on Saturday, March 15, between 6am (05:00 GMT) and 6pm (05:00 GMT). More than 2.6 million people are eligible to vote; that is, they are more than 18 years old and have been registered.

Voter turnout in 2021 — during the last election — was 67.70 percent according to the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). Authorities have announced that borders will be closed during voting.

Candidates with an absolute majority usually win the elections, or in rare cases, a run-off will be called between the two top polling candidates.

Presidential terms in Congo are for five years. While the constitution had previously allowed a maximum of two terms and an age limit of 70, those were removed in 2015.

Who’s running?

Dennis Sassou Nguesso: The 82-year-old was first elected to office in 1979 and led the country for 12 years under a one-party state. He lost elections after opposition lawmakers voted to introduce a multiparty system. On his second attempt in 1997, he seized power in a bloody civil war and has remained in office since. He is Africa’s third-longest serving ruler.

Nguesso’s legacy has been one of gross underdevelopment and corruption, said Andrea Ngombet, the exiled founder of Sassoufit, a group advocating for Nguesso’s exit. In 2015, Nguesso pushed through a controversial referendum that reset presidential term limits from two to three. It also completely removed age restrictions, allowing him to run for the fifth consecutive time in 2021.

A strong hold on the country’s judiciary and the Independent National Electoral Body (CENI) has helped secure Nguesso’s hold, analysts say. His strategic international alliances, from Beijing to Moscow to Paris, have ensured foreign investments and boosted his influence, according to Ngombet. However, since 2013, France has launched investigations into his family’s numerous assets in Europe and the US under pressure from civil society. French authorities seized property belonging to his son, Denis-Christel Sassou Nguesso, in 2022.

Melaine Deston Gavet Elengo: At only 35, Elengo’s candidacy has caused ripples. The oil sector engineer leads the Republican Movement and is the youngest contender in the race. Although a first-time presidential candidate, Elengo appears to be pulling an unusual amount of interest as he presents himself as a departure from the old system. His campaign has emphasised a government built on transparency, an independent justice system, and inclusive development.

“He could secure at least 20 percent of the vote, signalling a generational shift,” Ngombet said.

“His unique advantage lies in the unspoken support from UPADS dissidents frustrated with the boycott,” he added, referring to the opposition party, Pan-African Union for Social Democracy (UPADS), which boycotted the March 21, 2021, presidential election over concerns of integrity. UPADS is doing the same this year but has called on its supporters to go out and vote according to their “conscience”.

Elengo is also closely allied with political heavyweights like the opposition Union of Humanist Democrats, founded by the popular opposition figure, late Guy-Brice Parfait Kolelas, who came second in 2016.

Joseph Kignoumbi Kia Mboungou, 73: The veteran lawmaker is the leader of the political party The Chain and represents the southwestern Lekoumou department. He has run several times in the past without much success, with his 2021 bid resulting in just 0.62 percent of the vote. Mboungou’s campaign promised political change and an economy that diversifies from oil, while reducing poverty.

Uphrem Dave Mafoula, 43: The economist is leader of the New Start party. He is making his second bid for the top post after running as the youngest candidate in 2021 and securing just 0.52 percent of the vote. Mafoula’s goal, he says, is to implement governance reforms, create jobs, and reduce inequalities.

Vivien Romain Manangou, 43: The independent first-timer is a university lecturer campaigning on institutional reforms, improving public finances, and promoting national unity.

Mabio Mavoungou Zinga, 69: Running under the opposition coalition Alliance party, the retired customs inspector and former member of parliament promises to tackle corruption and free jailed opposition leaders. It’s his first bid.

Anguios Nganguia Engambe, about 60: The president of the Party for Action of the Republic is running for his fourth time as presidential candidate. In 2021, he won only 0.18 percent of the vote. This time, he has pledged to bridge political divisions in the country and foster better political participation.

Which opposition leaders have been targeted?

Several opposition leaders are either jailed or have fled into exile. Some are:

Jean-Marie ⁠Michel Mokoko,78: A former chief of the army and an adviser to Nguesso, who turned against the president and ran for elections in 2016. He called for protests after the results showed that he won 13.74 percent and placed third. He was arrested afterwards on charges of undermining state security and was in 2018 sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Andre Okombi Salissa: a one-time leading member of the governing Congolese Labour Party, and a former minister, Salissa also switched to the opposition in 2016 to contest the polls. He was arrested shortly after, also on security charges. In 2019, he was sentenced to 20 years of hard labour.

What are the key issues?

Poverty despite oil riches

Analysts have long warned that a lack of economic diversification hurts the country’s prospects. As Africa’s third-largest oil producer, Congo earns more than 80 percent of its export revenue from oil, according to the World Bank,  making the economy vulnerable to shocks.

Government investment in hydrocarbons has only intensified in recent years. In 2015, authorities aimed to boost daily output to 500,000 barrels of oil per day within three years. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and export also began in 2024.

Despite this, around half the population lives below the poverty line. Most live in the main cities of Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire where access to electricity and roads is available but dismal. The situation is even worse in rural areas, analysts say.

While the population is young, with nearly half under 18, job creation is weak. Many young people with degrees have to turn to menial work for survival. The unemployment rate hovers at approximately 40 percent, with inadequate electricity being one of the major barriers for business, according to the World Bank.

Forests and agriculture

Before it began extracting oil in the 1970s, agricultural produce and timber were the biggest revenue generators in Congo.

However, Congo has become reliant on food imports amid the shift to oil.

Although the country has up to 10 million hectares (24 milllion acres) of arable land, only a small percentage is being cultivated, and that’s mostly for low-yield subsistence farming.

The government has touted plans to boost cassava, maize, sorghum, and soy farming, along with developing fisheries and poultry.

Meanwhile, deforestation in the Congo Basin, which encompasses parts of Congo and five neighbouring countries, nearly doubled between 2010 and 2020, compared to the previous decade.

Political freedom and post-Nguesso race

Protests are rare in the country as authorities don’t provide permits and respond with violence when demonstrators gather, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

Opposition members are routinely jailed. Nguesso appoints national judges himself, meaning the judiciary is not independent.

Many Congolese expect Nguesso to win Sunday’s elections, so much attention is now on who will likely take over leadership in the country in the coming years.

Analysts say an intense succession race is already brewing behind the scenes.

Denis-Christel Nguesso, the president’s son and minister of international cooperation, is the clear favourite, but he faces challenges from the president’s nephew and Head of National Security Jean-Dominique Okemba.

The Nguessos’ cousin, Jean-Jacques Bouya, who is currently the minister of planning and works, is another contender.

Rastriya Swatantra Party, founded just four years ago, set to dominate new parliament with near two-thirds majority.

A political party led by a rapper-turned-politician has won a sweeping parliamentary majority in Nepal, official results show, capping one of the most dramatic elections in the country’s recent history.

The Rastriya Swatantra Party of Balendra Shah, a 35-year-old former civil engineer and hip-hop artist known simply as “Balen”, secured 182 seats in the 275-member lower house of parliament, the Election Commission said on Thursday, with 125 won directly and a further 57 through proportional representation.

The Nepali Congress party finished in second place, with 38 seats. The Marxist party of veteran four-time Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, whose government was ousted in a youth-led uprising last year, won just 25 seats.

Shah himself defeated the 74-year-old Oli in his own constituency.

Oli, who had dominated Nepali politics for years, congratulated his rival on X, wishing him a “smooth and successful” term.

The September 2025 protests that reshaped the country’s political landscape were initially set off by a government ban on social media, but rapidly swelled into a mass movement against corruption and economic stagnation, leaving at least 77 people dead.

Shah, whose music had long targeted those same grievances, emerged as a figurehead of the unrest, his song Nepal Haseko, or Nepal Smiling, accumulating more than 10 million YouTube views during the turmoil.

His path to likely prime minister, from engineer to rapper to Kathmandu’s first independent mayor in 2022, reflects a generational shift in a country where more than 40 percent of the nearly 30 million population is under 35, yet whose established party leadership has long remained in its 70s.

Shah said his victory was a signal of refusal to take “the easy way out” and a reckoning with the “problems and betrayals that have affected the country.”

The RSP, founded the same year as his mayoral win, ran a highly organised campaign backed by diaspora funding, particularly from Nepali communities in the United States.

Nepalese journalist Pranaya Rana described Shah to Al Jazeera as embodying “the outsider spirit that many young Nepalis are looking for to shake up the status quo.”

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the vote a “proud moment” in Nepal’s democratic journey, pledging close cooperation with the incoming government.

Under Nepal’s constitutional process, parties must now submit names to fill proportionally allocated seats before parliament is formally summoned by the president. A new prime minister, who will need the support of at least half of all members, is not expected to be confirmed for several days.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, the dean of South Carolina’s Democrats, said Thursday that he will run for an 18th House term, a move that could position him as an influential elder statesman in Congress if his party regains the majority in November.

The decision by the 85-year-old lawmaker cuts against calls for generational change within the party. Clyburn is one of several veteran Democrats running again instead of stepping aside for younger politicians whose frustration increased in the wake of President Biden’s failed reelection campaign.

“I’m here today to say I do believe that I’m very well equipped and healthy enough to move into the next term, trying to do the things that are necessary to continue that pursuit of perfection,” Clyburn said at state party headquarters in Columbia. “And so I will run a very vigorous campaign.”

Clyburn is among the oldest Democrats serving in Washington, and the only member of the last Democratic leadership team who is looking to stick around. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and former Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland both plan to retire at the end of their current terms.

Clyburn said that he sought counsel from his three daughters before making his announcement. One of them — Mignon Clyburn, a former member of the Federal Communications Commission — said she was concerned about the political vitriol that her father would face in Washington.

“Her interest was in her daddy and what she thought I might be subjected to,” Clyburn said. “When Mignon finally had decided that she could live with it, I’m here.”

Clyburn said he heard from another woman that “‘we don’t listen to them people up there, and you should not. You should listen to the people down here, and we don’t want you to leave.’ And so I’m responding to the people that are here.”

Clyburn served as majority whip and assistant Democratic leader. Remaining in Congress for another term could give him a chance to serve alongside the first Black speaker of the House as Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York is in line for the gavel should Democrats win control. Clyburn for many years was the highest-ranking Black lawmaker in the House.

On Thursday, asked about the prospect of being able to advise Jeffries, Clyburn said the two spoke recently about a possible working relationship in the next Congress.

“He expressed an interest in my being a part of his leadership, if we were to take the House back,” Clyburn said. “It made me feel necessary.”

Four years ago, when Clyburn announced his bid for a 16th term, he told the Associated Press that he intended to keep campaigning as long as his health and support from his family remained stalwart.

“I’ve told them, if you ever see that I need to go to the rocking chair or spend my spare time on the golf course, let me know,” he said describing his daughters’ counsel.

Clyburn won his 2024 reelection by more than 20 percentage points. First elected in 1992, he represents the district that sweeps from areas around the capital of Columbia through rural central and eastern counties down to Charleston.

Should he serve an 18th term, Clyburn would become the longest-serving South Carolinian ever in the U.S. House. Time horizons are longer for the state’s U.S. senators, two of whom — Republican Strom Thurmond and Democrat Fritz Hollings — served 48 years and nearly 39 years, respectively.

Filing for election in this year’s elections in South Carolina opens Monday and closes March 30. South Carolina’s primary elections will be held June 9.

Whenever Clyburn does leave office, the competition to be his successor will be fierce. He is the only Democrat representing his state in Washington.

As to whether his 18th term could be his last, Clyburn called that an “open question.”

“I’m looking forward to the day that I can spend more time reading, writing and playing golf, and so this could very well be to my last term,” he said. “And it could very well not be.”

Kinnard writes for the Associated Press.

SANTA FE, N.M. — Democratic-led states alarmed by the prospect of federal immigration officers patrolling the polls during this year’s midterm elections are taking steps to counter what they see as a potential tactic to intimidate voters.

New Mexico this week became the first state to bar armed agents from polling locations in response to President Trump’s immigration crackdown, a step being considered in at least half a dozen other Democratic-led states.

The moves highlight a deep distrust toward the Trump administration from blue states, which have been the target of his aggressive immigration tactics while threatened with military deployments and deep cuts in federal funding. Their concerns were heightened after the president suggested he wants to nationalize U.S. elections, even though the Constitution says it’s the states that run elections.

The Trump administration said it has no plans to deploy immigration agents to polling locations. Last month, the heads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol told a congressional committee “No, sir” when asked if they had any plans to guard polling places. The Department of Homeland Security’s deputy assistant secretary for election integrity, Heather Honey, recently told secretaries of state it “is simply not true” that immigration agents will be at the polls this year.

But a group of eight secretaries of state wants that in writing from the nominee to succeed Kristi Noem as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. In a letter Monday to Trump’s new pick to lead the agency, Markwayne Mullin, the group pressed for assurances “that ICE will not have a presence at polling locations during the 2026 election cycle.”

Federal law already prohibits the deployment of armed federal forces to election locations unless “necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States,” but Democratic lawmakers, election officials and governors remain concerned.

“The fear is that the Trump administration will attempt to evoke a national emergency or execute some other deployment of federal agents or military troops in order to interfere with elections and intimidate voters,” said Connecticut Democratic state Rep. Matt Blumenthal, co-author of a state bill to establish a 250-foot buffer from federal agents at local polls and other restrictions on federal intervention. “And we’re not going to let that happen.”

A potential clash between states and the federal government

Other bills seeking to ban immigration agents at the polls are pending in Democratic-led states, large and small, from California to Rhode Island.

In Virginia, lawmakers are weighing legislation that could prevent federal civil immigration officials from making arrests within 40 feet of any polling place or courthouse. But the provision on polling sites remains under negotiation, and it’s unclear whether it will be in the final bill.

The newly signed law in New Mexico prohibits orders that put any armed person in the “civil, military or naval service of the United States” at local polling locations and related parking areas, or within 50 feet of a monitored ballot box, from the start of early voting.

Under New Mexico’s new law, which takes effect in May and will be in place for the state’s June 2 primary, people who experience intimidation or obstruction at the polls from federal agents or military personnel can file a civil lawsuit seeking relief in state courts. State prosecutors and local and state election officials also can sue, and the courts can apply fines of up to $50,000 per violation.

It also prohibits changes to voting qualifications and election rules and procedures that conflict with New Mexico law, as Trump prods the U.S. Senate to approve a bill to impose strict new proof-of-citizenship requirements in elections nationwide.

Any state measures intended to counter federal election law will face legal hurdles because of the supremacy clause in the U.S. Constitution, which says federal law supersedes state law.

“It could set up a direct clash between state governments and the federal government. We don’t know exactly how that’s going to go,” said Richard Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the UCLA School of Law. “Given the supremacy clause, there’s only so much states can do.”

‘We will hold free and fair elections’

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said her own distrust of the Trump administration in election oversight stems from ongoing Department of Justice efforts to get detailed state voter data without explaining why and Trump’s continuing false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

“Do I believe the federal government and people in the White House? No,” said Lujan Grisham, who terms out of office at the end of 2026.

“We are sending a message to everyone: We will hold free and fair elections, and New Mexicans will be safe in every ballot location and that’s our responsibility,” the Democrat said Tuesday during a news conference. “The Constitution says the states run their elections, and that bill makes that painfully re-clear to the federal government.”

Federal seizure of ballots and election records is a growing concern

New Mexico Republicans, who are in the minority in the legislature, voted in unison against the bill.

“I would question strongly why we have to do this other than just to have to poke the president in the eye,” state GOP Sen. Bill Sharer of Farmington said during floor debate.

State Sen. Katy Duhigg, an Albuquerque Democrat who was a co-sponsor of the legislation, said it’s “better safe than sorry with democracy.” She said she wanted to “make sure that there was some sort of tool that our local law enforcement would have at their disposal if something does happen, if the federal government does in some manner try to interfere with our elections.”

Connecticut’s bill, scheduled for a hearing later this week, also takes aim at federal attempts to seize ballots or other election material. It would require that state officials receive notification of such a move.

Blumenthal said state lawmakers can’t prevent seizures such as the January search by the FBI on an election center in Fulton County, Ga., a Democratic stronghold that includes Atlanta. But he said, “there might be an opportunity for our state attorney general’s office or the secretary of the state’s office to challenge that.”

Lee and Haigh write for the Associated Press. Haigh reported from Hartford, Conn. AP writer Oliva Diaz in Richmond, Va., and David A. Lieb in Jefferson City, Mo., contributed to this report.

When Brazilian journalist Tatiana Merlino watched “The Secret Agent” — one of this year’s Oscar nominees for best picture — it felt like seeing scattered scenes from her own life.

As the movie follows Marcelo (played by Wagner Moura) — a professor fleeing from a vindictive businessman during Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964-1985), the story skims through old audio tapes and newspapers, reviewed by a researcher looking into how he died. Like her, Merlino also dug into the past to piece together how her uncle, Luiz Eduardo Merlino, a communist activist, was killed by the right-wing regime in 1971. Though it was initially reported as a suicide, the family soon found his corpse with torture marks in a morgue.

“It became necessary to fight for memory, truth, and justice, because these crimes committed by dictatorship agents weren’t punished at that time, and have not been to this day,” says the 49-year-old journalist, who first saw “The Secret Agent” in São Paulo, and made a career from investigating human rights abuses.

“When a country does not come to terms with its past,” she adds, “its ghosts resurface.”

Recent dictatorship-themed movies like “The Secret Agent” and “I’m Still Here,” which won the Oscar for best international film in 2025, were instant blockbusters back home in Brazil. While both films honor those who, like Merlino, still seek justice for the regime victims, their popularity also got boosted by the country’s zeitgeist.

To many Brazilians, these movies served as reminders of what could have been had former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, himself a retired Army captain and a dictatorship nostalgic, succeeded in his 2022 attempt at a coup d’etat.

On Jan. 8, 2023, encouraged by Bolsonaro, hundreds of vandals stormed into the Three Powers Plaza, a square in the country’s capital, Brasília, that gathers the congress, the supreme court and the presidential palace. Neither he nor the vandals accepted the 2022 election — won by the veteran leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, better known as “Lula.”

The uprising followed the same blueprint as the pro-Trump rioters behind the Jan. 6 insurrection in the United States. Although President Trump himself was federally prosecuted for election obstruction, the case was dismissed after his reelection in 2024.

Unlike the U.S., however, Brazil has charged, judged and arrested the conspirators — including Bolsonaro and members of his staff who participated in the coup plot.

“Bolsonaro doesn’t come from Mars,” said “The Secret Agent” star Wagner Moura to the L.A. Times in February. “He’s deeply grounded in the history of the country.”

In 1964, a U.S.-backed coup enacted a violent, 21-year autocracy run by the military, whose effects still resonate today, says Alessandra Gasparotto, a professor at the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPEL).

“It was a dictatorship that worked from a perspective of building certain legitimacy, keeping the congress functioning, but of course, after purging dissent,” explains the Brazilian historian.

“I’m Still Here,” for example, dramatizes the real-life quest of Eunice Paiva, a housewife whose husband Rubens Paiva, a former leftist congressman who had his tenure revoked after the coup, then disappeared in the hands of the military in 1971. To this day, his body still hasn’t been recovered.

In 2014, Bolsonaro, then just a congressman, spit on a bust of Paiva erected to honor his memory during the coup’s 50th anniversary in Congress.

“The cinema of all countries has the role of preserving memory, so if you take a look at the Holocaust, the American Civil War, or World War II movies, it has this role of almost an ally of history,” says writer Marcelo Rubens Paiva, son of Rubens Paiva and author of the book from which “I’m Still Here” is based. “There’s an old saying: History is the narrative of winners, while art is of the defeated.”

In the case of Brazil, the militaries who led the repressive apparatus of the dictatorship got away with torture and murder through a 1979 amnesty law. It was initially enacted to pardon alleged “political crimes” committed by the regime opposition and allow a transition to democracy — but it was also used to pardon the dictatorship’s human rights violations. Then, in the late 1980s, the military oversaw a slow, gradual shift to democracy, stepping down from power only in 1985.

“This new republic had more continuity than novelty, since many politicians who were central to the dictatorship moved to central roles in the democratic government,” explains Gasparotto. “That’s why they built this pact [to forgive the regime’s crimes].”

For that reason, these movies still feel contemporary. “The Secret Agent,” for example, blends past and future through the records analyzed by a researcher, while “I’m Still Here” highlights Eunice Paiva’s post-regime fight for the recognition of Rubens Paiva’s death; without any corpse to officialize his death, he was just deemed disappeared.

When Merlino watched the movie, for example, Eunice reminded her of her grandmother, Iracema Merlino.

“I’m the third generation of my family fighting for memory, truth and justice,” says Merlino. “It started with my grandmother, who passed away, then it was handed to my mother, who’s now very ill, then to me.”

Nowadays, she awaits trial for the third lawsuit attempt of the family to hold her uncle’s torturer, Col. Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, accountable — the two other cases against the accused were dismissed over the years.

Since Ustra’s death in 2015, the Merlino family is now suing his estate for reparations. Yet he still remains a hero to some; in 2016, while Bolsonaro was still a congressman, he shouted a dedication to the memory of the torturer during the voting of the impeachment of Brazil’s former President Dilma Rousseff — herself one of the victims of Ustra in the 1970s, but among the few who survived.

“These films make connections with the present because understanding the past is important for understanding today’s contradictions,” says Marcelo Rubens Paiva. “What happened before interferes in the conflicts a country lives in today.”

So if authoritarians like Bolsonaro don’t come out of the blue, the same goes for other autocratic leaders, like President Trump.

Although founded on democratic principles, the U.S. itself has a long, muddled history with the concept. The authoritarian turn the country is reckoning with is part of a long legacy of inequality that stemmed from the 246-year institution of slavery. Following its abolishment in 1865 came a near-centurylong period of tension marked by racial segregation that we now refer to as “Jim Crow.”

“With some exceptions, the South was governed by a then-segregationist Democrat party — with [rampant] electoral fraud, authoritarianism, use of local police for political repression, and no chance for opposition, even [by] moderates,” says Arthur Avila, a history professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Brazil.

Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ended segregation and granted voting rights to people of all races — signed by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Southern Democrat who broke away from the party’s history to spearhead progressive domestic policy — the decades that followed were ridden with manipulations of the electoral system. For example gerrymandering, or the practice of manipulating electoral district boundaries to favor one political party, is an ongoing, albeit controversial tactic among both Democrats and Republicans.

President Trump himself was federally prosecuted for election obstruction. The indictment alleged that, upon losing the 2020 election, Trump conspired to overturn the results and manipulate the public by spreading false claims of election fraud on social media. It argued that this, in turn, stoked a mob of his supporters into leading the deadly Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol; but the case was dismissed upon his reelection in 2024.

In the lead-up to the midterm elections in November, Trump has pushed for federal control over elections, restrictions on mail-in voting and the addition of citizenship documents to vote, despite an existing federal law that already prohibits noncitizens from voting in U.S. elections. (He tried implementing the latter through an executive order in 2025, but it was permanently blocked by a federal court; a voter ID bill called the “SAVE America Act” is currently stalling in the Senate.)

“There’s a strong local authoritarian tradition in the U.S. that Trump himself feeds from,” says Avila.

Besides that, according to Avila, the country faces a growing “de-democratization” process from within. This shows in the rising control and dismantling of institutions by reactionary sectors — including efforts to block professional, educational and athletic programs promoting DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion — from what many critics and scholars have cited as lingering resentment from desegregation, he says.

“We may see it as a slow authoritarian turn in North American politics that didn’t overturn the democratic regime yet,” Arthur considers. “But if this process goes on, and that’s a conjecture, in the next decade the U.S. may become a state of exception that keeps democratic appearances but has been stripped of any democracy’s substance whatsoever.”

As movies such as “The Secret Agent and “I’m Still Here” remind us, a great deal of maintaining a democracy has to do with keeping a good memory.

PHOENIX — The Republican leader of Arizona’s state Senate said Monday that he has handed over records related to the 2020 presidential election to the FBI in the latest sign that the Trump administration is acting on the president’s long-standing falsehoods about a race he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Senate President Warren Petersen said in a social media post that he complied “late last week” with a federal grand jury subpoena for records related to a controversial audit of the election in Maricopa County that had been ordered by legislative Republicans.

“The FBI has the records,” Petersen said.

He did not immediately respond to requests for additional comment, and a spokesperson for Senate Republicans said in an email that Petersen “does not have anything to add outside of his X post at this time.” The FBI office in Phoenix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It marks the second time this year that the FBI has obtained records related to the 2020 election from the most populous county in a presidential battleground state, both of which Trump lost as he sought reelection. In January, the FBI seized ballots and other records from Georgia’s Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, after the Justice Department sought a search warrant from a judge. The search warrant affidavit showed that the request relied on years-old claims, many of which had been thoroughly investigated and found to have no connection to widespread fraud.

Arizona Atty. Gen. Kris Mayes, a Democrat, issued a scathing statement in response to Petersen’s post, noting that multiple audits, independent investigations and legal challenges related to the 2020 presidential election found no evidence of widespread fraud that could have affected the outcome.

“Warren Petersen knows all of this. He has known it for years. He spread false stories of election fraud in 2020, and he remains an unrepentant election denier,” Mayes said. “What the Trump administration appears to be pursuing now is not a legitimate law enforcement inquiry. It is the weaponization of federal law enforcement in service of crackpots and lies.”

A firm hired by Republican lawmakers spent six months in 2021 searching for evidence of fraud in the previous year’s presidential election, a process experts said was marred by bias and a flawed methodology. It explored outlandish conspiracy theories, such as dedicating time to checking for bamboo fibers on ballots to see if they were secretly shipped in from Asia.

The audit ended without producing proof to support former President Trump’s false claims of a stolen election — and in fact found that Biden received 360 more votes than stated in the certified results for Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.

The firm, Cyber Ninjas, also acknowledged that there were “no substantial differences” between its hand count of the ballots and the official count.

Previous reviews of the 2.1 million ballots by nonpartisan professionals who followed state law found no significant problem with the 2020 election in Maricopa County, which was run by Republicans then and now. Biden won the county by 45,000 votes and went on to win Arizona by 10,500 votes.

Federal officials took different routes to obtain election records in the two states. The Georgia case involved a judicially approved search warrant that required the FBI to articulate grounds that probable cause exists to believe a crime was committed. In Arizona, the FBI relied on subpoenas, a law enforcement maneuver that does not require judicial sign-off or prosecutors’ assertion there’s probable cause of a crime.

The investigations into the 2020 election come as the Justice Department has clashed with a number of states, including some controlled by Republicans, over access to detailed voter data that include names, dates of birth, addresses and partial Social Security numbers. Election officials have expressed concerns that providing the information would violate both state and federal data privacy laws, and that it could be used to remove people from state voter rolls.

Arizona is among the states the Justice Department has sued to obtain the voter information. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, suggested that at least some Maricopa County voter files could be among the records Petersen gave the FBI. In a statement Monday, Fontes said his office was considering legal options “to secure personal voter information in the 2020 data that was shared.”

Calli Jones, a spokesperson for the secretary of state, said the office is assessing what was released to the FBI.

“This could be an end run by the Department of Justice to obtain unredacted voter files,” she said.

Kelety writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Visitors to the Capitol will now have a visible reminder of the violent attack against the building on Jan. 6, 2021, and the officers who fought and were injured defending it that day.

Steps from the Capitol’s West Front, where the worst of the violence occurred, workers quietly have installed a plaque honoring the officers, three years after it was required by law to be erected. The plaque was placed on the Senate side of the hallway because the Senate voted unanimously in January to install it after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had delayed putting it up. Many Republicans had balked at installing the plaque.

“On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on January 6, 2021,” the plaque says. “Their heroism will never be forgotten.”

The Washington Post first reported the installation of the plaque, which was witnessed by a reporter about 4 a.m. Saturday.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) led the effort to install it as he commemorated the fifth anniversary of the attack and insurrection and described his memories of hearing people break into the building. “We owe them eternal gratitude, and this nation is stronger because of them,” he said of the officers who were overwhelmed by thousands of President Trump’s supporters before eventually pushing them out of the building.

The mob of rioters who violently pushed past police and broke in were echoing Trump’s false claims of a stolen election after the Republican was defeated by Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. The crowd stopped the congressional certification of Biden’s victory for several hours, sent lawmakers running for safety and vandalized the building before police regained control.

Five police officers and four protesters died as a consequence of the violence. More than 140 officers from the U.S. Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police Department and other agencies were injured.

The fight to have the plaque installed came as Trump returned to office last year and the Republican Congress has remained loyal to him. The president, who has called Jan. 6 a “day of love,” on his first day of his new term granted pardons or commutations to nearly 1,600 people convicted or charged in the rioting.

Trump was impeached and criminally indicted for his role in the insurrection. The Senate did not convict him, and the felony charges were dropped after he was reelected in November 2024.

Congress passed a law in 2022 that set out instructions for the honorific plaque listing the names of officers “who responded to the violence that occurred.” It gave a one-year deadline for installation, but the plaque never went up.

After more than a year of silence — and a lawsuit by two of the officers who fought at the Capitol that day — Johnson said at the beginning of the year that there were technical problems with the statute and the plaque could not be erected.

Tillis went to the Senate floor shortly afterward and passed a resolution, with no objections, to place the plaque on the Senate side.

One of the officers who sued, Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, said the lawsuit would continue. Hodges, who was crushed by the rioters in the heavy doors steps away from where the plaque is now displayed, said Saturday that the overnight installation was a “fine stopgap” but that it was not in full compliance of the law. The original statute said that all of the officers’ names should be listed, among other technical specifications.

“The weight of a judicial ruling would help secure the memorial against future tampering,” Hodges said. “Our lawsuit persists.”

Jalonick and Mascaro write for the Associated Press. AP writer Allison Robbert contributed to this report.

Kathmandu, Nepal – On the eve of Valentine’s Day last month, a former king in Nepal was on a helicopter, making his way to the capital, Kathmandu, from Jhapa, a district to the southeast where he has business interests.

Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah landed in Kathmandu to a red carpet welcome by thousands of supporters, with chants of “Raja aau, desh bachau!” (“Come back, king, save the country!”), a slogan popular among Nepal’s royalists, ringing out.

Four days later, on the eve of Nepal’s Democracy Day, the 78-year-old former monarch released a video message with English subtitles, speaking of his “unwavering sense of duty and responsibility” towards a nation he suggested was trapped in an “unusual whirlwind of distress”.

“The country is in one of the most painful situations in its history,” he said.

“In a democracy, it is appropriate for state systems and processes to operate in accordance with constitutional principles. While periodic elections are natural processes in a democratic system, prevailing sentiments suggest that elections should proceed only after national consensus to avoid post-election conflict or unrest.”

Shah’s explicit opposition to the parliamentary election – scheduled for Thursday – was aimed at Nepalis who have a lingering nostalgia for the monarchy, which was abolished in 2008 after seven years of Shah on the throne.

Why Shah is hopeful

Since the 239-year-old monarchy was abolished in 2008, Nepal, an impoverished nation of 30 million people, has been plagued with political instability.

It has seen 14 governments and nine prime ministers since, with power rotating between the ⁠former Maoist rebels’ party, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified ⁠Marxist-Leninist), and the Nepali Congress.

However, a Gen Z-led uprising in September last year challenged the dominance of Nepal’s established political parties and forced the formation of an interim government, which is overseeing the March 5 election.

The youth-led challenge to an ageing political class has reignited debates in Nepal about a possible return of monarchy, and whether the prospect has significant public support.

There is marginal political support, too.

The Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP), which won 14 of the 275 seats in the 2022 parliamentary election, openly advocates for the restoration of a constitutional monarchy. Its leader, Rabindra Mishra, told Al Jazeera that Shah’s call for consensus on the issue echoed his own thoughts.

“I believe we need national consensus and a systemic overhaul of the system,” Mishra said, while campaigning in his constituency in Kathmandu. “I have been saying the election should be slightly postponed to forge consensus before announcing new dates. But we are not a formidable political force. The major parties are moving ahead with the election regardless.”

A year ago, Shah had put up a similar show of support in Kathmandu, fuelling speculation about whether he was trying to test the waters to push for the restoration of the constitutional Hindu monarchy. The demonstration turned violent after Durga Prasai, the royalist businessman who had mobilised crowds for the rally, broke the police barricade with his car and entered the restricted zone, which was not designated for demonstrations. Two people were killed, more than 100 were injured, and more than 100 were arrested for clashing with police.

‘Trying to remain relevant’

Critics see calculated political signalling behind Shah’s public appearances.

Baburam Bhattarai, an ex-prime minister and former Maoist leader, said Shah’s statements were concerning.

“These kinds of public statements during crucial times are not good,” Bhattarai told Al Jazeera. “The Constituent Assembly lawfully abolished the monarchy and established a democratic republic. He should think about how to contribute responsibly as a citizen. Suggesting elections should not happen just before they take place sends the wrong message.”

Political analyst CK Lal offered a more tempered view.

“He [Shah] has seen power, and that nostalgia does not fade easily,” Lal told Al Jazeera. “Perhaps he hopes that if circumstances change, keeping the idea alive may prove useful. But at present, he appears to be trying to remain relevant. It is difficult for anyone who once held absolute authority to accept irrelevance.”

‘Unifying symbol’

The RPP’s election manifesto describes the monarchy as a “guardian institution”, necessary for a country in crisis.

“To move forward, both wheels must be strong,” said party leader Mishra, using the metaphor of a royal chariot. “We are not proposing the monarchy will run the government. Political parties will govern. The monarchy would serve as a unifying symbol above partisan politics.”

Mishra said Nepal faces internal security challenges and regional geopolitical pressures, and a ceremonial monarchy could provide stability.

But Bhattarai rejects this, saying the idea of a Hindu monarchy conflicts with Nepal’s religious, ethnic and cultural fabric, and its secular constitution.

“Monarchy is obsolete,” he said. “It will not solve our crises. These are inherent challenges that can only be addressed through democratic processes. Nepal is an inclusive, secular state. We cannot reverse that.”

Lal, however, argued that the monarchy retains a limited but symbolic resonance among some people.

“It would be presumptuous to say it is not a force,” he said. “But it is not a considerable force. It appeals mainly to religiously minded elders and cultural conservatives. The younger generation has no lived experience of monarchy. To them, it appears antiquated.”

Calls to restore Hindu state

Nepal’s monarchy under the Shah dynasty ended in 2006, when Maoist-led mass protests forced Shah, who had seized power and imposed emergency rule, to reinstate parliament. In 2008, a constituent assembly formally abolished the monarchy and declared Nepal a secular federal democratic republic.

Now, the RPP advocates for reinstating Nepal as a Hindu state. Nepal was the world’s only officially Hindu kingdom until 2008.

Mishra frames the proposal as cultural preservation rather than religious majoritarianism. “Nepal is a centre of both Hinduism and Buddhism,” he said. “We do not oppose any religion.”

However, he insisted: “To protect Nepal’s identity and maintain social cohesion, we need a Hindu king as the head of state.”

More than 80 percent of Nepal’s population is Hindu.

Bhattarai dismissed the idea as “romanticism”.

“Religion is a personal faith,” he said. “A nation state does not have a religion – people do. Enforcing one religious identity on a diverse society is anti-democratic.”

Lal pointed out that calls to restore the monarchy and a Hindu state are closely intertwined. “From a monarchist perspective, a Hindu state is a first step,” he said. “For Hindu nationalist forces, it may be an end goal. There appears to be a convergence of interests.”

Since 2008, Shah has not formally entered politics, though he maintains a visible public presence. He appears at restaurants, night clubs, and other public places on his birthday and during festivals, casually posing for photographs with people. His occasional private visits abroad, including to India, have drawn political scrutiny, though he holds no official diplomatic role.

India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi also holds the ideology that India ought to be a Hindu state.

At a pro-monarchy rally in 2025, a prominent poster showed Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu nationalist politician who is the chief minister of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, which borders Nepal. Adityanath is also the chief priest at Gorakhnath Temple, which the Shah dynasty considers sacred, and has been publicly sympathetic to the idea of Nepal as a Hindu state.

But Lal downplayed speculation about Shah being backed by India, home to the world’s largest Hindu population.

“Foreign governments support winners, not losers. Their [India’s] interests lie with whoever holds power,” he said. “Despite a close relationship between the monarchy and the [Hindu nationalist] lobby in India, which is the ruling class now, they know that the monarchy has almost no relevance in Nepal.”

Monarchists mainly draw their support for the institution from an 18th-century treatise called Dibya Upadesh (Divine Counsel). Attributed to the “Prithvipath” philosophy of Nepal’s unifier, King Prithvi Narayan Shah. The idea describes Nepal as “a yam between two boulders”, referring to its precarious position between India and China, and urges its leaders to pursue cautious diplomacy, economic self-reliance and internal unity.

The RPP’s Mishra argues that these principles remain relevant.

“What Prithvi Narayan Shah formulated more than 240 years ago is still applicable today, in foreign policy, diplomacy, economic protection and national stability,” he told Al Jazeera. “We already had our organic values in Dibya Upadesh, but we went looking elsewhere for ideological models.”

But analyst Lal dismissed the idea that an 18th-century doctrine could guide a 21st-century republic.

“It is largely nostalgia. Invoking Prithvipath does not address contemporary geopolitical and economic realities. Nepal today operates in a completely different global context,” he said.

“I don’t see much chance for the monarchy to be restored.”