RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — A California sheriff running for governor has seized more than half a million ballots cast in a November special election from county election officials, saying he's investigating a ballot count discrepancy.
County elections officials have disputed the claims by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, called Bianco's move unprecedented and says it is designed to sow distrust in elections.
Bianco held a news conference Friday saying his office had launched the investigation after receiving a complaint from a local citizens group about the ballot count from a November 2025 special election on redistricting.
In the special election, voters approved a measure to redraw congressional district lines to favor Democrats in the upcoming midterm election. The measure passed in the county by a margin of more than 80,000 votes.
Bianco seized ballots in Riverside County, the inland California county of 2.5 million people where he has twice been elected sheriff. He called the effort "a fact-finding mission."
“This investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes reported,” he said Friday.
Bianco is one of two prominent Republicans running for governor in a crowded June primary that includes more than half a dozen Democrats. California runs a top-two primary system that puts all candidates on the same ballot, regardless of party, and sends the two candidates who get the most voters onto the November general election.
Leading California Democrats are worried that their party has so many candidates, they risk splitting the vote and sending Bianco and Steve Hilton, another top Republican, onto the general election. That would be a stunning outcome in the heavily Democratic state.
Bianco said the investigation had “absolutely nothing to do” with his campaign for governor.
“I have a duty to investigate alleged crime in Riverside County,” he said.
The effort came as President Donald Trump has repeatedly disputed the results of the 2020 election, citing unsubstantiated instances of fraud. His administration recently seized ballots and other documents from an election office in Georgia. Some Republicans have mirrored Trump's rhetoric on voting in their states.
Bonta has repeatedly sent letters to Bianco’s office over the last two months saying his staff is not qualified to conduct a recount. In one of the letters, Bonta wrote that the ballot seizure was “unacceptable” and “sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections.”
The letters said Bianco seized nearly 1,000 boxes of ballots and elections materials from the county's elections office with a warrant in February. At issue, Bianco said, is a discrepancy a citizen group reported between the handwritten ballot intake logs and the number of votes reported to the state.
Bianco said the alleged discrepancy amounted to about 45,800 votes — a difference elections officials have refuted at county meetings, saying the machine count and the final count submitted to the state differed by about 100 votes. They argue the handwritten rolls, which were not relied on to check the count, were being kept by temporary elections workers who had worked long days and may have made mistakes.
Bianco said Friday that the count had started and stopped, but would now resume under the supervision of a special master appointed by a judge.
FILE - Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco speaks at a news conference in Lake Elsinore, Calif., Feb. 7, 2023, as officials announced that the closure of poppy fields at Walker Canyon until the wildflower bloom subsides. (Watchara Phomicinda/The Orange County Register via AP, File)
ARAD, Israel (AP) — The United States and Iran threatened to target critical infrastructure Sunday as the war in the Middle East, now in its fourth week, puts lives and livelihoods at risk throughout the region.
Iran said the Strait of Hormuz, crucial to oil and other exports, would be "completely closed” immediately if the U.S. follows up on President Donald Trump 's threat to attack its power plants. Trump late Saturday set a 48-hour deadline to open the strait.
Israeli leaders visited one of two southern communities near a secretive nuclear research site struck by Iranian missiles late Saturday, with scores of people wounded. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a “miracle” no one was killed. Israel detected more Iranian missiles fired toward the area Sunday evening.
Netanyahu also claimed Israel and the U.S. were well on their way to achieving their war goals. The aims have ranged from weakening Iran's nuclear program, missile program and support for armed proxies to enabling the Iranian people to overthrow the theocracy.
The developments signaled the war, which the U.S. and Israel launched Feb. 28, was moving in a dangerous new direction, despite Trump's comment last week he was considering “winding down" operations. It has killed over 2,000 people, rattled the global economy and sent oil prices surging.
The Iranian-backed Hezbollah claimed responsibility for an airstrike that killed a man in northern Israel, while Lebanese President Joseph Aoun called Israel's targeting of bridges in the south “a prelude to a ground invasion.”
Iran has practically closed the Strait of Hormuz that connects the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world. Roughly one-fifth of global oil supply passes through it, but attacks on ships and threats of further strikes have stopped nearly all tanker traffic. Some of the largest oil producers have made cuts because their crude has nowhere to go.
The U.S. and its allies in Europe and Asia rely heavily on the oil to meet energy demand. In its most recent attempt to relieve pressure on energy prices, the U.S. has lifted some sanctions on Iranian oil at sea.
Trump said if Iran didn't open the strait, the U.S. would destroy its “various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!”
The U.S. has argued that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard controls much of the country’s infrastructure and uses it to power the war effort.
Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf responded on X that if Iran's power plants and infrastructure are targeted, then vital infrastructure across the region — including energy and desalination facilities — would be considered legitimate targets and “irreversibly destroyed.”
Under international law, power plants that benefit civilians can be targeted only if the military advantage outweighs the suffering it causes to civilians, legal scholars say.
Separately, Iranian officials said they would keep providing safe passage through the strait to vessels from countries other than its enemies.
Iran said its strikes in the Negev Desert late Saturday were in retaliation for an earlier attack on Iran’s main nuclear enrichment site in Natanz, according to state-run media.
Tehran praised the attack as a show of strength, even as Israel's military asserts that Iranian missile launches have gradually decreased in frequency since the war began.
“If the Israeli regime is unable to intercept missiles in the heavily protected Dimona area, it is, operationally, a sign of entering a new phase of the battle,” Qalibaf said.
Southern Israel’s main hospital received at least 175 wounded from Arad and Dimona, its deputy director Roy Kessous told The Associated Press.
Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, though it doesn’t confirm or deny their existence. The U.N. nuclear watchdog said on X it had not received reports of damage to the Israeli center or abnormal radiation levels.
Israel denied responsibility for hitting Natanz on Saturday, while the Iranian judiciary’s official news agency, Mizan, said there was no leakage. The Pentagon declined to comment on the strike.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has said the bulk of Iran’s estimated 972 pounds (441 kilograms) of enriched uranium is elsewhere, beneath the rubble at its Isfahan facility.
Iran said strikes hit a hospital in Andimeshk. Its health ministry said patients and doctors were evacuated to another city.
Iran's death toll in the war has surpassed 1,500, state media reported Saturday, citing the ministry. In Israel, 15 people have been killed by Iranian strikes. More than a dozen civilians in the occupied West Bank and Gulf Arab states have been killed in strikes.
A Qatari military helicopter crash on Saturday, blamed on a technical malfunction, killed all seven aboard, Qatari authorities said.
An Israeli civilian was killed in his car in the northern town of Misgav Am in what Israel's military originally said appeared to be a rocket attack. It later said it was looking into the possibility that the death was caused by Israeli soldiers' fire.
Israeli authorities identified him as 61-year-old farmer Ofer “Poshko” Moskovitz. Two days ago, Moskovitz told a radio station that living near the Lebanese border was like “Russian roulette."
Hezbollah launched strikes on Israel soon after the war began, calling it retaliation for the killing of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel then targeted Hezbollah in deadly airstrikes and expanded its ground presence in southern Lebanon.
Israel on Sunday expanded its target list to include bridges over the Litani River that Defense Minister Israel Katz said Hezbollah is using to move fighters and weapons into the south. Israel later struck the Qasmiyeh bridge near Tyre, giving an hour's warning. Destroying bridges further isolates residents from the rest of Lebanon.
Katz also ordered the military to accelerate its destruction of Lebanese homes near the border.
Lebanese authorities say Israel's strikes have killed more than 1,000 people and displaced more than 1 million. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel.
Metz reported from Ramallah, West Bank, and Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press writers Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel; Koral Saeed in Abu Snan, Israel; and Isabel Debre in Beirut contributed.
A man holds a lantern inside a tent at a makeshift shelter for people who fled Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, along the wall of the Pine Residence, the official residence of the French ambassador, in Beirut, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Smoke and flames rise from an Israeli airstrike that hit the Qasmiyeh Bridge near the coastal city of Tyre, Lebanon, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammad Zaatari)
People look at residential buildings heavily damaged by an Iranian missile strike in Arad, southern Israel, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Smoke and debris rise from an Israeli airstrike that hit the Qasmiyeh Bridge near the coastal city of Tyre, Lebanon, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammad Zaatari)
People survey a site that was struck by an Iranian missile in Dimona, southern Israel, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Smoke and flames rise from an Israeli airstrike that hit the Qasmiyeh Bridge near the coastal city of Tyre, Lebanon, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammad Zaatari)
Israeli security forces survey the site that was struck by an Iranian missile in Dimona, southern Israel, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
People survey a site that was struck by an Iranian missile in Dimona, southern Israel, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
People survey a site that was struck by an Iranian missile in Dimona, southern Israel, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Israeli security forces and rescue teams work at the site struck by an Iranian missile in Arad, southern Israel, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
A man looks at residential buildings damaged by an Iranian missile strike in Arad, southern Israel, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
People follow a truck carrying the flag draped coffins of Gen. Ali Mohammad Naeini, a spokesperson for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and one of his comrades Amir Hossein Bidi , during their funeral procession in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, March 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Iranian worshippers perform Eid al-Fitr prayers marking the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan as one of them wears an Iranian flag at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosque in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, March 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Israeli security forces and rescue teams work at the site struck by an Iranian missile in Arad, southern Israel, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men watch as Israeli security forces and rescue teams operate at the site hit by an Iranian missile in Arad, southern Israel, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
