California
Supreme Court hears arguments over sheriff’s seizure of ballots
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The California Supreme Court is weighing whether a Southern California sheriff who seized election ballots must return them to county election officials.
The high court heard oral arguments Monday regarding Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s seizure of approximately 650,000 ballots from a November 2025 special election on redistricting. The measure passed in the county by roughly 80,000 votes.
Bianco in March seized 1,000 boxes of election materials to investigate a complaint from a local citizens group that the count was off — though not by an amount that would have changed the outcome. Local election officials had previously said the complaint was unfounded. Bianco was running for governor at the time.
Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta immediately launched a legal challenge in March, arguing the sheriff has no authority over election materials and warning the seizure was designed to sow distrust in elections. He ordered Bianco to return the ballots, but Bianco did not. The University of California, Los Angeles Voting Rights Project also sued the sheriff on behalf of several Riverside County voters. The state Supreme Court heard arguments in both cases.
Chad Dunn, legal director and co-founder of the UCLA Voting Rights Project, told the court there are mechanisms to contest election results, and Bianco failed to follow them.
“The elections code provides a process. Citizens could have triggered a recount within, I think, it’s five days of the canvass, and they chose not to do that. They could ask the attorney general, the secretary of state, and there’s other officials to trigger an official recount,” Dunn told the court.
Bianco began recounting the vote using sheriff’s officials under the supervision of a special master appointed by a court but suspended it days later, citing mounting legal challenges from the state attorney general and a voting rights group. But he has not returned the ballots.
“Nowhere else in election law, in this state, in any other that I’m familiar with, does anybody get to handle ballots on their own in the back room with their deputies,” Dunn told the judges.
Bradley Hertz, who represented Bianco, argued the sheriff had a legal duty to open an investigation after receiving a complaint and he followed the penal code to carry out that investigation, first issuing search warrants in February.
Hertz said Bianco has not returned the ballots to the Riverside County registrar of voters because those ballots are “evidence.”
“The sheriff is holding that evidence, safeguarding it as a custodian for the court,” Hertz said.
He said Bianco didn’t follow Bonta’s order to return the ballots because a legal fight was already playing out.
Bianco said after the hearing that if he were to face the same complaint, he would again seize ballots.
“I did this and this was legal,” he said. “I went a different route. They are legal. Both routes are legal. It’s just their side doesn’t like the route I chose,” he told reporters.
At the time of the ballots’ seizure, Bianco was one of two prominent Republicans running for governor in a crowded June primary. He did not advance to the general election and later announced plans to run for reelection as sheriff in 2028.
Xavier Becerra, a former state attorney general and Democrat running for governor, is part of the UCLA lawsuit to halt Bianco’s efforts.
“We hope that the Supreme Court of California will issue a swift decision protecting the right to vote, protecting the ballots that are cast by our voters, so we can once again give our voters the confidence to know that when they go out and do their democratic duty and cast their vote, it not only will be counted, it will be protected,” Becerra said.
The ballot investigation 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.
Virginia
Zillow and Redfin resolve litigation over deal FTC claims suppresses rental listings competition
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has reached a settlement with Zillow and Redfin to resolve the regulator’s claim that the companies made an illegal deal to suppress competition in online rental advertising.
The FTC said Monday that it filed a proposed order with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. It essentially requires Redfin to restart its standalone rental housing listings business, which the commission says will restore competition in the market for rental property listings. The settlement also resolves litigation brought by state attorneys general in Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Virginia and Washington.
“This settlement delivers better, quicker, more certain results for both renters and property management companies than we would have been able to achieve after prevailing at trial, including firm and enforceable commitments by Redfin to relaunch its rentals advertising business,” Daniel Guarnera, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, said in a statement.
In its complaint filed almost a year ago, the FTC claimed that in exchange for $100 million and other compensation from Zillow, Redfin had agreed to shut down its internet listings and exclusively repost Zillow’s apartment listings, transition its customers to Zillow and stay out of the apartment listings market for up to nine years.
The commission argued that the companies’ February 2025 pact violated federal antitrust laws and could reduce incentives for competition, leading to higher prices and fewer choices for multifamily rental advertising customers.
Zillow and Redfin said their agreement was not anticompetitive and benefited renters and property managers alike.
The FTC’s proposed order requires Redfin to restart its rental listings business and hire enough staff to maintain it within six months of the order being finalized, or face financial penalties. The FTC said Redfin fired hundreds of employees shortly after announcing its deal with Zillow.
And while Redfin will continue to syndicate Zillow’s listings, it will be free to seek out and advertise non-Zillow listings, according to the FTC.
In a statement Monday, Seattle-based Zillow said it “has consistently maintained the partnership with Redfin is pro-consumer and procompetitive, and we’re pleased to have found a resolution that enables its
continuation.”
A spokesperson for Redfin, which was acquired by Detroit-based mortgage giant Rocket Companies last year, said Monday that the agreement “allows us to maintain our rental partnership with Zillow through at least 2030 while building and investing in a standalone rentals business of our own.”
Washington
New evidence prompts trial delay for Libyan man charged in 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Monday postponed a trial in the U.S. for a former Libyan intelligence official charged in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, citing the discovery of new evidence that defense attorneys want to examine in the nearly 40-year-old case.
Jury selection was scheduled to begin Wednesday for the federal trial of Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi in Washington, D.C. His trial will be the first in the U.S. for the Dec. 21, 1988, bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people, most of them Americans.
U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich’s order didn’t specify the nature of the newly discovered evidence.
Al-Marimi’s lawyers say prosecutors disclosed the new evidence to them on Saturday and added that their “constitutional and ethical obligations require the defense to investigate this development.” Defense attorney Laura Koenig, an assistant federal public defender, declined to elaborate in response to an Associated Press inquiry.
The judge scheduled a Sept. 1 hearing in Washington to discuss the status of the case. Friedrich’s brief order cited the complex nature of the case, the newly discovered evidence and “the need for the defense to determine how best to defend this case” as reasons to postpone the trial.
Al-Marimi is charged in the U.S. with making the bomb that downed the airplane.
Flight 103 was 31,000 feet (9.45 kilometers) over Lockerbie when a bomb in the plane’s forward cargo area exploded 38 minutes after takeoff from London Heathrow Airport. The flight was bound for John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
The blast killed all 259 passengers and crew members and 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie, where the wreckage destroyed an entire city block. Citizens of 21 countries were killed, including 190 Americans and 43 from the United Kingdom. The passengers included 35 Syracuse University students returning home from a semester abroad.
Kara Weipz, board president of the nonprofit Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, said her organization had received no details about the new evidence that prompted the trial delay. Weipz’s brother Richard Monetti was among the Syracuse students killed.
She called the delay a shock and noted that some victims’ relatives were already packing to head to the trial.
“At the same time, for almost 38 years we’ve been seeking the truth of what happened,” Weipz said. “If that’s what this is, then that’s a good thing, and this delay is worth it. ... It’s important to hear all the facts.”
Prosecutors allege Al-Marimi and others carried out the bombing at the direction of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who was ousted and killed during a 2011 civil war.
Two other Libyan intelligence agents were tried by a panel of Scottish judges on a former U.S. military base in the Netherlands in 2000. The tribunal convicted one official and acquitted the other, but the bombmaker’s possible identity remained a mystery for years.
Al-Marimi, now in his mid-70s, is charged with two counts of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death. He faces a maximum penalty of life in prison if convicted.
Al-Marimi worked for the Libyan intelligence service from approximately 1973 to 2011, rising to the rank of colonel, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors believe he brought a suitcase containing a bomb to an airport in Malta and gave it to co-conspirators for a flight to Frankfurt, Germany. The suitcase traveled from Frankfurt to London, where it was loaded onto Flight 103, according to investigators.
Supreme Court hears arguments over sheriff’s seizure of ballots
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The California Supreme Court is weighing whether a Southern California sheriff who seized election ballots must return them to county election officials.
The high court heard oral arguments Monday regarding Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s seizure of approximately 650,000 ballots from a November 2025 special election on redistricting. The measure passed in the county by roughly 80,000 votes.
Bianco in March seized 1,000 boxes of election materials to investigate a complaint from a local citizens group that the count was off — though not by an amount that would have changed the outcome. Local election officials had previously said the complaint was unfounded. Bianco was running for governor at the time.
Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta immediately launched a legal challenge in March, arguing the sheriff has no authority over election materials and warning the seizure was designed to sow distrust in elections. He ordered Bianco to return the ballots, but Bianco did not. The University of California, Los Angeles Voting Rights Project also sued the sheriff on behalf of several Riverside County voters. The state Supreme Court heard arguments in both cases.
Chad Dunn, legal director and co-founder of the UCLA Voting Rights Project, told the court there are mechanisms to contest election results, and Bianco failed to follow them.
“The elections code provides a process. Citizens could have triggered a recount within, I think, it’s five days of the canvass, and they chose not to do that. They could ask the attorney general, the secretary of state, and there’s other officials to trigger an official recount,” Dunn told the court.
Bianco began recounting the vote using sheriff’s officials under the supervision of a special master appointed by a court but suspended it days later, citing mounting legal challenges from the state attorney general and a voting rights group. But he has not returned the ballots.
“Nowhere else in election law, in this state, in any other that I’m familiar with, does anybody get to handle ballots on their own in the back room with their deputies,” Dunn told the judges.
Bradley Hertz, who represented Bianco, argued the sheriff had a legal duty to open an investigation after receiving a complaint and he followed the penal code to carry out that investigation, first issuing search warrants in February.
Hertz said Bianco has not returned the ballots to the Riverside County registrar of voters because those ballots are “evidence.”
“The sheriff is holding that evidence, safeguarding it as a custodian for the court,” Hertz said.
He said Bianco didn’t follow Bonta’s order to return the ballots because a legal fight was already playing out.
Bianco said after the hearing that if he were to face the same complaint, he would again seize ballots.
“I did this and this was legal,” he said. “I went a different route. They are legal. Both routes are legal. It’s just their side doesn’t like the route I chose,” he told reporters.
At the time of the ballots’ seizure, Bianco was one of two prominent Republicans running for governor in a crowded June primary. He did not advance to the general election and later announced plans to run for reelection as sheriff in 2028.
Xavier Becerra, a former state attorney general and Democrat running for governor, is part of the UCLA lawsuit to halt Bianco’s efforts.
“We hope that the Supreme Court of California will issue a swift decision protecting the right to vote, protecting the ballots that are cast by our voters, so we can once again give our voters the confidence to know that when they go out and do their democratic duty and cast their vote, it not only will be counted, it will be protected,” Becerra said.
The ballot investigation 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.
Virginia
Zillow and Redfin resolve litigation over deal FTC claims suppresses rental listings competition
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has reached a settlement with Zillow and Redfin to resolve the regulator’s claim that the companies made an illegal deal to suppress competition in online rental advertising.
The FTC said Monday that it filed a proposed order with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. It essentially requires Redfin to restart its standalone rental housing listings business, which the commission says will restore competition in the market for rental property listings. The settlement also resolves litigation brought by state attorneys general in Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Virginia and Washington.
“This settlement delivers better, quicker, more certain results for both renters and property management companies than we would have been able to achieve after prevailing at trial, including firm and enforceable commitments by Redfin to relaunch its rentals advertising business,” Daniel Guarnera, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, said in a statement.
In its complaint filed almost a year ago, the FTC claimed that in exchange for $100 million and other compensation from Zillow, Redfin had agreed to shut down its internet listings and exclusively repost Zillow’s apartment listings, transition its customers to Zillow and stay out of the apartment listings market for up to nine years.
The commission argued that the companies’ February 2025 pact violated federal antitrust laws and could reduce incentives for competition, leading to higher prices and fewer choices for multifamily rental advertising customers.
Zillow and Redfin said their agreement was not anticompetitive and benefited renters and property managers alike.
The FTC’s proposed order requires Redfin to restart its rental listings business and hire enough staff to maintain it within six months of the order being finalized, or face financial penalties. The FTC said Redfin fired hundreds of employees shortly after announcing its deal with Zillow.
And while Redfin will continue to syndicate Zillow’s listings, it will be free to seek out and advertise non-Zillow listings, according to the FTC.
In a statement Monday, Seattle-based Zillow said it “has consistently maintained the partnership with Redfin is pro-consumer and procompetitive, and we’re pleased to have found a resolution that enables its
continuation.”
A spokesperson for Redfin, which was acquired by Detroit-based mortgage giant Rocket Companies last year, said Monday that the agreement “allows us to maintain our rental partnership with Zillow through at least 2030 while building and investing in a standalone rentals business of our own.”
Washington
New evidence prompts trial delay for Libyan man charged in 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Monday postponed a trial in the U.S. for a former Libyan intelligence official charged in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, citing the discovery of new evidence that defense attorneys want to examine in the nearly 40-year-old case.
Jury selection was scheduled to begin Wednesday for the federal trial of Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi in Washington, D.C. His trial will be the first in the U.S. for the Dec. 21, 1988, bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people, most of them Americans.
U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich’s order didn’t specify the nature of the newly discovered evidence.
Al-Marimi’s lawyers say prosecutors disclosed the new evidence to them on Saturday and added that their “constitutional and ethical obligations require the defense to investigate this development.” Defense attorney Laura Koenig, an assistant federal public defender, declined to elaborate in response to an Associated Press inquiry.
The judge scheduled a Sept. 1 hearing in Washington to discuss the status of the case. Friedrich’s brief order cited the complex nature of the case, the newly discovered evidence and “the need for the defense to determine how best to defend this case” as reasons to postpone the trial.
Al-Marimi is charged in the U.S. with making the bomb that downed the airplane.
Flight 103 was 31,000 feet (9.45 kilometers) over Lockerbie when a bomb in the plane’s forward cargo area exploded 38 minutes after takeoff from London Heathrow Airport. The flight was bound for John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
The blast killed all 259 passengers and crew members and 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie, where the wreckage destroyed an entire city block. Citizens of 21 countries were killed, including 190 Americans and 43 from the United Kingdom. The passengers included 35 Syracuse University students returning home from a semester abroad.
Kara Weipz, board president of the nonprofit Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, said her organization had received no details about the new evidence that prompted the trial delay. Weipz’s brother Richard Monetti was among the Syracuse students killed.
She called the delay a shock and noted that some victims’ relatives were already packing to head to the trial.
“At the same time, for almost 38 years we’ve been seeking the truth of what happened,” Weipz said. “If that’s what this is, then that’s a good thing, and this delay is worth it. ... It’s important to hear all the facts.”
Prosecutors allege Al-Marimi and others carried out the bombing at the direction of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who was ousted and killed during a 2011 civil war.
Two other Libyan intelligence agents were tried by a panel of Scottish judges on a former U.S. military base in the Netherlands in 2000. The tribunal convicted one official and acquitted the other, but the bombmaker’s possible identity remained a mystery for years.
Al-Marimi, now in his mid-70s, is charged with two counts of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death. He faces a maximum penalty of life in prison if convicted.
Al-Marimi worked for the Libyan intelligence service from approximately 1973 to 2011, rising to the rank of colonel, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors believe he brought a suitcase containing a bomb to an airport in Malta and gave it to co-conspirators for a flight to Frankfurt, Germany. The suitcase traveled from Frankfurt to London, where it was loaded onto Flight 103, according to investigators.
