California Shows Exactly Why Having The Right Election Laws Is So Important
Democrats want voting that is deliberately designed for post-election manipulation by political insiders to achieve desired outcomes.Democrats want voting that is deliberately designed for post-election manipulation by political insiders to achieve desired outcomes.'He's going to hell': Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick accuses Talarico of campaigning against God
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) broached the subjects of God and damnation in his remarks on Friday to the 2026 Republican Party of Texas State Convention, characterizing Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico as a radical blasphemer in desperate need of prayer.
Preempting possible criticism by the media over his discussion of Jesus and "standing up for God," Patrick noted that "it's James Talarico who decided to bring the Bible into this election — and let me tell you, that's not a Bible I've ever read. I've never seen so much blasphemy from anyone running for office."
'That's the darkness.'
Democrat state Rep. James Talarico is a part-time Presbyterian seminarian who has, among other things,
- attempted to use Scripture to justify abortion;
- preached at a leftist church that regards abortion as a "blessing";
- protested the public display of the Ten Commandments;
- attributed the beginning of the "story of Jesus" to an "extraordinary act of feminism";
- fought to keep the Bible out of schools;
- characterized curricula that "elevate[s] Christianity over the other major world religions" as "deeply un-Christian";
- concern-mongered about traditional Christian views;
- voted against sparing kids from sex-rejection mutilations and claimed there are six sexes.
Talarico has desperately attempted in recent weeks to adopt a less radical, less effeminate persona. In addition to posing with meat — after having previously clutched pearls over animal welfare and the impact of meat consumption on "climate change" — he recently walked back some of his more provocative theological claims.
RELATED: Democrats can’t escape their trans problem
In a 2021 speech protesting legislation that prevents male athletes from playing on girls' K-12 school sports teams, Talarico stated, "God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between; God is nonbinary."
In an interview last month, Talarico called some of his previous religious statements "cringey comments" that were "meant to be deliberately provocative."
Lt. Gov. Patrick evidently isn't buying what Talarico is selling, stating on Friday, "Let me tell you what, I'm going to pray for that guy because when he loses the Senate race, if he campaigns against God as he's been doing, he's going to hell for sure. That's what we're up against. That's the darkness."
Talarico responded to Patrick on X, writing, "For decades, Dan Patrick has sold out the poor, the sick, and the vulnerable to enrich his donors. Love feels like blasphemy when you worship power."
Paxton recently stated that his Democratic opponent — whom he has referred to as "Tofu Talarico" and "Low-T Talarico" — "is a threat to our values, our way of life, and the future of Texas."
A pair of recent polls indicate that the race is unnervingly close. While Paxton was up 45%-43% in a recent Quantus Insights poll, the two candidates were dead even in a Siena University poll earlier this month.
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Maine ranked-choice count marred by flash drive error, delayed results, and ballot rescanning
Seven days after Maine’s June primary election, questions are emerging about the handling of ranked-choice voting results after reporting issues surfaced in several communities across the state, raising concerns about transparency, chain of custody procedures, and public confidence in the vote-counting process.
The Maine Wire began investigating the irregularities after receiving tips early Tuesday morning alleging problems with election results being processed by the Maine Secretary of State’s Office during the ongoing ranked-choice voting tabulation.
Bellows has still offered no clear public explanation. No timeline. No findings. No corrective action.
The first report involved the City of Biddeford, where election results appeared to be missing from the state’s ranked-choice voting count.
Seeking answers, we traveled to Biddeford City Hall and met with Interim City Clerk Crystal Morin and Communications Director Danica Lamontagne.
According to city officials, the election results were not missing. Instead, they explained that the city had inadvertently sent the wrong flash drive to the Secretary of State’s Office following Election Day.
Officials said the flash drive that was originally sent contained local election results rather than the state election results required for the ranked-choice tabulation process.
City officials further confirmed that investigators from the Secretary of State’s Office later traveled to Biddeford, retrieved the correct flash drive, and transported it to Augusta.
The incident raises several questions, including why it took seven days to discover that the incorrect flash drive had been submitted and what chain-of-custody procedures were in place to ensure the correct flash drive remained secure during that period.
Questions also remain regarding how the error was identified and whether any additional safeguards exist to prevent similar issues in future elections.
Biddeford was not the only municipality where election-related issues emerged.
The Maine Wire also confirmed with officials in the City of Bath that there was a delay involving election results submitted to the Secretary of State’s Office.
Bath City Clerk Diane Barnes confirmed that a delay occurred but said the results were ultimately delivered to Augusta. No explanation was provided regarding the nature of the delay or what caused it.
Meanwhile, officials in the Town of Bowdoinham confirmed that issues arose with ballot scanning following Election Day.
Town officials said ballots needed to be rescanned. However, rather than conducting the rescanning process locally, the ballots were picked up by Maine State Police and transported to Augusta, where the Secretary of State’s Office would conduct the rescanning.
The situation raises additional questions about the verification process used by local election officials and whether municipal clerks were able to independently confirm the election results before ballots were transferred to state officials for rescanning.
Despite reports of issues in multiple communities, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) has not publicly addressed the incidents as of Tuesday afternoon.
No public statement has been issued explaining the Biddeford flash drive error, the reported delay in Bath, or the ballot rescanning issue in Bowdoinham.
Bellows has become something of an infamous secretary of state. In 2024, she attempted to meddle in an election when she tried to remove President Donald Trump from Maine’s 2024 primary ballot, a unilateral move that plunged the state into legal chaos before being ultimately overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Later, 250 absentee ballots surfaced in Newburgh inside an Amazon package. Bellows has still offered no clear public explanation. No timeline. No findings. No corrective action.
This story was originally published at the Maine Wire. You can read more here.
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Attorney's radical solution to rigged elections: ‘For the survival of our republic’
After ballots showed up overnight for Nithya Raman to secure her unlikely win over Spencer Pratt in the Los Angeles mayoral election, the integrity of the California voting system is once again being questioned.
And senior counsel for the Article III Project, Will Chamberlain, has a solution.
“If I were investigating, I’d start with the prediction markets where ... pretty early on election day, well before there was any sort of public indication that the votes were going to start going Nithya Raman’s way so dramatically with late mail-ins, there was a big boost,” Chamberlain tells BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler on “The Liz Wheeler Show.”
“She was getting way ahead in her prediction market odds even though she was still down massively in the count at the point. So I think that’s the first place you start,” he says.
Wheeler, disturbed by the results of the election, points out that conservatives have a “moral imperative” to fix this problem for the “survival of our republic.”
And Chamberlain has a solution — which begins with recognizing that “we don’t have the votes” to pass the SAVE America Act.
Instead, he has a better idea.
“My basic idea is Mike Johnson in the House when it comes time to actually seat the representatives from California, any representative who wasn’t ahead on Election Day, you don’t provisionally seat them,” he explains, telling Wheeler that you then refer them to a committee that “evaluates these things.”
“And then you do an individualized process, and they have to show up and prove that they won legitimately. And if they can’t do that, then they don’t get sat and California can go back and do a special election again."
Wheeler finds Chamberlain’s solution “interesting” because “Congress has the authority to do that.”
“It’s a way of auditing, you could say, the election integrity laws of states,” she says.
“That would be a very interesting way for Congress to say, well, maybe we don’t have authority, but we do have authority,” she adds.
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Will the real Dan Sullivan please stand up? Alaska GOP works to keep another Dan Sullivan off the open primary ballot
Marine veteran and former Alaska Attorney General Daniel S. Sullivan has served in the U.S. Senate since 2015 and is now seeking re-election. The Anchorage-based Republican's route to victory is anything but assured, especially with Democratic challenger and former Rep. Mary Peltola leading him in recent polls.
The Alaska Division of Elections appears, however, to be eliminating at least one obstacle to Sullivan's success in the Last Frontier's Aug. 18 nonpartisan top-four primary, namely Daniel J. Sullivan of Petersburg.
'The preponderance of evidence does not support your eligibility.'
J. Sullivan, a 69-year-old retired teacher who was born in the Midwest, reportedly registered as a Republican earlier this year and entered the race to oust Sen. S. Sullivan on May 29, just before the deadline for filing.
The namesake challenger said that he had "every right to stand up and do this" and characterized himself as a "pragmatic Republican centrist."
Something stinks
The newly minted Republican's candidacy didn't pass the smell test where Sen. S. Sullivan, other Alaska Republicans, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee were concerned.
Sen. S. Sullivan told CNN earlier this month that J. Sullivan's candidacy was effectively a Democratic effort to "cheat."
The senator said, "Democrats recruited a guy by the name of Dan Sullivan. He is a liberal progressive, right. We've seen it — his donations to all the far-left groups. He's donated to Peltola, OK. His whole purpose of running is to confuse Alaskans."
Alaska's News Source confirmed that a Dan Sullivan with a Petersburg zip code had previously donated to Peltola campaigns — in 2022 and in 2024. A spokesman for Peltola's campaign has denied involvement with J. Sullivan's Senate bid.
The NRSC filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission on June 6, stating that "there is reason to believe Daniel J. Sullivan and Amber Lee of Amber Lee Strategies have engaged in a coordinated scheme to launch a U.S. Senate candidacy in violation of the Federal Election Act's prohibition on fraudulent misrepresentation of campaign authority at 52 U.S.C. §30124."
Blake Murphy, general counsel for the NRSC, noted in the complaint that:
- J. Sullivan's campaign logo and website "closely mimics" that of S. Sullivan's campaign branding;
- J. Sullivan has donated to Peltola;
- the press release promoting J. Sullivan's candidacy for Senate was authored by Amber Lee, a Democratic consultant and Peltola supporter; and
- FEC records show that Amber Lee Strategies has received thousands of dollars for "PAC Strategy Consulting" from a federal PAC that has supported Peltola.
Murphy suggested that the purpose of J. Sullivan and Lee's alleged fraudulent misrepresentation was to "deceive and mislead Alaskan voters to the detriment of another candidate."
The NRSC asked the FEC to investigate the matter and — in the event that wrongdoing is confirmed and found willful — refer it to the Justice Department for further review.
The Alaska Republican Party separately filed a pair of complaints with the state's Division of Election. One of the complaints claimed that J. Sullivan's candidacy was improper because his declaration of candidacy said he was affiliated with the GOP despite having an "undeclared" political affiliation at the time, reported the Anchorage Daily News.
Disqualification
Alaska Lt. Gov Nancy Dahlstrom notified J. Sullivan on June 8 that she had requested an investigation into his eligibility, claiming that the allegations against him were credible.
On Wednesday, Carol Beecher, director of the Division of Elections, delivered the namesake challenger some bad news, writing, "Based on a review of the evidence presented and in the [Division of Elections'] possession, the Division has determined that the preponderance of evidence does not support your eligibility for the office of United States senator."
Beecher gave J. Sullivan until 5 p.m. on Thursday to respond to the Alaska GOP's complaints, after which time she said a final determination would be made.
The namesake challenger said in response that Dahlstrom's "actions create the impression that the state government is being used to protect an incumbent senator from facing competition at the ballot box. That's not how elections should work."
"I am a qualified candidate who followed the rules and filed to run for office under my legal name. Yet, unsupported accusations have been given credibility while political operatives continue their effort to keep me off the ballot," continued J. Sullivan. "The people of Alaska are fully capable of deciding for themselves who should represent them in Washington."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!From sexting scandals to election fraud — if you’re a Democrat, ‘no one asks any questions’
Elections across the country this week have delivered no shortage of political drama, but two stories in particular are turning heads.
In Maine, several ex-girlfriends of Senate hopeful Graham Platner have hurled accusations of disturbing patterns of behavior at the Democrat — and his response hasn’t been promising.
Platner is also being accused of exchanging sexual text messages with women after he was married in 2023.
“So, Graham Platner, looking to move on from a week of controversy after telling supporters that his past had been weaponized,” BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere tells co-host Dave Landau. “That’s what happens, Dave. When you do something horrible and people catch you, that means they’re weaponizing what you’ve done.”
“Well, of course, it’s not being held accountable for the things you’ve done in your past. It’s just weaponizing the things you’ve done against you,” Dave jokes.
“When you’re a Democrat and you’re in one of these controversies, you’re able to live like this. No one asks any questions. You don’t address it, and no one follows up. What a wonderful way to be,” Stu says.
But it’s not just the Maine Senate election that is mired in controversy.
The Los Angeles mayoral race has shifted significantly over the weekend, as candidate Nithya Raman has passed Spencer Pratt for second place and will now go to the runoff against mayor Karen Bass.
“So we will have Democrat versus Democrat at the end of all of this,” Stu says.
“Are you saying that a system designed to lock out Republicans is locking out a Republican?” Dave asks.
Stu points out that there’s clearly a “tiny bit of skepticism by most people on the right that this is actually real and not just out-and-out fraud.”
“Well, I think it’s also because the way that it seems that the voting system works is you have the maybe some older conservatives come in early, you see the numbers, and then at the last minute, like a big giant bag of letters to Santa in a courtroom, all of a sudden they all just appear for one person,” Dave jokes.
“And they’re not even for Karen Bass. They’re just for this other person to then beat Spencer Pratt to then push Karen Bass forward,” he adds.
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'You're either crooked, or you're stupid': Trump goes nuclear on Kristen Welker, crushes 'Meet the Press' microphone
President Donald Trump joined Kristen Welker of NBC News' "Meet the Press" in a Wisconsin barn for an interview that aired on Sunday, covering a wide range of topics, including the war in Iran, Israel's escalating attacks against Lebanon, the economy, and the prospect of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates.
It became unmistakably clear nearly 40 minutes into the interview that the American president's patience had been sapped by Welker's incessant needling and contradictions.
'You know that these elections are rigged.'
Late in the interview, Trump defended his proposed "Anti-Weaponization Fund," which would provide compensation to victims of government weaponization, making whole those who've "been hurt so badly by radical left lunatics that worked for the Biden administration and Sleepy Joe."
Welker — whose approach does not appear to have undergone any refinements following her humiliating interviews with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — responded both by concern-mongering about restitution going to certain Jan. 6 protesters and by pushing back against the president's characterization of ex-FBI Director James Comey as a "dirty cop."
The NBC News talking head proceeded to claim, repeatedly, that the president's narrative regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, protests was baseless. Welker stated that there was "no evidence" that there were FBI agents ushering Jan. 6 protesters into the Capitol; "no evidence" that there were "dirty cops" on the scene; and "no evidence" that the Biden administration had sent innocent people to prison.
Welker then attempted to pivot to a different subject, but Trump refused to let her have the last word on the matter.
"There's a lot of evidence," said Trump. "Listen to me: There's tremendous evidence. There's nothing but evidence."
"Well, it's not been presented in a court of law," said Welker.
Trump, unfazed by Welker's many interruptions, stated, "The election was rigged. It was a dirty election — and it's happening again right now in California."
Welker tested Trump's patience again only to find that she had exhausted it.
After she said there was no evidence of improprieties in the California elections, Trump said, "They’re crooked just like you're crooked, your press is crooked. And 'Meet the Press' is crooked."
"To be fair, I'm not crooked," said Welker. "But let's continue."
"Really? Well, you play right into their hands then," said Trump. "You're either crooked, or you're stupid."
"You play right into their hands with this stuff. You know that these elections are rigged," continued the president. "Your network knows that they're rigged. Do you know that I won an election in a landslide, and I got 94% bad press. You know why I got that? Because you have no credibility."
The sputtering talking head's attempts to salvage the interview proved to be in vain as Trump was properly incensed.
"Your elections in this country — we're like a third-world country. Your elections are crooked, and you're crooked, and 'Meet the Press' is crooked," said Trump. "And so is ABC and CBS and CNN. You're one-sided, crooked networks. Let's call it quits. I've had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time."
Welker complained about having to travel "all the way" to Wisconsin for the interview and pleaded with Trump to stay. After leaving her with some advice — "straighten out your press" — the president rose to his feet, stepped on his lapel microphone, and marched off.
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Voting for the villain: Why Spencer Pratt is LA's last, best hope
Earlier this month I saw our old house in Pacific Palisades again, risen from the ashes in all its beautifully unremarkable splendor. In fact, the entire cul-de-sac had been restored, and when I followed Dulce Ynez to Jacon and then out onto Marquez, I passed all the familiar shops. There was Ronny’s Market, open for business, just as it was that Monday night 15 months ago when I stopped in for beer and toilet paper.
A mile or so down Sunset, Gelson’s supermarket was back too, along with the churches and the schools and the yogurt shops. So were other, more personal landmarks — sites of playdates and family dinners and Halloween parties, homes with addresses as familiar as my own.
We all remember Bass’ first public appearance during the fire: ambushed by a Sky News reporter as soon as she got off the plane from Ghana.
Like a ghost, this eerie figment of memory vanished the moment I went to get a closer look. One click on street view and I was back among the barren empty lots and charred ruins we had all come to accept as the new Pacific Palisades.
Map in the face
Why did Google Maps revert to pre-fire imagery of the Palisades (and Altadena, for that matter) sometime in mid-May?
It’s not unusual for Google to rely on older aerial photos for some maps, but after our town burned to the ground, the company seemed to make a special effort to document its destruction and slow recovery.
Anyone wanting to remember the complete and total devastation of the Palisades can go into Google Earth’s history and see the town flattened like Dresden in the first update, published just three weeks after the fire. Click through and you get a new aerial image roughly once a month until that September — at which point it’s as if somebody looked at the slow pace of rebuilding and decided it wasn’t worth the effort to take pics every month. And so the Palisades circa early fall 2025 remained the default.
Until sometime last month. Suddenly, with a looming mayoral election putting renewed scrutiny on incumbent Karen Bass’ much-criticized handling of the disaster, the most powerful tech company on the planet memory-holed what happened. Nothing to see here, folks.
At least, that’s how the “conspiracy theory” goes.
Wack job
Conspiracy theory: That’s what people like us — educated, affluent, well traveled — call such speculation. The phrase rolls off the tongue with a knowing, detached amusement — betraying just a hint of condescension for the benighted masses too paranoid to accept the unnamed Google spokesperson’s perfectly reasonable explanation:
This is a technical issue triggered by a recent, routine update to satellite imagery in Google Maps and Earth, which accidentally restored old imagery from before the fires. We’re fixing it ASAP.
Now that’s a response the old me could have gotten behind. Of course! A “technical issue.” “Routine update … accidentally restored …” It all checks out. I mean … I think. I use Google. I read the Economist. I know upper-level management at Netflix. My kid goes to the same school as the guy who designed the Cybertruck.
I don’t know exactly how it all works, but I believe the science — and I’m definitely not going to waste anyone’s time (“We’re fixing it ASAP”) with embarrassing, half-understood accusations. That’s what a conspiracy theorist does.
Hopelessly demoted
Why does that label sting? To paraphrase the old saw about capitalism, most of us see ourselves as temporarily embarrassed elites, no less capable or in control than the people we vote for. To express anger and frustration at them implies dependence. I’ve always thought that the most embarrassing thing about being a conspiracy theorist isn’t that it makes you look gullible. It’s that it shows everybody how helpless you feel.
Well, after days spent sweating through cheap paper hazmat suits, awkwardly scrabbling over ash-covered piles of twisted metal and carbonized particleboard in search of any remotely recognizable token of our previous lives, I’m no longer so self-conscious.
Months of misplaced documents, unfiled claims, and phone calls in which I invariably subject well-meaning strangers to me at my meanest, most self-pitying worst have made me realize there’s only so much we can control.
Most crucially, almost a year and a half of gaslighting, buck-passing, and bureaucratic bulls**t have made me so desperate for the straightforward, unvarnished truth that I no longer care about asking for it politely.
In other words, brothers and sisters, pass me the tinfoil hat, because I’m ready to start connecting some dots.
Loudmouth at large
Did Karen Bass or someone on her team actually call up someone at Google and ask them to make her re-election bid just that much easier? I don’t know. I don’t care.
Anyone with a modicum of imagination — and nothing fires up the imagination like coming face-to-face with the kind of apocalyptic destruction you’ve previously only seen in Michael Bay movies — can tell you the timing of this curious digital switcheroo doesn’t look good. Would it hurt Google to admit it?
Credit where it’s due: The only reason the company deigned to say anything at all was likely because of Spencer Pratt. He wasn’t the first to bring it to Google's attention, but he was apparently the first person loud enough to merit an official response.
That’s because from the moment his own house burned down, Pratt started talking and hasn’t stopped. He has built a loyal local following by relentlessly calling out everybody he thinks failed the Palisades: Karen Bass, the LAFD, Gavin Newsom.
There were plenty of times he probably should have kept his mouth shut. Sometimes he seemed whiny or self-pitying. He was given to exaggeration and didn’t always aim his attacks precisely. But he also didn’t care what people thought, and this let him state the most obvious truths and ask the most basic questions that nobody else would touch.
Heel turn
Pratt is a former reality-star villain who thinks he’s “qualified” to run Los Angeles. That’s the joke his detractors never tire of telling. But the joke only works if you start with a specific idea of leadership.
Mayor Karen Bass exemplifies it. She has decades of public-sector experience and an easy familiarity with the levers of power. She understands the intricacies of policy and the necessity of compromise. She’s not very charismatic or compelling, but she knows how to project the kind of calm managerial competence that lets good liberals like us relax and take our eyes off the news.
But suddenly we were the news, and the last thing we wanted was to be “managed.”
We all remember Bass’ first public appearance during the fire: ambushed by a Sky News reporter as soon as she got off the plane from Ghana, she stared straight ahead for two and a half excruciating minutes, saying nothing, as if by standing completely still she could make herself disappear.
Bass found her words in time for the first official press conference, of course. But by then it was clear that the standard-issue pablum about unity and strength and resilience was just another defensive strategy to keep predators at bay.
Maybe that’s why the Google maps thing struck a nerve. It would have been easier to ignore if it didn’t seem like the crudely literal embodiment of Karen Bass’ primary political instinct during these long months of recovery: to put this whole mess behind her as quickly and as painlessly as possible.
RELATED: Dispatch from Pacific Palisades: A harrowing view of California's competency crisis
Prattriots in control
It’s easy not to think about leadership until it fails you. Spencer Pratt as mayor? It never would have occurred to me; I doubt it ever occurred to him. Yet the fact remains that when thousands of people felt abandoned, confused, angry, and unheard, he was willing to make a spectacle of his own rage and pain on their behalf.
Was it self-indulgent? A way of making it all about him? Maybe at first. But at some point, Pratt was no longer just talking about himself. He was speaking for us too, saying things many of us were saying in private, while making it clear that none of the usual tactics — the bad-faith appeals to civility, patience, unity — were going to work on him. As they say in the reality biz, he wasn’t here to make friends.
It’s June 2026 now, and many of the things Spencer Pratt was mocked for saying no longer sound especially controversial. So much so that Jimmy Kimmel can go on his show and say of course Los Angeles' current leadership is useless; everybody’s always known that; kudos to Pratt for saying so, but anyone who thinks that’s a reason to hand him the city is an idiot.
Sure, Pratt can identify the problem, but he has no idea how to fix it.
Skin in the game
But was identifying the problem really that easy? Kimmel didn’t do it. A few days after the fire, he was back on the air, fighting back tears as he praised the firefighters and condemned “our future president and his gaggle of scumbags” for daring to criticize Newsom and Bass.
I’ve talked to many of my fellow Palisadians about that long, terrible day, and two things hold true for everyone, regardless of the political views. Nobody saw a single fire truck come to help them. And nobody was thinking about Donald Trump.
Spencer Pratt has made a lot of us understand that leadership is not merely a matter of credentials or expertise. For those of us used to treating politics as a lifestyle choice, it took being brought to our knees to admit that we needed something more. It’s so simple a 5-year-old could understand it: Tell the truth about what happened, accept responsibility for what went wrong, and vow to prevent it from happening again.
In this post-Christian age, we like to think of ourselves as rational, self-reliant people who are above such symbolic gestures. Yet many of us occupy positions where we take it for granted that our concerns will be heard and our questions answered. The shock of the fire was compounded by a second shock: the realization that nobody in authority was really listening.
For once, Los Angeles is behind the times; a lot of Americans have known this for years. That could explain the interest the entire country has taken in this local contest. If the hopeful schemers and would-be main characters of our country’s broken-down dream factory can see themselves clearly, anyone can.
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