He said his election might have been stolen. Then the FBI came

The Northern California County that often seems to be at the center of election drama is bracing for another potentially bumpy one.

As CalMatters’ Ryan Sabalow explains, Shasta County residents in June ousted Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis. But the longtime conspiracy theorist and election denier still has the remainder of his term to oversee the November general election. 

So will Curtis — who locked away ballots after making claims of election fraud in the most recent election — carry out his duty to tally every vote in the county accurately?

Curtis insists he will. 

He built a political brand on claims of finding evidence of election fraud. In 2025, far-right members of the county’s board appointed the Florida attorney to run the office, even though he had never officially worked in elections.

Curtis accused his predecessors of stuffing ballots to sway elections — an odd claim to make for a Republican considering that the rural, ultra-conservative county regularly votes for President Donald Trump and his causes, such as banning mail-in ballots and requiring voter ID.

After the June election, in which Curtis was on the ballot and lost, he courted the attention of the Trump administration by claiming ballots looked and felt funny, and some even “smelled wrong.” 

To him, this was evidence of bad actors fixing elections. In August, Curtis said he put a padlock on the door where he stored the ballots, and then threw away the key in an effort to preserve them as evidence. Last week FBI agents arrived to inspect the room, Curtis said. A federal grand jury in Sacramento also ordered him to bring boxes containing the ballots, though it’s unclear if he will. 

His successor, a former Shasta County elections official, starts their term in January. Until then — as an election that is likely to be fraught with accusations of election fraud heats up — Curtis plans to ride out the federal and state probes into his claims.

Asked who might be stuffing ballot boxes in Shasta County, Curtis shrugged it off.

• Curtis: “Who knows? Who cares? I don’t try to get into who did or why (they) did, only if they did.”

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Attorney General Rob Bonta and Paramount Skydance reached a settlement Monday, enabling the production studio to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in a $111 billion merger. The deal came after Paramount threatened to leave the state when Bonta and nearly a dozen other attorneys general sought to block the acquisition.

Critics of the merger worry that it will mean more job losses for the already struggling entertainment industry, which California lawmakers have repeatedly tried to buoy, reports CalMatters’ Kate Wolffe.

In 2009, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the state’s first California Film and Television Production Tax Credit, which allocated $100 million per year to eligible film and TV production companies. More than a decade later — prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, a writers strike, wildfires and growing production incentives from other states — lawmakers increased the credit in 2025 to $750 million per year until 2030. 

Most recently, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Saturday to create a new tax credit for post-production work, including editing and visual effects. 

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California’s lawsuit against two anti-abortion nonprofits over a disputed treatment underscores the state’s ongoing struggle to regulate anti-abortion clinics, writes CalMatters’ Kristen Hwang.

California is suing Heartbeat International, Inc., a national anti-abortion group, and its affiliate RealOptions Obria, a chain of Northern California anti-abortion clinics, for promoting “abortion pill reversal” services. The groups claim the effects of a medication abortion can be counteracted by high doses of progesterone, and that more than 8,000 pregnancies nationwide have continued after their clients took additional progesterone.

But lawyers for the state argue there is no way to reverse a medication abortion and that the groups’ treatment is unproven and potentially dangerous. The state is seeking $20 million in penalties under California’s false advertising and unfair competition laws.

Defendants contend that “abortion pill reversal” services are free, however, so false advertising law doesn’t apply. A previous ruling in New York could help their argument: In 2024 a federal appeals court found that because “abortion pill reversal” was not commercial speech, the state’s advertising law wasn’t applicable.

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As public sentiment against data centers grows, Newsom on Monday signed a handful of bills reining in the data center industry, including ones that shift electric infrastructure costs away from residential customers and toward data center operators. Read more from CalMatters’ Katherine Ortiz.