The state of California appears to be backing off legal threats against the California Republican Party over its use of unauthorized ballot drop boxes. On Monday, California's secretary of state and attorney general sent a cease-and-desist order to the California GOP and several county party offices, ordering they remove unauthorized boxes to collect ballots, some of which were labeled "official." At a press conference Friday, Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Secretary of State Alex Padilla, both Democrats, didn't announce any additional enforcement action against the party, saying the California GOP agreed to modify how they were collecting ballots.

Nuke Bizzle rapped about getting rich from unemployment claims. On Friday, he faced federal charges of defrauding the government of more than $1.2 million in jobless benefits

“It was Trump’s election that drove me to tweet like a maniac,” he says.

"As a former public official, I believe we have not treated Americans as adults, who understand truth, sacrifice and responsibility," Christie said in a statement. ... Christie, a longtime Trump ally, said he has recovered from his illness, and he thanked his doctors and "the manufacturers of Remdesivir and the Eli Lilly monoclonal anti-body cocktail for giving me access to their extraordinary treatments."

Yarmouth County RCMP said in a statement Saturday morning that the fire is considered "suspicious" and an investigation is ongoing.

It's safe to say that online shoppers like the promise of easy — and even better, free — returns. But it may surprise consumers to learn what can actually happen to all those unwanted items. A Marketplace investigation into Amazon Canada has found that perfectly good items are being liquidated by the truckload — and even destroyed or sent to landfill. Experts say hundreds of thousands of returns don't end up back on the e-commerce giant's website for resale, as customers might think. Marketplace journalists posing as potential new clients went undercover for a tour at a Toronto e-waste recycling and product destruction facility with hidden cameras. During that meeting, a representative revealed they get "tons and tons of Amazon returns," and that every week their facility breaks apart and shreds at least one tractor-trailer load of Amazon returns, sometimes even up to three to five truckloads. "We're not the only ones. We couldn't handle all of Amazon. There's no way. It is so — it's like cockroaches, it multiplies. It's incredible," said the operations manager.

We were sitting together in her living room, while she scripted a video, when her new boyfriend emerged from the bedroom. George Hutcheson, who was 30 at the time, runs a Canadian group called Students for Western Civilization, which works to “advance the interests of European peoples.” Her most recent boyfriends had also been adherents of far-right ideologies. She had nearly gotten engaged to a prominent conspiracy theorist, and had had an on-again-off-again fling with a Croatian neo-Nazi. “Maybe I’m too picky,” she’d mused before Hutcheson joined us on her IKEA couch. In appearance, Hutcheson is the caricature of the Aryan ideal. His undercut haircut, known in the alt-right as the fashy (short for fascist), and his fit, thick, soldier-like frame give him a Teutonic air. He and Southern decided to go out to dinner, and to let me film them. Hutcheson refuses to eat food originally from nonwhite countries, such as ketchup, whose origins are in China, so the two, facing limited restaurant options, chose the British-style Oxley Public House in Toronto’s Yorkville neighborhood.

In a reversal, the White House has approved California's request for federal disaster relief for wildfire recovery, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday.

Earlier this week, Top That allegedly posted to Facebook it would offer a 10% discount to anyone who came in and said “Happy Columbus Day,” an apparent pushback to the Indigenous Peoples Day movement. The post went onto say: “And as always 10% off for no masks!! Merica!!”

US presidential candidate Joe Biden is debuting his own island on the hit Nintendo Switch game Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

IWhile much of California shut down this spring, Robbie Hall stitched masks for 12 hours a day in a sewing factory at a women’s prison in Chino. For several weeks, Hall and other women said, they churned out masks by the thousands but were forbidden from wearing them. The incarcerated seamstresses at the California Institution for Women grew increasingly worried: The fabric they used came from the nearby men’s prison, where an outbreak ended up killing 23 inmates. And their boss regularly visited both institutions. “Are we safe with her going over there and coming back here?” Hall remembered asking her co-workers as they sewed. Then it happened. In early May, COVID-19 broke out in the sewing factory, sickening at least four incarcerated workers, including Hall. She spent weeks in the hospital struggling to breathe. California’s prison system has taken drastic measures to combat the coronavirus, halting rehab programs, religious services and educational classes. But correctional authorities kept one type of operation running through much of the last six months: prison factories. Hall was one of thousands of incarcerated workers who stayed on the job in high-risk positions during the pandemic, making wages that ranged from 8 cents to $1 an hour. They cooked the food. They walked from cell to cell delivering meals. They cleaned everything from communal showers to COVID-19 units in prison hospitals. And they labored in prison factories making products, such as masks, hand sanitizer and furniture, that were sold to state agencies for millions of dollars.

The Trump administration this week abruptly rejected California’s request for federal disaster relief funds to help residents affected by the Creek fire and a string of other devastating blazes that have ravaged the state. State officials received a rejection letter that gave no explanation for the rebuff, a spokesperson for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services said Thursday. The state plans to appeal. The Trump administration previously approved similar requests for other wildfires, though President Donald Trump has threatened to cut aid to the Democratic-led state for partisan reasons. On Friday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which administers disaster funds, said the agency “determined that the early September fires were not of such severity and magnitude to exceed the combined capabilities of the state, affected local governments, voluntary agencies and other responding federal agencies.” Yet by Friday afternoon, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), a Trump ally, claimed that the president had “committed to reverse FEMA’s decision to deny the request.”

Eight days after Embrace’s statement was posted online, Barron County voted to strip the organization of $25,000 in funding for 2021. The county’s director of health and human services resigned from Embrace’s board of directors. Since then, a majority of the 17 law enforcement agencies that work with Embrace have indicated that they will no longer partner with the domestic violence organization, including all law enforcement in Washburn County. That means women who call the police for help, for instance, may not be referred to Embrace for help with safety planning, counseling and support.

This summer, while hiking with his father through Horseshoe Canyon in the Badlands region, Nathan made a discovery at the top of a hill that would excite even the most seasoned paleontologist. "When I looked at it, it was very, very obviously a bone. It looked like a bone you'd see in a TV show," Nathan said. "I was basically just breathless. I was so excited that I didn't feel that excited, I was just so in shock."

Some entertainment concepts are too strong to ever be made, their potential producers knowing that audiences aren’t ready to handle what they have in mind. Consider Poochinski, a TV show about Peter Boyle as an animatronic bulldog possessed by a dead detective’s spirit that was cancelled after a pilot episode showed it was simply too powerful an idea to continue.

So we're glorifying local militias now?

Ninety-three years ago, a scientist trapped a mouse in a stream in Ethiopia. Of all the mice, rats, and gerbils in Africa, it stood out as the one most adapted for living in water, with water-resistant fur and long, broad feet. That specimen, housed at Chicago's Field Museum, is the only one of its genus ever collected, and scientists think it may now be extinct. But in a new study in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, researchers have verified this semi-aquatic mouse's closest cousins, including two species new to science.

Science fiction is going through an era of rapid change and expansion. Just as fantasy television, superhero movies, comics, cosplay, and other traditionally marginalized fan pursuits have moved into the mainstream, science fiction media has become much more visible over the last decade, reaching a wider audience, and changing to accommodate that audience. In America in particular, what was once a nerdy subgenre, dominated by pulp writers and amateur scientists and philosophers, has become vibrant and wildly divergent, running the gamut from old-school sprawling space opera to heady alternate-history philosophy to pop adventure-novel bestsellers to a growing wave of Afrofuturism. What’s next? Polygon recently sat down with a group of gatekeepers and tastemakers in science fiction literature to talk about the biggest changes they’ve seen in the books field over the last decade, and what science fiction novels they most recommend for hungry readers right now.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will draft regulations intended for social media companies following a petition earlier this year by the Trump administration, the agency's chairman said Thursday. In a tweet, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai indicated he will move forward with a rulemaking to "clarify" Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, which currently acts as a legal shield for tech companies' handling of user generated content. The move could inflame a national debate over the law, which has been spurred by numerous conservative complaints that tech platforms are systematically biased against right-wing views. The tech industry has strenuously denied the claim. Pai said the FCC's general counsel had informed him that the agency has the legal authority to issue regulations interpreting Section 230.

On Saturday, lines to vote early in Fairfax County, Virginia — an affluent, left-trending area including the suburbs of Washington, D.C. — reached enormous lengths, with many voters telling reporters that they were spurred to vote by the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But Trump supporters showed up at the early voting site to protest, as well. Photos and videos by Washington Informer reporter Anthony Tilghman show Trump supporters blocking the path to the early voting site, standing together waving Trump flags and chanting "Four more years!"