Fresno, California

The Trump administration has warned California election officials that processing ballots cast by suspected noncitizen voters could expose them to criminal investigation and prosecution. A letter from acting deputy attorney general Trent McCotter called noncitizen voting a federal crime and said officials who knowingly facilitate it risk being treated as aiders and abettors. The DOJ sued California after it missed a 48-hour deadline to cross-check a federal list of roughly 20,000 flagged names; federal prosecutors have since charged 28 green-card holders across California, 11 arrested, saying all appeared on that list. Secretary of State Shirley Weber called the demand unprecedented and said officials provided too little information to verify names. Governor Newsom calls the suit voter suppression; the dispute looms over competitive California House races in the midterms.

New California Department of Justice data show a Turner's Outdoorsman location in Bakersfield linked to 83 crime guns traced by law enforcement from 2023 to 2025, the most among active dealers in any of the state's 10 largest cities. Combined with the prior tenant of that storefront, 183 guns sold there were later recovered as crime guns—more than the top five dealers combined in Los Angeles, Oakland, or San Diego. Statewide, the Turner's chain, California's largest gun retailer, was linked to more than 8,500 crime guns over the period, a share disproportionate to its roughly 22% of sales. Its guns also turned up at crime scenes faster after purchase than those from other dealers, a pattern regulators associate with trafficking.

Officials including L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn and Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty have called for scrutiny of the chain's practices, while gun-safety group Brady United has pressed for investigation. Turner's has defended its compliance record; state inspectors flagged a possible straw-purchase violation at its San Bernardino store, the state's most crime-gun-linked dealer.