Recent Measles Case Highlights Difficulty in Tracking Disease

Here are the morning’s top stories on Friday, September 25, 2026

• A person was hospitalized with measles earlier this month after traveling extensively through California on Amtrak trains and buses. Now public health officials across the state are trying to find other passengers who were exposed. 
• California’s Supreme Court has ruled that the Republican sheriff in Riverside County illegally seized hundreds of thousands of ballots earlier this year, and must return them. The ballots were from a vote on Proposition 50 which asked whether to redraw California’s congressional map to favor Democrats. 
• Incarcerated people in Humboldt County will soon be unable to receive physical mail as authorities crack down on contraband. Critics say the policy could have unintended consequences.

A person was hospitalized with measles earlier this month after traveling extensively through California on Amtrak trains and buses. Now public health officials across the state are trying to find other passengers who were exposed.

Jake Crawford has family in Anaheim and Oakland and he’s been riding the train back and forth a lot lately. When he heard on the news that a person traveling the same route as his was sick with measles, he was frustrated. “It’s like, man I got to be aware of something that we were kind of done with you know? It’s back on the radar,” Crawford said.

The U.S. considered measles eradicated in 2000. But as vaccination rates have fallen in recent years, measles outbreaks have returned, most recently in Utah and Pennsylvania.

Crawford is vaccinated, but he knows there’s still a slim chance he can get infected. The measles virus can hang in the air of a train car for up to two hours after a sick person has coughed, sneezed, or breathed in it. Among those who are not vaccinated, it infects 9 out of 10 people who are exposed.

“And then, all of a sudden, boom, you have these very large outbreaks that we’ve seen in other parts of the country, so far not yet in California,” said Dr. Nicholas Moss, health officer in Alameda County.

Local vaccination rates are high. But Moss wonders if the U.S. is returning to a 1957 pre-vaccine era, with measles sweeping through communities, infecting everyone who’s not immune. He says until immunity levels get higher, alerts of new measles exposures may be the new reality.

California’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco broke the law when he seized more than 650,000 ballots cast in last year’s election and ordered him to return them to county election officials. 

The Republican sheriff confiscated the ballots in February as part of an investigation into purported voter fraud that he launched during his failed bid for governor. The state’s highest court ruled unanimously in two cases, saying that Bianco’s move violated rules for handling ballots outlined in state election law and that he was wrong to ignore Attorney General Rob Bonta’s order to pause the investigation. 

“California law long has recognized that voted ballots require special care and handling to safeguard them from alteration or tampering,” Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero, an appointee of Gov. Gavin Newsom, wrote in the court’s opinion in Cervantes v. Bianco, a case brought by Riverside County voters.

The ruling appeared to close the door on a flashpoint in the tug-of-war between Democratic state leaders and local Republican officials over vote-by-mail and election administration. Election advocates viewed the case as a pivotal test ahead of the November midterm, as President Donald Trump has derided mail voting as a form of cheating and pushed for limits on it.

In a second ruling, the court found that Bonta acted within his power when he ordered Bianco to halt his investigation. “He willfully defied my direct orders, misused criminal investigative tools and created a constitutional emergency in the process,” Bonta said after the ruling. “The California Supreme Court affirmed my authority as attorney general to supervise the sheriff — an important constitutional safety valve in extraordinary circumstances like these.”

In a video posted on Facebook, Bianco said he would comply with the ruling, while “exploring options of assistance from our federal courts.” “In this case we were provided evidence of a possible crime that obviously warranted investigation — the court agreed and issued warrants,” Bianco said. “Sacramento shut it down.”

Bianco’s investigation was sparked by claims from a local conservative citizens group over the ballot count in the November 2025 special election, when California voters approved Proposition 50 to redraw the state’s congressional districts in favor of Democrats amid a redistricting battle across the country.

Beginning next month, all personal mail for incarcerated people at Humboldt County Correctional Facility must be sent to Maryland where it will be digitized and only available to view on a tablet.

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office said the change is necessary to prevent drugs from entering the jail.

Capt. Duane Christian said banning physical mail is just the latest security update following the spread of fentanyl, which can cause an overdose in small amounts. Several years ago the jail added a body scanner. Recently, officers added barriers around the facility’s recreation yard to prevent inmates from getting contraband over the fence.

Digitizing mail for those who are incarcerated is a growing trend at jails across the country, said Cara Gagliano, an attorney with the privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation. She said the practice raises privacy concerns. Companies can store scanned correspondence for years, she said, and that can have a chilling effect on speech. “We’ve talked to a lot of people, our clients included, who stopped sending mail because they didn’t want it to be scanned and put in this database,” Gagliano said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation unsuccessfully sued San Mateo County for its banning of physical mail at jails. Gagliano said they plan to appeal. She said the policy can also have negative effects on an inmate’s mental health and even increase recidivism.