CBS News
Ballot drop boxes, long a target of misinformation, face physical threats
With Election Day nearing, authorities in Oregon and Washington have opened investigations and stepped up security measures after two ballot drop boxes were set ablaze on Monday.
Three ballots were damaged after an incendiary device was found inside a ballot box in Portland, Oregon, on Monday. And on the same day, officials feared hundreds of ballots were damaged by a fire in a ballot box in nearby Vancouver, Washington. Police said a “suspicious device” was found next to the box.
Ballot drop boxes have historically been targets of misinformation, according to experts, who say the false claims surged in 2020 when then-President Donald Trump raised doubts about the security of mail-in ballots. Drop boxes are now facing growing physical threats, according to election officials and internal U.S. government warnings.
U.S. intelligence officials said “domestic violent extremists” may target ballot drop boxes because of their accessibility, according to internal reports issued by the Department of Homeland Security and FBI in the months leading up to the election.
The DHS report said social media users discussed methods for damaging ballots and ballot drop boxes, such as using road flares or gasoline. The intelligence reports were first obtained under open records law by Property of the People, a nonprofit that focuses on governmental transparency and national security.
The incidents in Oregon and Washington are not the first time ballot drop boxes have been the target of attacks. Ahead of Election Day 2020, ballot drop boxes were also set alight in two separate incidents in Massachusetts and California.
A drop box is a secure container for mail-in ballots, providing an alternative to mailing ballots through the U.S. Postal Service. Outdoor boxes are typically tamper-proof and anchored, with secured locks and other safety features, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The agency is part of the DHS and focuses on federal cybersecurity while working to protect against security risks related to the 2024 election.
CISA also said outdoor drop boxes often have features to prevent fire and water damage.
Officials said fire suppressant protected nearly all the ballots in the Oregon drop box. While the ballot box in Washington also had a fire suppression system, Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey told the Associated Press the system was not effective.
Indoor boxes are generally monitored by trained workers and video surveillance, CISA said. Ballots in drop boxes can only be accessed by election officials, often bipartisan collection teams, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which supports state and local election officials.
Misinformation targeting ballot drop boxes
Election infrastructure has been a focal point for misinformation, including in 2020 when the drop boxes became an increasingly popular option for voters to submit their mail ballots amid the pandemic.
Paul Gronke, a professor of political science at Reed College and director of the Elections and Voting Information Center, said ballot drop boxes became a major target of misinformation in 2020 when Trump repeatedly raised doubts and suspicions about drop boxes and mail-in ballots as part of his false claim that the 2020 election was “stolen.”
In August 2020, Trump called drop boxes a “voter security disaster,” but he eventually embraced mail voting in 2024, and it’s been used by millions of voters of both parties this year.
Misleading claims and videos have spread widely on social media. In one example, social media users claimed footage of a woman placing at least three ballots into a drop box in Ohio in October 2020 was evidence of mail ballot fraud. But election officials said it’s not illegal to place multiple ballots in the box in Ohio as long as they are all from family members.
Such examples are often pointed to as evidence that ballot drop boxes are a problem; however, experts say drop boxes offer a reliable and secure way to safeguard ballots, and that there is little to no evidence that they have been used for voter fraud.
Gronke says the physical attacks on drop boxes are likely related to the pervasive misinformation circulating since 2020.
“Unfortunately, we’re in a place right now in some parts of America where people feel sufficiently frustrated, angered, and outraged by some of the misinformation that they hear,” Gronke said.
Drop boxes are permitted in 27 states and the District of Columbia, while 12 states have banned them, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Each state has its own rules for securing drop boxes.
States and counties also have systems in place to keep track of every ballot sent out and received back, says CBS News election law contributor David Becker.
In both Washington and Oregon, election officials said voters whose ballots were damaged would receive replacement ballots.
“We have multiple systems and security measures in place to ensure your ballot is safe,” Multnomah County Elections Director Tim Scott said in a statement. “Your Elections team is working hard to make sure that every vote counts.”
“We take the safety of our election workers seriously and will not tolerate threats or acts of violence that seek to undermine the democratic process,” Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said about the incident in Vancouver.
contributed to this report.
CBS News
United Airlines passenger attacked while sleeping on flight from San Francisco: “His face was bruised and bloody”
A man on a cross-country United Airlines flight violently attacked a sleeping passenger, punching him repeatedly in the face until it was bloody, authorities said. A witness said the man who was attacked is deaf and nonverbal.
Authorities identified the suspect as Everett Chad Nelson, according to an affidavit from an FBI agent.
The incident unfolded Monday on United Flight 2247 about two hours after it took off from San Francisco International Airport for Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
Nelson got up from seat 35F toward the back of the Boeing 737 and went to the lavatory near the front of the plane, according to the affidavit. When he was returning to his seat, he stopped at seat 12F and started punching the man who was sleeping there, according to the affidavit, which didn’t identify the victim.
Sandhya Gupta, who was sitting behind the sleeping man, watched the attack unfold.
“I will not forget the look in his eyes,” Gupta told CBS News. “I had not seen a look from anyone’s eyes like that. It was like he was seeing through the victim.”
According to the FBI affidavit, the attack lasted about a minute. The man screamed as Nelson kept hitting him and his blood was seen on the sleeves of Nelson’s windbreaker, a nearby seat and on the plane’s wall and window, according to the affidavit.
“I actually wondered does this guy have a weapon because I didn’t realize you could do so much damage with just your fists,” Gupta told CBS News. “… His face was bruised and bloody.”
Another passenger rushed up the aisle and wrapped his arms around Nelson to stop him, Gupta said.
“He didn’t fight the person who came to subdue him,” Gupta said. “It was like powering off a robot.”
A doctor on the flight ran toward the man who was attacked and started administering first aid, Gupta said. She said she realized he was deaf and nonverbal when he started signing at the people helping him.
According to the affidavit, the man sustained bruising to his eyes and a gash on his nose. Nelson didn’t appear to be injured, and there wasn’t any indication that the man fought back, according to the affidavit.
Nelson was taken to a seat toward the front of the plane and monitored by the passenger who stopped the attack, according to the affidavit. Gupta said he wasn’t restrained after the attack.
“He just went limp,” Gupta said.
In a statement, United praised the reaction of the passenger and crew.
“Thanks to the quick action of our crew and customers, one passenger was restrained after becoming physically aggressive toward another customer on a flight from San Francisco to Washington Dulles on Monday. The flight landed safely and was met by paramedics and local law enforcement,” the airline said.
Gupta said a flight attendant told her that Nelson claimed the man had attacked him in the street earlier.
“He kept texting, ‘I’m innocent,'” Gupta said.
The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement it was investigating the incident. According to the agency, airlines have reported over 1,740 unruly passenger incidents this year and that such incidents have dropped from the record highs reached in early 2021.
Kathryn Krupnik and Ryan Sprouse contributed reporting.
Trump Media & Technology Group has had a wild stock market ride this month. After quadrupling in price just days before, the stock on Thursday plunged as much as 39% since its intraday high on Tuesday. The two-day decline has shaved more than $2.4 billion from former President Donald Trump’s stake in the business, which trades under the ticker DJT, the same as his initials.
Trump Media, which owns the Truth Social app, shed $5.35, or 13.4%, to $34.68 in early afternoon trading on Thursday, after touching an intraday low of $33.41. That comes after a 22% tumble on Wednesday, which followed more than five weeks of market gains, sending the shares to a Tuesday intraday high of $54.68.
Because of their volatility, DJT has earned comparisons to meme stocks, or companies that trade on social media buzz rather than revenue growth or profitability, investors’ favored yardsticks. Despite Truth Social’s declining revenue and large losses, Trump Media shares surged for much of October as polls in the presidential race tightened and as betting markets such as Polymarket predicted odds in Trump’s favor to win.
It’s not exactly clear what sparked the two-day sell-off, but DJT shares have attracted a number of speculators and short sellers, with the latter betting the stock would fall. Some of the October surge in DJT shares could have come from short sellers forced to cover their bets, which requires them to buy stock and create a so-called short squeeze, which can send shares higher, according to research group S3 Partners.
“Trump and Media Group (DJT) stock, closely tied to Trump’s election chances, faces high squeeze risk due to limited float and elevated short interest,” S3 wrote on Tuesday. “Trump’s 57% stake and current short losses intensify squeeze potential.”
Trump’s stake in DJT
Trump owns about 115 million shares of Trump Media, making him the largest investor in the fledgling social media company. At its most recent intraday peak of $54.68 on Tuesday, his stake was valued at almost $6.3 billion.
But the two-day sell-off has whittled the value of that stake to about $3.8 billion, based on Thursday’s intraday low.
To be sure, those losses represents paper wealth, and Trump has vowed not to sell his shares after a lock-up period expired last month, which now enables him to liquidate his stake. Because Trump owns almost 60% of the company’s stock, selling even a portion of his stake could flood the market with available shares, potentially lowering its price.
Many of the other DJT shareholders are small investors who bought shares as a way to express support for the former president. On Thursday, as the stock tumbled for a second day, some of its shareholders vowed revenge in the months to come, with some blaming short sellers and others pointing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC.)
“I was happy to strap my investment dollars to @realDonaldTrump and take all the financial arrows with him,” wrote Chad Nedohin, a minister and shareholder who runs a DJT group on Truth Social. “The more they try to hurt DJT, the worse it’s going to be for them in 2025.”
Nedohin added #TrumpTheSEC at the end of his post.
CBS News
U.S. imposes sanctions on top members of armed wing of Mexican cartel linked to 2019 killings of 9 Americans
The U.S. imposed sanctions Thursday on senior members of the armed wing of a Mexican drug cartel that operates on border territories in and around Chihuahua, Mexico. The cartel has also been linked to the 2019 ambush that killed nine Americans in Mexico.
Five Mexican citizens and two companies linked to La Linea, a violent Mexico-based drug trafficking organization that smuggles fentanyl and other synthetic drugs into the U.S. on behalf of the transnational Juarez Cartel, were hit with economic sanctions Thursday.
The latest action is meant to stem a major source of the fentanyl coming into the U.S; the powerful opioid is the deadliest drug in the U.S. today. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that drug overdose deaths in the U.S. have increased more than sevenfold from 2015 to 2021, though the agency reported a 3% decline in the number of drug overdose deaths this year.
Mexico and China are the primary sources of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked directly into the U.S., according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, which is tasked with combating illicit drug trafficking. Nearly all the precursor chemicals that are needed to make fentanyl come from China.
La Linea and the Juarez Cartel are known for inflicting violence on innocent people, and U.S. authorities have tried to pursue them – in July 2022, a North Dakota federal judge ordered La Linea to pay $4.6 billion in monetary damages to the families of nine Americans killed in an ambush in Northern Mexico on Nov. 4, 2019.
Marco Ugarte / AP
Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in a statement Thursday that “if La Linea continues to directly contribute to the proliferation of deadly fentanyl throughout our communities, Treasury will continue to use every tool in our arsenal to go after their criminal activity.”
The Biden administration has taken a slew of actions against fentanyl traffickers — charging powerful traffickers with drug and money laundering offenses and announcing indictments and sanctions against Chinese companies and executives blamed for importing the chemicals used to make the dangerous drug.
In December 2023, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen launched a Counter-Fentanyl Strike Force that brings together personnel and intelligence from throughout the Treasury Department — from its sanctions and intelligence arms to IRS Criminal Investigations – to more effectively collaborate on stopping the flow of drugs into the country.
And President Biden signed into law the bipartisan FEND off Fentanyl Act as part of the supplemental spending package signed in April, which among other things, declares that the international trafficking of fentanyl is a national emergency.
Combatting fentanyl has increasingly become a political issue. Republicans say fentanyl smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border should be viewed alongside migration issues, which are a focal point of the 2024 presidential election.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has blamed migrants for the trafficking of drugs like fentanyl, even though federal data suggests many people smuggling fentanyl across the border are U.S. citizens.
Over the past two years, Treasury has sanctioned more than 350 people and firms connected to drug trafficking, from cartel leaders to labs and suppliers.
Last month, the U.S. sanctioned a man known as “The Tank” who allegedly leads the fuel theft arm of Mexico’s hyper-violent Jalisco New Generation cartel .
In July, the U.S. imposed sanctions on a group of Mexican accountants and firms allegedly linked to a timeshare fraud ring run by the Jalisco cartel in a multi-million dollar scheme targeting Americans.
The month before that, U.S. officials announced economic sanctions against eight targets affiliated with a Mexican drug cartel, La Nueva Familia Michoacana, accused of fentanyl trafficking and human smuggling. Among the leaders targeted was an alleged assassin named Uriel Tabares Martinez. According to the Treasury Department, he is known as “El Medico” (“The Doctor”) for the violent and surgical manner in which he tortures and kills those who cross the high-ranking members of the cartel.
United Airlines passenger attacked while sleeping on flight from San Francisco: “His face was bruised and bloody”
Trump’s net worth slumps by as much as $2.4 billion amid DJT stock plunge
U.S. imposes sanctions on top members of armed wing of Mexican cartel linked to 2019 killings of 9 Americans
United Airlines passenger attacked while sleeping on flight from San Francisco: “His face was bruised and bloody”
Trump’s net worth slumps by as much as $2.4 billion amid DJT stock plunge