POLITICS

WASHINGTON — The House passed legislation Thursday that would aid Ukraine and sanction key segments of the Russian economy, overriding objections from Republican leaders who warned the bill would undermine negotiations designed to achieve a comparable but stronger result.

The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., seeks to cement U.S. assistance for Ukraine by providing more than $1 billion in security and reconstruction aid. It would make another $8 billion available for Ukraine’s defense through loans.

The 226-195 vote is a sign of impatience with President Trump’s approach to the war and represents the House’s second major foreign policy break with Trump this week. The day before, the House, for the first time, approved a war powers resolution aimed at halting U.S. military action against Iran.

Supporters were able to force action on the Ukraine bill by gathering 218 signatures on a discharge petition, a legislative tool that allows a majority of the House to effectively bypass leadership.

Once rarely successful, House members have used the petition tool this Congress to pass bills on releasing the government’s files on Jeffrey Epstein and to extend health care subsidies to many of those who get health coverage through the Affordable Care Act, though the latter measure faltered in the Senate.

Meeks said the question before the House was simple. Would it help Ukraine negotiate from a position of strength or help Russia outlast American resolve?

“We all want this war to end,” Meeks said. “The question is how. Will we abandon Ukraine and force it into a terrible deal? That is what Vladimir Putin is counting on. Or will this body live up to the commitments we’ve made since the start of this war?”

The vast majority of Republicans opposed the measure. Rep. French Hill, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said he is a steadfast supporter of Ukraine. However, the Arkansas Republican said the House was confronted with a flawed, outdated measure that actually calls for less funding for Ukraine security assistance compared to what Congress had agreed to as part of this year’s defense policy. Another section could lead to a decrease in defense spending by some NATO members, he warned.

Rep. Brian Mast, the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said he believed the bill was “a cudgel to fight against President Trump.”

“This bill, in my opinion, is an unserious bill that was crafted basically a year-and-a-half ago,” Mast, R-Fla., said.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., broke with most of his Republican colleagues in voicing support for the measure.

“Are we going to stand with good or are we going to stand with evil? That’s what this is about tonight,” he said.

In the end, 18 Republicans, 207 Democrats and one independent voted for the bill. Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar joined with 194 Republicans in voting against it.

Lawmakers want to send a message

Supporters are hopeful that the House’s passage of the Ukraine bill would put pressure on the Senate to do the same. But they also know the Senate likely won’t go along unless Trump endorses the bill.

“It’s probably not going to get 60 votes in the Senate, but it’s going to hopefully force the Senate to address the issue,” said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., who signed the discharge petition and voted for the bill. “It’s going to send a great message to the soldiers of Ukraine.”

He said the vote would also send a message to Putin that “we do have a pulse here, that we do care about Ukraine and that we are going to utilize our authority to help them.”

As the war has dragged on, it’s gotten more difficult for supporters of Ukraine in Congress to provide additional financial support to help Ukraine defend itself.

The U.S. has approved some $195 billion for the Ukraine response, according to the latest quarterly inspector general report for Operation Atlantic Resolve, with roughly a quarter of that going to replenish weapons stockpiles for the U.S. military. The last major legislation designed to bolster the Ukraine response occurred in April 2024, though modest amounts have since been included in annual appropriations bills.

Republican leaders tried to stop the bill

Republican leaders urged their members to oppose the legislation. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said there are good-faith negotiations between members of Congress and the White House to boost Ukraine. He described the negotiations as complicated.

“I think they are going to yield positive results, but you set that back if you pass legislation that doesn’t go as far as the negotiations are going,” Scalise said.

The war that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor is more than four years old, with no end in sight. In recent days, both sides have sought an edge by launching long-range missile strikes.

U.S.-led peace efforts have fizzled out as the sides made no progress on key differences and after the war in Iran grabbed Washington’s attention. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accepted an unconditional ceasefire demanded by Trump, but Putin refused.

Action in the Senate on Ukraine has revolved around a bill that would impose sweeping tariffs and secondary sanctions on countries that purchase Russia’s oil, gas, uranium and other exports, which are crucial to financing Russia’s military. But the bill has languished.

Freking writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

After the 2022 Los Angeles mayoral primary, developer Rick Caruso looked to have a surprising, and sizable, lead over then-U.S. Rep. Karen Bass.

The morning after the polls closed, Caruso was ahead by 5 percentage points — 42% to Bass’ 37% — and the former Republican called the early results “a victory story.”

But that lead did not last as the vote count continued. By the time all votes were tabulated two weeks after election day, Bass had come out on top, with 43% of the vote compared with Caruso’s 36%.

Welcome to the postelection vote-count slog in California, where tight races are often impossible to call even when the initial results seem clear-cut.

The California governor’s race still has not been called even though Republican Steve Hilton has been the top voter-getter and Democrat Xavier Becerra has been in second place since election night. The same is true in the battle over who will face Bass in the mayoral election: reality TV personality Spencer Pratt, who is now in second place, or L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who is in third place.

At this point in the vote tally, “everybody has an opinion and very few facts” about what the results will be, said Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist.

“Nobody in politics wants to be patient,” Murphy said, adding that California has “adopted a system that’s slow and deliberate.”

It’s not just the L.A. mayor’s race where mail-in ballots have swung election outcomes. Other contests, including those for highly competitive Orange County congressional districts and L.A. City Council seats, have come down to extremely narrow margins that have shifted long after election day.

On election night in November 2024, just over 1,000 votes separated Democrat Dave Min and Republican Scott Baugh in their bid for the 47th Congressional District, with Baugh enjoying a slight lead.

But, ultimately, as more ballots were counted, Min pulled ahead. He ended up winning by about 10,000 votes.

Similarly, in the race between Democrat Derek Tran and then-incumbent Michelle Steel to represent Congressional District 45, it took until Nov. 27 to determine that Tran had won the contest by just over 650 votes.

In 2022, the race between then-incumbent Gil Cedillo and community activist Eunisses Hernandez for L.A. City Council was similarly unsettled. On election day, Cedillo had a comfortable lead with 56% of the vote. But two weeks later, Hernandez ended up in the lead with 54% of the vote to Cedillo’s 46%.

Experts say confirming the final spot in the mayor’s race could still take several more days, depending on how close the contest becomes and how many ballots still need to be counted. Only an estimated 62% of ballots from the city of Los Angeles had been counted as of Thursday morning.

“Of the 40% remaining, or outstanding, there could still be a chance that there would be a significant return of more left-leaning votes, which would certainly benefit Raman,” said Pete Peterson, dean of the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University.

Late results tend to favor Democrats — as seen in the 2022 Bass-Caruso contest — as Democrats tend to be more likely to vote by mail, a system that accepts ballots up to seven days after election day as long as they are postmarked by that Tuesday. And this year, Democratic voters held on to their ballots longer amid an unsettled governor’s race, which could further boost that phenomenon.

“The major difference between ’26 and ‘22, you had two candidates versus three,” Peterson said. “Mathematically, it’s a different situation.”

Three experts The Times interviewed said Raman still had a chance to pass Pratt, but it seemed more likely at this point that Pratt would survive and challenge Bass in November.

The remaining ballots to count, even if they are overwhelmingly left-leaning, will probably be split between Raman and Bass, which means Raman needs to outperform not just Pratt but Bass to make such a comeback possible, Peterson said.

He called her chances of ousting Pratt “dastardly remote … but it’s not impossible.”

In L.A. County, the registrar of voters reported late Wednesday that officials estimate they still have about 713,000 ballots to process and count, which primarily includes vote-by-mail ballots postmarked by election day but not yet received, as well as ballots returned to drop boxes and vote centers on election day. The registrar only made countywide estimations, which includes a much larger pool than L.A. city voters who will decide the mayor’s race.

Kamy Akhavan, the managing director at the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future, said there’s a theory circulating among pundits that ballots submitted later are going to break more progressive, meaning they’ll be more friendly to Raman.

“Whether there is enough of them to tilt the outcome in favor of Raman taking a second place position, right now, it seems unlikely,” he said.

Pratt is pulling from the same electorate in Los Angeles that voted for President Trump and could snag a few more voters who are angry about the state of the city. But his lead very well could shrink a bit as more Democrats’ ballots are counted, Murphy said.

“Nithya, she’ll probably go up because there’s going to be a fair amount of Democratic votes and she’ll get her chunk, but will she catch Pratt? You can extrapolate it either way,” Murphy said.

A similar left-leaning shift also occurred as more ballots were counted in November 2022 when Bass and Caruso faced off in the general election. Results on election night wavered between the two candidates, but by the following morning Caruso had a thin lead with 51.25% of the counted votes. Bass sat at 48.75%.

Caruso remained in the lead — though it continued to shrink — as the week dragged on, but by Saturday, Bass had pulled ahead with 50.78% of the counted vote. Caruso had fallen to 49.22%.

Her momentum continued to grow as more ballots were processed. Eight days after polls closed the following week, the Associated Press called the race for Bass. At that point, she led Caruso by six points with 53% of the vote.

The final tally would have her winning almost 55% of the vote.

California officials have worked to dispel rumors and falsehoods about slow election results — explaining that it’s part of the process to accurately count and confirm ballots, especially those mailed in — though there has been a growing push to expedite results to build voter trust.

The process has been particularly slow in L.A. County, though experts say that is mostly a result of the county’s massive voter base. Mail-in ballots are also heavily scrutinized with workers verifying signatures and giving voters a chance to remedy the situation if their signature doesn’t match, a process that takes time.

“They’re using that level of care because they’re supposed to — that’s their protocol — and also because it could make a big difference,” Akhavan said. “We’ve seen some elections in Southern California decided by single digits. And that just means this is going to take time. That can be very frustrating, even annoying, to Angelenos.”

The last time Angelenos sacked an incumbent city attorney in the primaries, almost 30% of them were unemployed.

That was May 2, 1933, the nadir of the Great Depression, when sprawling encampments blanketed downtown, King Kong ruled movie theaters and violent crime reached a fever pitch not seen again for almost half a century.

Incumbent City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto’s near-certain defeat on Tuesday may have little in common with Erwin P. Werner’s primary loss 93 years ago, but themes of Depression-era Los Angeles echo through the contest.

Marissa Roy, a deputy attorney general with the California Department of Justice who leads the race with ballots still being counted, wooed voters with shoe-leather and social media savvy, promising to use the office to fight for wage workers and tenants. But it was the city’s powerful unions and its increasingly democratic socialist bloc that propelled her to the top spot, mirroring the coalition that drove California’s sharp left turn in the early 1930s.

Meanwhile, county prosecutor John McKinney tapped into voter frustration with homeless encampments, a blighted downtown and general distrust of City Hall to pull off a last-minute heist of the second runoff spot. McKinney only started campaigning in earnest five weeks ago, but managed to win votes with a tough-on-crime campaign — even as some categories of city crime have dipped to historic lows.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, left, shares a laugh with L.A. City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto, right, at Avance Democratic Club’s politics and tacos event on May 16.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

As of Thursday morning, Roy had nearly double the number of votes of Feldstein Soto. McKinney led the incumbent by 13 percentage points for the second runoff slot. The race has not yet been called, but Feldstein Soto issued a statement effectively conceding the race Wednesday morning. She acknowledged that “the voters had spoken” and referenced “her successor’s administration.”

Her campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

The ouster of Feldstein Soto would be nearly unprecedented. Werner’s 1933 loss is the only similar instance since the city adopted its current primary ballot process in 1917, according to the City Clerk’s office. No other incumbent city council member or mayor has ever failed to advance out of the primary when facing two or more opponents.

“This is not something that has happened in the lifetimes of most people who follow city government,” said Mike Bonin, former City Council member and executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State L.A.

McKinney’s sudden emergence in the race in May saw him hijack the incumbent’s support from law enforcement. His campaign received $3 million worth of independent expenditures. An official with a group supporting McKinney — who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media — said an internal poll showed Feldstein Soto falling nearly 10 points outside the runoff a week before election day.

Since Roy had already captured the support of the county Democratic Party and energized left-leaning voters, that put Feldstein Soto in the center, analysts said, which left her vulnerable in a race that most people casting ballots hadn’t closely followed.

“To the extent that people had any information, they knew that one of them basically wanted to be tougher and somebody on the other side wanted to be kinder, that left her with very little room to maneuver,” said Roy Behr, a longtime consultant to veteran politicians in the city.

Roy “micro-targeted” likely progressive voters in social media spots, experts said, presenting as an affable presence in her ever-present purple blazer while sharing her vision of serving as the “people’s lawyer.”

Marissa Roy, a deputy attorney general with the California Department of Justice, appears poised to finish first in the June 2 primary race for L.A. city attorney.

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

Boosted by a massive influx of cash from rental giant Airbnb, some of McKinney’s ads played up his hard-luck upbringing in one of New Jersey’s most violent cities. His campaign also sent out texts that painted his opponents as “George Gascón”-style Democrats, invoking the former progressive district attorney as a bogeyman for voters anxious about crime.

AI-generated videos depicted McKinney as a stoic, suit-clad crime fighter walking through a dystopian version of L.A.’s Metro system.

“The debate isn’t necessarily two candidates on one stage appealing to one person, it’s for attention and information in the same sphere,” said Spencer Slovic of Mycorrhiza Digital, who ran Roy’s digital advertising. “That battle of information will play out almost in different realms.”

Without a compelling story for her powerful but poorly understood role, Feldstein Soto often struggled to explain her achievements in office.

In a recent interview with The Times, she said she delivered on “public safety, public integrity and public services.” She went on to discuss granular improvements she made to the office, such as limiting access to law enforcement databases by former employees, modernizing internal systems and improving the rapport between the city attorney’s office and LAPD. By her own admission, she doesn’t often publicly celebrate her accomplishments.

“I didn’t hold some big press conference and hop up on a white horse and declare myself Joan of Arc and the savior of all things Los Angeles,” she said. “Which I could have done.”

Tumult during Feldstein Soto’s lone term in office was easier for voters to identify. The cost of litigation exploded. A high-ranking city lawyer accused her of abusing her power, prosecuting political enemies, mistreating employees and engaging in “inappropriate alcohol consumption.” Feldstein Soto claimed she improved her office’s rapport with the LAPD, but the police union’s decision to rescind its endorsement of her and instead back McKinney cost her a key voting bloc.

Feldstein Soto’s messaging was at times muddled and lacked the flair of her challengers, political observers said. Campaign finance records show she paid for 80 email blasts, mailers and other messages that sought to influence voters.

John McKinney, a Los Angeles County prosecutor, appears set to advance to a run-off against Marissa Roy in the race for L.A. city attorney.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

In one video, she stood in front of a static background and talked for three minutes straight about her record while describing her opponents as representing the “extreme left” and “extreme right.” She attacked both for receiving large sums of money from “special interests,” especially McKinney for accepting Airbnb’s largesse. Feldstein Soto sued the rental giant for price gouging in the wake of the 2025 wildfires.

Roy’s campaign sent out 180 communications, records show, the bulk of them ads for Instagram and Facebook, where her team said they saw instantly which stories resonated with likely voters and which were duds.

Slovic said a “clip of Hydee talking about how she wasn’t going to prosecute the Trump administration” seemed to touch a nerve with voters.

“That was by far our best performing ad,” he said, adding, “What Democrats really want in primaries is someone who will fight and have some sort of backbone.”

McKinney had just 23 communications, campaign records show, plus 19 more made by independent groups. He often leaned into the same gritty visuals that defined mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt’s viral AI spots.

In a race for a position most voters don’t understand, McKinney’s and Roy’s ability to play a consistent character may have proved critical, political analysts said.

“The vast majority of voters started off with no strong feelings about the race,” Behr said. “Nobody had any votes locked down other than their friends and neighbors.”

WASHINGTON — Former Trump administration national security advisor John Bolton has agreed to plead guilty to a single count of retaining classified information under a deal with the Justice Department that could allow him to avoid prison time, a person familiar with the matter said Thursday.

The deal would resolve a criminal case filed in October that charged Bolton with 18 counts of either retaining or disseminating classified information, including diary-like notes from his time in government that officials say he shared with his family members as he was preparing a memoir about his time in office.

Under the agreement, Bolton would also face a $2.25-million fine, said the person, who insisted on anonymity to discuss a deal that had not been made public. Any prison sentence would be capped at five years, but the agreement allows for him to avoid time behind bars, though the punishment will ultimately be up to a judge.

The case against Bolton, filed weeks after prosecutors secured indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James, unfolded against the backdrop of concerns that the Justice Department was using its law enforcement powers to pursue perceived adversaries of President Trump. The investigation burst into public view last August when FBI agents served search warrants at his Maryland home and Washington office, but it had been well underway by the time Trump returned to the White House in January 2025.

Bolton is a longtime fixture in Republican foreign policy circles who became known for his hawkish views on U.S. power. He served for more than a year in Trump’s first administration before being fired in 2019 and publishing a critical book that portrayed the Republican president as deeply misinformed, an unflattering portrait of his leadership and decision-making.

Trump’s administration fought unsuccessfully to block the publication of “The Room Where it Happened” on the grounds that the book risked disclosing classified information. The plea deal that Bolton will enter covers the notes he shared with relatives as opposed to information published in the tell-all book.

A rearraignment, which typically signals a plea agreement, is scheduled for June 26 in federal court in Greenbelt, Md.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

The indictment’s 18 counts carried a threat of a substantial prison sentence in the event of conviction.

Court documents alleged that he shared with two family members “diary-like” entries with information classified as high as top secret that he had learned from meetings with other U.S. government officials, from intelligence briefings or talks with foreign leaders. After sending one document, Bolton wrote in a message to his relatives, “None of which we talk about!!!” In response, one of his relatives wrote, “Shhhhh,” prosecutors said.

The indictment said that among the material shared was information about foreign adversaries that in some cases revealed details about sources and methods used by the U.S. government to collect intelligence. One document related to a foreign adversary’s plans for a missile launch, while another detailed U.S. government plans for covert action and included intelligence blaming an adversary for an attack, court papers say.

In a statement released after his indictment, Bolton described the charges as part of an “intensive effort” by Trump to intimidate his opponents, to ensure that he alone determines what is said about his conduct.”

Bolton also served in the Department of Justice during President Reagan’s administration and was a State Department point person on arms control during George W. Bush’s presidency.

Bolton was nominated by Bush to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, but the strong supporter of the Iraq war was unable to win Senate confirmation. He resigned after serving 17 months through a recess appointment that allowed him to hold the job on a temporary basis without Senate approval.

In 2018, Bolton was appointed to serve as Trump’s third national security advisor. His brief tenure was characterized by disputes with the president over North Korea, Iran and Ukraine.

Those rifts ultimately led to Bolton’s departure, with Trump announcing on social media in September 2019 that he had accepted Bolton’s resignation.

Bolton subsequently criticized Trump’s approach to foreign policy and government in his book, alleging that Trump directly tied providing military aid to Ukraine to that country’s willingness to conduct investigations into Joe Biden, who was soon to be Trump’s Democratic rival in the 2020 presidential election, and members of the Biden family.

Trump responded by slamming Bolton as a “washed-up guy” and a “crazy” warmonger who would have led the country into “World War Six.”

Tucker writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Trump announced Wednesday night at a White House dinner that he wanted to make acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche’s leadership of the Department of Justice permanent.

The president said he thought the confirmation of his onetime personal defense attorney would go “very quickly,” according to a video posted from the dinner.

But early indications suggest that the process could be anything but.

Blanche, who assumed his current role after Trump fired former Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi in April, has been the face of some of the administration’s most unpopular actions, including the $1.8-billion “anti-weaponization fund,” the Justice Department’s release of the so-called Epstein files and a spate of prosecutions that critics have seen as politically motivated.

“He was nominated because he’ll do whatever the President demands. Todd Blanche should be under investigation — not under consideration for a promotion,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who sits on the committee, said in a statement.

Blanche was confirmed as deputy attorney general last year in a vote along party lines but now faces a changed political climate, in which Senate Republicans have felt more emboldened to question the administration’s actions.

Already, two Republicans who sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will decide Blanche’s fate, have expressed reservations about his nomination.

Republicans hold a 12-to-10 majority in the committee, so losing two votes probably would torpedo Blanche’s confirmation.

Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn told CNN reporter Manu Raju Thursday that he was concerned about the independence of Blanche, who served as Trump’s personal attorney in a New York case about his alleged hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.

“Being attorney general is probably one of the hardest jobs in the Cabinet, because you’re working for the president but you’re also supposed to be able to tell the president ‘no,’ ” Cornyn said. “So we need to talk about that.”

Cornyn recently lost his primary bid for reelection after Trump endorsed his opponent, Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton.

In recent weeks, Blanche has faced withering criticism for the anti-weaponization fund, which was created last month to settle a lawsuit brought by Trump, two of his sons and their business against the Internal Revenue Service.

Blanche publicly walked back the fund at a congressional hearing this week, after critics had described it as a slush fund for allies of the president who believed they had been prosecuted for political purposes, including those who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters that the fund, and any support for participants in the Jan. 6 insurrection, would be a sticking point for him in Blanche’s nomination.

“The key for Todd or anyone going through the Judiciary Committee is being pretty tight on January the 6th,” Tillis said.

Tillis, who is not seeking reelection, previously held up the confirmation of another Trump appointee — Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh — over the senator’s concern about the prosecution of outgoing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell in connection with statements Powell had made about a renovation of the Federal Reserve headquarters.

After the Powell investigation was dropped, Tillis supported Warsh’s nomination.

And Blanche will probably face questions during the confirmation process about the department’s prosecution of other perceived political enemies of the president, including former FBI Director James Comey, who is facing charges in North Carolina over a picture he posted on social media of seashells spelling out the numbers “86 47,” a reference to removing the president that prosecutors described as a death threat.

During Blanche’s first nomination hearing to be deputy attorney general, Tillis specifically asked Blanche to promise not to pursue any politically motivated prosecutions.

“I’ve got your commitment there will not even be a whiff of an investigation that appears to have a political motivation to it?” Tillis asked.

“I commit to that,” Blanche responded.

Even if he were to advance out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Blanche could face a tough confirmation vote in the full Senate, where Republicans hold 53 seats. Two Republican senators facing tough reelection matchups, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, along with lame duck Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, could prove to be hard votes to win.

Blanche has also been criticized for his handling of the release of millions of pages of records from the Justice Department’s investigation into deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as well as his interview with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.

Last week, Blanche’s predecessor, former Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, placed the blame for the delayed release of files and improper redactions on Blanche’s shoulders.

He has also faced criticism for his decision to interview Maxwell in her Florida prison in July 2025, and for her transfer to a more comfortable prison in Texas soon after the interview was conducted. The former British socialite’s attorneys have made clear that she is seeking a pardon for her 2021 conviction and 20-year prison sentence.

In the race for Los Angeles mayor, incumbent Karen Bass secured a place on the November ballot. But who will challenge her is yet to be determined, as votes are still being tallied.

With 62% of the expected vote counted, reality television personality Spencer Pratt sits in second place and City Councilmember Nithya Raman trails in third. Although Pratt has declared victory, the Associated Press, which estimates the expected votes in, has not called the race.

This story is based on a snapshot of precinct-level results provided by the L.A. County registrar on Wednesday. The Times analyzed the 525,326 votes processed so far. This story will be updated when winners are finalized in early July by the secretary of state.

This map shows the margin and density of votes by precinct. Areas where a candidate leads by a wide margin, such as Brentwood for Pratt, appear darker on the map. More densely populated neighborhoods — such as Bass strongholds in Baldwin Hills and Hyde Park — appear in brighter colors. As of Wednesday, an estimated 710,000 ballots were yet to be counted, according to L.A. County officials.

The preliminary results show narrow margins among precincts on the Eastside, with some precincts showing an almost 30% split across the top 3 candidates.

Bass retained a strong lead in precincts across South L.A. compared with her 2022 race against Rick Caruso. Pratt has garnered heavy support from his neighbors in Pacific Palisades, as well as precincts in Bel-Air and Shadow Hills.

Raman, who represents Los Feliz, Hollywood Hills, Sherman Oaks and Encino on the city council, has so far underperformed in her home 4th District. She led in 12 of the 66 precincts, particularly in parts of Los Feliz. A few precincts in East Hollywood swung heavily for Pratt; but Bass led much of CD-4.

To win the race outright, Bass needs to secure at least 50% of the vote. She currently holds 35% of the vote and a five-point lead over Pratt. A Berkeley IGS poll released last week found that Bass and Raman would likely defeat Pratt by double digits in the event of a runoff.

Mail-in ballots with a June 2 postmark will be accepted by county election officials through Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Thursday that federal housing finance regulator Bill Pulte, his pick for acting director of national intelligence, would not be his “permanent” choice for the critical security post.

The Republican president’s disclosure that he was ruling out installing Pulte in the position full time came after bipartisan pushback on Capitol Hill in recent days over Pulte’s lack of national security experience. The position requires Senate confirmation, something that lawmakers indicated was unlikely if Pulte were the nominee.

“He’s not going to be permanent because, you know, I don’t think he’d want to be permanent,” Trump said while taking questions in the Oval Office after an event on coal. He called Pulte a “very smart guy” and said he may look at past elections that Trump claims, without credible evidence, were “rigged” against him.

Trump said other candidates were under consideration for nomination to the post. “We’re interviewing people right now,” he said.

Pulte, a grandson of the founder of PulteGroup, has been a source of controversy within the administration for his work as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and his oversight of the mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Pulte has used his position to pursue Trump’s perceived political rivals for alleged mortgage fraud and has verbally attacked Jerome H. Powell, whose term as the Federal Reserve chairman recently ended after months of Trump and Pulte attacking him for not slashing the central bank’s benchmark rates. The federal housing finance regulator has also pitched a 50-year mortgage, an idea that backfired as it meant that the process of building wealth through homeownership would be slowed.

Both Republican and Democratic senators expressed concerns about Pulte and his lack of national security credentials in occupying a role coordinating 18 federal agencies involved in domestic and foreign security issues. Trump’s initial director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, resigned last month, citing her husband’s recent cancer diagnosis.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, said the national intelligence director job shouldn’t be “weaponized” and should be led by “professionals.”

Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and John Cornyn of Texas, who are each leaving the chamber after this year’s elections, also expressed concerns about Pulte.

Democratic senators view Pulte as a risk even if he is serving only temporarily as the director of national intelligence while keeping his position at the FHFA.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent Trump a letter on Thursday calling on him to rescind Pulte’s national security appointment.

“Americans cannot trust him to protect our nation and refrain from misusing the sensitive information he will have access to,” Warren wrote, saying that giving Pulte the job on an acting basis was a risk because Trump’s own words suggested the federal agency could be used “to promote election denial theories.”

At a hearing on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed reports that he had threatened to fight Pulte in September, a sign of the friction that the federal housing finance director had generated inside the administration.

But as a frequent traveler on Air Force One, Pulte has a close relationship with Trump.

“He’s a person who’s got high integrity,” Trump said Thursday about Pulte.

Boak writes for the Associated Press.

Well, that didn’t take long.

A day after California’s primary election, President Trump took to social media with baseless claims of election fraud — predictable, but also dangerous.

“Look what’s happening in California, the Dumocrats, right before our very eyes, are stealing the Vote,” Trump wrote in one post.

“There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California,” he wrote in another, apparently enamored of his latest juvenile slur.

Never mind that his candidate, Steve Hilton, is in the lead — for now anyway.

California has once again become the main dish on Trump’s buffet of bull-hockey as he continues to undermine democracy and consolidate authoritarian power, using this disingenuous and patently untrue narrative that American elections are rigged by shadowy Democratic forces working in collusion with illegal immigrants.

That last part is called the Great Replacement Theory, the idea that “elites” are replacing white people — and white voters — with Black and brown immigrants in a bid to destroy white culture. It’s at the heart of Trump’s voter fraud allegations.

The twist this time is that Hilton, the man who wants to represent all Californians, seems to be jumping on the election fraud conspiracy train with the president. I get it, there’s the MAGA base to feed, and it’s a base that feasts on outrage and fakery. Serving up resentment glazed with lies and propaganda has been the MAGA playbook for years under Trump, a strategy that no one can deny has been heartbreakingly effective.

But Hilton is a smart man and must certainly know that voter fraud is rare, to the point of being inconsequential to election outcomes. Hilton by his own admission understands voting patterns, and that in this cycle, Republicans have voted early and often by mail, despite Trump’s claims that all vote-by-mail should be suspect. So Hilton understands that early votes have skewed his way, and that later vote tallies will likely favor Democrats.

And Hilton is definitely intelligent enough to expect that in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly three to one, he will not keep the top spot in this primary, and a slim chance remains that he will not make it into the top two. That’s just simple math.

So if Hilton truly seeks to represent this state as its top elected executive, now is the time to renounce election fraud myths and stand up to Trump’s lies. If Hilton can’t say that he believes our recent election was free and fair, then he has no business being our governor.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the path he’s taking, even as it seems increasingly likely that he will advance to the general election.

This week, speaking with far-right podcaster and former Turning Point USA creative director Benny Johnson (who was allegedly duped into working for a Russian influence operation), Hilton said that while “so far we’re not seeing any signs” of cheating, “we’re going to be all over it. We’re not going to let them do that.”

Hilton was responding to a question from Johnson on whether Hilton will sue over “cheating.”

On a post-election appearance with Laura Ingraham, the conservative Fox News host who has repeatedly promoted the Great Replacement Theory, Hilton delved into more conspiracy.

“Just to really underline the point that you made about the corruption,” he told Ingraham an anecdote about supposed fraud in a previous election cycle when a “whistleblower” at the post office told him that they were instructed that a handwritten postmark was acceptable when sorting ballots to deliver to the county registrar.

“It’s just unbelievable, and of course, that’s why so many people don’t believe the results, but it just undermines confidence,” he told Ingraham, certainly knowing that the post office forwarding a ballot on to a county registrar in no way means it will be certified or counted. Would we really want the USPS deciding which ballots to deliver? Disingenuous on Hilton’s part at best.

“The whole thing is a joke,” Hilton went on to say of California elections, which of course, is absurd.

Thursday, when I asked Hilton’s team to speak with him about his views on voter fraud, they sent back a response that focused on the slowness of the California vote count; voter rolls Hilton has described as “wildly inaccurate,” which is a wildly inaccurate claim; and two instances of actual fraud with voter registration — not examples of votes that were counted.

To be sure, all those items are important. Any malfeasance should be punished, and the system should always strive to improve.

But how hard is it to simply be against fraud, while accurately acknowledging that it is rare and our current system provides accurate results?

I am against voter registration fraud. I am against vote fraud. I am absolutely pro-democracy, including policies such as mail-in voting that increase participation.

I do not believe that there is widespread fraud in the California primary, or in American elections in general, because the evidence does not support that conspiracy. I do not believe that Democrats are running a decades-long, nationwide conspiracy to replace white voters with votes from Black and brown undocumented immigrants, because that is both false and racist.

Pretty basic stuff, and statements in line with the values and common sense of the majority of Californians Hilton says he will represent.

If Hilton can’t come out and clearly say that Trump is wrong — about fraud and about the Great Replacement Theory — can he really be trusted to represent the values of the Golden State?

WASHINGTON — Initial efforts in the Senate failed Thursday to block the $1.8-billion fund that the Trump administration has sought to establish to pay people who claim the government wronged them, though further attempts were likely to come Thursday afternoon.

Republicans narrowly voted down a Democratic amendment to ban the payout fund and then Democrats killed a Republican amendment, which would have prohibited the use of federal money for the fund but would have sent $1.7 billion to the Justice Department’s fraud division.

It was the second effort in Congress to rebuke President Trump in two days, following the House vote Wednesday to rein in Trump’s war powers in Iran.

The dueling amendments were proposed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). They were attached to the reconciliation bill that would fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol, a high priority for Republicans.

The votes came as the Senate began a “vote-a-rama,” during which lawmakers were expected to propose a stream of amendments to the immigration bill on various topics.

The Trump administration’s plan for the payment fund — widely seen as a way for Trump to compensate his political allies, including those who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — set off particular ire from some GOP lawmakers.

The plan has fueled growing unrest within parts of Trump’s party over his governance, compounded by the president’s endorsement of primary challengers to Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.), as well as Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), which angered some Republican senators.

Cassidy, who lost his primary and has since voiced strong opposition to Trump’s $1.8-billion fund, became a key player in the Thursday votes, voting down Schumer’s amendment but supporting Tillis’.

On Wednesday, Cassidy joined with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to argue in a court filing that the $1.8-billion fund circumvents Congress’ authority and violates the Constitution’s spending and appropriations clauses.

“It is an unconstitutional attempt to spend the People’s money without Congressional approval,” Cassidy and Booker wrote in an amicus brief filed in the federal court case challenging the fund.

The fund was created by the Justice Department to settle a lawsuit brought by Trump against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. Trump and his sons agreed to drop their personal lawsuit against the government in exchange for the creation of the $1.776-billion fund. Critics immediately questioned the plan, and it drew a rare backlash from Republicans.

In late May, GOP senators derailed plans to vote on the immigration bill over their displeasure with the payout fund and with Trump’s desire to use taxpayer funds for his planned White House ballroom. Senate Republicans removed the ballroom funding from the immigration package Wednesday, another setback for Trump.

The Trump administration sought to back away from its plans for the fund this week, following bipartisan outcry and a federal court ruling that temporarily blocked any payouts from the fund. Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said Tuesday the administration would end its plans to move ahead with the concept.

But Trump on Wednesday told reporters he didn’t know whether the fund was dead, calling it “a beautiful thing.”

After Schumer proposed the first amendment to ban the fund Thursday morning, the Senate came to a standstill as three key Republican senators deliberated. Schumer framed his effort to ban the fund Thursday as a way to force a referendum on Trump’s plan.

The amendment “offers Republicans a choice: Do you support Donald Trump’s $2 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund, or do you want to protect the American people and their paychecks?” Schumer said on the Senate floor before the vote.

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) urged Republicans to reject the amendment, saying Democrats were planning to “play so many games” on Thursday during the marathon session.

“We are going to fund immigration enforcement and border patrol, and I urge my Republican colleagues to stay united on that singular mission,” Moreno said.

The amendment failed after Cassidy voted against it. Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Jon Husted of Ohio and Dan Sullivan of Alaska voted in favor.

Schumer’s amendment was uniformly supported by Democrats, including California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla.

Tillis, who also voted against Schumer’s amendment, immediately proposed his amendment. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) urged Democrats to oppose it, saying that the proposal would create “a new slush fund” by giving the money to the Justice Department.

“We heard over the last 48 hours that the acting attorney general said that this fund’s not moving forward. All this amendment does is codify what I believe the policy of the DOJ is,” Tillis said on the floor before voting began on his amendment. “This [fund] is unpopular, this administration has said they’re not moving forward with it; this is an opportunity for us to put it to bed.”

Responded Merkley: “Taking one slush fund and eliminating it and then creating a new slush fund still under control of the attorney general is not the way to go. The way to go is to get rid of these slush funds altogether.”

Trump has faced a recent string of failures, including the House vote Wednesday, a court ruling to remove his name from the Kennedy Center and a record-low approval rating among Americans as concern rises about economic issues, gas prices and Trump’s war with Iran.

On Wednesday, Trump lashed out against the four Republicans who backed the House war powers resolution, calling it “an unpatriotic thing” to do and calling the vote “meaningless.”

“They’re GRANDSTANDERS! They should be ashamed of themselves. MAGA!!! President DJT,” Trump wrote.

Times staff writer Ana Ceballos, in Washington, contributed to this report.

More than a day after polls closed, voters still hadn’t learned which two candidates would run off in the November general election for dozens of races.

Many significant races are still too close to call. In the race for governor, Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra held leads, with Democrat Tom Steyer and Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco trailing. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, San José Mayor Matt Mahan and former Rep. Katie Porter conceded the race Tuesday night.

The Associated Press surveys the numbers posted by local election officials and projects the winner using vote returns and other data. Races can be called within minutes of polls closing on election night. However, if a race has tight margins or an high expected volume of mail-in ballots, it can take longer to call.

In some cases, such as for L.A. mayor and state treasurer, the tight race is between second and third place.

In California’s primary, the top two vote-getters move on to the general election regardless of candidate pool size, party preference, or whether one candidate receives a majority of votes. Locally and in nonpartisan races, however, a candidate can avoid the November election if they win with a majority.

Statewide

State Senate

State Assembly

Congress

Almost half of California’s 52 U.S. House of Representatives seats had known finalists on election night. But in tight races such as the Republican vs. Republican competition in the 40th District and the Democrats’ challenging of Republican Rep. David Valadao in a redrawn 22nd District, the top two vote-getters weren’t yet known.

Local

In Los Angeles County, there were still 27 races with uncertain results. The Times considers uncertain races those where no candidate has a majority or where the vote share for the top two is between 55% and 40%. The Associated Press does not call winners for most local races, such as city councils, city officers and ballot measures. If no candidate wins with a majority, the top two will face off in November. That could be the case for the sheriff and L.A. City Council’s 3rd District.

The L.A. County registrar will continue to count and confirm mailed-in, provisional and conditional ballots until June 26. Updates to the results charts below are expected approximately once a day in the early evening.

Close city races

Voters can track their own cast ballot here.

The secretary of state will certify results in early July.

PHOENIX — The Arizona Supreme Court has denied a prosecutor’s appeal of an order that the state’s fake elector case against President Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and others over the 2020 presidential election be sent back to a grand jury.

The decision marks another setback for Democratic Atty. Gen. Kris Mayes as she struggles to push the sprawling case through the courts. Mayes’ office said it will again present the case in its entirety to a grand jury rather than end the prosecution.

The ruling came after similar cases in Michigan and Georgia were dismissed by the courts and a special prosecutor dropped a federal case in late 2024 that charged Trump with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. Cases related to the fake elector scheme remain in Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin.

A lower-court judge in Phoenix concluded in May that the case’s first grand jury hadn’t been shown the text of the Electoral Count Act, a 19th century law that governs the certification of presidential contests and was invoked by those charged in defending themselves.

Defense lawyers argued the law allowed for multiple slates of electors to be submitted to Congress in case the results were disputed, though it was amended in 2022 to specify that a state could put forward only one slate of electors and that it was the governor who would sign off.

There has been no movement in the Arizona case at the trial court level since mid-May.

Former President Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020 by 10,457 votes.

Billeaud writes for the Associated Press.

To the surprise of few, President Trump has once again claimed without evidence that Democrats are somehow cheating to win California’s primary elections — writing on social media late Wednesday that federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are investigating the matter.

“The Dumocrats are at it again! They are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES. Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS,” Trump posted to his social media platform Truth Social.

“There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California. Votes are all tied up. May not be in for weeks. Under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles,” he wrote in a second post. “Why the vote counting DELAY???”

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles — run by Trump loyalist First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli — declined to comment Thursday morning on Trump’s claims of an investigation.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber’s office also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office responded directly to Trump late Wednesday with its own social media post, writing, “Trump is lying about California again — time to take the phone away from grandpa and put him to sleep.”

On Thursday morning, Newsom’s office wrote that there “is a lot of misinformation floating around about California’s election — including from the President,” and recommended people watch a CNN video about California’s election process. It concluded that delays in vote counting in the state are essentially a result of state leaders deciding that providing voters with “last minute options” for casting ballots is more important than a quick count.

“And yes, for the record: we wish the votes were counted faster, too,” Newsom’s office wrote — a nod to the fact that the issue isn’t new.

In an email, Brandon Richards, Newsom’s deputy director for rapid response, said Trump’s claims are part of “a tinfoil hat level conspiracy theory that has been debunked repeatedly.”

The president’s claims of cheating were predicted before the election by both elections experts and Democratic leaders in California, who dismissed them in advance as more baseless bluster from a president beset by low approval ratings.

A worker puts ballots in a counting machine at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center on Wednesdayin City of Industry.

(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)

Those same experts and Democratic leaders acknowledge that California’s system for counting votes takes a long time and should be quickened, but stress that is not because of anything nefarious. Rather, it is because California allows voters to cast ballots by mail up until election day — and then has to count those ballots, which can number in the millions and are subject to manual signature verification.

Trump has long dismissed such explanations. An election denier since he first entered politics more than a decade ago, Trump has pushed skepticism about elections he and his party lose time and again since — most notably when he claimed, again without evidence, that the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden was stolen.

Trump even challenged Biden’s victory in court, but his claims were rejected completely because neither he nor his attorneys could produce any evidence substantiating them.

He has combined his tactic of targeting undocumented immigrants for political gain with his skepticism of election integrity by claiming, again without evidence, that such immigrants somehow vote in large numbers, particularly in big blue states such as California, despite experts saying there is no evidence of that.

He has alleged that mail ballots — such as those used by the majority of California voters — are a particularly rich source of voter fraud, despite again having no basis for the claim and it being disputed by experts.

A consistent feature of his election fraud claims is that they arise and target races only when Republicans lose or lose ground.

And, he has tried to use the power of his administration to make sweeping changes to election laws to bar mail ballots and require strict voter ID and proof of citizenship measures, despite the control of elections and their rules being constitutionally given to the states.

Those efforts have prompted a wave of litigation between the Trump administration and California and other blue states, with multiple cases pending in the courts over voter ID, proof of citizenship, mail balloting and the role that the U.S. Postal Service may be allowed to play in processing such ballots.

Trump’s latest remarks came as additional vote counting on Wednesday narrowed the advantage of Republican Steve Hilton over his Democratic challengers in the California governor’s race and closed the gap in the L.A. mayoral race between the MAGA-aligned candidate Spencer Pratt, currently running second, and City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who is running third.

The trend was anticipated. Elections experts warned before vote counting began of the potential for a “red mirage,” wherein earlier voting among Republicans and late voting among Democrats — many of whom were unsure of whom to vote for in the two high-profile races — would create an early illusion of Republican victories despite large volumes of liberal votes from major population centers still to be counted.

It is a trend that has played out repeatedly in past elections, and one that does not come as a surprise to careful elections watchers.

Elections officials in California knew such claims were going to be made, as they’ve been made in the past. Some local elections officials made a point of preparing their staffs for baseless claims of election fraud in advance of this year’s primaries. State officials made repeated efforts to explain the reasons why California elections take time, precisely to undercut claims amid counting that the delays were the result of fraud.

But those claims have come regardless, and not just from Trump.

Above an X post Wednesday suggesting Pratt was losing ground to Raman as more counts came in, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote, “California keeps dumping votes. Odds are shifting because the vote dumps always seem to go one way. Count until you get the result you want?”

Above another X post Wednesday noting that the California count would take time, Katie Miller, a former Trump administration official and conservative podcaster married to Trump’s top advisor Stephen Miller, wrote, “The Democrats are about to steal the LA mayoral race once again using mail-in voting.”

Both of the posts that DeSantis and Miller were responding to were from Polymarket, a prediction market where people can bet on the outcomes of political races, pop culture events and a slew of other subjects.

Such emerging financial markets, which process billions of dollars in bets, are causing rising concerns about political meddling for profit — including by campaign staffers and other individuals with insider knowledge of polling and other campaign information, or by politicians and their operatives, whose public remarks about politics can swing those markets.

WASHINGTON — The Senate is beginning a long series of votes Thursday on legislation to fund President Trump’s immigration enforcement agencies, moving toward passage of a three-year fix as Democrats have blocked the money for months in protest.

The roughly $70 billion bill to fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol would end the blockade by Democrats who demanded policy changes after the fatal shootings of two protesters by federal agents in January. The bill would fund the agencies for three years, through the end of Trump’s term.

First, though, Republicans must beat back a potential gauntlet of amendments that Democrats plan to offer, including to try and permanently ban Trump’s $1.776 billion settlement fund for allies who he believes have been politically persecuted. Democrats have said their first amendment Thursday morning will be to eliminate the fund and send the immigration spending bill back to committee.

Senate Republicans are using a complicated procedural maneuver to get around the filibuster and pass the budget legislation with no Democratic votes. But it has taken weeks to get the bill to the Senate floor as Republicans navigated various obstacles to passage created by Trump and the White House — including a $1 billion proposal for White House security that they eventually scrapped and fierce bipartisan backlash to the settlement fund.

“The thing we’re trying to do here is to keep the focus on funding for ICE and CBP,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday evening, after the Senate voted to start debating the legislation. “This was narrow and targeted from the very beginning and clean, and we’re trying to maintain it that way.”

But it’s unclear if Republicans will have enough votes to fend off the Democratic amendments. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said this week that the fund would not move forward, and many GOP senators said Wednesday that they were satisfied with his remarks.

Yet Trump, who has been at odds with Senate Republicans in recent weeks, raised new doubts about the settlement’s future on Wednesday afternoon when he told reporters that the settlement is “very important” and said “I don’t know” whether it is dead or on hold.

“I’d have to ask the lawyers,” he said.

Democrats, Republicans plan to force votes on settlement

To pass legislation through the budget process called reconciliation, the Senate must first hold a long series of votes. Democrats are using that process to try and ban the settlement by law — and also kill the immigration spending bill.

After Trump’s comments about the fund, Schumer posted on X that “this is EXACTLY why” Democrats would be forcing votes to ban it.

Some Republicans also planned to try and put Blanche’s promise in writing. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has said he will offer an amendment to block any attempt at resurrecting the fund.

“We’ve got a sufficient number of Republicans who have been very clear they’ve got concerns there,” said Tillis.

ICE and Border Patrol money has been long fight

Democrats say any funding bill for the Homeland Security Department should place restraints on federal immigration authorities, including better identification for federal officers and more use of judicial warrants, among other asks.

After federal agents shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Trump agreed to a Democratic request that the Homeland Security bill be separated from a larger spending measure that became law. But bipartisan negotiations went nowhere, and the DHS funding lapsed in mid-February with no agreement on changes to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.

Congress eventually funded the rest of the Homeland Security Department at the end of April with Democratic support. But ICE and Border Patrol remained without regular funding, and Republicans launched a new effort to pass three years of funding for those agencies with no Democratic votes.

Security money for Trump’s ballroom dropped

Work on the legislation was also delayed by Republican opposition to $1 billion in security funding for the White House, including for Trump’s new ballroom, that was added to the original bill.

Democrats and some Republicans questioned using taxpayer money for the massive project, and Republicans did not include it in the final bill when it was released on Wednesday.

Thune said he was working with his GOP conference to try and fight off any amendments and ensure he has enough votes for a simple majority to pass the bill in the 53-47 Senate.

“Keep in mind, we’ve got to keep them all together, make sure we’ve got 50 votes for it,” he said.

Republican House leaders said Wednesday they would like to clear the legislation before the end of the week, if the Senate can finish it. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said that House leaders were having internal conversations about the schedule.

“We just need to make sure everybody’s there,” Scalise said.

Jalonick and Cappelletti write for the Associated Press.

CHICAGO — Former President Obama’s influence in his presidential museum runs deep, from the location on Chicago’s South Side to textured stone adorning its dramatic tower to striped reading chairs that resemble ones in his own home.

The Obama Presidential Center opens to the general public on Juneteenth after a celebratory dedication in Chicago with dignitaries. But tens of thousands of people — friends and family of museum staff, students and journalists — have already been offered a sneak peek of the nearly 20-acre campus as crews finish final art installations and landscaping.

The roughly $850 million project covers the political and personal realms of the nation’s first Black president. Campaign memorabilia and presidential artifacts are displayed in the admission-based museum tower while public spaces of the sprawling campus feature other things important to Obama: a new library, basketball court and picnic area with grills.

“This is a safe space for people to come and, yes, reflect on the historic moments of this presidency and the campaigns, but also to come together as a community to think about what change you can bring to your own neighborhood,” Josh Harris, the Obama Foundation’s vice president of public engagement, said during a recent tour with The Associated Press.

Here’s a closer look at the top attractions of the campus that is expected to draw as many as 1 million visitors annually.

President for a day

Obama’s presidential museum will be the first fully digital museum of its kind. There will be no official papers on display. Instead, visitors will experience high-tech and hands-on exhibits spanning the campaigns, key moments of Obama’s presidency and life at the White House.

One of the largest attractions is a life-sized replica of the Oval Office.

On a recent day, a stream of visitors, including schoolchildren, walked through the circular room, stopping to sit behind the desk and pose for pictures. The top drawer holds a copy of a handwritten letter from his predecessor, President George W. Bush, and Obama’s beloved BlackBerry phone.

“We want to make sure that people from all walks of life have the opportunity sit behind the Resolute Desk,” said Harris. “You think about the possibilities that if a young organizer from the South Side of Chicago can be president, you can be president too.”

Other sections of the museum detail the Affordable Care Act, immigration policies, and smaller moments such as when Obama unexpectedly sang during a 2015 eulogy for those killed in a South Carolina church shooting. A large television screen plays a clip of Obama singing “Amazing Grace.”

Peppered throughout are areas for personal reflection, which museum organizers say is key.

“We’re passing that baton and inviting people to bring change home, however change may be defined, both small or large,” said Louise Bernard, the museum’s director.

Touching iconic ballgowns

When Obama touted the museum’s contents at its groundbreaking in 2021, he predicted one of the top draws.

“We want this center to be more than a static museum or a source of archival research,” Obama joked at the site. “It won’t just be a collection of campaign memorabilia or Michelle’s ballgowns, although I know everybody will come see those.”

Roughly a dozen outfits on mannequins are behind glass, including a black and red dress designed by Narciso Rodriguez that the former first lady wore on Election Night in 2008 in Chicago.

Visitors will also get a chance to touch swatches of the fabrics, including the rose gold chain mail Atelier Versace evening gown she wore at her final state dinner in 2016.

Obama’s personal touches

The museum’s location is near where Barack Obama started his political career, taught law at the University of Chicago and where the family lived. Michelle Obama also grew up on the South Side.

A lifelong basketball lover, Obama requested a glass-paneled, professional grade basketball court to be used for community programs.

The former first lady designed a garden, where lettuce and strawberry plants are sprouting. There are also charcoal grills available for public use — an element that Obama envisioned when he pitched the plan in community meetings nearly a decade ago.

“President Obama always talked about his feelings of being in Chicago and one of his memorable moments was grilling in the park,” Harris said.

The Obamas’ design tastes and love of history are also evident.

The museum campus features dozens of commissioned works of art while different parts of the campus are named after prominent figures. The central “John Lewis Plaza,” named for the late congressman and Civil Rights leader, is designed as a public gathering spot.

Inside a new Chicago Public Library branch, a 70-foot mural depicts literary figures, including Walt Whitman and James Baldwin. At the center, Toni Morrison reads to a boy wearing orange shirt, representing a young Obama.

The presidential reading room features thousands of books chosen by the Obamas, ranging from presidential biographies to best-selling fiction. One of Obama’s favorite parts are two high-backed chairs with blue, yellow and black stripes. They were selected by the former president as top-notch reading chairs similar to ones he has at home.

Pricey admission with free options

Tickets are $30, the highest of any U.S. presidential museum or library. Next on the list is the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California, where tickets are $29.

Obama Foundation leaders say the prices are justified for the state-of-the-art facility.

Tickets at the adjacent Griffin Museum of Science and Industry are $25.95. In downstate Illinois, tickets to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield cost $15.

Along with free days and discounts for Illinois residents, Obama Foundation officials also argue that most of the campus is free, with only four floors of the museum tower requiring tickets.

Anyone can walk the campus, use the playground, library, sledding hill or grilling area. The tower’s top floor, which feature panoramic views of the nation’s third-largest city, is also free.

“The idea behind this institution, this campus, was to make it accessible to as many people as possible,” Harris said.

Tareen writes for the Associated Press.

In recent months, the iconic ticking stopwatch of the CBS News magazine “60 Minutes” began to sound like a time bomb.

The explosive detonated Tuesday as the prestigious program’s most high-profile correspondent, Scott Pelley, was fired after openly challenging the moves and motives of the news division’s leadership and questioning the credentials of new “60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton.

Pelley accused CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss of “murdering” the program and berated Bilton, a former New York Times journalist, for lacking TV news experience. His forced exit along with the departure of several other veterans is raising fears about the future of the most-watched TV news program that has managed to retain its vitality and importance in the face of major changes across the media landscape.

Weiss praised Pelley’s contribution to the network when she discussed his termination at the network’s morning editorial meeting Wednesday, but cited a loss of “trust and mutual respect” as the reason for moving on.

“We cannot do our work without it,” Weiss said. “That foundation was broken on Monday, and despite our attempts to engage with Scott Pelley and to find a way back, unfortunately we weren’t able to do so, and so we had to part ways.”

But industry veterans familiar with “60 Minutes” said the firings represented a notable shift in how the venerable program has been run by its predecessors.

Rome Hartman, a former longtime “60 Minutes” producer, said Wednesday in an interview that the termination of Pelley for forcefully expressing his views at a staff meeting is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the program has operated and thrived over 58 years. Spirited, and occasionally acrimonious, internal debate has always been a part of working at “60 Minutes.”

“Sharp words in defense of important ideas, whether they be in stories, or whether they be about the future of the broadcast, shouldn’t just be tolerated, they should be encouraged and inculcated, and they always have,” Hartman said.

The insularity of the “60 Minutes” operation — which has its own suite of offices across the street from the main headquarters of CBS News — has rankled the network’s executives in the past. But those dynamics were considered part of the price of having the most prestigious news program on television.

“Every single CBS News president in the history of CBS News has resented the independence of ’60 Minutes,’” Hartman said.”But the smart ones have come to understand that that independence is part of the secret sauce. I don’t know Bari Weiss, but she seems incredibly thin-skinned.”

The turmoil inside “60 Minutes” comes at an inopportune time for CBS. Weiss is now under the gun to replenish the program’s staff with three months to go before original episodes return to the prime-time schedule.

Pelley is the fourth correspondent to depart “60 Minutes” since Weiss took over as editor in chief. Last week, Weiss fired correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi — who accused Weiss of playing politics by holding a story on the government’s use of El Salvador prisons for undocumented migrants — and Cecilia Vega, who was also outspoken in her criticism of the changes at “60 Minutes,” saying she faced censorship. Anderson Cooper, the CNN anchor who spent nearly 20 years as a contributor to the program, chose not to sign a new contract.

Weiss also fired executive producer Tanya Simon, who has been with the program for 25 years, and her second in command. (Pelley said he was unable to get answers on the firings during his final meeting Tuesday with Weiss and CBS News President Tom Cibrowski.)

Bari Weiss hosts Senator Ted Cruz on her “Honesty” podcast on January 18, 2025, in Washington, D.C.

(Leigh Vogel / Getty Images for Uber, X and The Free Press)

And there could be more departures on the way, adding to the upheaval. Bill Whitaker, who joined the program in 2014 and was a Pelley ally, is said to be weighing whether to walk away from the two years left on his current contract. The program’s respected veteran , Lesley Stahl, is pondering her future as well amid the massive changes, according to people familiar with her thinking who were not authorized to speak publicly.

The call is out for new talent, according to one agent who said CBS News is talking to “dozens of people” for the openings.

But the company will also look within its ranks. Matt Guttman, hired away from ABC News by Weiss to become senior national correspondent, is one name being mentioned, along with Major Garrett, the network’s chief Washington correspondent. Both have emerged as favorites of Weiss.

Norah O’Donnell, already a contributor to the program, is also likely to have a larger presence.

While the “60 Minutes” patina has been tarnished by the recent events, there is no shortage of journalists who would be willing to step up and join the program. But whoever does sign on will be intensely scrutinized while the Nielsen numbers are closely watched.

Newcomers on the program are rare and would have an easier time gaining audience acceptance if they were joining a stable operation.

Although every long-running TV program can use an occasional refresh, a massive overhaul is destabilizing for “60 Minutes,” one of the last non-sports appointment programs for the traditional television audience that still provides broadcast networks with the bulk of their advertising revenue.

Notably, the program averaged 9.1 million viewers during the 2025-26 TV season according to Nielsen, up 9% over the previous year.

“Viewers liked the ’60 Minutes’ that they had,” said a former CBS News executive who worked on the program who was not authorized to speak publicly. “And if they don’t like it, they have many other places to go.”

One of Weiss’ mantras — echoed by Bilton — has been the need to pull “60 Minutes” into the digital future as traditional TV viewing declines. Insiders say she has yet to make clear how that will be achieved.

Under Weiss’ watch, clips and full segments of the program gained significant traction on platforms such as YouTube. The success on digital is an encouraging sign for the program’s ability to attract younger viewers who don’t watch traditional talent.

But veteran TV executives say that loyal “60 Minutes” viewers still expect to see seasoned correspondents delivering in-depth investigations and analysis. A diversion from that formula poses substantial risks.

“Its audience has certain expectations,” said Jim Murphy, a former executive producer for CNN and CBS News. “These guys built a literally nearly perfect program for the medium and for the audience. You’re not going to make it better just because somebody cooler does a story that’s, like, a little funkier. It just not going to work.”

Steve Capus, a veteran network producer who worked with Pelley at the “CBS Evening News,” said his former colleague was built for the meticulous work that goes into every “60 Minutes” segment.

“It’s hard to do week in and week out,” Capus said. “You have to be first-rate in your storytelling.”

What’s more, Weiss and Bilton will also have to fight the perception that their moves on the program have been guided by the desire of David Ellison, chief executive of CBS News parent Paramount, to please the Trump administration as he seeks regulatory approval of his deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.

Trump sued “60 Minutes” over the editing of an interview with his 2024 presidential opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris. The suit was settled just ahead of the Federal Communications Commission clearing the way for the takeover of Paramount by David Ellison’s Skydance Media.

Ellison acquired Weiss’ digital startup, the Free Press, which established itself as a voice critical of so-called woke politics.

Pelley said in a statement Tuesday that there has been pressure to shape CBS News coverage to please the Trump White House, a claim that both Vega and Alfonsi have made.

“I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified,” he said. “To date, in every case, I have ignored these instructions or refuse them.”

In a statement, a representative of “60 Minutes” said that the exchanges with Pelley regarding editorial content were not out of the ordinary.

“There is no political interference at CBS News, not from ownership, not from Bari Weiss,” the representative said. “The only ‘interference’ is the normal back and forth between editor and correspondent that happens in every newsroom.”

A huge, waning moon glimmered over Los Angeles on election night, a metaphor for a trend that emerged in early returns.

The city’s political establishment seemed to be on the retreat in favor of populist insurgents from both the left and the right.

Mayor Karen Bass held a cushy lead in her bid for a second term, and the Associated Press declared that she had made it into the November runoff election. But the underwhelming amount of support she got thus far showed that many voters in a super-blue city didn’t have enough confidence in a Democratic stalwart to return her to office. Instead, many chose self-proclaimed upstarts from opposite ends of the political spectrum: Republican reality TV star Spencer Pratt and democratic socialist City Councilmember Nithya Raman.

Raman launched her campaign at the last moment, just weeks after endorsing her longtime ally Bass, figuring that enough Angelenos were tired of the incumbent and would join her message of change from inside City Hall.

Raman’s instincts were half right. Voters did want change. But they didn’t view her as a challenge to the status quo — to many, she is the status quo.

The mayoral hopeful didn’t articulate a platform that radically departed from Bass’, and voter antipathy to her muddled messaging showed: she ended the night in third place. If the current results hold, Bass would face Pratt in the runoff.

At Raman’s election-night party at Boomtown Brewery on the outskirts of Little Tokyo, I saw why her chances of becoming L.A.’s next mayor were slim from the start. The gathering felt like happy hour at a Silver Lake bar: far whiter than the city overall, with few Latinos. Her address to a packed house was a grab bag of platitudes mixed with a broadside against MAGA, which is a political nothing in L.A. politics. It was an uninspiring cri de coeur and reflective of a campaign that wasn’t apocalyptic enough for those, such as Pratt’s people, who want radical change, while offering nothing new for Bass supporters.

Yet Raman still insisted she had unlocked something transformative.

“Together, we built something extraordinary,” she said to cheers. “And it gives me so much inspiration to be a part of it, a movement powered not by cynicism or political insiders, but by ordinary people who still believe Los Angeles is worth fighting for.”

Raman then went on the dance floor to greet well-wishers, pumping her fist while a DJ blasted Daft Punk’s “Lose Yourself to Dance.”

A billboard for L.A. mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt near MacArthur Park on June 2, 2026.

(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)

Across town in West Los Angeles, Pratt reveled in his second-place position, enjoying a Mexican dinner with friends and family. It was a peaceful conclusion to a spring of fulminations against Bass (“Karen Basura”), nonprofits, homeless people (“zombies”) and anything that reeked of Democratic pieties, even as the Republican swore he was campaigning for all ideologies in a nonpartisan race.

Long dismissed as a has-been joke, Pratt correctly judged that Angelenos are angry and don’t want to be polite about it anymore. He and his supporters will take his unlikely rise as a mandate to double down against liberal L.A.

But if Pratt, who lost his house in the Palisades fire, does move on to the general election and is serious about winning, he needs to learn from the political revolution successfully pursued by his polar opposites, the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Six years ago this spring, L.A.’s political establishment wrote off DSA-LA as wokoso upstarts in their long-shot quest to get a political novice named Nithya Raman elected to the city council. Even as Raman and three other DSA members joined the council, skeptics dismissed them and their progressive policies as anomalies that didn’t reflect how Angelenos actually wanted the city to work.

Tuesday night, four of the six DSA-endorsed candidates in L.A. city elections were in first place by large margins and another was comfortably in second, reflecting DSA’s multicultural, citywide reach. In a telling sign of its newfound king-making status, the local chapter declined to endorse Raman or any other mayoral candidate. Without that powerful backing, their trailblazer, along with DSA member Rae Huang, withered on their L.A. revolutionary vine.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez and L.A. Unified school board member Rocío Rivas looked to be coasting to outright victories. Marissa Roy was on her way to a runoff that would exclude the incumbent city attorney, Hydee Feldstein Soto, who was a distant third in the early returns. In District 9, where Curren Price is terming out, Estuardo Mazariegos stood comfortably in second place and looked to headed to a runoff against a fellow Latino candidate in a race that will see South Los Angeles elect its first non-Black council member in 63 years.

The most surprising outcome involved Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who became a punching bag, along with Bass, for people who thought L.A. had transformed into a hellhole. So-called dark money groups, which don’t have to reveal where their funding comes from, poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into negative mailers. Opponents vying for her seat cast federal raids against drug dealers and gangs in the MacArthur Park area as an indictment of her leadership, berating her during debates and on social media.

Even Hernandez’s supporters were fretting about what might happen on election night. But by the time I arrived at her raucous soirée in Highland Park, early returns showed her way ahead of the field and perhaps avoiding a runoff.

“It’s reassuring to see [DSA’s success],” she said as jubilant supporters lined up beside her to get tattoos — real ink, not temporary — of hummingbirds, her campaign’s logo. “That means people see us. That means people want more.”

Hernandez pointed to her fellow DSA member, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

“What happened with DSA over there didn’t happen overnight,” she said. “In L.A., we’re getting there.”

A table filled with campaign buttons for Council Memer Hugo Soto-Martinez, who ran for reelection this year and is expected to win outright.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

L.A. hasn’t suddenly become a land of Trumpers and closet commies, of course. Two incumbent council members who are centrist Democrats are also on their way to easy victories, while Councilmember Monica Rodriguez walked into a third term because no one ran against her. Centrists Timothy Gaspar and Barri Worth Girvan have a huge lead over their rivals for the San Fernando Valley council seat that Bob Blumenfield is leaving due to term limits.

But anyone who wants to win in Los Angeles needs to realize that antiestablishment sentiment is in the air.

At the same time, I would remind the victorious populists to look up in the sky and remember their Shakespeare.

“O, swear not by the moon, th’ inconstant moon / That monthly changes in her circle orb / Lest that thy love prove likewise variable,” Juliet warned Romeo.

Politics, like la luna, waxes and wanes whether we like it or not, and anyone who bets on a permanent transformation at City Hall will probably lose.

Angelenos have declared that they want dramatic change. But how will they feel in November?

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass made what sounded like a victory speech Tuesday night.

Councilmember Nithya Raman made what sounded almost like a concession speech.

And former reality TV star Spencer Pratt relayed a message from the heavens.

“Well, obviously God wanted five more months of me exposing all the failures of our mayor, so it’s gonna be a fun ride,” Pratt said. “I hope she’s ready.”

Assuming Pratt holds on to one of the two spots in the Nov. 3 general election as the final votes are tallied in the next few days, the smart money will be on Bass, for reasons I’ll get into in a moment.

But the supreme being and patron of all pontiffs has to be considered a wild card. This is the first time, to my knowledge, that an incumbent mayor in the City of Angels would be running against a challenger whose campaign manager is God Almighty.

So here we go. We could be in for one of the more remarkable electoral adventures in city history, with a complete novice and MAGA conservative going up against a liberal career politician in a deep-blue city and state full of people who are tired of hearing excuses from Democrats. (If Raman ends up ousting Pratt, my apologies for jumping to conclusions. But it’s not my fault. The devil made me do it.)

If you intend to follow closely, as of course you should, maybe you can help me count the number of times Pratt plays the faith card. I went to St. Peter Martyr School and attended the church by the same name, and I don’t recall ever hearing a nun or a priest drop God’s name as often as Pratt does.

In fact, I just watched a clip of Pratt talking to Fox News TV host and Donald Trump disciple Kayleigh McEnany, and over the course of 1 minute and 52 seconds, he mentioned God or Jesus 10 times.

“Thankfully, I married an angel who was very connected with Jesus and has brought me to the light,” Pratt said of his wife and former reality TV co-star Heidi Montag. “It’s been very empowering to just pray and just be on his path and just say, ‘God, if you want me to save these animals, save these humans and protect my city, just keep putting me in the place where I can do that.’”

Is he running for mayor or cardinal?

Look, I totally respect your average true believer. But I’m not entirely comfortable with a mayor who might be sitting around City Hall waiting for signs and smoke signals rather than knowing what to do on his own.

God has a lot on his plate. He might be busy multiplying fishes and loaves so people don’t go hungry thanks to the president’s tariffs and warmongering. Is he going to rush to answer a prayer for guidance about underfunded parks or broken sidewalks in Los Angeles?

How did we get here, you ask?

Well, Pratt is an AI creation, in a way. A composite of sorts. You combine the forces of social media, political rebellion, second-rate celebrity obsession and the Peter Principle, and here’s a little Trump puppet walking around L.A. like he’s the chosen one.

Add to that the very real essence of his appeal to some voters:

Los Angeles has problems. Big problems that don’t get fixed quickly enough or at all, and Pratt represents the angry voter who wants to know why City Hall can’t do better and where all the money went. He’s absolutely right when he says we shouldn’t have people living on the streets, using drugs on the streets and dying on the streets.

But if Pratt is in the general election rather than Raman, we’re in for a national media circus rather than a summit on solutions. Raman is well-versed on matters of relevance and could have pushed back against Bass in substantive, detailed ways. On the other hand, as Pratt has fairly argued, Raman headed City Council’s homelessness committee, so isn’t she partly to blame for the failures she tried to pin on Bass?

As for Pratt’s policy chops, he has not responded to my offers of a get-together. Absent that, and given his careful avoidance of local reporters who know their stuff, I read his platform on his campaign website and I can tell you that while he touches on many of the right issues — public safety, fiscal integrity, homelessness — attention to detail and depth of knowledge are not God-given strengths.

Maybe Pratt can actually deliver on his promise of a “treatment-led recovery model that addresses mental illness and addiction as the primary drivers of chronic homelessness.” But that would require an act of God (which I suppose is possible given their relationship), because those matters are primarily under the direction of the county, not the city.

This is the main problem here. Bass was beatable, and could have been pushed by a serious challenger to do better.

In the last election, Rick Caruso gave her a scare. That was partly because he had some depth on the issues, he was a successful businessman and philanthropist, he had served on the police commission and the water and power board, he had built relationships across the city and, along with his family, he had poured time and millions of dollars into underserved communities.

In this election, it looks as though Bass could get lucky and face off against a guy who lost his house in the Palisades fire, saw a few homeless encampments through his car window, and decided he wanted to be mayor. Some might have questioned his hubris, but only before learning that he was on a mission from God.

If you’re keeping count, that’s nine mentions of God so far in this column.

One more for the tie, with an eye toward five more months of campaign fodder.

Thank you, God.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

WASHINGTON — As Californians cast their ballots in the state’s closely watched gubernatorial primary Tuesday, a very different race was playing out in Iowa — one that holds clues about the mood of Republican voters heading into November.

President Trump’s endorsed candidate in Iowa’s high-stakes governor’s race, Republican U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra, lost his bid for the party’s nomination, a rare defeat for a Trump-backed candidate.

The outcome exposed fractures among Republican voters, though their choice of Zach Lahn, who ran on an “Iowa First” and Make America Healthy Again platform, didn’t amount to a rebuke of Trump’s politics, said Jimmy Centers, a Republican strategist in Iowa.

The primary race was “emblematic of the seismic plates that make up the Republican Party in Iowa,” Centers said — the successful MAGA-style message, from Lahn; a more traditional conservative platform, from Feenstra; and a conservative Christian approach, from candidate Adam Steen.

“It’s a bit of a look-ahead in terms of how the Republican Party is going to be shaped in what will be a post-Trump era,” Centers said. “Those plates are moving, and last night in Iowa, we had an earthquake.”

Results from Iowa, California and other late-stage primaries portend contentious fall campaigns, with control of the House and Senate hanging in the balance.

“You’re seeing Republican primary voters rebel against politicians, whether it’s Dusty Johnson in South Dakota or Chip Roy in Texas,” said Matt Gorman, a longtime Republican strategist and chief communications officer at Targeted Victory. “There’s clearly a backlash against sitting politicians, and Republican primary voters are looking for outsiders.”

That pro-outsider outlook has been promoted by Trump himself in some races, as he has used his endorsement to boost primary challengers to victory over Republican incumbents — notably in Texas, Louisiana and Kentucky. In Tuesday’s primaries, however — held in six states — none of the races involved Republican veterans whom Trump wanted to see ousted.

Outside of such races, Trump — who last week said, “I don’t care about the midterms” — has taken a more laissez-faire approach. In Iowa, he did not endorse Feenstra until Friday, a last-minute boost that didn’t help the congressman over the finish line.

Lahn, in a victory speech Tuesday night, acknowledged the upset he had pulled off.

“Nobody thought this could be done,” Lahn said. “We were outspent, opposed by the establishment, told to wait our turn.”

Lahn will face Iowa state auditor Rob Sand, who ran uncontested for the Democratic nomination. The seat is being vacated by Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican who is not seeking reelection.

Iowa Republicans will now ramp up efforts to retain both the governor’s office and the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Joni Ernst, as Democrats target both offices for flipping.

The race to replace Ernst is now on between Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson, who has been in Congress since 2021 and has Trump’s support, and Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek, a former Paralympian who was backed by a leadership PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Economic issues, particularly in the agricultural sector, where farmers have been squeezed by Trump’s tariffs and war in Iran, could dominate the races. Centers said both parties are acutely aware of the economic factors — and aware that Democrats’ chances in Iowa could be slightly better than “a hope and a prayer,” though the state’s voter-registration edge remains solidly red.

“I don’t think many Republicans in Iowa are bashful about acknowledging the environment we’ll face in November,” Centers said. “It’s going to be a hard-fought race.”

Other Tuesday takeaways

Elsewhere on Tuesday, voters chose candidates in races for U.S. Senate, House and governor’s seats, setting up some lively November match-ups.

In New Jersey, the state’s 7th Congressional District will be a closely watched contest — largely because of the recent absence of Republican Rep. Tom Kean, who has not been publicly seen for months as he deals with an undisclosed medical issue.

His absence has provided an opening to Democrats, who have ramped up attention on the seat as they attempt to flip as many House seats as possible. Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot, won the Democratic nomination Tuesday.

Kean, who has support from Trump, ran unopposed. In a statement Tuesday evening, he laid out plans to reveal his medical condition when he returns to in-person work, which he said would be “within a matter of weeks.”

The race could become key to Democrats’ attempt to win control of the House in November.

“We’re ready for this fight. Bring it on,” Bennett wrote Wednesday on X.

In Montana, the race for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat, being vacated by Republican Sen. Steve Daines, was also set to get interesting.

Trump-backed Republican Kurt Alme, a former U.S. attorney, and Democrat Alani Bankhead, an Air Force veteran, won primaries Tuesday — but former University of Montana president Seth Bodnar has launched an independent bid for the seat. Bodnar said Tuesday that he had delivered enough petition signatures to the secretary of state to get on the November ballot.

And in New Mexico, former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland secured the Democratic nomination for governor, advancing in her bid to make history as the first Native American governor in the United States. She will face Republican Gregg Hull, a former local mayor, in November.

What’s next

Next week brings Maine’s Senate primaries, following a Democratic race that has taken several twists and turns. Democrats have held hopes of unseating Sen. Susan Collins, the veteran Republican lawmaker, as part of their long-shot attempt to flip the Senate along with the House.

But leading Democratic candidate Graham Platner has been dogged by controversies. The primary vote will be held just more than a week after a New York Times report that he had sent sexual messages to several women outside his marriage. This week, Gov. Janet Mills, who had opposed Platner but suspended her campaign at the end of April, said, “I am still on the ballot.”

Also to watch: Next week’s outcomes in South Carolina’s crowded gubernatorial field; the June 16 Georgia Senate runoff to determine which Republican will face Democratic Sen. Jon Osoff; and the June 16 Democratic primary for Senate in Oklahoma.

Times staff writer Michael Wilner,in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: The U.S. is investigating two more Mexican governors for connections to cartels
The deep dive:Can we speed up California’s vote count already?
The L.A. Times Special:More middle-class Californians cancel health coverage after losing federal aid

More to come,
Justine McDaniel and Michael Wilner
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As election officials continued tallying ballots Wednesday, Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra continued to lead in the unsettled race to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, with billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer hoping for a surge in late-arriving votes to push him into one of the top-two spots to advance to the November general election.

Hilton, a British immigrant and former Fox News commentator, told reporters outside the state Capitol in Sacramento Wednesday morning that he was “very encouraged” by the latest results, though he stopped short of declaring victory.

“It does look as if change is coming to California, and that is good news for everyone, every small business, every working family, everyone who wants to see our state set back on track,” he said.

Becerra and Steyer did not hold public events as of Wednesday afternoon.

Election data analyst Paul Mitchell said it would be nearly mathematically impossible for Steyer to close the gap.

“As we start to get more data, the runway is going to get shorter and shorter,” he said.

He said Steyer, to finish in the top two in the primary, would have to get about 30% of the remaining uncounted votes while Becerra would need to be limited to 15%. The self-funded billionaire has “a very high hill to overcome, and the challenge gets steeper and steeper as we get more data from the counties,” Mitchell said.

Once mired near the bottom of a crowded pack of Democrats in opinion polls, Becerra, a former Biden administration cabinet member, rocketed ahead of his rival candidates after former Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out of the race in April amid allegations of sexual assault and misconduct. The scandal triggered an upswing of voter interest in California’s once sluggish governor’s race and in Becerra, who seized the moment.

“Here in Hollywood’s hometown, we love a good underdog story,” Becerra told cheering supporters at his election night party at La Plaza de Cultura y Artes in downtown Los Angeles.

Becerra spoke about his Mexican immigrant parents and becoming the first in his family to attend college. Though a longtime California politician, Becerra said that his campaign for governor was outspent and that he faced calls to drop out of the race.

“The underdog stayed in the fight,” he said. “Like my parents, I never gave up. … Never stopped believing in the beacon-light goodness of California and thankfully, neither did you.”

Steyer, who spent more than $216 million of his wealth on the race, has not conceded defeat.

His campaign manager, Heather Hargreaves, wrote in a letter to supporters Wednesday that “we’re going to give democracy time to work. County election officials are still counting ballots and don’t expect to know how many people voted in total until” Thursday, when officials are required to report the estimated number ballots left to process.

The billionaire former hedge fund owner campaigned against the corporate and special interests that have a powerful presence in Sacramento and often spend heavily in elections, including this year against Steyer.

Billionaires “do everything they can to hoard their wealth and avoid paying taxes, and we see corporations continue to rig the system for themselves — raising your prices to juice their profits. Screw that,” Steyer said at his election watch party at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco.

Other candidates in the race included Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and Democrats including former Rep. Katie Porter, San José Mayor Matt Mahan, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.

Villaraigosa, Mahan and Porter conceded the race Tuesday night.

California’s 2026 race for governor started slow but ended with a flourish, including the demise of a scandal-ridden Democratic favorite, the anointing of a Republican by Trump and Becerra’s unexpected rise from the depths of the candidate field.

Unlike gubernatorial elections in the last quarter of a century, this year’s race lacked a clear crowd-pleasing front-runner able to win over voters, such as movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jerry Brown, a sage of the California electorate and scion of a storied political family. But it unfolded at a time when the state’s residents are overwhelmed by high housing costs, steep gas prices and overall unaffordability that threatens the “California dream” that once drew millions of people to the state.

“Normal people are not living and breathing politics on a daily basis,” said Tim Rosales, a strategist who ran Republican John Cox’s unsuccessful 2018 gubernatorial campaign. In today’s information-saturated environment, Rosales said, the race and its roster of “extremely milquetoast candidates” didn’t break through until the Swalwell scandal grabbed voters’ attention.

The 2026 gubernatorial primary has been one of the most unpredictable and expensive in decades and a race that was shaped early on by a number of heavyweight Democrats staying on the sidelines.

Though supporters urged them to run, former Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Alex Padilla and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta passed on the race. It was in a state of limbo for months last year as Harris, one of the state’s most high-profile politicians, weighed whether to jump in.

“I don’t ever recall a playing field that looks like this one. Usually there’s a clear front-runner,” said veteran Democratic strategist Darry Sragow. “It’s easy to say that it reflects a lack of talent [but] that’s absolutely not true. Almost any of the candidates running could make a good governor.”

Still, candidates struggled for months to break through to voters.

In February, polls showed the crowded field of Democrats splitting liberal voters and opening a statistical possibility that the party would be boxed out of November under California’s open, top-two primary, which places all candidates on the same ballot. Only the first- and second-place finishers in the primary advance to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation.

Just when Swalwell appeared on the cusp of becoming the Democratic front-runner the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN published allegations that he sexually assaulted a former staffer and acted inappropriately with other women. Swalwell suspended his campaign.

It was Becerra who benefited the most. In less than two months, he vaulted from polling in the low single digits to the top of the field of candidates, according to surveys conducted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that were co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.

“Becerra caught lightning in a bottle,” Rosales said. “It could have easily gone to any of the other candidates,” but many had baggage. Videos of Porter losing her temper hurt her image, the source of Steyer’s wealth and his unbridled campaign spending weighed on voters’ minds, and Villaraigosa and Mahan were “more centrist than what most Democrats wanted, and so Xavier Becerra was really the safe choice,” Rosales said.

Before Democratic voters began to narrow down their choices, Trump endorsed Hilton in early April. It helped the former Fox News host break away from Bianco, his main GOP rival.

In the days before the primary election, the race solidified into a three-way contest involving Becerra, Steyer and Hilton.

Steyer stepped up his fight in the remaining days, seeking to squeeze into one of the top two spots by battering Becerra in ads and at campaign rallies as a politician propped up by corporate special interests.

“We cannot afford to have a governor who’s been bought off by Big Oil. Period,” he said at a Sunday rally in Los Angeles.

Corporations, along with labor unions and interest groups including the California Assn. of Realtors, had spent more than $18.7 million to boost Becerra, according to the election spending tracker California Target Book. Many of the same groups also gave money to a committee intended to attack Steyer.

As the election neared, Becerra sharpened his attacks against Steyer, calling the billionaire a “liar” and accusing him of trying to buy the election.

“We are not going to let a billionaire or Trump’s handpicked candidate take over this state,” he said during a Sunday rally in Long Beach.

If Becerra faces off with Hilton in November he’ll have a distinct advantage. Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1 in left-leaning California.

Winning the general election would make the 68-year-old Becerra the first elected Latino governor of California. At roughly 40% of the state’s population, Latinos are California’s largest ethnic group but have not been represented in the governor’s mansion since 1875, when then-Lt. Gov. Romualdo Pacheco was elevated to fill a 10-month vacancy.

Times staff writers Iris Kwok, Susanne Rust, Andrew Khouri and Christopher Goffard contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The House approved a war powers resolution Wednesday that would halt the U.S. military action against Iran, defying President Trump as a handful of Republicans joined with Democrats to end the three-month-long war that has reordered politics at home and abroad.

House Speaker Mike Johnson had tried to prevent an outcome that would show the mounting opposition to the war, abruptly shutting down floor action two weeks ago when the war powers resolution was on the verge of approval. But displeasure has only grown as the conflict drags on and as Trump struggles to negotiate a quick resolution.

The roll call Wednesday was 215-208, and cheers erupted in the House chamber.

“This reckless and costly war of choice needs to end today,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said earlier in the week.

“All we need are a handful of Republicans to join us and we can end this reckless and costly war of choice — a war that has cost the American taxpayer over $100 billion — that’s extraordinary — and left our country in a weaker position relative to Iran.”

Opposition to war grows

It’s the fourth time the House has tried to curb the U.S. war against Iran, and the first time the House was able to pass the measure. The Senate advanced its own war powers resolution last month when a handful of GOP senators broke ranks with the Republican president in a rare show of political pushback from his party.

Each time Democrats have pushed forward the war powers resolution, the vote tallies have inched higher as political unease with the U.S. war swells. Trump had campaigned for the White House on a promise to end U.S. entanglements abroad and focus more on domestic issues, but the war has shifted attention back to the Middle East.

Johnson insisted Trump is “laser focused” on the domestic front, particularly ahead of the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.

The speaker said he spent three hours at the White House with the president this week as Trump is calling on allies to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz for commerce, especially the flow of oil.

Since the U.S. joined Israel in launching the Feb. 28 strikes on Iran, Americans have seen gas prices spike at the pumps, adding to inflationary pressure on consumer spending.

Iran has been able to interrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital channel for a large segment of the world’s oil, natural gas and related products such as fertilizer.

“We’re working on that final piece,” said Johnson, R-La. “The entire world has an interest in the Strait of Hormuz being reopen for commerce. That what he’s working on.”

While a ceasefire in the conflict was declared in April, it remains uneasy and uncertain. Talks for a more durable end to the fighting have dragged, increasingly complicated by Israel’s broadening war with Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. Meanwhile, military strikes between the U.S and Iran continue to flare.

Congress exerts its war powers authority

The war powers resolution from the House would not immediately stop the war, but it would provide a symbolic if not legal step against further military action.

If approved, it would then go to the Senate, where four Republican senators last month joined Democrats in advancing a similar measure to curtail the U.S. campaign against Iran. The Senate has yet to take a final vote to approve or reject its own war powers resolution.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Wednesday testifying at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that the Iranians would think that the administration’s “hands are going to be tied” if Congress approved a war powers resolution. He said they would think ”we won’t be able to do anything to them, so why make a deal?”

It’s not the only action Congress is taking in the national security arena as Democrats, in the minority, work to peel off Republican support for measures beyond the war against Iran.

The House is also voting Wednesday on another Democratic-led effort that would authorize U.S. support for Ukraine’s military operations as it battles Russia and to help reconstruct the war-torn country. The House this week is also expected to consider a war powers resolution to block U.S. action in Lebanon.

While Congress has the authority under the Constitution to declare war, the president also has power as the commander in chief to engage in military action, creating a legal dispute over which branch of government has ultimate say in matters of war and peace.

Under the war powers act, the White House has a 60-day window to seek approval from Congress for military action. The administration, however, has indicated that because a ceasefire has been declared in the current conflict in Iran, the hostilities have ceased.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

BEIRUT — President Trump acknowledged criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “crazy” in a phone call that involved expletives, saying he was “a little bit perturbed” that Israel’s fighting with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon was holding back peace talks with Iran.

But even as the president conceded the tensions in an interview released Wednesday, he insisted that his relationship with Netanyahu was solid and that they connected, in part, because they are both “wartime” leaders.

“We’ve worked very well together. I like Bibi a lot. And I work very well with him,” Trump told the New York Post’s “Pod Force One.”

In an interview on the American business-news channel CNBC, Netanyahu responded that he and Trump sometimes have “tactical disagreements” but have “common goals” and “agree on the main things.”

“He respects me. I respect him. We always find a way to work out our differences,” the prime minister said.

The president’s comments about the Monday call offered a sign of the growing pressure he faces to resolve the Iran war as higher energy prices and economic uncertainty threaten Republican prospects in the midterm elections and hamper global commerce.

Talks have dragged on for weeks as mediators seek to extend a fragile ceasefire into a more enduring truce. The negotiations are further strained by Israel’s broadening war with the Iranian-backed militia group in Lebanon. The conflicts have become increasingly intertwined as Iran insists that any potential truce in the war there must also quell the fighting in Lebanon.

Trump does not commit to timeline for ending Iran war

Trump remained noncommittal about a timeline for settling the Iran conflict, saying the Strait of Hormuz might stay blocked through the Labor Day holiday on Sept. 7. He has insisted that Iran stop any efforts that could lead to a nuclear weapon and that the strait be reopened for shipments of oil and natural gas.

“I don’t know. I mean, I think it could be [closed through Labor Day], but I think it’s unlikely. I think that we’ll have it. I think this will resolve itself fairly quickly,” Trump said.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his late father, is “involved” in peace talks, Trump added.

“They have a lot of respect for him,” the president said in the interview.

Trump said that Khamenei is not doing well due to wounds sustained in an airstrike, but “they say he’s giving approval because that’s the way it has been for a long, long time.” Khamenei’s father was killed in an airstrike when the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran at the end of February.

Meanwhile in the Persian Gulf region, Kuwait briefly shut its main airport Wednesday after Iranian drones hit a passenger terminal building, killing one person and wounding dozens. It was the latest in the back-and-forth attacks by Tehran and Washington that have tested the ceasefire.

The strike again brought home the risks to residents and travelers in Gulf countries that had considered themselves relative safe havens before the war, now in its fourth month.

Path to a lasting ceasefire in Lebanon is obscured by new strikes

The path toward a lasting ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah remained unclear as hostilities continued in Lebanon.

An Israeli strike Wednesday hit a car on a busy highway just south of Beirut, hours before the second day of talks between Lebanon and Israel in Washington were set to take place.

The strike in Khaldeh came without warning, and it was not immediately clear if the person targeted was killed.

Israel and Lebanon on Monday reached a U.S.-brokered agreement in which Israel would not strike Beirut’s southern suburbs and Hezbollah would end its attacks on northern Israel.

The agreement was made hours after Israel announced that it was going to launch strikes across the sprawling urban neighborhoods near the Lebanese capital in what would have been the most intense strikes since a nominal ceasefire went into effect on April 17.

The State Department said progress was made during the first day of talks on Tuesday. Lebanon hopes to widen the scope of the ceasefire so it becomes comprehensive across the country. Israel wants to disarm Hezbollah immediately before the Israeli military ends its operations in Lebanon and withdraws its troops from dozens of villages and towns.

Not long after the strike on Khaldeh, the Israeli military said it intercepted what it called a hostile aircraft coming from southern Lebanon, but it did not immediately blame Hezbollah. Hezbollah has not claimed a cross-border attack since the agreement.

Israeli military warning rattles coastal city

Israeli strikes over southern Lebanon continued, especially in and around the battered cities of Tyre and Nabatiyeh. Two overnight strikes near Tyre, a coastal city, killed four Syrians and two Palestinians.

Israel warned the Christian neighborhoods in Tyre that Hezbollah members were among them. Many Lebanese Shiite Muslims fled to those areas in recent days because they were spared from the aerial bombardment along the Mediterranean coast.

After the warning, the Lebanese army deployed to the Christian district of Tyre in an effort to prevent Israeli attacks there and to show that Hezbollah has no armed presence in the area.

Israel launched an invasion of southern Lebanon days after the latest war was sparked on March 2, when Iran-backed Hezbollah fired rockets toward northern Israel in solidarity with Iran. Israeli troops have pushed deeper into Lebanon over the past week, as Hezbollah continues to claim rocket and drone attacks.

The latest round of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has killed 3,468 people in Lebanon and displaced 1.2 million people. According to Netanyahu’s office, at least 27 Israeli soldiers and a defense contractor have been killed in or near southern Lebanon. Two civilians have also been killed in northern Israel.

Strike on village kills most of a family

Many residents of southern Lebanon remained in villages near the hostilities or returned to areas where strikes occurred after evacuation warnings.

The Al-Abdallah family returned to their home in Marwanieyh, which they left because they thought the village was unsafe following earlier strikes. A day later, two rockets hit the home, bringing down the three-story building and killing six family members, said the brother of Hassan Al-Abdallah, who was killed.

Ahmed Al-Abdallah, 13, was thrown away from the building by the force of the blasts and was the only member of his family to survive. His uncle, Eissa Al-Abdallah, said the boy has two broken legs and shrapnel wounds all over his body.

“What good is talking now? They are gone, and nothing will bring them back,” the uncle told the Associated Press in a phone call Tuesday. “This land costs blood.”

Chehayeb, Boak and El Deeb write for the Associated Press. Boak reported from Washington.

NEW YORK — A prediction market reported former U.S. Rep. George Santos to federal prosecutors after he boasted he’d be going to President Trump’s State of the Union address, then bet against his own attendance, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

Kalshi, the online prediction marketplace, referred Santos to the Department of Justice after detecting suspicious trades made by him ahead of Trump’s Feb. 24 speech, the person said. The person spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Kalshi also reported the trades to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal regulatory body that has vowed to crack down on insider trading in prediction marketplaces.

The Justice Department and the CFTC didn’t immediately respond Tuesday to inquiries from the AP.

Santos also did not respond to text messages or phone calls.

The referral was first reported by NPR. Santos told NPR that he wasn’t aware of the investigation. He declined to say whether he had a Kalshi account.

“I’m not saying yes, I’m not saying no,” Santos told NPR.

The convicted ex-congressman had repeatedly discussed his intention to attend the State of the Union, which came just four months after he was granted clemency by Trump in a fraud case that led to his expulsion from the U.S. House.

On the eve of Trump’s speech, Kalshi put the odds of Santos attending at close to 75%.

Then, minutes into the speech, Santos posted on X that he had been waylaid at the airport. Immediately, several social media users accused him of running another scheme.

“Santos talking to his accountant and telling him to open his Kalshi account and bet all his money on No,” one user wrote, alongside a meme of Al Pacino counting money in the movie Scarface.

In March, Santos addressed the complaints on his podcast.

“I guess people lost money,” he said. “Some people made unexpected money. That’s to show you how fragile these markets are.”

Santos, who won office as a Republican after inventing a bogus persona as a Wall Street dealmaker, was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to fraud and identity theft in 2024.

After serving just 84 days, he was ordered released by Trump, who called Santos a “rogue” but said he didn’t deserve a harsh sentence and should get credit for voting Republican.

Prediction markets, including Kalshi and its chief rival Polymarket, have drawn scrutiny as their businesses have expanded — with some lawmakers urging the platforms to do more to guard against insider trading.

Both companies have said they are reporting suspicious trades to federal regulators. Some investigations have led to criminal charges. In April a soldier involved in the military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was charged with using classified information to win more than $400,000 predicting the date of his capture on Polymarket.

In April, the Senate approved a bipartisan resolution to prevent its own members from using prediction markets.

Offenhartz writes for the Associated Press.