state

SACRAMENTO — Even before President Trump’s latest wave of unfounded claims of election fraud in California, a significant share of voters in the state expressed concerns about federal interference in the electoral process, according to a new poll.

Trump on Monday claimed on his social media site that the race for Los Angeles mayor was a “Rigged Election,” an allegation that came after Democrat Nithya Raman overtook Republican Spencer Pratt for second place in the ongoing primary election vote count.

Raman’s lead had prompted Rep. Abe Hamadeh, an Arizona Republican, to call for the election to be federalized, or run by the federal government rather than the state, a message Trump reposted.

Earlier Sunday, Trump had alleged during an interview with NBC News that California elections officials “were cheating.” That came after a debunked social media conspiracy theory claiming that a lag in an update of electronic voting data by the Associated Press showed Pratt was being cheated. On Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson said the elections process in the L.A. mayoral race “stinks to high heaven.”

The ongoing attacks by Trump and his supporters continue to erode confidence in the nation’s elections, especially among Republicans, threatening a pillar of American democracy, said political scientist Eric Schickler, co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley.

“The president … wants to use those claims to make changes in the election process that could make it harder for people to vote, and that certainly is a threat to our democratic institutions,” Schickler said.

“One thing we’ve learned in recent years is that we just cannot take the voting process for granted, cannot take for granted that both sides will accept as legitimate the outcome, and can’t take for granted the idea that there won’t be efforts to essentially manipulate the vote counting process,” he added.

A new poll released Friday by the institute found that 41% of California voters were “not confident” that this year’s elections would be free of federal interference. Although 48% had confidence that there would be not meddling, the concerns expressed were still significant, Schickler said.

More telling was the partisan divide among voters when asked whether they have confidence that local officials would conduct fair and secure elections and that the vote count would be accurate. Among Democratic registered voters, 79% said they trusted elections officials to provide an accurate vote count. Among Republicans, 55% said they were not confident that would occur.

California voters who don’t belong to either party said by a 2-1 margin that they had confidence in the vote count, the poll showed.

“The positive is that local officials are still widely trusted by Democrats, no-party-preference voters, and at least a share of Republicans, though a lot fewer than I think in the past, and a lot fewer than you know we would want for a really healthy democracy,” Schickler said.

That growing mistrust among certain parts of the electorate comes after years of baseless claims by Trump that the 2020 election was stolen from him, as well as Republican-led efforts to restrict the use of mail-in ballots and impose new requirements for voters to show identification and proof of citizenship.

Recent rulings by the conservative-leaning Supreme Court also have rolled back federal protections under the Voting Rights Act. In April, the court sharply limited a part of those protections that had forced states to draw voting districts to help elect Black or Latino representatives to Congress, as well as state and local boards.

Trump and his allies have used California’s slow vote-counting process to allege cheating. The day after the June 2 primary, Trump claimed without evidence that Democrats were trying to “steal” the gubernatorial and L.A. mayoral primaries. The next day, he alleged that California Democrats had “found” mail-in ballots and were “rigging the election” with them.

Secretary of State Shirley Weber and other officials have said California’s voting system prioritizes voter accessibility and security over speedy results. The state has more than 23 million registered voters, and ballots go through numerous verification steps, including verifying signatures on mail-in ballots.

“Over 97% of our folks actually vote by mail. They want to keep that system. That system demands more contact, more touching of the ballot, more verification of the individuals who are voting. All of those things take time,” Weber said during a recent interview with ABC10 in Sacramento.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office called Trump’s claims during the recent “Meet the Press” interview the “most severe case of California Derangement Syndrome we’ve ever seen.”

Newsom is considering a 2028 run for president and has consistently warned that Trump may try to interfere in both the 2026 and 2028 elections.

The Berkeley poll found that California voters overall — 74% — want candidates running for president in 2028 to prioritize defending democracy and making voting more accessible. Among Democratic voters, 95% said that was important; among Republicans, 41%.

Funding for the poll was provided to IGS by the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, a private foundation based in San Francisco that aims to increase civic participation and improve the state’s democratic processes.

The poll of 8,578 registered California voters was conducted between May 19 and 25 online in English and Spanish and has a margin of error of about 2 percentage points in either direction.

Times staff writers Alene Tchekmedyian and Kevin Rector contributed to this report.

BOSTON — A federal judge on Monday struck down the Trump administration’s $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas, contradicting an earlier federal court ruling upholding the fee hike.

The administration announced the much-higher fee as a way of preventing foreign workers from taking American jobs.

But U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston sided with 20 states and struck down the visa policy, concluding that the executive branch exceeded its authority and violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies develop and issue regulations.

“The Court finds that the Policy imposes a tax on H-1B petitions without the requisite delegation by Congress,” Sorokin wrote.

H-1B visas are meant for high-skill jobs that are difficult to find American workers to fill. Deep-pocketed technology companies are the biggest users, with nearly three-quarters of approvals going to workers from India. The states argued that using the H-1B program to fill vacancies for much-needed doctors and teachers was already difficult before the higher fee.

Most H-1B visa applications cost several thousand dollars before the announced increase set off a wave of panic among confused employers, students and workers in the United States and abroad and led to several lawsuits, including in Boston.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also sued, in federal court in Washington, D.C., and has appealed a denial of a summary judgment against the fee hike. That left the higher fee in effect, at least until September, when it is scheduled to expire. Monday’s ruling is also a summary judgment, to the opposite effect. Still another lawsuit was filed in federal court in San Francisco, by religious groups and labor organizations, setting up the possibility of divided rulings in three appellate court circuits.

The states argued that the policy impedes their ability to hire primary and secondary school educators and to staff public colleges and universities, will stymie academic research and will lead to a decline in medical workers.

“The Proclamation makes various overtures to domestic economic policy goals to justify the unprecedented $100,000 fee,” plaintiffs wrote in their complaint. “But the Proclamation gives no indication that the President gave any consideration to how the fee would affect Plaintiff States and their ability to provide their residents access to education, healthcare, and other basic human needs.”

A Department of Homeland Security statement said the agency disagrees with “this blatant judicial activism dismantling President Trump’s historic efforts for immigration reform.”

“Under President Trump and Secretary [Markwayne] Mullin, our immigration system is being reformed to serve American citizens, American workers, and American families and to preserve our national identity — not to rapidly import foreigners who take American jobs, commit crimes, burden our welfare system, and erode our cultural and social fabric.”

Casey writes for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — The World Cup, a 48-team, 104-match behemoth kicking off this week in Los Angeles and across 15 other cities in the United States, Mexico and Canada, presents an unprecedented security challenge, with more countries, games and a larger footprint than ever before.

It also comes against the backdrop of the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran, mounting political violence in President Trump’s orbit and growing fears of artificial intelligence-fueled disruptions, creating a complex threat environment for authorities.

Overseeing the sprawling security apparatus is a legion of federal agencies, state and local police departments and private entities. Their responsibilities range from securing stadiums and fan zones to escorting teams and protecting dignitaries.

Their tools include hunter drones that can shoot nets over objects in restricted airspace, bag-inspecting robot dogs, giant X-ray trucks and thousands of AI-powered cameras trained on public spaces soon to be thronged by fans.

In the U.S., it’s “78 Super Bowls over 39 days,” said Andrew Giuliani, executive director of Trump’s World Cup task force, which is overseeing the multiagency effort.

“There’s never been a summer like this in American history from a security angle,” said Giuliani, son of former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. “We’re as prepared as we can be.”

Collaborative effort

The tournament has the same high-level federal security designation as the Super Bowl, just below a presidential inauguration or a national political convention, ensuring federal, state and local coordination. It coincides with other major events linked to the 250th anniversary of America’s founding.

So far, Giuliani said, there are no credible threats.

The Department of Homeland Security, focused on Trump’s immigration enforcement crackdown and with a funding lapse only recently resolved, estimates that as many as 7 million people will visit the United States for the World Cup.

The U.S. Secret Service, under scrutiny after security breaches and attempts on Trump’s life, is in charge of protecting world leaders who show up to cheer on their countries. Trump has expressed interest in attending a match.

“I feel very comfortable where we’re at, and we feel like we have a zero-fail mission,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Congress last week, noting that the Secret Service was understaffed by about 860 agents. “But it’s going to be complicated.”

Officials have indicated they are confident they can keep Trump safe because they will be integrating his usual security into the robust World Cup plan on days he may watch a match.

The FBI has spent two years developing its security plan, incorporating lessons from other major events such as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and New Year’s Eve ball drop in New York and testing them at smaller ones, including last weekend’s Israel Day parade in the city.

“We prepare for the worst day,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Amit Kachhia-Patel in New York told the Associated Press. “And that’s how we go into any single event.”

To help cover security costs, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has distributed $625 million to the 11 U.S. host cities. An additional $250 million is being directed toward tracking and neutralizing suspect drones.

The disbursement of those funds was held up by the department’s funding delay in Congress, which the Trump administration has argued hindered security planning.

Others involved in the planning effort said the federal government could have played a more hands-on role even before the partial shutdown.

John Cohen, a former senior Homeland Security official who has been briefing state leaders before the matches, said the government was largely absent from planning meetings last year and did not begin sharing threat intelligence with host regions until recently.

“With an event of this magnitude, one would expect the federal government would’ve played a more active role,” Cohen said. “It felt like a missed opportunity to showcase that collaboration.”

Evolving threats from drones and AI

In January, thousands of officials involved in World Cup security gathered for exercises simulating crowd surges, vehicle attacks and mass shootings.

A month later, the U.S. and Israel launched a war with Iran.

“The security picture fundamentally changed,” said Stefano Ritondale, chief intelligence officer at Artorias, a defense intelligence company not involved in the security preparations. “There’s a major difference in preparing for a lone-wolf radical who rams his car into a public place and a terrorist who is bankrolled by a foreign country we’re at war with.”

Among the greatest concerns are drones.

Since the last World Cup in Qatar in 2022, drones have become a prominent weapon in conflicts including Russia’s war in Ukraine and Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“If there is one threat that keeps me up at night, it is from drones,” said New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, whose department is partnering with the FBI on drone mitigation.

Drones are prohibited over stadiums and fan zones, and Kachhia-Patel said the FBI has a “full suite of options” to thwart incursions. They include agents monitoring the sky and a “variety of means” to safely down the devices, he said without elaborating.

Before this year’s World Cup, the growing sophistication of AI videos was a particular concern, with officials warning that state actors can harness the technology to sow misinformation and panic.

On match days, the FBI will activate joint operations centers in each host city, bringing together local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to monitor and investigate threats.

“If there’s a video that shows an explosion going off at a site, and it’s AI-generated, we have people on the ground who can validate whether or not that’s true,” Kachhia-Patel said.

Opportunity for private tech

Some AI companies have pitched themselves to police departments in host cities, promising to comb through data and surveillance on game days to prevent threats, including unruly fan behavior.

“We know sports fanaticism around here in terms of the NFL and baseball to some extent, but nothing like international soccer,” said Jake Becchina, a police spokesperson in Kansas City, Mo., which is hosting six matches.

The department has contracted with Peregrine Technologies, which promises to sift through police data and publicly available information such as team practice locations and the country affiliation of popular bars, to get ahead of possible conflict.

In Dallas, a recent $120-million tech upgrade will give local police body cameras capable of real-time translations, helping law enforcement communicate with international visitors soon to descend on the region.

Several drone detection and mitigation companies are joining efforts to help federal agencies secure the skies.

One of those companies, Fortem, has claimed to have signed a multimillion-dollar contract with the Department of Homeland Security before the World Cup for an unusual drone mitigation strategy: quadcopters that can shoot nets at encroaching drones to trap them in midair. A Homeland Security spokesman declined to discuss the contract.

Just as the teams will aim to perform their best on the pitch, Giuliani said the security planning was a unique chance to “show off American exceptionalism.”

“If we do our job right,” Giuliani added, “nobody will be talking about security at the World Cup.”

Offenhartz, Sisak and Santana write for the Associated Press. Offenhartz and Sisak reported from New York, Santana from Washington. AP writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.

The votes are still being tallied but the result of Tuesday’s top-two primary election in California seems pretty clear.

Despite an uptick in his performance, hopes for third-place finisher Tom Steyer are fading along with the number of uncounted ballots, suggesting Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton will face off in November.

Given the overwhelming Democratic advantage — both attitudinally and in registration — the outcome of the governor’s race might seem preordained. But it’s voters who decide elections, not know-it-all columnists.

Two of that breed, Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria, can’t see into the future. But they can try to make sense of what just passed, starting with a primary season that was a strange mix of ennui and white knuckles.

Barabak: So Anita, now that the election is over how are you feeling? Relieved? Giddy? Depressed?

Chabria: Tired, with five months to go. And while it’s true neither of us can see into the future, it’s not too much of a long shot to predict that in a state where registered Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans, the next governor will likely be blue.

So while the primary was bruising and confusing, the general election will be much more predictable — it’s Becerra’s to lose, and he’d have to try really hard to do that.

But here’s what I’ll be looking for in the lead up to November: How far will Hilton go to capitalize on this moment for personal gain? There are plenty of real issues to be discussed where the Republican-Democrat divide could offer worthy debate. What should we do about gas prices? What is the right balance between environmental regulation and building housing?

But my fear is, with little chance of winning, Hilton will instead focus on boosting his MAGA credentials.

In the past week, we’ve seen him dive headfirst into voter-fraud conspiracies, following the lead of President Trump. Hilton’s campaign is providing Trump with the biggest platform for this false propaganda of rigged elections that California has ever endured.

That is bad for our state and bad for democracy, and it’s troubling that we will likely be subjected to these lies — and that California could be used to further erode voting rights nationally — for the entire summer leading up to the midterms.

What will you be keeping an eye on?

Barabak: How Becerra spends the next five months.

One presumes he’s smart enough not to take anything for granted. Meaning he won’t spend the time between now and Nov. 3 at some swank beach resort, sipping one of those colorful cocktails with a little paper parasol while musing over his inaugural address.

So it will be interesting to see how Becerra campaigns and whether he uses the next several months to build a mandate and also to prepare California voters for the rough road ahead.

Becerra is smart enough, one would think, not to run as Mr. Sky Is Falling and tell voters, “Boy, oh, boy things are really gonna suck going forward.” But the next governor is going to face some really tough challenges, including a structural budget deficit that’s probably going to require both painful cuts and unpopular tax hikes.

On top of that, there are the inevitable disasters, be they earthquake, fire or flood, the latter quite possibly exacerbated this winter by what may be an epic El Niño. There’s also the continued challenge of dealing with a president who treats California the way a dog regards a fire hydrant.

Finally, there’s the unknowable but certain catastrophes the next governor will face.

All of it makes you wonder why anyone would want the job — though Steyer panted after it enough to burn through more than $215 million of his fortune in a bonfire of vanity.

Chabria: Steyer was bashed for being a self-funded billionaire, but what his support showed is that there is a significant contingent of voters who are tired of the status quo and want a governor with bold ideas.

California definitely faces many problems, but we are also historically a state that pushes forward on hard issues.

Universal healthcare and standing our climate ground in the face of federal rollbacks were two of Steyer’s big talking points, along with standing up to corporate influence. Becerra now inherits those thorny problems if he wants to form a more cohesive Democratic base.

Becerra hasn’t yet offered up his vision of the Golden State, as you point out. As much as it may benefit Hilton to focus on Trump in coming months, the same could be true for Becerra.

Why get into messy policy when you can run on opposing MAGA in a very blue state? I fear the next few months will be more about Trump than California.

Barabak: That’s a charitable way to look at $teyer’s campaign.

Sure, he had plenty of ideas, though I think the promise of delivering universal healthcare — a political nonstarter — was cheap pandering, not visionary leadership.

There’s no shortage of people with good ideas. The only reason anyone paid attention to Steyer, who’s never served in any elected office, was the obscene amount of money he spent on his luxury-class ego trip. So it pleases me voters didn’t reward his arrogance or buy his billionaire-turned-populist, “Amazing Grace” spiel. (“I once was blind, but now I see.”)

And I’m be gladder still that voters showed — once again — the governor’s office is not for sale.

I do agree, however, that Becerra should to more than just cry MAGA! MAGA! MAGA! for the next five months, as if that incantation is magic and will solve all our problems. That applies, by the way, to Democratic candidates everywhere.

All of that said, we should note the governor’s race has yet to be officially decided and Steyer still has at least a theoretical possibility of slipping into the top two.

What do you think about California’s prolonged, much-derided long ballot count? Is the criticism warranted?

Chabria: First, we’ll have to agree to disagree. California is on a healthcare cliff and even middle-class Americans (not just Californians) can’t afford either insurance or care.

Single-payer may be a dream, but it’s my dream — for my kids, for my community and for my state, because healthcare shouldn’t be just for the rich and that is increasingly the direction we are going. So any politician, Steyer included, who fights for inclusion rather than accepting exclusion will get my consideration.

And let’s be real — self-funded or corporate-funded — our elections are, to their detriment, too much about money. My outrage is for the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which unleashed the current no-limits mess and created a system in which it requires hundreds of millions from somewhere, anywhere to run for our highest offices.

But back to ballots: Slow is not fraud. Slow is not bad if it’s accurate. Slow allows for greater voter participation by allowing mail-in ballots, and carefully checking all ballots for problems. Slow takes into account the federal mangling of the post office that has, yes, slowed down our mail.

And, slow happens because most of our county elections offices are understaffed and budget-starved. If you want fast, you’ve got to pay for it.

So keep your britches on people and don’t buy Trump’s (or Hilton’s) manufactured hype. Every system can be improved, but there’s far worse problems than slow.

What’s your take on the ballot controversy?

Barabak: Here’s one where we agree.

California goes out of its way to make it easy to vote, which, I believe, is a very good thing. Kim Alexander of the non-partisan California Voter Foundation, who’s spent decades on the matter, has suggested ways we can have both wide access and a faster count, starting with better funding of the state’s over-extended county election offices.

This prolonged count is something Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Democratic-run Legislature could have anticipated. Shame on them for not doing more to address it.

Chabria: Any final thoughts?

Barabak: Just this. I’ve read the many plaintive pieces written about this boring, wholly-unworthy-of-the-Great-Golden-State field of gubernatorial candidates.

I, too, yearn for that perfect candidate who is firm but flexible, old but youthful in his or her thinking, masculine but also feminine, brilliant but not too smart and larger than life but also totally relatable.

Maybe in 2030.

A federal judge sided with California and other Democratic states on Friday in a preliminary injunction that blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to condition food benefits on compliance with the president’s policies on gender and immigration.

Twenty states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit in March against the Trump administration in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, arguing that the “unlawful” and “unconstitutional” funding requirements are vague and designed to force policies on states.

Billions in federal funding are ultimately at stake, including money for school lunch programs that provide meals to 30 million children nationwide and food stamps that support about 40 million Americans living in low-income households.

“As the Trump Administration tries to use essential programs and billions in funding as leverage to advance their hateful, discriminatory agenda, California continues to fight to uphold the law and ensure that our communities can continue to access the funding they need to thrive,” said California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta in a statement.

The policy shift from the United States Department of Agriculture marks another effort by the president to force left-leaning states to submit to his positions on hot-button political and cultural issues to receive government funding. California’s current budget relies on $174.5 billion in federal dollars, or roughly one-third of the overall state budget funds.

Last year, the Trump administration canceled a sexual education grant to California after the state declined to remove gender identity from sexual education curriculum. The administration is also restricting federal funds in an attempt to force states to ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.

The funding conditions from the USDA relate to gender ideology, women and girls’ sports and immigration, according to the lawsuit.

States argue that the conditions do not explain what activities are prohibited for entities that receive grants. The USDA did not cite any law allowing the organization to impose anti-discrimination policies that go beyond federal law, the suit states.

The states that joined the lawsuit contend that they are left with the “unlawful” choice of adhering to the conditions or risk losing up to $74 billion in collective federal assistance from the USDA.

U.S. District Judge Myong Joun approved a preliminary injunction Friday and is expected to issue a memorandum later explaining the decision, according to the Associated Press.

Around 7 a.m. Saturday, in a lot beside the shuttered Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, a strange set of cars and trucks began to gather. Three Model A’s. A couple of ’60 convertibles. A 1964 Chevrolet Impala station wagon. Also, a big bull on trailer wheels.

“Am I in the right place?” asked a man in one of the Model A’s.

“Going to Chicago?” asked a guy in a white Denali.

“I wish I could do the whole thing,” said Joe Hernandez of Pasadena, wistfully standing by.

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This was the starting line for roughly 70 drivers who gathered to celebrate the centennial of Route 66 with a 2,448-mile, 20-day caravan to Chicago. Most had come from outside California to share an adventure with fellow “roadies” and boost awareness of the classic scenery and independent businesses along the eight-state route.

But soaring gas prices and hesitant international travelers have added uncertainty to a trip that was always going to be a logistical challenge. Day 1 alone might terrify an L.A. commuter: From the Pacific to Pasadena by surface streets, including miles on Santa Monica and Colorado boulevards.

“I don’t know how it’s all going to happen,” said Gary Daggett, president of the Old Route 66 Assn. of Texas. But he and his wife, Stephanie, have more than a little Route 66 experience to draw upon.

Mike and Lisa Visket of Prescott, Ariz., pose in Santa Monica at the pier in their Route 66 clothing on June 6, 2026.

“This is our 30th trip over 20 years,” Daggett said. “You can’t see everything. There’s so much…. You start meeting the people, you get hooked on the people.”

Shortly before their 8:30 departure time, organizer Rhys Martin called drivers together.

“Leaving here is going to be a little complicated,” he said.

Martin, who is part of the Route 66 Road Ahead Partnership, is president of the Oklahoma Route 66 Assn., and serves as manager of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Preserve Route 66 initiative. For the journey, he is driving a ’64 Chevy Impala station wagon with a GPS unit inside so that armchair travelers can follow his journey on the web.

“It’s going to be impossible to keep everybody together,” he said during preparations. “We’re encouraging people to spread out and support independent businesses rather than all going to one place and demolishing the kitchen.”

William Cooke of Pinon Hills participates in a caravan from Santa Monica Pier to Chicago, celebrating the centennial of Route 66.

In song and literature, the route is celebrated as an east-to-west journey. This caravan, running in the opposite direction, will travel from California through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri to Illinois.

From Santa Monica, the Day 1 schedule took drivers to Beverly Hills City Hall, Grand Central Market downtown for lunch, the Chicken Boy statue and Galco’s Soda Pop Stop in Highland Park, then an overnight in Pasadena.

Day 2 takes the group from Pasadena to Barstow. Day 3, from Barstow to Needles. On June 25, the caravan is due to arrive in downtown Chicago.

The loose procession was led by a core group of 15 cars, including representatives of all eight states on the route. Since anyone can join or leave the caravan at any time, the number of vehicles will vary by the hour.

Through the decades, the road has grown from an American artifact into a global symbol of small-town Americana. Many merchants, restaurateurs and hoteliers along 66 now say that their summer customers are mostly travelers from abroad, especially Europe. One of the caravan’s drivers, in a rented pickup truck, was Dries Bessels, co-founder of the Dutch Route 66 Assn.

Brady Wilson of Amarillo, Texas, displays an assortment of Route 66 pins on his cowboy hat. Wilson is part of a caravan of Route 66 enthusiasts who set out from Santa Monica Pier on June 6, 2026, for Chicago.

Though the Model A’s will surely raise eyebrows on the road, the caravan’s most startling element is the fiberglass bull representing the Amarillo-based Big Texan Steak Ranch restaurant, one of the event’s sponsors.

“It’s the same one my dad brought home in ’71. His name is Big Moo,” said Danny Lee, who co-owns the restaurant with his brother, Bobby Lee. “He’s 12 and a half feet high. About 500 pounds. It’s all fiberglass.”

In 21 cities along the drive, the Big Texan team aims to stage nightly steak-eating contests, giving free dinners to anyone who can eat 72 ounces of steak, a baked potato, three shrimp, a side salad and a roll in 60 minutes.

The caravan’s first challenge came at the Santa Monica Pier, where there was no room for the cars due to a construction project, World Cup preparations and a Children’s Hospital fundraiser. Instead, the caravan gathered by the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Drivers strolled over the pier for a photo op, then returned to their cars.

“Herding cats,” said George Kulakowski of Huntington Beach, at the wheel of a 1931 Ford Model A Panel Delivery truck.

Participants in a Route 66 centennial caravan pose for a photo before they depart from Santa Monica Pier on June 2, 2026, for Chicago along the historic highway.

Another challenge awaited in West Hollywood, where Santa Monica Boulevard (aka Route 66) was busy with crowds for the city’s WeHo Pride Street Fair. By plans laid ahead of time, most caravan vehicles detoured around the party while select caravan cars followed a police escort through the action.

This way, Martin said, “another community along Route 66 gets to share its identity with the community at large.”

Allison Lehn of Boston participates in a caravan from Santa Monica Pier to Chicago, celebrating the centennial of Route 66.

By 11:15 a.m., Martin’s car had reached Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake. Meanwhile, assorted other parades and caravans are traveling Route 66 in other states this year; most of them concentrate on short segments.

By 12:45 p.m., caravaners had met the mayor of Beverly Hills and rolled through West Hollywood’s Pride festivities, arriving at Grand Central Market, running slightly ahead of time.

On May 30, an estimated 3,596 classic cars joined a “Capital Cruise” on Route 66 in Tulsa, Okla., becoming a Guinness Book of World Records holder for the largest parade of classic cars, drawing an estimated 100,000 spectators and overwhelming local traffic.

In Arizona, the Williams Historic Route 66 Car Show was set for Friday and Saturday. In Texas, the Amarillo-based Texas Route 66 Festival is running Thursday through June 13.

William Cooke of Pinon Hills, left, and Sarah Jane Woodall of Tecopa, Calif., drive along Wilshire Boulevard in a 1960 Edsel Ranger Convertible as part of a Route 66 centennial caravan.

In those states and beyond, the caravan from Santa Monica will find hotels and motels in every kind of condition, vintage neon, road food, blue states, red states and purple states.

As a package of Times stories described in May, some landmarks date to the highway’s days as a scene of Depression desperation in the 1930s, others to its giddy postwar years in the late 1940s and ‘50s.

Route 66 was created in 1926 as a highway stitching together hundreds of local roads. Nicknamed “the Main Street of America” by its boosters and “the Mother Road” by John Steinbeck in “The Grapes of Wrath,” the highway inspired Bobby Troup’s song “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66” in 1946.

But economic life along Route 66 has been precarious since the late 1960s, when interstate highways and chain hotels began stealing traffic away from the older, slower road. After Route 66 was decommissioned as a highway in 1985, about 85% of the old route remained in use, often as small-town thoroughfares, country highways and frontage roads alongside Interstate 40.

Efforts to save and rebuild the route as a historic resource began in the late 1980s and gained ground after the 2006 release of the Pixar/Disney animated features “Cars,” which tells the story of the highway’s rise and fall. In small towns such as Tucumcari, N.M., and Seligman, Ariz., the highway remains central to local identity and economy.

A vehicle in the Route 66 caravan is photographed June 6, 2026.

This year’s centennial improvements along the route “are things that are going to go into the future,” Martin said. “The real impact is going to be next year and the years after.”

Since the public launch of large-language models like ChatGPT and OpenAI in 2020, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is gaining ground across a variety of private and public areas,  the prospect of not only facilitating mundane tasks but also revolutionising labor markets, research, medicine and militaries.  

The gilded age of AI

But as the presence of AI is becoming an increasingly normalized part of everyday life, from summarizing texts, fact-checking a statement or composing an email, it is easy to overlook the more nefarious purposes of surveillance, discrimination and persecution for which AI can be used at the state level. This is an increasingly pertinent issue, with the surge of state-based AI surveillance—such as ’safe cities,’ facial recognition, and smart policing—since 2018, extending to at least 75 of the 175 countries with available data. While this trend is present on all continents, there are regional disparities in application, with AI surveillance present in almost 70% of the surveyed African states, over 50% of South East Asian states, and just under 40% of European countries use AI for surveillance. Thus, AI surveillance is not limited to authoritarian states; according to one report, 51% of liberal democracies use AI for surveillance purposes. How, then, is AI being used for surveillance in China, the Middle East, US, and Europe? 

China—a spearhead for surveillance

China dominates the AI surveillance sector, with companies like ZTE and Huawei present in over 63 countries, vastly outnumbering the US. This presence is especially noticeable in Africa and Asia, where the use of Chinese surveillance technology correlates closely with  participation in the cross-continental Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. In particular, China has been exporting its ‘safe city’ model, which has already been domestically implemented in cities like Beijing as part of its social credit system, to Saudi Arabia, Uganda, and Thailand as well as European cities like Valenciennes, which in 2017 was gifted safe city technology by Huawei. This model connects an extensive network of facial recognition cameras and police body cameras into intelligent command centers using algorithms to predict crime.

Individual freedom versus national security

While states are justifying these measures by reference to crime reduction and national security, organisations are warning about the implications of AI surveillance for privacy, systemic discrimination civil rights and democratic freedoms as AI allows for cost efficient surveillance at an unprecedented spatial and temporal scale. For example, China has domestically implemented large scale AI surveillance encompassing over 600 million cameras, coupled with large language models for minority languages to sharpen its surveillance of the communication of its Tibetan, Uyghur, Korean, and Mongolian minorities. In the Xinjiang province, the Chinese state has created an Integrated Joint Operations Platform, which employs an extensive network of CCTV cameras, facial recognition devices, and or WiFi surveillance devices to suppress political dissent among the province’s Uyghur minority. Such Chinese technology has reportedly also been exported to Saudi Arabia and Iran for similar purposes of suppressing political dissent, and to enhance the precision of drone air strikes in Ukraine and the Middle East.

AI surveillance beyond autocracies

However, the West is not immune to these developments. The US government recently found itself in a legal dispute with AI company Anthropic after the company refused to allow the government to use its ground breaking AI model Claude for domestic surveillance without built-in restraints. The US government claimed that this jeopardised national security by preventing the state from identifying espionage. In addition, US President Trump has issued various executive orders to increase the adoption of AI by federal agencies over state regulations. Indeed, the US already uses surveillance technology deployed by Israel on the occupied West Bank, to stem migration on the Mexican border. Moreover, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) admitted in March 2026 that federal agencies are buying personal data from data brokers, including location data collected by private companies, in order to track citizens.

Europe: between security, migration and regulation

Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) is exploring Automated Border Crossing technologies. The intelligent system iBorderCtrl is currently being piloted in Greece, Hungary and Latvia  applies AI lie detectors to immigrants, with immigrants found lying being automatically detained for further questioning. This system has been criticised by human rights activists and academics as a scientifically weak and potentially discriminatory practice. Thus, even though AI is more regulated in Europe than elsewhere in the world, with the EU AI Act of 2024 restricting large scale usage from sensitive areas through, the risk of questionable AI use in the name of national security remains salient.

Indeed, several member states are stretching the AI Act’s limitations on large-scale surveillance. For example, Luxembourg has since 2025 pursued plans of expanding its use of Trojan spyware from state security and terrorist threats to encompass a broader range of crimes, such as child exploitation, currency counterfeiting and human trafficking. Similarly, the government of Ireland is seeking to expand the powers of the police and Defense Forces to intercept conversations on encrypted platforms like WhatsApp, and iMessage, and other social media platforms. Meanwhile, the Czech Republic was forced to end its use of facial recognition at Prague Airport after six months as it was found to violate the EU AI Act. Likewise, Hungary authorized the police to use real-time facial recognition to identify participants in LGBTQ+ parades in April last year, in violation of the AI Act.

Digital emancipation or authoritarianism?

Thus, it appears that national and international regulation has been lagging behind the rapid tech innovation of recent years. As with any innovation, AI is a neutral tool—but it can be used in ways good or bad depending on the decisions of power-holders. Thus, the application of AI calls for increased scrutiny, accountability and implementation to safeguard the benefits and prospects of improvement it holds out from being hijacked by nefarious purposes undermining democracy and human rights.

Veteran Democratic politician Xavier Becerra won one of the top two spots in California’s primary election for governor, according to the Associated Press, a finish that puts him in a prime position to win in November and make history as California’s first elected Latino governor.

“The people of the great state of California, in the greatest nation on earth, have spoken — loudly and proudly,” Xavier Becerra said in a statement Friday. “We will not be bought. We will not be bullied. And we are never backing down. November, here we come.”

Former Fox News host Steve Hilton, a Republican, remains in a close second and appears on the cusp of securing the right to face off with Becerra in the November general election.

Tom Steyer, a hedge fund manager turned climate change activist, may be destined to finish in third place — which would be a disappointing end to a campaign that saturated California’s television screens, social media scrolls and mailboxes thanks to the progressive Democrat spending $216 million of his own wealth.

Becerra’s victory was declared by the Associated Press on Friday evening, three days after the June 2 election — an indication of the competitive race to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom and California’s lengthy process of counting ballots. Still, Becerra and Hilton were within a percentage point of each other, though that could change as the vote tally continues. While his fate is not sealed, Steyer faces long odds to finish in the top two.

Under California’s primary system, only the two candidates who receive the most votes in the primary advance to the November general election, regardless of their party affiliation.

Becerra would enter the general election campaign with a significant edge over Hilton since Democratic voters in California outnumber Republicans by almost a 2-to-1 margin, a telltale reason why no GOP candidate has won a statewide race since 2006.

President Trump’s endorsement of Hilton helped consolidate support from Republican voters, which was pivotal to his success in the primary, but would likely hurt him in a face-off against Becerra. Nearly two-thirds of voters in the state want a governor who will fight Trump’s policies, according to the survey by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.

Becerra could make history by becoming the first Latino to be elected governor — and the first to lead the state in more than 150 years. The last time a Latino held the office was in 1875, when then-Lt. Gov. Romualdo Pacheco was elevated to fill a vacancy and served for 10 months.

“California has made history. Xavier Becerra’s advancement to the general election is a defining moment both for the state, and for the millions of Latino families who have been instrumental in shaping the state’s future. … As home to the nation’s largest Latino population, California will once again demonstrate the decisive power of Latino voters,” said Voto Latino Executive Director Beatriz Lopez.

Though Latinos make up about 40% of the state’s population and are California’s largest ethnic group, they historically have lower turnout in elections and are underrepresented in government. Though Becerra often cites his upbringing as a child of working-class Mexican immigrants, he will still need to demonstrate he can deliver for those communities, said Christian Arana, vice president of civic power and policy at the California-based Latino Community Foundation.

“There’s a lot of excitement about the representation side,” Arana said. “You can have Latino representation, but whether or not that will actually lead to tangible outcomes for Latino communities, that’s what people want to know.”

Once stuck in the single-digits in public opinion polls with a handful of other Democratic candidates, Becerra rose quickly and unexpectedly following the political demise of former Rep. Eric Swalwell.

Becerra’s rise began days after Swalwell dropped out in April following allegations of sexual assault and misconduct, which he denies. Becerra quickly consolidated support from elected officials including Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and influential groups like Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California and the California Medical Assn.

But both supporters and critics of Becerra struggle to explain exactly how or why he became the main beneficiary of Swalwell’s downfall.

Becerra’s campaign credits the timing of a major television and digital advertising push. The political ads began running just before the allegations against Swalwell came out and depicted Becerra as a calm, experienced leader with a record pushing back against Trump and support from Young Democrat groups.

Steyer’s campaign hired an intelligence firm to look into the online surge favoring Becerra and found thousands of bot accounts had amplified Becerra on various social media platforms. Becerra’s campaign denied any involvement and dismissed the influence of the fake accounts.

Political experts describe it as the stars aligning for the longtime Democratic politician. In the aftermath of the scandal, voters were apparently drawn to Becerra’s long resume and calm, thoughtful demeanor.

“He just never overreacted. Even when attacked [during debates], he was calm,” said Fernando Guerra, professor of Chicano Studies at Loyola Marymount University. That “gave the sense of being a moderate, while he’s really a liberal, so he was able to appeal not only to Latinos, but to liberals and to moderates.”

After Swalwell’s campaign crumbled, members of the political brain trust — many with ties to Newsom — that had been advising the former congressman began working for Becerra, including digital strategist Alf LaMont and veteran consultants Courtni Pugh and Lindsey Cobia.

“There was nothing going for him for a long, long time,” said Jason McDaniel, associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University. “I do think it was just people looking for someone who had a lot of experience who could win.”

Becerra’s first election victory was to the state Assembly in 1990. He served one term before successfully running for a Los Angeles congressional seat, which he held for 24 years.

Then-Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Becerra as state attorney general in 2017, a post he used to challenge Trump administration policies in the courts more than a 100 times — with great success. Becerra helped craft the Affordable Care Act in Congress and defended it as attorney general, and Joe Biden nominated him to serve as Health and Human Services secretary.

The 68-year-old veteran elected official has faced criticism on the campaign trail for his record leading the massive federal agency, particularly over a New York Times investigation that found thousands of unaccompanied migrant children ended up working in dangerous jobs after they were released to sponsors.

Some former Biden administration officials, many of them anonymous, have also criticized Becerra’s leadership of the agency.

Still, Becerra’s supporters said the candidate’s experience, particularly when it comes to fighting the Trump administration, qualifies him for California’s top job.

“He’s had some very important positions in government,” labor leader Dolores Huerta said at Becerra’s election night party in downtown Los Angeles. “He is qualified. He doesn’t have to go into a learning mode.”

“He’s a legal scholar,” said David Dixon, a political science professor at Cal State Dominguez Hills and brother to a longtime Becerra aide. “When our Constitution is threatened, we need people like him to be in positions of power to reclaim things we are losing now.”

Times staff writers Seema Mehta, Dakota Smith and Andrew Khouri contributed to this report.

The November runoff for state schools superintendent will pit two school board presidents — one a union-friendly liberal and the other a Trump-aligned conservative — against each other.

Republican, Sonja Shaw finished in first place in this week’s primary with 24.5% of votes counted through June 4. Democrat Richard Barrera had19.3%.

Shaw’s margin seems comfortable even with more ballots to be counted, with Barrera firmly in the runoff. The third-leading vote-getter, Wendy Castaneda Leal, was about 10 percentage points behind him.

The race creates a clear contrast between candidates and their vision for California’s schools.

While Shaw, 43, has not typically spoken to Trump’s immigration policies in relation to schooling, she is in accord with the Trump administration education agenda, including banning trans-athletes from women’s and girls’ sports and notifying parents when a child expresses gender-identity issues at school.

Under Shaw’s leadership, the school board in Chino Valley Unified, located in San Bernardino County, also approved a policy that permits parents to challenge books in school libraries.

Barrera, 59, is the board president of San Diego Unified, the second-largest school system in the state. He is a former union official who has developed strong bonds with the teachers union during his long board tenure.

That history helped him win the endorsement of the California Teachers Assn., which poured about $5 million into an independent campaign on his behalf.

Barrera acknowledges that this support made the difference in his leap ahead of other strong Democratic candidates.

Shaw has framed her campaign as a populist effort against a failed and self-interested status quo establishment.

“I didn’t get into this race because I was a politician,” Shaw said in a statement. “I got into it because I was a mom who saw too many families being ignored, too many classrooms falling behind, and too many elected officials unwilling to stand up for our kids.”

Barrera said he is ready to focus on the job of helping students learn more effectively.

“We see examples of schools that are delivering,” Barrera said. “The answers are all around us. The challenge for us as a state is to learn from educators in the local community about what is beating the odds and then take those practices to scale.”

Barrera speaks of an “assault” by the Trump administration on immigrant families: “I’m going to stand up to that assault.”

Barrera, who is a senior adviser to outgoing state Superintendent Tony Thurmond, praises the record of his boss.

Shaw, in contrast, once threw Thurmond out of her local school board meeting.

Lance Christensen, a conservative education analyst who ran unsuccessfully for the office four years ago against Thurmond, is ready for a spirited campaign that “is about to go nuclear.”

“Sonja Shaw pulled out an impressive primary win as an unabashed parental rights advocate while successfully running her local school district,” Christensen said.

“Should Shaw weather the political maelstrom that is about to hit her with tens of millions of dollars from the entrenched left,” he added, “she will have a bigger bully pulpit to shame the people in power who have made California’s education system the laughing-stock of the nation.”

Veteran Democratic political consultant Larry Levine predicted that, in November, Democrats will consolidate around Barrera just like Republicans did around Shaw in the primary — likely leading to a different order of finish in November.

“She consolidated the Republican vote and the Democrats spread like butter on warm bread,” Levine said. “It will be a far different story in the general. CTA will step up with the money to make sure their candidate wins.”

One of the trailing Democrats — former state Legislative leader Anthony Rendon —has already endorsed Barrera.

Rendon said that Barrera “is qualified, shares my values, and has spent his career fighting for public education. He is the candidate who will stand up to and defeat the dangerous, extremist ideology of Sonja Shaw.”

The state superintendent has limited authority over school districts, which are locally managed. The officeholder instead manages the California Department of Education. This agency guides local school districts and also provides partial oversight. The state superintendent also typically takes advantage of the bully pulpit on education issues.

The office has an uncertain future because Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing a proposal to reimagine the office and redistribute some of its duties.

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?

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.

June 3 (UPI) — Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz sent a bill to Parliament on Wednesday to regulate states of emergency, while two ministers resigned amid a crisis that has entered its fifth week of road blockades.

The crisis, which began in early May with protests over fuel shortages, rising living costs and opposition to economic measures promoted by the government, has left at least five people dead and caused economic losses that exceed $1.6 billion.

Since the inception, more than 100 roadblocks have disrupted the transportation of goods, food and medical supplies, and fuel distribution in different parts of the country.

“This law regulating states of emergency in the nation has already been sent to Parliament, and I hope it will be resolved soon,” Paz said during a public statement.

Paz said the initiative would provide a legal framework for actions the government plans to implement to ensure assistance to the population and distribution of essential supplies.

Bolivia’s Constitution provides for a state of emergency in extraordinary situations that affect the country’s security or normal functioning. However, the newspaper La Razón reported the government considers it necessary to have a specific law establishing procedures, scope and implementation mechanisms for that constitutional tool.

Paz added that any action taken by the police, armed forces and government would be guided by a “logic of humanitarian action” and defended dialogue as the path to resolving the crisis.

“We come from the real, democratic and constitutional culture of dialogue,” he said.

The announcement came the same day defense and education ministers submitted resignations, becoming the most significant cabinet departures since the protests began, according to reports from Bolivian media outlets.

Their departures follow the resignation of Labor Minister Edgar Morales less than two weeks ago.

The resignations represent a new political blow to Paz, who took office six months ago and is facing a growing humanitarian crisis.

The protests, led by labor unions, Indigenous organizations, teachers and groups aligned with former President Evo Morales, have expanded their demands, and some groups have begun to call for the president’s resignation.

According to reports by El País and Infobae based on data from Bolivian authorities and business organizations, the Federation of Private Business Entities of Bolivia warned that the road blockades continue to affect productive sectors, exporters and transport operators, while agricultural producers have warned of growing difficulties in moving goods and guaranteeing domestic supply.

The Legislative Assembly must now debate the proposal on states of emergency as protests continue and pressure mounts on the executive branch to solve the crisis.

The government maintains that road blockades are intended to destabilize the constitutional order, while protesters say the demonstrations are a response to deteriorating economic conditions and shortages that affect much of the country.

After all the buildup, fear and uncertainty, the most wide-open and unpredictable California gubernatorial primary in decades appears to have ended in the most consistent and predictable of ways.

California has never elected a female governor. That won’t change in November.

Voters have never much cared for rich people trying to buy the state’s highest elected office. They still don’t.

The California electorate has typically favored experience over youth, and favored bland and boring over razzle and dazzle. It continues to do so.

And for all the speculation about one political party or the other being shut out in Tuesday’s primary, the November runoff may very well turn out to be a thoroughly conventional Democrat vs. Republican matchup.

Here are five takeaways from a gubernatorial contest that was sedentary and sleepy until, suddenly, it wasn’t.

Flashback!

Three months ago, Xavier Becerra seemed so irrelevant he — along with a clutch of other weak-polling candidates — was conspicuously excluded from a scheduled debate at USC. Today, the Democrat has seemingly punched his ticket to November.

The obvious parallel is with another massive underdog, Gray Davis, who also came from far behind to win the last time a gubernatorial primary held this level of uncertainty and suspense. That was back in 1998.

Like Davis, Becerra has a political persona that could be marketed as a sleep aid. No one will ever mistake either of them for, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger. But Becerra’s even-keeled demeanor seemed the perfect prescription following the overnight implosion of Eric Swalwell’s scandal-scarred campaign while presenting a welcome contrast with the endless Sturm und Drang emanating from Washington, D.C.

Despite California’s star-struck reputation (perpetuated mainly by outsiders), the state has elected far more governors like Davis and Becerra than Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan. In fact, other than Schwarzenegger, who prevailed in an unprecedented recall campaign, every candidate following Reagan has successfully run for statewide office at least once before being chosen governor.

Becerra was elected attorney general before heading to Washington to join the Biden administration; his candidacy offered worn-out voters a safe harbor amid the Trumpian tempest.

Cha-ching!

There are things money can’t buy which, Tom $teyer — er, Steyer — is just the latest to discover.

The hedge fund billionaire turned Democratic activist sank more than $215 million — a record — into his gubernatorial bid, after spending nearly $350 million in a failed 2020 try for president.

With roughly 60% of the vote counted, he was running an unimpressive third and hoping a lopsided surge of still-to-be-counted ballots will push him into the top two.

Half a billion dollars, which makes for a pretty pricey, “Meh.”

California has a long record of rejecting money-bag candidates for governor and the U.S. Senate — a pattern stretching back more than half a century. Given that hostile history, Steyer would enter the runoff as a distinct underdog, notwithstanding the many added millions he is poised to spend.

“These filthy rich people who don’t have to deal with the kind of financial struggles that people have in connection with their daliy lives just don’t feel relatable,” said Garry South, who ran Davis’ successful 1998 campaign against the free-spending Steyer of his day, former airline executive Al Checchi.

Given the relentlessly negative campaign Steyer has waged, besieged voters could count on many more ugly months of brutality on the airwaves, on computer screens and in their mailboxes.

The only happy ones would be TV station managers and political consultants cashing Steyer’s super-sized checks.

A self-fulfilling prophecy

It was never likely. But the mere prospect of Democrats being shut out of the November runoff was enough to guarantee such a scenario would not happen in this reliably blue state.

With a large pack of Democrats running and just two serious Republican contenders, Democratic partisans feared their fractured vote would let the GOP nab both spots in Tuesday’s top-two primary.

Much of the freak-out was fed by polls supposedly showing Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco atop the field. But no candidate ever had much more than a paltry 20% support; for all the heavy breathing, the race was always pretty much a multi-candidate tie.

Fearing the worst, however, voters who normally couldn’t tell a “jungle primary” from a jungle gym began thinking a lot like gimlet-eyed political strategists. Democrats, in particular, held onto their ballots much longer than usual, waiting to see which candidate appeared strongest at the end.

“The decision matrix on this was not just the political insiders, but all the normies who heard there might be two Republicans,” said Paul Mitchell, a Sacramento political data expert who developed a popular online tool handicapping various election scenarios. “They’re talking to friends and families. It was kind of crazy.”

In the end, the race among Democrats became less a contest than a self-fulfilling prophecy. Becerra was seen as the candidate with the best chance of advancing to November, so many voters flocked his way — ensuring he would advance to November.

Now he waits to see whether his opponent will be Hilton or Steyer.

Sacramento still a boy’s club

More than 30 states have elected female governors. A few have done so multiple times. But come January, California — which perceives itself as oh-so-cutting edge on oh-so-many things — will install the 41st in the state’s unbroken line of male governors.

Things might have been different had Kamala Harris jumped into the contest. The former vice president, U.S senator and California attorney general would have been a prohibitive favorite to end that gendered streak. When she opted not to run, there were still a handful of female contenders. But Toni Atkins and Betty Yee eventually fell by the wayside, leaving just Katie Porter.

The former Orange County congresswoman and whiteboard wizard was making her second try for statewide office after a failed 2024 bid for U.S. Senate. Given her wide name recognition and national fundraising base, Porter started as one of the front-runners for governor. But a needlessly combustible TV interview and a leaked video that showed her profanely snapping at one of her aides played into persistent questions about Porter’s temper and temperament.

Unfair? Perhaps.

“There’s expectations that are put on a woman” that are different from those male candidates face, said Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at USC. Toughness in a man can be seen as abrasive or off-putting in a women. Acting with authority can come across — at least to some observers — as overbearing.

“A woman’s version of a leader still has to be at least somewhat feminine,” Romero said. “That’s what our society expects. So you have to be tough, but do it with a smile.”

Clearly, there’s a double standard. There’s also apparently a different standard for the office of governor. California, after all, became the first state in history to send two women to serve at the same time in the U.S. Senate and is home to the first female House speaker, San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi.

But in Sacramento, within the governor’s suite, California’s highest glass ceiling remains firmly intact.

Youth won’t be served

Last fall, over a plate of enchiladas in downtown San José, Mayor Matt Mahan emphatically ruled out a run for governor.

“I have a wonderful marriage,” Mahan said at the time. “I have two wonderful kids. I loved working in the private sector. I’ve got a lot of great friends … I genuinely want to make our city better, and I love the job.”

He should have stuck to those words.

Instead, Mahan and his wealthy Silicon Valley backers talked themselves into a rushed and premature campaign that was never remotely competitive. Investors might have thought they were getting in on the ground floor of the next Amazon. Instead, Mahan’s candidacy was more like Pets.com, a famous e-commerce flop that came to embody the heedless froth of the dot.com bubble.

But it would be equally premature to write Mahan off.

Decades ago, another youthful big-city mayor ran an ill-considered campaign for governor, finishing a distant fourth and failing to muster even double-digit support. That, however, didn’t hurt Pete Wilson’s political career. Four years later, he was elected to the U.S. Senate en route to two terms as California governor.

At 43, Mahan has plenty of highway ahead and a good deal of political potential. His time may yet come.

The Times’ results pages reveal how Californians voted for governor, U.S. House seats and in local city, school board and ballot measure races.

Every registered voter in the state receives a ballot by mail. Polls close at 8 p.m. on June 2, and mailed ballots need to be postmarked on or before that day. Winners may not be known on election night due to the high volume of mail-in ballots arriving after election day.

The vote counts on these pages update periodically as results are reported by the Associated Press and the L.A. County registrar. On election day, those results include in-person voting as well as any mail-in ballots already received. In the days and weeks following, votes will be reported approximately once a day, as they are processed by county registrars. Voters can track their own cast ballot here.

The Associated Press surveys the numbers posted by local election officials. The AP projects the winner for all statewide and federal races using vote returns and other data. A race may be called before all expected votes are in. Results can change as more ballots are counted.

These pages will update until the secretary of state certifies results on July 10.

Sonja Shaw — a Trump-aligned conservative Republican whose public profile rose as she became identified with culture-war causes, including banning transgender athletes from girls’ sports — has emerged as the leading vote-getter in the June primary for California’s superintendent of public instruction.

With more than 80% of precincts at least partially reporting, Shaw was well ahead of Democrat Richard Barrera, holding a lead that would be difficult to surmount.

Both Shaw and Barrera are school board presidents.

Shaw heads the elected Board of Education for Chino Valley Unified in San Bernardino County, a diverse but substantially conservative inland portion of Southern California.

Barrera heads the school board of San Diego Unified, the state’s second largest school district, serving an area with liberal leanings, but that is also politically diverse.

In the primary Shaw was greatly helped by a candidate field that included seven Democrats — most with a voter and financial base that would make them competitive. Incoming results show they divided votes among themselves.

Shaw managed to consolidate the Republican vote, which put her on top for the primary. A second Republican candidate finished far behind her.

On Tuesday night, Shaw sounded hopeful and confident that her campaign themes were resonating beyond her conservative roots.

“I am humbled and grateful that Californians from every corner of our state have rallied behind this campaign,” Shaw said in a statement. “What we’ve built is more than a campaign. It’s a diverse movement of communities who believe our schools can do better and who are determined to make that happen.”

Among its high-profile actions, the Chino Valley board majority put forward a policy that would require parents to be notified if their child expressed gender-identity issues at school. Shaw and her allies also approved a policy that allows parents to challenge the content of library books.

Positioned in a runoff against one Democrat — in a state where Democrats dominate — makes for a challenging campaign.

“Tonight is not the finish line,” Shaw said. “It’s the beginning of the final stretch.”

Barrera, who was not available for comment late Tuesday night, benefited immensely from a $5 million independent expenditure campaign from the California Teachers Assn., which, in the recent past, has seemed determined to spend whatever it takes to get an ally into the state superintendent’s office.

Barrera, besides his work as a longtime public official, has been a senior aide to current state Superintendent Tony Thurmond. Thurmond could not run again because of term limits and instead mounted an unsuccessful campaign for governor.

The state superintendent has limited authority over school districts, which are locally managed. The officeholder instead manages the California Department of Education. This agency guides local school districts and also provides partial oversight. The state superintendent also typically takes advantage of the bully pulpit on education issues.

The office has an uncertain future because Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing a proposal to reimagine the office and redistribute some of its duties.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday night that Alabama Republican leaders may redraw their congressional voting districts to oust a Black Democrat and elect a white Republican.

The court’s conservatives, who ruled for Louisiana Republicans in a redistricting dispute, extended that decision to Alabama. The three liberals dissented.

The decision clears the way for the governor and state lawmakers to redraw their congressional voting map with six districts that favor Republicans and one that favors a Democrat.

“Weeks ago, I warned that vacating the District Court’s injunction in these cases would ‘unleash chaos and … confuse voters,’ ” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent. “Yet just as Alabama doubled down on racial discrimination, the Court today doubles down on chaos. Because I choose to defend the rule of law and the right of all Alabamians to participate equally in democracy, I respectfully dissent.”

The justices granted an emergency appeal that was backed by the Trump administration and set aside the decision of a three-judge panel in Alabama.

The court in a brief opinion said the three judges should not have blocked Alabama’s new map.

“While federal courts should not impose changes close to an election, states are free to decide for themselves whether last-minute changes to an election are in their best interests,” the court said.

Alabama’s emergency appeal went to Justice Clarence Thomas, who referred it to the full court.

Those three judges, two of them Trump appointees, ruled that Alabama’s state lawmakers discriminated against Black voters, who made up a near majority in the center of the state.

Three years ago, the Supreme Court agreed.

In a 5-4 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the justices upheld the creation of a second district in the center of the state where Black voters had a near majority.

The result then was an Alabama state voting map that favored five Republicans and two Democrats for the House of Representatives.

But last month, in the wake of the Louisiana decision, Alabama’s lawmakers went back to court, arguing that the state may return to the voting map with only a single Black majority district.

In his appeal to the Supreme Court, Alabama’s Atty. Gen. Steven Marshall argued that the high court’s decision in favor of Louisiana “vindicates Alabama position on the lawfulness” of its earlier voting map. He said the state should not be penalized for “refusing to intentionally discriminate” to favor Black voters.

The court’s decision has cleared the way for Republican-led states in the South to flip congressional districts in Louisiana, Tennessee, Florida and now Alabama.

As primary voters head to the polls Tuesday to determine which candidates will face off in November to become California’s governor and Los Angeles’ mayor, both races are wide open, with a new crop of candidates challenging the Democratic status quo.

For Democrats, little clear consensus has emerged so far on who should lead the city and state into the future.

In California’s crowded gubernatorial race, Democrats have struggled in recent months to settle on a candidate to succeed term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom.

After former Rep. Eric Swalwell suspended his campaign in April amid allegations of sexual misconduct, Xavier Becerra, a former Biden cabinet member, inched ahead by positioning himself as the safe, experienced Democratic candidate. Another Democrat, billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer, and Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, trail close behind.

In L.A., experience seems to be as much a liability as an advantage.

Mayor Karen Bass finds herself in the extraordinary position, as an incumbent, of fighting to make the runoff as she is assailed from the left and the right. The latest UC Berkeley-L.A. Times poll shows Bass leading with just 26% of the vote, one point ahead of City Councilmember Nithya Raman, a wonkish Democratic socialist, and four points ahead of Republican Spencer Pratt, a former reality TV star.

“There’s a clear sense of frustration with the Democratic Party,” said Sara Sadhwani, a professor of politics at Pomona College. The reason a wave of conservative outsiders like Pratt and Hilton are doing so well in such a solidly liberal city and state, Sadhwani said, is that they’re more willing to spell out the challenges that L.A. and California face.

“Democrats tend to be very concerned about not upsetting one coalition or another, so it’s politics as usual with many of the Democratic candidates,” Sadhwani said. “Spencer Pratt has blown a hole in that by just naming the problems that everyday residents and voters are seeing and feeling on the ground.”

On homelessness, many Angelenos are frustrated Bass hasn’t significantly moved the needle.

“We can point to facts and figures that might suggest that things have changed,” Sadhwani said. “But when you walk down the streets of Los Angeles, it doesn’t feel like it, so she hasn’t passed the field test. That’s the problem.”

A growing segment of Angelenos also chafe at the city’s high cost of living. And many are angry about the Bass administration’s lack of preparation and response to the 2025 Palisades fire.

“The Democrats have to account for those challenges,” Sadhwani said. “They have been in power for all of this time.”

California, of course, remains a Democratic stronghold, and polls show state voters are overwhelmingly opposed to President Trump. His second-term agenda — including a sweeping immigration crackdown, tariffs and the war in Iran — only seems to have cemented California’s status as a resistance state.

But after so many years of Democratic dominance, in Sacramento and at Los Angeles City Hall, leaders have to answer for voter frustrations.

The top two vote-getters in California’s nonpartisan primaries will advance to theNovember runoff, unless one candidate manages to pick up more than 50% of the vote.

Republicans have turned out at higher rates than Democrats in early voting. Paul Mitchell, vice president of the Sacramento-based bipartisan firm Political Data Inc., said that older Democrats who reliably turn in their ballots were slower to vote this year, likely because two Republicans were on the gubernatorial ballot and the Democratic field was fractured.

“That has caused them to dive into a lot more strategic voting,” Mitchell said, noting many seemed to be waiting to cast their ballots for the Democrat who looks to have the best chance of moving on to November.

For the GOP, getting a candidate on the November ballot for governor means more than just demonstrating Republicans are players in California. A GOP candidate would bring out more Republicans to vote in the general election, raising the party’s prospects of winning down-ballot races and passing a GOP-led ballot initiative on voter ID.

For Democrats, the midterm races offer the party its first major chance to chart a new path for the future.

As polls show Trump cratering in popularity, Democrats in California and beyond are struggling a year and a half after Kamala Harris’ bruising 2024 defeat to agree on what went wrong.

The Democratic National Committee’s long-awaited autopsy of that election — which said Harris “wrote off rural America,” wrongly assumed identity politics would win over voters of color and failed to develop “defined or consistent” strategy against Trump — has only generated more hand-wringing.

“There is not a clear vision, there is not a clear policy agenda, and the Donald Trump presidency upended the policy world as we knew it,” Sadhwani said. “It’s unclear how any Democrat, including any of the individuals in these two races, is going to navigate the waters into the future. One thing is for certain: We aren’t going back. So, which of these candidates is going to lead us into an uncertain future?”

Referendum on Bass

In L.A., the election is a referendum on Bass, who pledged in 2022 to solve homelessness, cut crime and make the city more affordable.

“How has L.A. changed in four years?” said Christian Grose, a professor of political science and public policy at USC. “The Bass campaign is saying it has changed for the better and she still needs more time. All the other candidates, from very different perspectives, are saying that it’s much worse than it was four years ago, and it’s time for new leadership.”

Bass told The Times she plans to win in November by demonstrating her administration’s progress in clearing homeless encampments and accelerating the building of affordable housing. She has also noted that data shows homicides in the city are at their lowest since 1966.

Challenging Bass from the left is Raman, who was elected in 2020 as the first DSA-backed L.A. City Council member. Pitching herself as the viable progressive in the race, Raman has accused Bass of not doing enough to make the city affordable and critiqued Bass’ spending on Inside Safe, her program to move unhoused people into stable housing. Although Raman presents herself as an outsider, she is a former Bass ally who has chaired the council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee for more than three years.

“She’s absolutely a part of the establishment,” Sadhwani said. “She’s been in City Hall longer than Karen Bass.”

As Raman tacked to the center during the campaign to appeal to more moderates and distanced herself from past calls to defund the police, she alienated some DSA members who complained they didn’t know what she stood for. Her three fellow DSA City Council members endorsed Bass.

Pratt is challenging Bass and the entire Democratic status quo.

A former star of “The Hills” who lost his home in the Palisades fire, he has surprised many political observers with his success assailing the city’s handling of the 2025 firestorms. He has called unhoused people drug-addled “zombies” and argued that L.A.’s housing crisis requires heavy-handed policing.

Pratt has raised vastly more campaign contributions than Bass and Raman. He has also generated national online buzz by waging an aggressive social media campaign and inspiring supporters to post a stream of viral AI election campaign ads.

Still, most political experts agree that Bass has the most viable path to victory, starting with a solid base of Black voters and a large share of Latino voters, plus support from powerful unions.

“Under normal circumstances, or at least under historic circumstances, that would be plenty to get her over the finish line,“ said Jim Newton, executive director of UCLA Blueprint magazine and a former political journalist for The Times. “What’s problematic for her is that there are people who are angry with her.”

A reset in California

Newsom has emerged in recent years as the national face of Democratic resistance to Trump, bolstering California’s status through a barrage of lawsuits and all-caps trolling against Trump.

Whatever candidate replaces Newsom, things are going to be different.

The emerging front-runner, Becerra, is a safe-bet career politician who has served as California attorney general and U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services. Asked recently why he had climbed in the polls, Bercerra said he thought voters wanted experience, not “glitz and sizzle.”

He has pledged to issue executive orders declaring California’s housing shortage a state of emergency and directing state agencies to maintain coverage for every Californian affected by federal or Medi-Cal cuts. He also touts his record, as the state’s attorney general, of suing Trump 122 times.

Steyer, a hedge-fund billionaire, calls himself “the most progressive candidate on the ballot.” He has pledged to build one million affordable homes, make the wealthy pay more taxes, and defend the environment — stances that are certain to unsettle Sacramento lobbyists and test the limits of California’s progressivism. But his past investments in coal plants and ICE prisons raise questions for some voters.

“His wealth is in one way his Achilles heel in the election,” Grose said. “Voters think of him as a billionaire more than progressive.”

Republicans seem to have rallied around Hilton — a British immigrant and former top strategist forconservative prime minister David Cameron — who has secured Trump’s backing and is campaigning on the message that California is a failed state in need of radical reform.

Hilton has pledged to cut government spending, make housing more affordable and bring gas prices down. But to achieve some of his goals he would scale back public services and environmental regulations and ramp up domestic production of oil and natural gas — strategies that many Californians might hesitate to get behind.

Whichever candidates make it to the runoff, the California Democratic Party will face questions about its strategy and vision. Less than two months ago, the party chair had urged Becerra to drop out of the race to make way for Swalwell.

“Clearly, the party itself has lost its way in California,” Sadhwani said. “I would not be surprised if the California Democratic Party looks for new leadership after this election.”

Can a Republican win?

Because the top two spots in each contest are up for grabs, elections experts warn that the vote results may not be known for days.

If Republicans make it to the runoff, they face steep odds of being elected in November in a state where Democratic registered voters outnumber Republicans by more than 20 percentage points.

Rob Stutzman, a GOP strategist, said neither Hilton nor Pratt was likely to win. But if they made the runoff they could have a huge impact on the political environment by advancing “grievance issues that really put up a spotlight on what I call the blue state incompetence.”

Of all the candidates, Mitchell said, Pratt as an outsider adept at Instagram and TikTok has the greatest opportunity to create a new surge electorate. But he’s also going after the hardest voters to get to turn out: disaffected voters who are upset at the system.

Pratt had more retweets and viral videos than any other candidate, Mitchell said. “But that doesn’t buy him the vote of the disaffected DoorDash driver who believes that the system is broken, and who hasn’t voted in the last five elections.”

If Republicans don’t make it past the primary, Mitchell said, Democrats would likely hit the reset button.

“Pratt running has kind of obfuscated the differences between Raman and Bass,” Mitchell said. “It’s like a WWE match versus a chess match. I think Raman versus Bass would be more of a strategic and nuanced election than Spencer Pratt trying to hit Karen Bass over the head with a chair.”

It’s election day in California’s 2026 primary, and you’re headed to the polls — until you realize you’re not sure you’re registered, or fear you might not make it to the vote center on time.

Here are some common election day concerns and challenges and how to end your Tuesday with an “I voted” sticker.

I forgot to register to vote

You can still register to vote on election day as a conditional voter through the same-day voter registration process.

Eligible citizens who need to register or re-register to vote within 14 days of an election can complete this process and vote at county elections offices, polling places or vote centers. To register you’ll need to provide a driver’s license, a state identification number or the last four digits of your Social Security number.

A complete list of county election office addresses can be found here.

Your submitted ballot will be processed and counted once the county elections office has completed the voter registration verification process.

If you’re unsure about your voter status, you can find your record here by providing some personal information including your date of birth and driver’s license number.

I don’t know where my polling place is

You can find your nearest polling place on the California secretary of state’s website here.

You can also use Los Angeles County’s voter center locator on the registrar-recorder/county clerk website here.

On election day, voting centers are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. across the state.

I can’t submit my mail-in ballot myself

You can have someone else submit your ballot.

Anyone can drop off your mailed ballot as long as you authorize them to do so and they do not get paid on a per-ballot basis, according to the secretary of state.

You and the person you’ve authorized to submit your mailed ballot must fill and sign the outside of the ballot envelope.

I forgot my check-in code for in-person voting

Los Angeles County election officials say you can check in at a vote center by scanning your “quick check-in code” — a number that verifies your voter registration.

Your code can be found on your mailed sample ballot and vote center postcard. Take either of those hard copies to the vote center.

If you forgot the hard copies, you can retrieve the code by verifying your voter registration here. You’ll need to input your last name, birth date, the house number of your residential address and ZIP Code. For assistance call, (800) 815-2666, Option 2.

I want to drop my ballot in a box but fear it’s too late

There are three ways you can submit your mailed ballot on election day:

• You can put it in a ballot drop box. The cutoff time for doing so is 8 p.m., which is also when the polls close on election day.
• Drop it off at a vote center, where the deadline is the same.
• Drop it off at a United States post office. Be sure to get a hand-stamped postmark from a postal employee. Mailed ballots must be postmarked on election day and received no later than seven days after election day.

I think I forgot to sign by mailed ballot envelope

If you failed to sign your vote-by-mail ballot return envelope, your vote will still count.

Your county elections official will notify you by mail, phone or email, according to the secretary of state. You can also be notified by way of the “Where’s My Ballot?” tracking tool if you have signed up for automatic notifications that will ping you if there are issues with your ballot.

Your county elections office will provide you with a form to fill out and return completed.

The form will be given to you two days prior to the day your county certifies the election, so be sure to fill it out and return it to your county elections office right away.

I’m going to be late getting to the polls; can I still vote?

In California, any voter who is in line at 8 p.m. when the polls are scheduled to close is allowed to vote, according to the secretary of state.

If there is a line when the polls close, a poll worker stands at the back of the line to let people who arrive after 8 p.m. know that the polls have closed.

Any voter who arrives after the polls have closed may not be allowed to vote, even if voters who were in line to vote before the polls closed are in the process of voting.

California voters are deeply divided over the trustworthiness of state elections heading into Tuesday’s primary, with most Democrats but less than half of Republicans expressing confidence in the electoral process, according to a new poll.

The polarized view follows a years-long campaign by President Trump and his Republican allies to question the legitimacy of American elections, especially in California and other blue states. It also follows robust efforts from liberal leaders, elections officials and voting rights experts to denounce Trump’s claims as baseless.

Overall, registered voters in the state — which skews heavily Democratic — expressed confidence in local election officials by a 2-to-1 margin, with 65% expressing confidence and 31% expressing a lack of confidence, according to the poll released Tuesday by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times.

However, those figures shift dramatically when sorted by political party, and even more when parsed by partisan leaning.

For example, 79% of Democratic voters expressed confidence in local officials running a secure and fair election, compared to 62% of independent voters and 42% of Republican voters, the poll found.

While 82% of voters who identified as strongly liberal expressed confidence, just 38% of voters who identified as strongly conservative did so.

A volunteer assists Melani Hurwitz at a polling location Monday at the Cal State Long Beach Walter Pyramid.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s clearly a partisan issue, and it is being promoted by the president and others who are his followers,” said Mark DiCamillo, the director of Berkeley IGS polls. “Strong conservatives and the Republicans are the least confident, and a lot of them are saying [they are] not at all confident. That’s a pretty extreme statement.”

Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, said he expected Republican confidence to be even lower given Trump’s decade of undermining trust in elections, especially in liberal, diverse states such as California. But he said neither Trump’s narrative nor public sentiment about election security — which generally shows voters are more confident “when their side wins” — reflects reality, which is that “our elections are administered well.”

“There’s very little evidence of manipulation or of fraud or even of incompetence,” Hasen said. “Anyone who looks objectively would see that there are numerous safeguards to ensure we have free and fair elections in California.”

Trump has long contended without evidence that voter fraud is pervasive among undocumented immigrants and in states, such as California, that use mail ballots, and blamed his 2020 loss to Joe Biden on such fraud despite experts rejecting the claim and Trump’s own allies and lawyers being unable to prove it.

A voter casts their vote inside the Westchester Family YMCA Annex on Monday.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has tried to implement strict new requirements for voter ID and proof of citizenship and to limit or bar mail-in voting, and called for greater federal or Republican Party control over state-run elections. In February, he said that “Republicans ought to nationalize the voting” in “at least 15 places” where they lose.

On Saturday, Trump falsely claimed that California doesn’t have any voting booths and only accepts mail ballots.

Democratic leaders, elections experts and voting rights advocates have all pushed back. They’ve backed their assurances that the state’s elections are safe with lawsuits to block Trump’s efforts to assert federal control. They also warn that his administration may try to intervene anyway, including by sending federal immigration agents to polling locations or intercepting or invalidating mailed ballots.

When Trump issued an executive order in March 2025 purporting to require voters to provide proof of citizenship, California sued, with a court blocking the policy while the litigation continues. When the Justice Department sued California Secretary of State Shirley Weber in September for refusing to hand over the state’s voter rolls, California won a dismissal in court. When Trump issued another executive order this March directing the U.S. Postal Service to take control of mail balloting, California sued again. That litigation is ongoing.

Last week Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill barring federal agents and other law enforcement from interfering with local and state elections officials or confiscating ballots, voter rolls or voting machines without a warrant. Newsom said California voters were experiencing “legitimate anxiety” over election integrity given the threats from the Trump administration and the recent actions of Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — a MAGA-backed Republican candidate for governor who recently seized hundreds of thousands of ballots as part of what he said was an investigation into potential fraud in last year’s election.

An election worker collects extracted vote by mail ballots to be tallied at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Ballot Processing Center in City of Industry.

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

Newsom said he expects Trump to interfere with the upcoming election as well because “every single thing that Donald Trump is saying only suggests that he will do more, not less, to intimidate and to impact the outcome of this election,” but that the state stands ready to respond.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta last week said that his office is preparing for “all different types of scenarios” involving federal interference, from ballots being seized to immigration agents showing up at polling locations.

“We are currently monitoring any potential risks or threats, and we’re ready for any possibility,” he said.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) last week blasted the U.S. Postal Service for issuing a proposed rule to implement Trump’s mail ballot changes, despite the ongoing litigation. In April, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) helped convene a pair of “shadow hearings” in California where fellow House Democrats and a panel of experts shot down Trump’s claims about widespread fraud and expressed confidence in state elections.

A Berkeley IGS Poll from a year ago found that California voters support requiring first-time voters to show ID to prove citizenship in order to register, and that most supported requiring a government ID every time a voter casts a ballot. However, another Berkeley IGS Poll from last month found that strong majorities of California voters believe American democracy is under attack or being “tested.”

Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office, said that overall confidence, “despite a sometimes volatile state and national narrative,” was “gratifying.”

“Election officials take connection to their community seriously. We recognize that our job is to facilitate their voting experience, and that voter participation is key to election security,” Logan said. “Regardless of party affiliation, our role as election officials focuses on the function and process of ensuring the voice of the electorate is heard and that compliance with the election laws adopted in our state is achieved.”

Jesse Salinas, president of the California Assn. of Clerks and Elections Officials and the registrar of voters in Yolo County, said local elections officials are “proud to be a steady source of trust at a consequential moment,” and stand ready to “open our doors to any voter who wants to see firsthand how our elections work and to answer any questions they may have.”

Times staff writer Iris Kwok contributed to this report.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Two days after failing to capitalize off numerous scoring opportunities against Texas State, USC battered the Bobcats early and often to remain alive in the College Station Regional.

Third baseman Kevin Takeuchi set the tone with a grand slam in the first inning as USC beat Texas State 15-4 Sunday afternoon before a crowd of 6,885 at Blue Bell Park

With the victory, the Trojans (45-16) advance to the regional final against Texas A&M on Sunday night. The Trojans must beat the Aggies to force a winner-take-all game Monday at a time to be determined.

The Trojans avenged the 5-4 loss they suffered against Texas State on Friday night in the regional opener. In that loss, USC stranded 13 runners, struck out 12 times and left men in scoring position in each of the first seven innings.

The Trojans have been on a tear ever since. They crushed Lamar 19-6 on Saturday and then battered Texas State. The Trojans wasted no time jumping on the Bobcats in the rematch.

Abbrie Covarrubias led off with a single. Texas State sophomore right-hander Cade Smith then hit Adrian Lopez with a pitch and walked Augie Lopez to load the bases. Takeuchi followed with his grand slam to center.

“It just helped me pitch with freedom,” USC freshman starter Diego Velazquez said of the grand slam. “A pitcher always feels good when you’re in the lead, especially with a grand slam. It just keeps everyone positive, so it definitely helped very much.”

Velazquez gave up two runs on three hits and three walks with three strikeouts in 3 1/3 innings. He was relieved by fellow freshman right-hander Gavin Lauridsen, who failed to retire a batter while giving up two runs on two hits and two walks. Freshman left-hander Sax Matson then pitched 3 ⅔ scoreless innings of relief to earn the victory.

Isaac Cadena made it 6-0 in the third with a two-run home run to right field. With one on and two outs in the fourth, Augie Lopez hit an RBI single in the fourth to give the Trojans a 7-0 lead. Reliever Alec Beversdorf then walked Takeuchi and hit Cadena to load the bases. Jack Basseer drew a walk to plate another run to give USC an 8-0 lead, prompting Texas State to make another call to the bullpen.

Texas State countered with four runs in the bottom of the fourth, highlighted by Coy DeFury’s two-run home run.

Lauridsen relieved Velazquez with one out in the fourth, but he couldn’t retire a batter. Brady Boles greeted Lauridsen with a single up the middle. After Jackson Cotton walked, Manny Salas cut USC’s lead to 8-3 with an RBI single through the right side.

Clayton Namken followed with a walk, prompting USC coach Andy Stankiewicz to call on Matson, who took over with the bases loaded.

“I felt good about Diego on the mound here being able to compete and give us quality innings, and he did that,” Stankiewicz said. “I think he’d probably say he wanted to give us a little bit more, but he gave us three quality innings.

“And then Sax Matson came in and did a fantastic job. He came in and made some big, big-time pitches to get us out. It could have been a little dicey there.”

Both teams were retired in order in the fifth, but USC’s offense got back on track with a run in the sixth, two in the seventh and four more in the eighth.

“I think it just shows the type of bond we have all together,” Velazquez said. “We’re all pulling the rope for each other. I think it just shows how strong we are and how we’re able to pull off miracles and stuff.”

The June 2026 election has been dominated by a down-to-the-wire governor’s race that has been filled with drama, scandal and much national attention.

A large group of Democrats are vying to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom in this very blue state. But the candidates have — until recently — struggled to generate wide excitement, and it’s far from clear who will win. On the Republican side, commentator Steve Hilton has benefited from the divided Democrats (and a Trump endorsement) to remain near the top of the pack in polls.

But the governor’s race is far from the only vital decision voters will make.

Los Angeles residents will vote for mayor in a race that is far from certain. And there are numerous state, county, local and judicial candidates to choose from.

Here is a breakdown:

When is the election?

The election is Tuesday, but early voting has already been already under way.

You can find your polling place here or by calling (800) 345-8683. All polling locations are open on election day from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Once it’s cast, you can track your ballot here.

(Photo illustration by Nicole Vas / Los Angeles Times; Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

What are the big statewide races?

Let’s start with the race for governor, of course. With Newsom term-limited, Democrats and Republicans are competing for California’s open gubernatorial seat in what could reshape the state’s political landscape. Democrats went in hoping for easy sailing, but a wide field and no superstar name has left the race something of a tossup, though Xavier Becerra has been rising in recent polls. On the Republican side, Hilton continues to poll strongly.

There is a possibility California could make history: The state has never has elected a woman as governor, and only once has a person of color held the office.

But there are many down-ballot statewide races as well,

(Photo illustration by Nicole Vas / Los Angeles Times; Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)

What are the big L.A. races?

The L.A. mayor’s race is grabbing all the attention. Polls show the leading candidates are Mayor Karen Bass, City Councilmember Nithya Raman and community activist and former reality TV personality Spencer Pratt. Those same polls show Bass has struggled in the aftermath of the 2025 firestorms, a big issue for Pratt. Another major topic is affordability, which Raman has taken up.

But there are several other competitive races plus ballot measures.

What are the big L.A. County races?

These contests don’t get the attention of the mayor’s and governor’s races, but L.A. County voters have a lot of choices to make.

What’s left?

California’s decision to redraw its congressional map to flip as many as five House seats to Democrats in November is poised to play a big and potentially decisive role in the nation’s broader, bare-knuckle fight for control of Congress.

Tuesday’s primary races — where the top two candidates will advance to November runoffs — won’t determine which Republicans are ousted in most cases, but they will provide an important first look at voter sentiment and bring the fall’s most crucial head-to-head contests into focus.

“There will be some real cues and signals about what to expect,” said Christian Grose, a redistricting scholar and political science professor at USC. “We’re going to know how strong the Democrats’ chances are going to be based on who advances.”

As one example, Grose pointed to the redrawn 22nd Congressional District in the Central Valley, where incumbent Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) is facing challenges from moderate Assemblymember Jasmeet Kaur Bains (D-Delano) and progressive college professor Randy Villegas.

Grose said Bains is probably a stronger challenger than Villegas in a district that’s still a reach for Democrats — even if “either one could probably beat Valadao if 2026 is a big Democratic wave.”

Grose will also be closely watching the race between incumbent Reps. Young Kim (R-Anaheim Hills) and Ken Calvert (R-Corona) in the redrawn Congressional District 40, which covers a swath of inland Orange County and portions of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, including parts of Kim’s and Calvert’s current districts.

The district race wasn’t designed to deliver Democrats a seat, but will produce “one of the first casualties for Republicans from the new map” — months before other expected ousters — if Kim and Calvert don’t both advance.

The national picture

The redistricting war was prompted by President Trump’s unprecedented pressuring of Republican-controlled states to redraw their maps mid-decade for partisan advantage in order to retain control of Congress, given his sinking approval ratings and a history of midterm voters punishing the president’s party.

After Texas Republicans heeded Trump’s call to redraw five districts in their party’s favor, California Democrats responded with Proposition 50, a ballot measure passed by voters in November to sideline the state’s independent redistricting committee and allow Democrats to redraw five congressional districts in their favor.

The war ratcheted up — with more Republican states suddenly considering map changes — after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in April that weakened the 1965 Voting Rights Act and its long-standing protections for majority-Black districts in the South.

Republicans have now acted to redraw congressional maps in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee, with varying degrees of success, while a battle in Utah could add a single additional Democratic seat there. Attempts in other states have failed, including by the GOP in South Carolina and Democrats in Virginia.

Experts say the net result from the flurry of redistricting will probably be a gain of a handful or more seats for Republicans — but in a year when Democrats are expected to make gains more broadly, leaving control of the House up for grabs. California’s new map is “a huge deal” precisely because that math is so close, said David Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst for the independent, nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

“Democrats are modest favorites for House control based on the political environment, but also because of California,” Wasserman said in an interview with The Times. “Picking up these four or five seats is a prerequisite to Democrats getting the majority.”

California seats in play

California has 52 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, by far the most of any state. With their new map, California Democrats are hoping to increase their 43 House seats to 48. That would leave just four seats represented by members of the GOP despite Republicans accounting for a quarter of the state electorate.

But that outcome isn’t guaranteed.

Paul Mitchell, a Democratic redistricting expert who devised California’s new map, said the reconfigured congressional districts had to create a pathway for new Democrats to win additional seats without undermining incumbent Democrats’ reelection. And the result is a map with three pretty safe pickups for Democrats, and two districts that are “100% on the table, ready for Democrats to win,” but will nonetheless “require shoe-leather and grit.”

The redrawn congressional district boundaries enacted by Proposition 50 promise to shake up at least three seats, experts said.

Congressional District 1: Held by the late Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) for 13 years until his death in January, the district is currently rural and conservative, stretching from the Sacramento outskirts through Redding to the Oregon border and California’s northeastern corner. Under the state’s new congressional district map, it loses some of its rural reaches and picks up liberal coastal communities, and favors a Democrat such as state Sen. Mike McGuire, who is one of the leading candidates.

Congressional District 3: The seat is currently held by Rep. Kevin Kiley (I-Rocklin) and stretches from the Sacramento suburbs through Lake Tahoe and south along the Nevada border. Under the new map, it holds more tightly to the Sacramento suburbs, favoring a Democrat.

The changes were enough to convince an incumbent Democrat, Rep. Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove), to leave his current district — Congressional District 6, which includes the city of Sacramento and the suburbs of Roseville and Rocklin in Placer County — and run in District 3 instead.

Meanwhile, Kiley did the reverse. He quit the Republican Party, became an independent and announced he would be leaving District 3 and running instead in District 6 — the one Bera is leaving — against a slate of new Democratic challengers.

Congressional District 41. The seat is now held by Calvert, a 17-term incumbent, and currently stretches from Corona to the Coachella Valley. The new map made the district more liberal, losing voters in Riverside County and gaining them in Los Angeles County, and Calvert decided to run instead in Kim’s redrawn but still Republican-leaning Congressional District 40 that is just to the west.

The two toughest flips for Democrats, experts said, are Congressional District 22, Valadao’s heavily Latino district in the Central Valley, followed by Congressional District 48 in San Diego and Riverside counties, where Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall) decided to retire rather than run for reelection.

Valadao is viewed as especially vulnerable because of his recent support for Medicaid cuts, but he has proved resilient in the past. Meanwhile, his two leading Democratic challengers, Bains and Villegas, are in a bitter fight, with Bains receiving Democratic establishment support and Villegas winning endorsements from prominent progressives.

In Issa’s district, moderate Republican San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond is running against several infighting Democrats, including San Diego Councilwoman Marni von Wilpert and former Obama labor official Ammar Campa-Najjar.

Not new, or over

Jeff Wice, a New York Law School professor who was involved in California redistricting efforts in 2010, said the state “has long played hardball politics on redistricting,” including when then-Rep. Phil Burton, a powerful San Francisco Democrat, bragged more than 40 years ago that the complex congressional boundaries he’d crafted for Democrats were his “contribution to modern art.”

But in five decades studying redistricting, Wice said he has never seen such “politically driven, partisan politics” as are occurring now across the nation, which he said have “no root in law, reason or fairness” — and are only likely to continue.

“This state-by-state war is far from over, and may continue all the way through 2030,” he said. “A lot of it depends on the outcome of this November’s election.”

Wasserman said the country has “entered an era of no-holds-barred redistricting,” and he also sees redistricting efforts continuing — including in California, where they would present a distinct threat to the state’s few remaining Republicans.

Michael Li, senior counsel in the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, said California is a “big part of the story” this election cycle, thanks to Proposition 50. “Democrats in California proved to be very determined and resourceful and managed to get that done, and right now California is the big offset to Republican gerrymandering around the country,” he said.

But what will come of it all — in California and across the country — is still to be determined.

“When you’re gerrymandering, you’re making a bet that you know what the politics of the future will look like, and it’s hard to predict,” he said. “It’s a high-risk, high-reward venture.”