voter

Ahead of the November elections, candidates in Arizona seized on one issue like never before: water.

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs ran ads touting her record, saying: “Those before me didn’t protect our water, so I tackled the problem.” She handily won reelection.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs share the stage during a Democratic rally in Phoenix.

(Rebecca Noble / Getty Images)

Atty. Gen. Kris Mayes also made water a central issue, saying in a campaign ad: “If it’s Arizona’s water, I’ll always fight to protect it.” She similarly trounced her Republican challenger.

The surge in water-focused campaigning reflects growing concerns among voters about the shrinking Colorado River and chronic overpumping of groundwater.

“Water is now among the very top issues,” said Christopher Kuzdas, the Environmental Defense Fund’s water program director in Arizona. “People increasingly relate water to their ability to make choices about their future — the opportunity to stay in a place and build a life.”

The subject has become top-of-mind for many as the desert state braces for more cuts to its allotment of Colorado River water. Arizona recently joined a lawsuit by Nevada against the Trump administration to challenge its plan for mandatory cutbacks, arguing it would harm the state’s economy.

In California, in contrast, water was less prominent in most political campaigns.

One exception was Republican gubernatorial contender Steve Hilton, who sought to woo voters with his calls for delivering more water to farms and cities. In the Central Valley, some of his campaign signs declared: “For Water & Jobs.”

But ultimately Hilton’s calls seemed to gain little traction. Democrat Xavier Becerra won by a large margin.

Some Arizona voters have become alarmed about how out-of-state companies and investors have set up large farms in the desert where they can pump unlimited groundwater from wells, with some exporting alfalfa overseas.

Both Hobbs and Mayes have targeted a giant Saudi-owned hay farm in western Arizona, and campaigned on their efforts to rein in its heavy water use.

The governor terminated the company’s leases of state land, a deal that had included below-market rates. And Mayes is suing the company, arguing it’s causing harm by pulling up excessive amounts of water on its remaining farmland.

An irrigation system sprays an alfalfa field in December 2025 near Vicksburg, Ariz. The Saudi-owned company Fondomonte Arizona LLC has been growing alfalfa on desert farmland.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

“It takes about 12 gallons of water to grow just one alfalfa plant. But there’s a Saudi-owned mega-farm in Arizona growing millions of them,” the attorney general said in one commercial. “That’s why I sued, just like I’ve sued other companies abusing Arizona’s water supply.”

The company, Fondomonte, also owns land in California. It recently said it is “committed to progressive, efficient agricultural practices,” and has invested in “the latest technology to conserve water” on its farms.

A survey earlier this year by the Center for the Future of Arizona confirmed that water has risen to the top of voters’ concerns, and that 69% do not believe the state will have enough over the long term to support people, agriculture and economic growth. The survey also found 78% want stronger protections for groundwater in rural areas — which Hobbs’ administration has begun to adopt.

Over the last four years, state officials have established three new regulated areas to limit pumping by farms where groundwater levels are dropping. Hobbs has tailored her message to indicate she isn’t anti-farming but will prioritize solutions where large farms are taking too much groundwater. In one ad, farmer Ed Curry endorsed Hobbs as a leader who is helping to address his area’s water problem.

In a post on the Environmental Defense Fund’s website, Kuzdas wrote that concerns about water have gone “from obscurity to the mainstream,” thanks in part to extensive journalism examining the subject. (He credited a 2019 Arizona Republic investigation that I wrote with then-colleague Rob O’Dell for helping to put the groundwater crisis on the agenda.)

He also credited residents who have organized and spoken out to demand change in areas where wells have run dry.

At the same time, the constant news coverage of the Colorado River’s low reservoirs over the last year has more people concerned about the state’s water future as climate change intensifies drought. By this summer, Kuzdas said he was seeing political ads on water almost every day.

He said unlike issues such as the economy or education, water tends to be a nonpartisan issue, and that makes him hopeful the state’s leaders can take bigger, more creative steps toward solutions.

“I do think that water has some traction and legs for a while as a top electoral issue,” he said, “because the challenges we face are so significant.”

A 2014 aerial view of the valley where the proposed Sites Reservoir is slated to be built near Maxwell, Calif.

(Risa Johnson / California Department of Water Resources)

More water news

California water regulators have cleared the way for construction of Sites Reservoir, the state’s first large reservoir in decades. I reported for The Times on the decision by the State Water Resources Control Board after a heated debate. Gov. Gavin Newsom and leaders of water agencies say the reservoir is vital to a modern California water system. Tribes say it will destroy sacred sites, and others argue the $7-billion project is too costly and will harm fish and the environment.

The decision followed another vote by the same board approving controversial changes to how the state controls water pumping in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the heart of the state water system.

My L.A. Times colleague Susanne Rust wrote about alarming new research on plastic pollution. A scientist skied into remote wilderness areas of the Sierra Nevada to take samples of freshly fallen snow. Everywhere she looked, she found microplastics.

A deckhand holds a dorado aboard the sportfishing boat Dana Pride in September.

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

More climate and environment news

The extremely warm ocean waters along the California coast, fueled by climate change and the strong El Niño, continue to set records and drive extraordinary shifts in fish and other marine life. Joshua Partlow writes in the Atlantic that El Niño, which has pushed the ocean temperature to 11 degrees higher than average, has brought entire tropical ecosystems north, including whale sharks, giant manta rays and reef fish.

The superheated ocean waters have been bringing dramatic transformations for months. Fedor Zarkhin reported for The Times that anglers on sportfishing boats have been catching tuna, mahi-mahi and wahoo, which aren’t usually found off Southern California. Last week, my colleague Corinne Purtill covered the news when a third olive ridley sea turtle laid its eggs in Southern California. The shifts in the ocean are also leaving victims, as thousands of emaciated seabirds have washed up dead on beaches.

Sen. Alan Armstrong of Oklahoma pushed for a provision in a permitting reform bill that would limit states’ power to block gas pipelines. As Nicholas Kusnetz and Lauren Dalban report for Inside Climate News, Armstrong could stand to gain financially.

As U.N. climate talks began in Turkey this week, Secretary-General António Guterres said in an interview with AP reporter Seth Borenstein that as global warming brings worsening heat waves, storms, floods and droughts, it’s time fossil fuel companies start paying taxes on their windfall profits to support countries grappling with the most severe effects.

“This is a moment of truths,” Guterres said. “We can no longer wait. … Everybody must do more, everybody must do more now.”

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in California and the West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

And catch the latest episode of the Boiling Point Podcast: This week hear film director Richard Ladkani talk about the documentary he has produced with Indigenous leader Juma Xipaia about her years of struggle to protect the forests and rivers of the Amazon.

For more news on water issues and climate change, follow Ian James @ianjames.bsky.social on Bluesky and @ByIanJames on X.

After President Trump’s unfounded claim that California’s slow vote count during the June primary indicated cheating by Democrats, state and local elections officials made changes to speed things up — in part to dispel any questions about this month’s crucial midterm elections.

The state of California allocated $29 million for new equipment, election staffing and voter awareness campaigns statewide, about $6 million of which went to Los Angeles County. The county, which opened a massive new ballot processing center in 2024, announced it would shift to around-the-clock ballot counting in the days after the Nov. 3 election and used some of its state funding to purchase a third mail ballot processing machine.

A full analysis of the impacts of those efforts statewide has not been completed, and ballot counting is still underway. But one week after the polls closed, officials in L.A. County and independent election observers say the efforts clearly paid off.

A statewide report on unprocessed ballots as of 5:41 p.m. Tuesday found that L.A. County had processed about 99% of nearly 3.2 million ballots cast in the county, with just 37,800 ballots still to process. That’s well ahead of where it was at the same point after other recent elections.

Kim Alexander, president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, which has for years tracked ballot processing, said that compared to L.A. County having processed 96.9% of ballots a week after the 2024 general election and just 73.3% of ballots a week after the 2022 general election. She said a similar 99.3% of ballots had been counted by the county a week after the June primary — but nearly a million fewer people voted in that election.

Alexander said L.A. County was also well ahead of the state average for ballots processed seven days after an election, which stood at 92.8% processed a week after the June primary, 84.2% processed a week after the 2024 general election, and 71.6% processed a week after the 2022 general election.

On Tuesday, L.A. County, the most populous county in the state, was outpacing other big counties, such as San Diego and Orange counties, which had both processed over 1 million ballots but had 185,000 and 116,660 left to count late Tuesday, respectively. It was also outpacing some of state’s smaller counties, such as Humboldt, which had counted more than 25,000 ballots but had nearly the same amount left to process.

L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan said the success of this election was a result of the state funding, which “came very late in the process,” but also years of support from the county — especially for the new $10 million, 144,000-square-feet processing facility.

Before the new facility was opened, the county processed ballots in multiple different locations. “And even on election day, we had to stop processing vote by mail ballots so that we could process the ballots coming in from the vote centers,” Logan said. “Now we have a space that is designed and — provided we have the resources to staff it — we can keep those operations going on simultaneously.”

The county’s purchase of a third mail sorting machine, Logan said, also helped workers to more quickly process the massive influx of ballot envelopes that voters drop off at vote centers or in drop boxes on election day.

Logan said the count this election also may have been quickened slightly by more voters returning their ballots earlier in the process and voting in person.

Alexander called the quickened count, during an election with high turnout and a long and complicated state ballot, “remarkable” — and all the more so given the tremendous amount of pressure the Trump administration was putting on L.A. County.

“I feel this vote count in L.A. and across the state is remarkable in that it appears to be going smoothly and in L.A. clearly very efficiently, but it’s also remarkable given all of the hurdles that we had to overcome to conduct this election,” Alexander said.

The day after California’s primary election in June, President Trump took to social media to allege — with zero evidence — that Democrats were “trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES.”

“Votes are all tied up. May not be in for weeks. Under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles,” Trump wrote. “Why the vote counting DELAY???”

While dismissing such claims as baseless and a threat to democracy, Gov. Gavin Newsom in May acknowledged that the longer it takes to count votes, the “more mis- and disinformation spreads.” That’s why, he said, state lawmakers passed legislation in 2025 to speed up the process.

“We must do all that we can to tabulate votes quickly and accurately,” Newsom said in a letter to elections officials. “Time is of the essence in preventing election lies from taking hold.”

Other states do count votes and call elections faster than California, though California officials say that is for several reasons.

California counts far more ballots than any other state, provides voters with more options for voting than other states, provides a grace period for counting ballots postmarked by election day but received in the days that follow, and provides opportunities for voters whose ballots have an issue — such a signature discrepancy — to cure them in the days after an election.

None of those explanations have convinced Trump, however. And his comments criticizing California were not just bluster.

Instead, they were part of a much larger, highly-coordinated effort by his administration to wrest control over voting processes in the state to institute stricter rules and new federal oversight for mail ballots, stricter requirements around voter ID and proof of citizenship and stricter rules for when ballots must arrive to county officials in order to be counted, Alexander said.

Federal courts, including the Supreme Court, shot down all of those efforts. The Supreme Court also rejected federal demands that California and L.A. County halt the counting of 20,000 ballots the Trump administration alleged could be from noncitizens — but not before Justice Department officials sent letters to county elections officials across the state, threatening them with criminal prosecution if they counted those ballots. Litigation was playing out right up until election day.

Logan said the judicial branch played a pivotal role in defending California’s elections from the Trump administration, and prevented an election disaster. He and other county officials said in court filings that, had they been forced to begin segregating the 20,000 flagged ballots in the midst of the election, “chaos” would have ensued.

Logan also said that the success of this election “is not guaranteed going forward,” and should be understood by state and county officials as further proof that investments in elections in L.A. County and across the state are not only beneficial but critical moving forward — particularly ahead of 2028, when the Trump administration can be expected to target California once more.

“We will continue to be a target of the administration,” he said.

California’s sky-high housing costs cast a dark shadow on its sunny disposition, sending some fleeing to more affordable climes.

Yet voters decisively rejected a state ballot measure that promised to make it easier and cheaper to build housing by changing the law often blamed for driving up costs: the California Environmental Quality Act. Proposition 45 even divided pro-housing groups.

So what gives? And where do we go from here?

Proposition 45 would have offered expedited environmental review and put a shot clock on legal challenges for projects defined as essential, including those involving housing, water, transportation and internet access. Supporters said it would cut costly delays, while opponents warned it would weaken environmental protections and public input.

Skeptics pointed out that state lawmakers already changed CEQA last year, exempting the lion’s share of urban infill housing from the law. They argued that means the proposition would have largely benefited low-density development on the outskirts of cities — sometimes labeled “sprawl.”

But supporters say the measure would also boost projects in cities left out of those exemptions. All types of housing, some say, are needed to dig the state out of its shortage.

For housing advocates, where they stood on the measure “ultimately depends on how you feel about exurban development” and whether the state should be making it easier to build it, said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at the UC Berkeley Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, who didn’t take a public position on the measure.

Jordan Grimes, legislative director for the Greenbelt Alliance, an environmental nonprofit that opposed the measure, is among those that see it as the wrong type of development.

According to Grimes, it increases greenhouse gas emissions as residents are forced to drive more; gobbles up natural areas and farmland to build; and requires outsize investment from taxpayers in the urban core to pay for the needed infrastructure.

“It’s definitely not climate friendly for sure,” he said. “But sprawl is also a pretty huge economic drag.”

The significant legislative changes enacted last year under Assembly Bill 130 are paying off, he said. He estimated some 18,000 units have since been permitted statewide.

“If you want to build a new apartment building in Los Angeles or Beverly Hills or Palo Alto or San Francisco, you can do that now,” he said, describing it as a “watershed moment” in the state’s urban housing production.

But many who laud the changes believe there’s more that can be done. For instance, infill projects over 20 acres don’t qualify for the CEQA exemption.

“So there’s still these massive projects where you know developers want to be able to do redevelopments of shopping malls and parking structures, but they just can’t,” said Paul Shafer, public policy manager for the nonprofit California Council for Affordable Housing, which backed the measure.

He added that there are certain rural areas that didn’t benefit from last year’s changes because projects there don’t fit the definition of infill housing.

“There’s a lot of hesitation around what greenfill looks like,” he said. “But when we’re in a 2.5-million-unit housing shortage, it really requires more than just that infill development to fill that gap.”

Shifting public opinion

A July poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 73% of likely voters would support Proposition 45. By October, voters were divided, with 50% opposed and 46% in favor, according to another survey by the nonpartisan think tank.

Experts pointed to a number of possibilities for voters’ decisions, including what some characterized as successful but potentially misleading messaging by the opposition and confusion over the complex measure. Others suggested voters rejected it based on its substance, deciding they didn’t want to fast-track some projects it covered.

Supporters raised several million dollars more than opponents, according to state campaign finance data. Yet Jason Elliott, a consultant who helped craft the measure, said proponents were outspent 2 to 1 on paid advertising, “making it hard to compete.”

What’s next

Some want to see state lawmakers take up parts of Proposition 45, including imposing timelines for review and litigation related to CEQA. The measure generally would have meant that environmental impact reports could take no more than 365 business days and lawsuits no more than 270 calendar days.

“Death by delay is a real strategy, particularly for affordable housing,” said Linda Mandolini, chief executive of Eden Housing, which develops and owns affordable housing.

For five years, she said, the nonprofit was embroiled in a series of lawsuits over a 130-unit project it’s developing in the eastern edge of the Bay Area. It’s starting construction this year, but she estimates the delays cost them $29 million.

Shafer, of California Council for Affordable Housing, said shot clocks would offer some certainty that the state’s current development process lacks. Some say it’s hard to secure financing and insurance when you don’t know how long it will take before you can break ground.

But Shafer is not optimistic that the Legislature will prioritize making such changes.

“I don’t think there’s going to be an appetite to see reforms in this area, certainly not as far-reaching as we saw in Prop. 45, for many years to come,” he said.

Not everyone sees the environmental law as the area to target.

UC Berkeley’s Elkind believes the first step to boost housing in already developed areas would be for state lawmakers to allow denser housing in communities where it’s restricted — such as permitting apartments in areas zoned for single-family homes.

“We’re really at that point where we’ve got to start kind of chainsawing through the thicket of local requirements that keep the infill housing we need from getting built,” he said. “And it’s not really about CEQA at this point.”

SACRAMENTO — Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Sacramento) has successfully defended a challenge from fellow Democrat Mai Vang to continue representing California’s 7th Congressional District.

The Associated Press declared Matsui the winner Tuesday afternoon over Vang, a Sacramento City Council member who entered the race pushing for a new generation of Democratic leadership.

Matsui, 82, was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2005, succeeding her late husband, Robert Matsui, who had served in Congress since 1979. She ran on her congressional experience and record of delivering federal funding for projects in the district. She lent her campaign more than $5 million this cycle.

“The votes have been counted and voters have spoken,” Matsui said in a statement. “I believe their mandate was clear: They want someone who shows up to work every day, seeks common ground, and who listens to their concerns. The voters of this new district chose the steady solutions I’ve delivered throughout my service as their representative. I promise to keep delivering for them.”

Vang, 41, is the daughter of Hmong refugees and previously served on the Sacramento City Unified School District Board of Education, where she helped establish the Sacramento Children’s Fund for young people affected by poverty, violence and trauma.

The solidly Democratic district encompasses Sacramento, Elk Grove, Galt, Lodi, Placerville and El Dorado.

Proposition 50’s redistricting added conservative voters in the Sierra foothills to the district. In an effort to win over those voters, Matsui attacked Vang for appearing on left-wing streamer Hasan Piker’s platform and fundraising with him.

Matsui previously served as one of eight members of former President Clinton’s transition board. She later served as deputy assistant to the president in the White House Office of Public Liaison.

Two of California’s congressional races remained too close to call Tuesday evening: In Northern California’s 4th District, Democratic challenger Eric Jones led incumbent Rep. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) by about 5 percentage points. In the 23rd District, which was considered to be a safe Republican seat, Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Big Bear Lake) narrowly led Democratic challenger Tessa Lynn Hodge by less than 2 percentage points.

Last week’s midterm elections made history across the country, and Los Angeles was no exception: Asian Americans will now hold all three citywide elective offices — mayor, city attorney and controller — for the first time.

Mayor-elect Nithya Raman came to the U.S. from India as a child. City Atty.-elect Marissa Roy’s mother also emigrated from India. And City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who is Filipino, won reelection to a second four-year term in June.

“This is a historic moment for the nation and certainly for our city and state, and for [Asian American and Pacific Islander] communities,” said Manjusha P. Kulkarni, executive director of the AAPI Equity Alliance, which advocates for resources and funding for the coalition of community organizations it represents. “We feel that the work that we’ve done across many decades has come to fruition in seeing progressive Asian American representation in our city.”

Kulkarni noted that Asian American voters have trended more progressive over the decades, after years of being pigeonholed as largely conservative. Raman and Roy were both endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, and Mejia was recommended by the leftist group.

Across the country, voters made history at the ballot box: California voted in its first Latino governor, Texas elected its first Latina governor and Georgia will have its first Black female governor. Michigan elected Abdul El-Sayed, who will become the first Muslim in the U.S. Senate.

The two largest U.S. cities will now be headed by South Asian Americans: New York City’s Zohran Mamdani, born to Indian parents, and Raman, who arrived from India to the U.S. at the age of 6. Raman became the first Asian American woman and the first South Asian elected to the City Council when she won her seat in 2020.

In her first address as mayor-elect last week, Raman acknowledged the significance of voters putting their faith in her at a time when the Trump administration has terrified immigrant communities with mass deportations.

“This city has opened its arms to people to come and build their dreams here, and the idea that Angelenos voted for an immigrant to be their next mayor at this moment in American history is so deeply moving to me,” she said.

Roy frequently invoked her mother’s immigrant story and her Indian heritage on the campaign trail. As a founding board member of the Asian Democrats of Los Angeles County, she had key Asian American backers, including California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and San Francisco City Atty. David Chiu.

Roy, whose campaign was infused with Bollywood needle drops on Instagram, is also the co-creator of a “Raman Rager” Bollywood dance mix for a South Asian-themed fundraiser that has since taken on a life of its own.

Roy said in an interview that her win in last week’s election represents a moment for the city’s broader immigrant community. When she won, she received Whatsapp messages from family members in India who were watching closely and was featured in an India Weekly article.

“I think this is really a significant moment, not just for the Asian American community, but for the immigrant community to have an immigrant mayor, to have a city attorney who is the daughter of an immigrant,” Roy said. “This is Los Angeles sending a message about who it is.”

Asians are the fastest growing population in the U.S., outpacing Black, Latino and white populations, according to the Pew Research Center. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders represent about 12% of the city’s population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

And they constitute more than 1 million eligible voters in L.A. County, according to an analysis of census data by Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California.

“Our communities have helped build Los Angeles, and it’s time our political leadership reflects the enormous role we play in shaping its future,” Dahni Tsuboi, chief executive of the organization, said in a statement.

On election night last week, Zahra Hajee, president of Asian Democrats of L.A. County, hopped from Roy’s election night party — which featured a henna station and a victorious Roy who flashed glittering bangles — to Raman’s, where Mejia gave an impassioned speech as a Raman win looked likely. After Raman took the lead by early Wednesday morning, Hajee, who is Pakistani American and Muslim, became emotional.

“To be able to see two South Asian women leaders — I didn’t think I’d see this in my lifetime,” Hajee said. “Being able to have those shared experiences with our next city attorney and next mayor is just such a surreal feeling and a connection I thought I’d never have.”

The group, which has about a thousand members, was among the first to endorse Roy’s campaign and supported Raman early on. The organization also has a working relationship with Mejia, who is a member of the Green Party. It also helped introduce Raman to key constituencies; she set up an event with small business owners in L.A.’s Little Bangladesh neighborhood near Koreatown, for example.

Nina Long, policy manager for AAPI Force, a progressive statewide coalition, said the candidates’ outreach reflected the nuances of the community, reaching groups including Chinese, Korean and Filipino voters.

“They did not treat AAPIs as a voter bloc to be taken for granted,” she said. “Each of the candidates was really savvy about the diversity of AAPI communities in Los Angeles.”

The dominance of Asian Americans in this election is also a display of the growing political influence of Asian American and Pacific Islander voters.

“For a very long time, the AAPI community was considered a quote unquote margin of victory in Democratic politics,” Hajee said. “We have shown our community is not just a margin of victory but a true base of voters.”

Mejia acknowledged the moment as a “huge feat” for progressive values being championed by Asian Americans.

“Representation is great, but it’s also showing that we have people running on great values centered on people, not special interests,” he said in an interview. “The fact that we are all AAPI is amazing, but the credit is what we stand for and what we believe in.”

He said his views were shaped by having parents who worked hard but were exposed to more conservative values and were expected to keep their heads down and not ask questions. But as life has become harder, more Asian Americans, especially young people, want better, he said.

“I believe what you’re seeing right now, this movement in politics, is that so many people are paying attention, especially those from immigrant communities,” he said.

There are currently three Asian Americans on the L.A. City Council, including Raman, who represents District 4. The other two are Ysabel Jurado of District 14 and John Lee of District 12.

Jurado became the first Filipina elected to the City Council when she won in 2024. In a statement, she said, seeing three Asian American leaders elected to citywide office felt deeply personal.

“It reflects generations of organizing by communities who fought to be heard and opened doors for those who would follow,” she said, adding that she looked forward to pushing for policies that would make living in L.A. more affordable. “We have an opportunity to show what greater representation can mean in people’s everyday lives.”

Times staff writers Noah Haggerty and Sonja Sharp contributed to this report.

A Northern California judge on Monday permanently barred Shasta County from implementing a voter-approved initiative that sought to dramatically reshape voting in the conservative stronghold.

Measure B, which was passed by 56% of voters in the June primary, sought to require hand-counted ballots, eliminate most mail-in voting and require residents to present government-issued photo identification to cast a ballot on election day.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber, the state’s top elections official, sued Shasta County days after the primary, arguing that Measure B violates state election laws. Shasta County Superior Court Judge Benjamin Hanna temporarily blocked the measure in August.

In his final ruling Monday, Hanna wrote that the provisions of Measure B “are wholly contrary to existing state law.”

“The regulation and administration of the electoral process is a matter of statewide concern, and Shasta County’s status as a charter county does not entitle it to enact invalid legislation simply because some in this community do not agree with the existing law,” the ruling continued.

Attorney Alexander Haberbush, who represented a group of Measure B supporters, did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment. But Haberbush told local television station KRCR that they are “reviewing every option, including an appeal.”

“Today’s ruling tells the voters of every charter county in California that they have no say over how their own elections are run. This ruling goes far further than any state law requires,” he told the station.

The battle over election integrity took hold in the mostly rural Shasta County in 2023. At the time, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors, fueled by President Trump’s unsubstantiated election fraud claims, stopped using Dominion voting machines and opted to hand-count ballots for the county’s more than 110,000 registered voters. The move quickly prompted a new state law that banned them from doing so.

The fight has continued amid Trump’s calls for the government to “nationalize” state-run elections and restrict voting by mail.

Weber in a statement Monday described Measure B as a “colossal waste of time and taxpayer funds” and an attempt to disenfranchise voters.

“Today’s decision affirms what was a forgone conclusion from the beginning,” she said. “As long as there are those willing to enact reckless, illegal, and poorly drafted laws, on behalf of Californians, we will see them in court.”

California voters have passed Proposition 38, authorizing the state to issue $8.4 billion in bonds to fund immunology and immunotherapy research aimed at curing and preventing certain chronic diseases.

The measure, which the Associated Press called on Monday evening, requires at least $4.2 billion of the funds to be used for immunology research on cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease. It also authorizes the state to enter into a partnership with an unnamed immunology and immunotherapy research institute selected by the California Department of Public Health, and to allocate half of the bond revenue to it.

Opponents argued that the measure would saddle taxpayers with decades of debt and that the requirements to qualify for grants created such a narrow pool of candidates that only one research institute in California, the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, currently meets the criteria to receive half the bond revenue. Gary K. Michelson, a wealthy philanthropist who wrote the proposition, co-founded the institute. He was also the proposition’s largest supporter, pouring $45 million into the campaign, according to state data.

Remaining funds will be used for competitive research grants that focus on immunology and immunotherapy. Those grants would be awarded by a council of representatives from University of California campuses, universities and nonprofit research institutions.

Supporters celebrated the passage on Monday saying in a press release that it “comes as federal research funding cuts have disrupted clinical trials and delayed medical discoveries nationwide.”

“This victory belongs to the patients and families who have spent years fighting devastating diseases and waiting for the next medical breakthrough,” Chris Tarver, a nurse and president of the American Nurses Association\California, said in a prepared statement.

Californians will take on an increased cost of $500 million to $600 million annually to repay the bond for an anticipated 20 years, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. Some or all of the cost could be offset if any funded research generates revenue. However, it’s difficult to predict how many, if any, research projects would lead to marketable treatments.

Times staff writer Hannah Fry contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Facing an expected impeachment resolution in Congress, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he’s eager to litigate the policy choices that he and President Trump have made in Iran and Venezuela.

“If you want to take issue with what we did in Epic Fury or Rough Rider or nabbing Nicolás Maduro, you’re taking issue with the troops and what they accomplished, which is historic,” Hegseth told reporters Monday.

He also announced that he would hold a news conference on Tuesday — his first in over 180 days — on the looming impeachment threat.

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie has pushed the impeachment resolution forward over the objections of House GOP leadership as momentum grows to hold Hegseth accountable for the Iran war, which many Republicans blame for the party’s midterm election wipeout.

Hegseth argued that starting the war with Iran was a “bold move” by Trump “and as the president points out so clearly — you can’t let crazy Islamists have a nuclear bomb.”

“The choice was don’t act and wish it away or take a bold move, which the president did with Midnight Hammer, which we’ve done with Epic Fury,” Hegseth said, referring to the names for the strike on Iranian nuclear facilities and the larger war.

Hegseth’s public defense of the war comes after voters last week overwhelmingly showed the unpopularity of the conflict.

According to The AP Voter Poll, a survey of more than 100,000 voters in the United States, about 6 in 10 said the U.S. made the “wrong decision” in taking military action against Iran, though the survey suggested the Iran war was not the top issue for most voters.

Only about one-third of voters said the war in Iran was “crucial” to shaping how they voted for Congress. That was well below the roughly half who said that about the cost of living or government corruption.

Toropin writes for the Associated Press.

DELANO, Calif. — While cutting men’s hair in his barbershop, Jorge Navarro has been hearing the same concerns over and over: The prices of gas, food and housing are going up. Immigration agents are lurking outside stores and schools. And President Trump and the Republicans are to blame.

Widespread dissatisfaction with the decisions being made in Washington, he said, helped Democrat Randy Villegas trounce Republican incumbent David Valadao to take his congressional seat in Tuesday’s election.

“We want a change,” Navarro said, speaking in Spanish. “We hope for a change.”

Villegas won in a region of the San Joaquin Valley that has been dominated by Republicans for two decades. The majority Latino district stretches from western Fresno to Bakersfield, an agricultural area with dairy farms, grapevines and vast orchards of almonds, pistachios and oranges.

That Valadao lost to Villegas, a community college professor who ran on a populist message, was not a major surprise, given the gains Democrats made nationwide. But Villegas’ margin of victory left both Republican and Democratic leaders and operatives stunned. The progressive challenger has maintained a lead of roughly 30 percentage points since election night. Although votes still are being counted, the Associated Press has declared Villegas the winner.

“It was remarkable,” said Christian Romo, chair of the Kern County Democratic Party. “I knew we would win but didn’t expect this margin, and I didn’t think that we would have the turnout we did.”

Jorge Navarro cuts Victor Salazar’s hair at Jorge’s Barber Shop in Delano. Navarro supported Randy Villegas in the congressional election.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

Even Paul Mitchell, the redistricting and election data consultant who drew the reconfigured map to favor Democrats, was surprised by Villegas’ performance.

“We drew the district to be three points more effective for Democrats, and I was off by a factor of 12,” he said.

Though Democrats had a registration advantage even before voters approved the new congressional lines via Proposition 50, Valadao continually frustrated the party by winning over enough independent voters in what historically has been a low-turnout district.

This year voters turned out in droves, especially young Latinos, the district’s largest voting group. Though mail-in ballots still are being processed, turnout may have doubled compared with the last midterm election in 2022.

Villegas, who will turn 32 this week, credits an army of volunteer canvassers, who prioritized reaching out to people who did not have a history of voting.

“So often we have this catch-22 cycle where young people, low-income communities, renters never vote because campaigns don’t talk to them, and campaigns don’t talk to them because they never vote,” he said.

He focused on the cost of living, healthcare and fighting back against moneyed interests in Washington, issues he said resonated with residents who so often feel ignored by those in power.

It’s not “about left versus right; it’s really us versus them,” Villegas said. “Working families in the Central Valley and across this country who’ve been left behind by politicians who care more about power than people and who care more about catering to corporations than our communities.”

His populist and anti-establishment message apparently appealed to voters who felt squeezed by fuel prices and the effect tariffs have had on farms in the area. Many of Villegas’ supporters also were energized by outrage over how Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been pursuing immigrants and terrorizing their community.

“People who used to support Trump don’t trust him anymore,” Navarro said in his Delano barbershop, adding that some of his relatives who previously backed Republicans switched sides to vote for Democrats.

Navarro, a 67-year-old Mexican-born U.S. citizen, said Valadao has done a poor job in office.

The sun sets over Highway 99 in Delano, a city in the congressional district where Central Valley voters ousted Republican Rep. David Valadao.

(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)

One of Valadao’s biggest vulnerabilities in the race was his vote in favor of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included steep cuts to Medicaid, the healthcare program for the poor, known in California as Medi-Cal. The district has the highest proportion of Medi-Cal recipients in the state, with 67% of residents enrolled as of last year, according to the California Health Care Foundation.

Many residents also are worried, Navarro said, about the squads of ICE agents that have been appearing in the community to detain people. He said even American citizens and other legal U.S. residents with documents are afraid of being hauled away to detention centers.

He said one ICE team was spotted last week outside a Target store, and another by a high school.

“The streets are sometimes very empty because people are afraid to go out,” Navarro said. Since the raids began, he said, business at his shop has dropped about 50%.

Victor Salazar, a 46-year-old farmworker who was getting a haircut, agreed that ICE agents are liable to seize anyone “if they see you look Hispanic.” Despite being an American citizen, he fears being detained and will not go out if immigration agents are in the area.

Salazar works picking grapes, but lately his hours have been cut back. He says Trump’s tariffs, which have led to retaliatory measures by Canada and other countries, are hurting the farming business.

On top of that, Salazar said, high food prices are a struggle.

“We go to the store and everything is expensive,” he said. “Because of political decisions, we are the ones paying.”

Neftali Trinidad sells flowers on a street corner in Delano.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

Along with the strong head winds the party faced nationally, Republicans blame the loss on Proposition 50, which rejiggered the district lines to pick up more Democratic voters in response to Trump-ordered GOP gerrymandering in Texas and elsewhere.

“It’s pretty bad,” said Clayton Campbell, chair of the Kern County Republican Party. “There’s so many reasons that it was a tough environment for Republicans this time around, and Valadao was one of the victims.”

Villegas’ victory appears to rebuff the past strategy by Democrats of putting up moderate candidates to challenge Valadao. Earlier this year, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee backed Jasmeet Bains, a moderate Assembly member and family doctor, over Villegas. She finished third in the primary.

Valadao was first elected to Congress in 2012 and reclaimed his seat in 2020 after losing in 2018. Because of redistricting, he served his last two terms in a different district. While in Congress, he has pushed for more water for large farms in the San Joaquin Valley, in line with Trump’s agenda.

But he also split from hard-line Republicans and Trump’s MAGA base with his support for providing a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who entered the country illegally. He was one of the last two House Republicans remaining in Congress who voted to impeach Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Valadao has not commented publicly since the election. Some voters said the Republican dairy farmer, who lives in Hanford, had a strong record of delivering for the community.

“You’d talk to him and he’d get down to it. … A lot of people like him,” said Arthur Rodriguez, a 75-year-old retiree who worked at an ice cream plant and supports Trump.

Arturo Vitela of Bakersfield stopped for tacos during a ride through Delano on his Harley-Davidson.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

But others said any Republican associated with Trump was an extremely hard sell here, especially with the state of the economy and how ICE has been targeting Latinos.

“The kids that were brought up from immigrant parents came out and voted, tipped the elections,” said Arturo Vitela, a 64-year-old retired medical lab technician from Bakersfield who was out riding his Harley-Davidson with a friend.

Alexa Lopez, a 23-year-old in Delano who works at a clothing store renting dresses and tuxedos, said she was glad to see that young voters turned out in large numbers. On election night, she texted with friends as they celebrated the sweeping Democratic victories in Congress.

Alexa Lopez, at JFW Formal Wear in Delano, says young voters turned out in high numbers.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

She said Trump’s anti-immigrant crackdown was a top concern and she wouldn’t vote for anyone perceived as linked to the president.

“The ICE activity has had everyone scared, scared to leave their homes,” Lopez said.

She said people in the area have been feeling both afraid and angry, “knowing that we can’t let it go on like this, and we have to do something about it.”

Lopez said her father, who previously supported Trump, called her days before the election and asked: “We shouldn’t vote Republican, right?”

James reported from Delano and Nixon from Sacramento.

WASHINGTON — As it became clear on election day that Republicans would lose the House of Representatives, House Homeland Security Committee Democrats posted a three-word message on social media to Markwayne Mullin, who leads the agency: “clear your calendar.”

The next day, Mullin posted a three-word message of his own: “Deportations will continue.”

After affordability and the Iran war, immigration was a defining issue in the midterm elections, and now that Democrats won majorities in the House and Senate, they plan to increase agency oversight and attempt to rein in the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement policies.

Come January, Democrats will control every House seat along the U.S.-Mexico border. But while they will have wider leeway to investigate alleged wrongdoings of the last two years, how much they can advance their immigration agenda will likely depend on how much Republicans will collaborate with them. Any advances would also require the approval of President Trump, who on Friday appointed Stephen Miller, the architect of many of his administration’s most stringent immigration policies, as his new chief of staff.

Democrats have already started outlining their goals for next year and preparing to staff up. Job listings posted last week seek investigators, lawyers and law clerks whose duties would include immigration.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), who is poised to lead the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said one of his major focus areas would be the Department of Homeland Security and abuses by immigration agents. Garcia specifically named former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her advisor Corey Lewandowski, saying they would face accountability and justice.

“When people are being kidnapped and detained, thrown to the ground, arms broken, people snatched up on their way to immigration appointments that we the government gave them, that’s inhumane, it’s wrong, and I think the American public — regardless of party — are sick of it,” Garcia said Wednesday at a news conference in Huntington Beach.

Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, sent a letter to Mullin the same day demanding that his department preserve all documents, including emails and contracts, and prepare to hand them over.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the investigations subcommittee of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, made a similar request. Blumenthal said he has written Homeland Security leaders more than a dozen times and received no records.

But that was when Republicans controlled the subcommittee. Last week, he wrote, “Please also note that failure to voluntarily produce the requested records and information by January 4, 2027, will leave the Subcommittee with no choice but to consider alternative measures to obtain compliance.”

Republicans, too, have begun preparing for the coming power shift. House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) told GOP committee chairs to identify possible targets of Democratic scrutiny and to consider how recent Supreme Court decisions will factor into oversight moving forward.

“They will use their oversight authorities to harass the President, his family, cabinet officials, and they will seek to destroy our allies,” Scalise said in a letter Thursday. “You will all be a key line of defense in this fight, and we must maximize our remaining days in power to prepare for what is coming.”

Planning by companies that operate immigrant detention facilities for Immigration and Customs Enforcement is already factoring in Democratic control of Congress. During a call with investors on Thursday, Lucibeth Mayberry, the chief executive of CoreCivic, was asked whether election results will affect future sales of privately run detention facilities to Homeland Security.

“We would urge the ICE administration to move quickly,” she said, adding that “there’s no reason to wait.”

Asked if the election results would affect ICE activity, Mayberry did not anticipate any immediate change, noting that ICE has already increased enforcement and expanded the number of detainees, currently around 69,000.

While immigration enforcement is unlikely to change, the administration signaled an openness to modifying some tactics. In a statement on social media the day after the election, Vice President JD Vance said he’s “open to the idea that we should change enforcement — by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance.”

Trump, speaking to reporters Friday in Florida, said that immigration is one Democratic-led initiative he could get behind.

But in tapping Miller as his chief of staff, Trump signals a desire to continue the aggressive tactics of the last two years, said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).

“Voters demand lower costs, an end to the chaos, and a government that works for them,” he wrote in a statement Friday. “I know Trump heard them, but sadly and predictably, he’s choosing to double down, handing the keys of the West Wing to the man most responsible for this Administration’s failures and most harmful policies.”

A majority of voters support a path to citizenship for longtime immigrants, banning immigration agents from wearing masks, mandating use of body cameras and limiting use of force, according to a poll by the Los Angeles-based analytics firm BSP Research of more than 10,000 midterm voters.

Most poll respondents also support redirecting billions of dollars appropriated by Congress for immigration enforcement to other government programs.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement, acknowledged Trump may not sign a comprehensive immigration reform bill. But she said Trump would be going against the will of American voters.

“Especially now that Stephen Miller has become the chief of staff, we will have to pass our comprehensive reforms on immigration and send it to Trump’s desk,” she said. “If he and Stephen Miller want to veto it and continue their cruel sweep, we can hold them accountable, not give them any money for it and show them what a real solution looks like.”

Blumenthal said the investigations subcommittee will focus not just on enforcement, but alleged corruption, such as the airplanes reportedly purchased at inflated prices from a political donor to Noem when she was Homeland Security secretary.

Blumenthal said he’s hopeful that a handful of Republican senators up for reelection in 2028 will work with Democrats on legislation that would require immigration agents to wear badges and identify themselves, bar them from wearing masks, and hold them to account when they kill people.

“We don’t have 60 Democratic votes,” he said, referring to the threshold needed to stop a filibuster, “but I’m hopeful Republicans will insist on decency and humanity.”

Chris Tausanovitch, a political science professor who studies Congress and the federal government, said it’s very unlikely Democrats can overcome a presidential veto, which requires two-thirds votes in both chambers.

That leaves the budget process as their main vehicle for change, Tausanovitch said. Trump could veto a budget passed through a simple majority, but he’d face the prospect of a government shutdown.

Similar budget negotiations have taken place in the second half of the second term of recent presidents, he said. The party that won the midterms usually got something they wanted by making a narrow change in the budget. But Trump is unlikely to give ground on immigration.

“Part of the problem is that, unlike before the Biden administration, when there were a lot of proposals to pair citizenship for undocumented people with border security in some sort of grand compromise, the Republicans have gotten a lot of what they wanted on immigration,” he said. “There’s not an opportunity for a bargain like that, because the enforcement part of the bargain is already done.”

Instead, Tausanovitch said, Democrats will probably focus their political capital on healthcare and affordability — issues where they have the greatest popularity and can create a winning message for 2028.

President Trump in his first major interview since his party lost control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections said he thinks his administration was too aggressive on deportations and that he believes he can work with Democrats in the new Congress on some kind of immigration deal.

Trump said his deportation policy was part of the reason Republicans lost, telling CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview that aired Sunday: “I think it might be too tough, yeah.”

He added that he thinks he could reach an agreement with the new Democratic majority. “The deal would be we would work something out. And I think it’s something — I think that’s something that’s actually doable,” he said in the interview.

Trump did not give specifics about what that deal would look like — and shortly after taping the interview Friday, Trump named the key architect of his hard-line immigration agenda, Stephen Miller, as his new chief of staff.

“Trump says his immigration crackdown went too far,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer scoffed on social media Sunday after the interview aired. “Apparently, his solution was to put the man responsible for it in charge of the White House. That’s not a course correction. That’s a promotion.”

The president’s immigration crackdown has been a prominent feature of his second term with major operations in Los Angeles and other cities sending arrests soaring. Two U.S. citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — were killed by federal officers during protests against the operations.

Democrats have said oversight of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security is a priority for the new Congress.

Trump said he believes that “killers” and “drug dealers” in the country illegally should be deported, but suggested he was open to the idea of a deal that would let others stay “if they’re good people working in a landscaping company, or working in a hotel, or doing something, right? And in some cases, paying taxes.”

Catalini writes for the Associated Press.

President Trump and his Department of Justice are taking a combative stance toward Democrats after their election victories in the midterms, signaling intense conflict to come as lawmakers prepare aggressive investigations into the executive branch next year over alleged corruption and other issues.

Trump declared on social media that investigative requests already made by Democrats are “extortion at the highest level, and they should be held accountable.” Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche echoed the Republican president and said criminal investigations of Democrats are possible.

“They are not allowed to just go around threatening existing members of the administration, to go around threatening companies, and that’s what President Trump is extremely worried about and he should be,” Blanche said as he and congressional Democrats appeared on the Sunday news shows to discuss the repercussions from last week’s elections.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), who is poised to chair the powerful House Oversight Committee in the next Congress, is preparing investigations into what he calls the “Trump crime family.” He said Democrats are not going to be intimidated.

“The days of us not fighting back are over,” Garcia said.

The early rhetoric sets up a showdown ahead that is likely to define Trump’s remaining two years in office and test the power of Congress to put a check on the White House.

About 7 in 10 voters nationally say Congress is not doing enough to provide checks and balances on the presidency, according to the AP Voter Poll, a survey of more than 100,000 midterm voters. Voters in several polls during the campaign identified corruption among their top issues.

Democrats have made clear that impeachment is an option.

If there are people who have been “shortchanging the American people, screwing over the American people, or stealing from the American people, then they need to be held accountable in a manner consistent with Congress’ role, constitutionally,” said Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

Some Democrats worried about overreach

But the investigative onslaught is also a source of tension for Democrats, with many warning that delivering on their central promise to voters — actions to lower the cost of living — must take precedence.

Some are concerned that their resounding wins Tuesday that have given them healthy majorities in the House and Senate will prove fleeting if conflict with Trump defines the agenda.

Sen.-elect Adam Hamilton, the first Democrat elected to the chamber from Kansas in 94 years, expressed skepticism about impeachment, saying his campaign was about trying to bring people together. He said he does not want the next two years to be spent “dividing our country further.”

“I’m not as interested in impeachment as setting up guardrails,” Hamilton said. Still, he said he understands that some investigations are necessary, and Democrats “have to look at what’s happened in Washington.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, said he wants to hold Trump accountable, but warned that there was only so much time.

“We cannot spend all of our time investigating Trump,” Sanders said. “We’ve got to stand up for working-class families, make a real difference in their lives.”

Jeffries casts doubt on working with Stephen Miller

Jeffries, who is on the cusp of becoming the nation’s first Black House speaker, was asked on election night about the prospects of working with Trump. He said he would be ready to work with Republicans “whenever and wherever possible to deliver real results.”

Jeffries on Sunday criticized Trump’s choice of longtime advisor Stephen Miller to succeed Susie Wiles as his chief of staff, calling him an “awful choice” and casting doubt on the prospect of working with him.

“There’s not going to be an opportunity, certainly, to work with Stephen Miller and what he represents. And we’re committed to forcefully pushing back against the extremism that they may try to continue to unleash on the American people,” he said.

Democrats across the ideological spectrum have been critical of the appointment of Miller, a primary force behind Trump’s mass deportation machine that became an issue in the midterm elections. Nationally, about 6 in 10 voters said the administration’s actions on immigration enforcement had “gone too far,” according to the AP Voter Poll.

Jeffries also said he supports a pending resolution from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Jeffries said Democrats would be discussing it when they return to the Capitol this week. “Hegseth has got to go,” he said.

“I’m a hard yes on the Hegseth resolution,” Jeffries said.

Hegseth in a video dismissed the impeachment push as “all about the politics of personal destruction.” He said it “won’t work with me.”

New senators express skepticism about Schumer

At least two new incoming Democratic senators expressed some reservations Sunday about Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who’s expected to be reelected to his post after leading his party back to the majority.

Hamilton said he’s told Schumer, who is currently running unopposed, that he means no disrespect but that the New Yorker is a polarizing figure in Kansas and Hamilton is aiming for someone less divisive.

“What I’d be looking for is a leader who can lead from the center, somebody who can bring Republicans and Democrats together,” Hamilton said. “It feels like it is a time for fresh and new ideas and somebody who can unite us instead of dividing us.”

Hamilton said he wants to get to know the other Democratic senators better before he makes any recommendations.

Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan, whom Schumer did not back in the Democratic primary, said he had been committed to Sen. Chris Van Hollen, but acknowledged that the Maryland Democrat does not appear to be running for the post.

El-Sayed said he and Schumer, who put $67 million into El-Sayed’s general election campaign, “figured out how to work together” after the primary.

“The question to me is, who wants to be the leader who’s going to make sure that we deliver on the mandate that we just got?” El-Sayed said.

Blanche was interviewed on “Fox News Sunday” and CNN’s “State of the Union.” Garcia also was on CNN, Jeffries spoke on ABC’s “This Week,” Hamilton and Sanders were on CNN and NBC, and El-Sayed appeared on ABC.

Catalini writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Republicans aren’t holding back.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis described last week’s elections as an “extinction-level event” for the GOP. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas likened it to a “Watergate-level repudiation.” Former Vice President Mike Pence called it a “reckoning.”

For all the apocalyptic talk emerging from a midterm that relegated Republicans to their thinnest ranks on Capitol Hill in decades, there’s little agreement on how the party should move forward.

A return to the bedrock fiscal and national security conservatism that defined Republicans under President Reagan risks alienating the more hard-line conservatives welcomed into the party under President Trump under the “Make America Great Again” banner.

But leaning even further into Trump’s coarse brand of politics could lead to more voter rejection.

“We have soul-searching to do,” Alex Latcham, the executive director of the Senate Leadership Fund, which spent $810 million to support Republicans, said in an interview. “We need to first understand and honestly admit why we just endured a wipeout of this magnitude. And then we have to regroup and agree to a path forward.”

Questions about Trump’s future role

As has been the case for the last decade, the central question is the role Trump will play in shaping the party’s future. His insistence on loyalty reached a zenith this year as he intervened in GOP primaries and pressed voters to make the elections a referendum on his second term. He held dozens of rallies in the final weeks of the campaign for candidates, most of whom lost their races.

Since Tuesday’s election, he’s refused to acknowledge any responsibility, placing blame on the candidates. His public events have focused on his pet projects in Washington, which have proved unpopular with voters. On Friday, he elevated Stephen Miller, the advisor behind some of his most contentious policies, to White House chief of staff.

In an interview, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, said that the election results were “shocking” but that Trump could still steer the conversation around issues such as immigration. The governor described the GOP’s current dynamic as a natural process for a party whose leader is deep into his second term.

“It just tells you that the American people, after 10 years, they’re pretty much tired of whoever’s in office,” Stitt said. “I think people want a little more stability. They want people to be nice to people, to say, ‘Hey, we’re all Americans.’”

Others were more blunt.

Longtime conservative commentator Tucker Carlson — for many years a Trump acolyte — said the midterms marked “the end of the Trump era.” John Sununu, a Republican who lost his bid for a Senate seat in New Hampshire, blamed Trump.

“It seems like he or his family is in on every transaction and deal that goes on in Washington,” Sununu told John Kasich, a Republican former governor of Ohio and onetime presidential candidate, on SiriusXM. “Those two things, I think, caused people to say, ‘You know, I just can’t vote for a Republican while he’s still in office.’”

Republican infighting likely to intensify

The GOP infighting is poised to intensify quickly.

When Republicans return to Capitol Hill this week, they’ll have to choose between Reps. Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio to lead the new minority in the House. They may weigh whether to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. There could also be tough votes on defense spending and keeping the federal government open after Dec. 11.

Already a leadership fight is brewing at the Republican National Committee, where there are early conversations about limiting Trump’s influence in picking the next chair. KC Crosbie, the co-chair, circulated a letter last week calling the midterms a “serious setback” and announcing plans to run for chair at the committee’s January meeting in Arizona.

Trump announced his support Friday for the party’s current chair, Joe Gruters.

That’s to say nothing of the emerging contest for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination. Vice President JD Vance, seen as a leading contender, will probably face a broad range of opponents if he enters the race. Stitt is among the Republicans calling for a “big open primary.”

“I don’t think we should crown anybody,” he said.

There will be pressure to revive the coalition of voters, particularly Latinos, who have lifted the party to success in previous elections but swung to Democrats on Tuesday. Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) said he thought Secretary of State Marco Rubio is best positioned to win back Latinos.

“The two main constituencies that Republicans have to quickly regain are white suburban voters and Hispanic voters,” Curbelo said in an interview. “Vance was out on the campaign trail this year, and it doesn’t appear that he was able to move the needle in terms of Hispanic voters.”

A representative for Vance didn’t comment on that characterization.

Broad election fallout

Still, the fallout for the GOP is broad, according to the AP Voter Poll, an expansive survey of about 80,000 voters in all 50 states.

Younger Republican voters who supported the Republican candidate in their House race were less likely to approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president, and more likely to say he worsened the economy with his policies.

About two-thirds of Republican voters under 30 said they approved of how Trump was handling the presidency, compared with about 9 in 10 Republican voters age 65 and older. About one-third of younger GOP voters said Trump had worsened the country’s economic conditions, compared with about 2 in 10 older Republican voters.

The war with Iran also appeared to divide Republican voters, with about 6 in 10 Republican voters under 45 saying the U.S. made the right decision in taking military action against Iran. That rose to about 8 in 10 among Republican voters who were 45 and older.

Young Republican voters were more likely to say U.S. support for Israel was “too strong.” Roughly half of Republican voters under 30 said the country’s backing of Israel was “too strong,” compared with about 1 in 10 voters 65 and older.

Despite rosy outlooks from top Republicans including Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) in the final weeks of the campaign, Republican strategists had long seen the country’s confidence in the party unraveling.

In late August, the Senate Leadership Fund convened a donor retreat in Laguna Beach, where Latcham told the group that Republicans had lost the confidence of voters on handling the cost of living and the economy, according to two Republican Senate campaign sources who attended the event. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting.

In defeat, Republicans are trying to take a broader view, knowing that it may take several election cycles before they one day return to power.

Rep. Christopher Smith was reelected to his 24th term last week and will soon be New Jersey’s only Republican in Congress. He took a long view on the party’s current struggles.

“The pendulum swings back and forth,” he told reporters. “These are cycles.”

Sloan and Beaumont write for the Associated Press. AP writers Steve Peoples, Kevin Freking and Linley Sanders contributed to this report.

The U.S. Justice Department moved Friday to voluntarily dismiss its lawsuit challenging the counting of 20,000 ballots in California, arguing the relief it sought is now impossible given Tuesday’s midterm election has concluded.

The Justice Department had sought a court order requiring state and Los Angeles County election officials to set aside the ballots, which it alleged could be from noncitizen voters. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter and a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had both rejected that request, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied a Trump administration appeal to those lower court rulings — with no noted dissents.

Carter had ruled that the government’s request was probably unconstitutional, given the Constitution gives states and Congress power over elections, not the executive, and probably ran afoul of federal law barring sweeping vetting of voter rolls in the immediate run-up to an election.

However, he had set a schedule moving forward for additional fact-finding in the case — including by appointing a special master to dig into the data the federal government was relying on to assert the 20,000 voters were potentially noncitizens.

In a filing before Carter on Friday, Assistant U.S. Atty. Julie Hamill in Los Angeles wrote that that court process was no longer necessary, as it would not provide the relief that the federal government was seeking by filing its lawsuit.

“In light of the Supreme Court’s denial, the United States is evaluating how to best ensure that American votes are protected, including by preventing vote dilution by noncitizens. In addition, by the time of this Court’s hearing on Nov. 13 in this matter, California will have already commingled the challenged ballots with lawful ones,” Hamill wrote. “There is then no way to get the challenged ballots segregated. As a result, the relief the United States sought and needed is no longer available — rendering voluntary dismissal necessary.”

Hamill wrote that the Trump administration had sought to “protect American voters and to prevent the irreparable harm of state and local election officials including illegally cast votes in the final vote tabulation,” but had “exhausted its appeals to obtain timely relief” by going to — and being denied by — the Supreme Court.

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli’s office in Los Angeles — where Hamill works — referred questions about the filing to the Justice Department.

Kiersten Pels, a Justice Department spokesperson, said the litigation at issue was “moot” but that the Trump administration “is not backing down” in its targeting of alleged noncitizen voters, including in a separate case in which it is still demanding that California “conduct proper list maintenance, including removing noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls — which will be crucial to ensure fair elections in the future.”

Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a defendant in the case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan, another defendant, said he was “pleased that the administration has accepted the clarity of the court findings” against it and ended its lawsuit.

“At each stage of this election, and in response to the Department of Justice, we have been clear that state and federal law sets well-defined standards for verifying and challenging voter eligibility,” Logan said. “Our commitment and focus remain on the fair, secure, accurate, and legal processes we are engaged in to complete and certify the election.”

California Atty. Gen Rob Bonta, in a statement, said that after losing in every court it tried, including the Supreme Court, “the Trump Administration has given up its latest unlawful effort to interfere with California’s elections and disenfranchise eligible voters.”

Bonta added: “Rest assured: California has and always will defend your fundamental right to vote.”

Tricia Webber, president of the California Assn. of Clerks and Election Officials, said state election officials “are very pleased” with the voluntary dismissal of the case — which she said “affirms that our elections are administered with the utmost integrity and care.”

“At the same time, we are under no illusions. We recognize that this issue is unlikely to go away permanently, and we remain fully prepared to continue defending California’s election administration against future challenges,” she said. “We will always stand ready to protect every eligible voter’s right to participate in a fair and secure election process.”

The administration’s filing — three days after President Trump’s party took a drubbing in the midterms — marks a sudden and unremarkable conclusion to an unprecedented court battle in the days leading up to the election, when the federal government sought permission from the courts to force state and local elections officials to set aside votes during an ongoing election.

Carter had rejected the administration’s request for immediate intervention in a blistering Oct. 28 ruling, calling its allegations about the ineligible voters “not credible” and warning that the proposed action could disenfranchise eligible voters and sow chaos in the ongoing midterm election.

“This request violates longstanding constitutional principles mandating that states have control over their elections,” Carter wrote. “If [the Trump administration’s] last-minute request for relief were granted, either party could create chaos for their own political purposes to disrupt the election process.”

While Justice Department officials characterized the relief it had requested from the court as “targeted and modest,” Carter had reached a sharply different conclusion — writing that the administration’s demands would “wreak havoc” on an ongoing election and “create a chilling effect on election workers and voters alike, and discount the votes of United States citizens.”

The reliability of the government’s list became a central issue in the litigation. Logan’s office said its review of about 200 flagged voters found that a substantial portion appeared to have been born in the United States, a finding Homeland Security officials disputed.

Election officials elsewhere in California also reported problems with the lists, including names of people who did not appear to live in their counties or to be registered voters. Justice Department officials sent letters to election officials across the state, demanding that they sequester flagged ballots and warning of potential criminal penalties if they failed to comply.

The three-judge 9th Circuit panel that heard the federal government’s appeal to Carter’s ruling — composed of two appointees of President Trump and one of President Biden — came to some of the same conclusions Carter did in a 2-1 ruling. One of the Trump appointees dissented, writing that he would have ruled for the administration.

Carter ordered an expedited hearing on the state’s and county’s motions to dismiss the case and the government’s motion for a preliminary injunction. He ordered all parties by Nov. 6 to submit witness lists, including experts, regarding the reliability of the list of voters and the methodology behind it. He ordered both sides to appear at the Nov. 13 hearing, with submitted witnesses prepared to take the stand.

Ending the litigation now will forestall that process to detail the origins of the administration’s list — which is still being used by federal prosecutors in California to target individual voters for criminal prosecution.

WASHINGTON — Democratic upsets in this year’s midterms, which stretched from the suburbs of Atlanta to rural Kansas, could reshape the electoral map that governs presidential politics — and, with it, the calculus for each party in the fight for the nation’s top office in 2028.

Democrats were already cautioning against overconfidence, discussing how to translate their midterm success into more lasting power and to draw back Tuesday’s voters in 2028.

For Republicans, the defeat set off something close to an existential crisis, with would-be contenders for the party’s presidential nomination openly debating what had gone wrong and how the party should regroup after voters rebuked President Trump’s agenda.

And members of both parties were taking stock of the deep reach Democrats demonstrated Tuesday, with Senate, House and state legislative seats flipped in red strongholds that have not been up for grabs in a presidential race in years.

The midterm results have “enlarged the competitive map” for 2028, said Alex Keyssar, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, who has written books about voting rights and the electoral college. States such as Texas and Georgia may no longer be considered long-safe GOP territory, he said, leaving Republicans with fewer states they can count on and more ground they will have to spend money to defend.

“The number of states that the Republicans can feel secure that they have has diminished,” he said. “And the flip side of that is that there are more states that the Democrats can compete in. And that’s a shift.”

Presidential hopefuls typically begin putting together exploratory committees soon after the midterms, announce their candidacies after the new year and begin fundraising by midyear. Potential candidates began putting down markers swiftly this week.

On Thursday, allies of Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) launched a fundraising committee for his potential candidacy. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is considering a run, commuted the death sentences of all California’s death row prisoners. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker this week released a road map with recommendations for the new Congress.

And party leaders in Washington were nodding to 2028 as they outlined broad plans for their House and Senate majorities.

“As we look to 2028 and beyond, we need to start identifying now, in 2027, to solidify our position in the states we won and build our party infrastructure in those areas,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told an audience Wednesday at the think tank Center for American Progress, “and continue to expand the map into new states.”

Meanwhile, Republican leaders moved swiftly to assert authority within their party with analyses and prescriptions after Tuesday’s battering. Vice President JD Vance, long seen as a potential Trump heir, on Wednesday rushed to blame the sweeping losses on the president’s war in Iran.

Sen. Ted Cruz, whose state of Texas saw a historic blue wave, faulted his party for ignoring the economic pain many voters face. And Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, one of the few states where Republicans held the line, called the midterms an “extinction level event for Republicans” that will last beyond 2028.

“Once you have the [midterm] election results, that’s when like the real literal politicking begins, and you have to move quick,” said Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist who worked for the National Republican Congressional Committee and the presidential campaigns of Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney.

For the GOP, Tuesday’s results will mean spending more money in places such as Texas that the party has traditionally counted on to get their candidates to 270 electoral votes, Keyssar said.

“When the map shifts, the strategies have to shift, and that includes the allocation of money,” he said.

For Democrats, the midterms demonstrated that the party should be “investing heavily in the coastal South,” said Keneshia Grant, a Howard University political scientist. The party needs to “recognize the moment and meet it,” she said, pointing to the unexpectedly close Senate races in Florida and Mississippi.

“If you’re the Democratic Party at the national level, you now have to ask yourself different questions about the calculus,” Grant said.

It is generally difficult to predict the next presidential election outcome based on the results of the preceding midterms, said Justin Grimmer, a political scientist at Stanford University.

“Right now there’s this incentive or dream of Democrats to think, like, ‘Well, what if this were 2028? Then it’s a landslide.’ And then Republicans are fearful that if this map were to carry forward, that they would get ransacked in ‘28,” Grimmer said.

But “it’s hard to know what the major issues are gonna be in 2028, who the candidates are, and what sort of world we’ll be in.”

‘No silver lining’

President Trump has so far declined to endorse a successor, saying it is “too early” to make the call, though he has praised both Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“We’ll see what happens,” Trump said Wednesday. “You can have maybe a lot of people running, maybe nobody is going to run. … I don’t know who is going to run.”

Trump cast doubt on whether Vance would eventually run. But Vance appeared to be signaling 2028 aspiration with a post that pinned the GOP defeats on the Iran conflict launched by Trump this year.

The scale of the midterm losses may be the most useful thing for Republicans moving toward 2028, Gorman argued.

“The silver lining is that there’s no silver lining,” Gorman said.

That’s because there is nothing to cling to. “It’s a bottoming-out,” he said, which frees the party to begin “rebuilding conversations.”

The larger danger for whoever leads the party next is assuming that Trump’s voters come with the nomination, he argued, saying the 2028 nominee will have to create their own voter coalition. The same applies to Democrats, Gorman said, pointing to Latino voters who swung toward Trump in 2024 and back toward Democrats this year.

Such groups of swing voters, said California Republican consultant Mike Madrid, care about economic and quality-of-life-issues, not culture-war and partisan issues.

Madrid said that if he were advising a 2028 presidential contender, he would tell them, “Quit talking about these differences, or at least set these differences in the construct of a class-based, top down model — not a right left model.”

Time to ‘deliver’

With Democrats set for a wide-open presidential primary with a large array of candidates, the sweeping success on Tuesday of the party’s populist platform could influence how 2028 contenders run their campaigns.

Democratic leaders in Congress have said they intend to make affordability a centerpiece of their legislative agenda as soon as they take control of both chambers next year. But any measure will still need Trump’s signature, setting up an early test of whether Democrats can hand voters tangible results before 2028 — or end up with a stack of vetoes to campaign on instead.

“We have won immense amounts of political power, and now it’s the most important time in which to deliver,” Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) told reporters Wednesday, “so we can keep that political power.”

Now that voters expect Democrats to clean up the nation’s problems in the next session, the party has to ensure that is “backed up by real results” — something anyone who is preparing a 2028 run will need to have in mind, strategist Rob Flaherty said at the Center for American Progress event Thursday.

“That is a huge thing that whoever we nominate has to be thinking about: quick delivery, quick change that people can substantively feel in their lives,” Flaherty said.

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who has not ruled out a presidential run, told reporters Thursday that some states may now be more “swing-ish” and that the Democrats will need to “take in” and analyze Tuesday’s data.

But, he said, voters’ top issues will remain the same.

“The candidates … that can answer those things authentically and well for the voter,” he said, are “going to be the more successful” ones.

The Times is tracking race results across California, Congress and Los Angeles County from the moment polls close until the secretary of state certifies results in early December.

Twenty-three million registered voters in the state received a ballot by mail this fall. The vote count starts once the polls close at 8 p.m. on Tuesday. However, winners may not be known on election night because of the state’s mail-in and conditional ballot process.

The vote counts on these pages update periodically as results are reported by the Associated Press and the county registrars. 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.

A Culver City ballot measure that would give 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in municipal and school board elections was trailing Thursday.

Ballots still were being counted, but Measure YV was losing, with 55% of voters in Culver City voting against it and 45% voting for it, according to early results posted by the Los Angeles County Registrar’s Office.

There were 7,875 votes against the measure and 6,487 for it as of Thursday — a margin of 1,388 votes.

Passage of Measure YV, which was championed by a group of high school students called Vote16 Culver City, would make the Westside city one of just a few municipalities nationwide, and among a handful in California, to expand voting rights to people younger than 18.

The measure proposes an amendment to the city charter that would allow youth voters to participate only in school board and city elections. They would not be able to vote in county, state or federal contests.

The teenage proponents spent weeks canvassing for the measure in Culver City, despite having no power to cast ballots for it.

This is the second time the youth-vote initiative has been on the ballot in Culver City, where a similar measure failed in 2022 by just 16 votes.

In 2024, a citizens’ initiative to lower the voting age failed to gather enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. In February, the City Council, at the request of Vote16 Culver City, voted to put the measure on the November ballot.

Supporters say that 16- and 17-year-olds who are old enough to work, drive and pay taxes are mature enough to have a say in local decisions that affect their schools, parks, public safety, transportation and other matters. In California, they already are allowed to preregister to vote so that on their 18th birthday, they become automatically eligible to cast a ballot.

“I feel really strongly that 16- and 17-year-olds are very capable to vote and make a calm, educated decision for a school board and city elections,” 16-year-old Arlo Meighan-Thiel, a leader for Vote16 Culver City, said last month. “It would be amazing for us, the people who go to school five days a week, to have a say who represents us on the school board.”

Opponents counter that 16- and 17-year-olds are too young to make reasoned electoral choices and easily could be manipulated by adults.

Ron Bassilian, who signed the opposition statement in the city’s voter guide, told The Times in a text message Thursday that the 2022 measure trailed significantly a few days after that year’s election, only to lose by a few votes in the end.

“We remain cautiously optimistic for now” that the measure will not pass, said Bassilian, president of Protect Culver City, a political action committee that has opposed local efforts to defund law enforcement and other causes.

Bassilian, a Republican, told The Times last month that progressive candidates and activists had “really been pushing their way into the high school” seeking to influence young people, and that he was concerned about high schools becoming places where political interests were fighting for access to teenagers.

Vote16 Culver City is a part of Vote16USA, a national organization that supports youth-led state and local campaigns to lower the voting age. Vote16USA is funded by the New York-based nonprofit Goodnation Foundation, according to its website.

In 2013, Takoma Park, Md., became the first city in the U.S. to lower its voting age to 16 for municipal elections. A few additional cities in Maryland, as well as cities in New Jersey and Vermont, allow people younger than 18 to cast ballots in some or all local elections.

Multiple efforts to pass a similar youth voting initiative in San Francisco have failed by a narrow margin in recent years.

In 2016, Berkeley became the first municipality in California to drop the voting age to 16 for school board elections, followed by its Alameda County neighbor Oakland in 2020. Voters in Albany, also in Alameda County, took it a step further in 2024 when they passed a measure to let 16- and 17-year-olds cast ballots in all municipal elections — though the county still is trying to figure out how to fully accommodate youth voters in citywide contests.

In those cities, 16- and 17-year-olds were able to vote for the first time in this year’s school board elections, according to the Alameda County elections office. Every eligible preregistered youth voter was set to receive a vote-by-mail ballot before the election.

Robert Martinez, a retired IT guy, stepped out of the Eagle Rock Rec Center polling place Tuesday afternoon and said he had just filled in a ballot bubble not for L.A. Mayor Karen Bass but for challenger Nithya Raman.

“You know, I’m not really thrilled about her, either,” Martinez said, but he told me what a lot of people have been telling me.

He wanted a change.

“I saw what happened these last four years,” Martinez said, citing the continuing homelessness epidemic and the broken-down condition of the city, “and I’m hoping something different goes on this time.”

He and thousands of others were ready to roll the dice, and meanwhile, Raman began to catch fire with young progressives who were voting for her rather than against Bass.

Some votes are still being tallied, but it’s now clear that Raman will be the next mayor of Los Angeles.

And that will be remarkable, and fun to watch, for a number of reasons.

She will take over despite every single one of her City Council colleagues having endorsed Bass, which is like the least popular kid in class getting elected school president.

She will take over despite having flip-flopped on several major issues, including Bass’ signature homelessness strategy, which Raman willingly implemented until just recently.

She will take over despite having unexpectedly rescinded her endorsement of Bass and eliciting whispers in and out of City Hall that she couldn’t be trusted.

She will take over despite having lukewarm support from the very organization through which she began her rise, the Democratic Socialists of America.

Raman is either a political savant or someone with really good timing, or maybe a little of both.

Everybody in L.A. knew that Bass was mortally wounded, and ripe for a takedown, but it was Raman who had the killer instinct, a trait that could serve her and the public well, putting everyone in city government on notice.

The mayor, having spent her entire adult life in public service, had made the worst decision of her career by leaving town in January 2025 despite conditions that led to the incineration of Pacific Palisades.

And she had made homelessness her marquee issue with scant progress to show despite throwing billions at the problem.

The mayor’s unfavorability rating was so epic, “undecided” voters were neck in neck with supporters of either Raman or Bass, and even the knuckleheaded former TV reality star Spencer Pratt looked like a solid contender in the primary.

But winning the election may turn out to be much easier than fixing City Hall.

Roads and sidewalks are falling apart. The Palisades rebuild is a maddeningly long work in progress. The homeless count tops 40,000. New housing takes forever. The cost of living swallows paychecks. The budget for just about everything is tight, and more of it will go to parks with the passing of the measure to set aside more for greenery. And the ‘28 Olympics are coming our way.

“You have all of these wicked problems that are difficult to solve in a perfect scenario, and [even more] in a governmental system as tangled and confused as L.A.,” Cal State Northridge political science professor Tom Hogen-Esch told The Times’ Jennie Jarvie.

Tangled and confused is an understatement. Homelessness does not get solved without the help of the county, which generally oversees mental health services and drug intervention and rehab.

On the bright side, it’s possible that L.A. will be able to wrangle more federal assistance now that the bloated carcass of President Trump’s political career is floating in the reflecting pool on the National Mall.

And Raman will have two key allies in City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who monitors and critiques City Hall’s many inefficiencies, and in Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who is a potential candidate for the new position of county executive.

“You’re right. It is daunting,” Horvath said of the countless challenges. “But I don’t think it was a secret to Nithya when she got into the race.”

Raman’s campaign, Horvath said, was about building power by acknowledging the exasperation of voters rather than building traditional coalitions in what has been an unresponsive political establishment.

“Whether or not you like each other, or formally agree or disagree, when people are able to accomplish change that the public is longing for, everybody wants to be a part of that win,” Horvath said.

Among City Hall’s problems has been a mummified tolerance of arthritic leadership and the rusted machinery of basic services. Raman, for better or worse, might be inclined to push-start the old jalopy, oil the gears and throw department heads overboard if they don’t deliver.

Early on as a council member, Raman told me she was sorting out the fragmented response to homelessness, having identified overlapping services, a lack of accountability, and broken lines of communication and coordination. In her district, homelessness has declined, and she has called out Bass for the high cost, slow pace and low returns of the mayor’s efforts.

“I know this about Raman,” Horvath said. “She is not afraid of a tough conversation.”

She’s definitely going to have them. As a YIMBY who favors greater housing density, there will be pushback in some neighborhoods. And her opposition to bans on homelessness in certain public areas (she prioritizes solving problems rather than relocating them), will test patience. As reflected in the relatively tight election, nearly half of voters are a bit wary about whether Raman would move the city’s policy and philosophy orientation too far to the left.

In San Francisco, according to USC political science professor and pollster Christian Grose, Mayor Daniel Lurie’s popularity has dipped a bit since he took office in 2024 and tackled issues similar to those in L.A., but it remains high. Grose said Lurie won immediate support and high marks among both moderates and progressives by cleaning streets and moving people indoors while also working on longer-term problem-solving.

Raman could conceivably try that formula, Grose said, and take advantage of what figures to be a honeymoon period with voters who are hungry for change. The question will be whether the honeymoon turns into a longer romance.

In Pico-Union, retired airline attendant and interpreter Aurora Corona has seen some neighborhood improvements of late. But she has long been unhappy overall with the lack of progress on homelessness, trash and infrastructure issues like broken street lights.

“It’s not working,” Corona said, telling me she visits other cities that are in better shape and wonders why L.A. can’t sort through its bureaucratic sclerosis. She doesn’t put all of that on the mayor, though, and said that after considering Raman, she voted for Bass even though she wants to see a shakeup.

“Whoever it is, I’d like to see some changes for the better,” Corona said.

In Studio City, Jon Manzanares and neighbors spent five years reporting encampments and myriad problems at an abandoned property. They tried city departments and got no help, and they tried Raman’s office repeatedly, with the same result.

In September, a fire at the abandoned property spread to an adjacent house, and finally, Raman and Bass both showed up and blamed each other.

“Between Bass and Raman, I wasn’t happy with either,” Manzanares said.

He wants a mayor who does a better job of getting homeless people whatever help they need, who respects the frustrations of taxpayers, and who demands more accountability regarding all the money thrown at various entrenched problems.

“I ended up voting with Raman,” Manzanares said. “I feel like Bass had her shot and didn’t do much with it.”

And now it’s Raman’s turn.

Good luck to her, and to nearly 4 million Angelenos hungry for change.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

Gov. Gavin Newsom told the California Supreme Court Thursday that he will commute the death sentences of all 548 state prisoners awaiting execution, reducing their punishments to life in prison without parole.

Newsom can commute about 40% of the death sentences with the stroke of a pen, but the rest will require the high court’s approval in order to be finalized.

The mass commutation would apply to inmates convicted of some of the most heinous acts in the state’s history. Newsom and other opponents of capital punishment have long argued that the process is costly, cruel and discriminatory, with death sentences disproportionately handed down to defendants of color.

“I take this action because I firmly believe that state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values, undermines the foundation of our legal system, and diminishes each of us,” Newsom wrote in a letter to Californians explaining his decision. “I know we cannot execute people in our imperfect legal system and remain true to our core values, first among them justice and human decency.”

The move comes in Newsom’s final months as governor and as he considers a run for president. Reducing the death sentences could help him in a primary with a Democratic base of like-minded liberal voters, but potentially hurt him in a general election with a national electorate that supports capital punishment.

The decision to officially spare the condemned inmates is largely symbolic in a state that has not executed a prisoner since 2006, though experts say it could save millions of dollars in court costs every year. Only 13 inmates have been killed since voters reinstated the death penalty in 1978. The state’s electorate reaffirmed its support a decade ago, voting down a ballot initiative that would have abolished capital punishment. Polls show its popularity has waned in the years since.

Despite his outspoken opposition to state-sanctioned executions, the governor has declined to use his political influence with voters to pursue a ballot measure that would amend the state Constitution to align with his position and officially end the death penalty. Without changing state law, criminals can continue to be sentenced to death in California.

“California voters have voted to keep the death penalty on the books and I respect that,” Newsom wrote in the letter to Californians. “But the constitution also gave every governor clemency authority, and that power exists for moments when law as applied cannot be squared with justice. For me, this is that moment.”

Newsom made national headlines two months after his inauguration in 2019 when he issued a temporary moratorium on executions and vowed to dismantle the death chamber at San Quentin State Prison, now called San Quentin Rehabilitation Center.

Calling the death penalty system a “failure,” Newsom said the punishment is also often reserved for poor people who cannot afford expensive legal representation, fails to deter crime and wastes taxpayer money.

Careful to avoid elevating a death penalty debate in the midterm elections, Newsom intentionally waited until after the general election on Tuesday to go a step further and launch the process of commuting all California death penalty sentences.

The decision is another bold signature Newsom move that sits well with his base of support in California and wealthy, white and college-educated national voters who would be crucial to his success in a Democratic presidential primary, said Mike Madrid, a Republican political consultant.

However, his liberal stance on government executions could also create a vulnerability for him if he advances in the 2028 presidential election as the party’s nominee.

“Gavin’s exactly right with that base Democratic voter on that position,” Madrid said. “One hundred percent. It makes him a champion.”

But more moderate blue-collar voters who helped the party flip Congress in the midterms, Madrid added, are “not in line with him on this.”

A poll conducted in August by the Pew Research Center found that about two-thirds of voters nationally favor the death penalty for people convicted or murder.

Those numbers could shift following the botched lethal injection of Christa Pike in Tennessee in September and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s now-scuttled plan to livestream the execution of Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Hasan by firing squad.

“Those events have really ripped the veneer off the death penalty in this country,” said attorney Natasha Minsker of the California Anti-Death Penalty Coalition. “The death penalty is an act of violence. It’s taking another life. I think that’s become clear to the entire country.”

The state spends more than $200 million a year to adjudicate automatic death penalty appeals and habeas corpus petitions for inmates who, in all likelihood, will never be executed, according to a 2025 report by the Habeas Corpus Resource Center.

The case of Clarence Ray Allen, the last inmate killed by lethal injection in California 20 years ago, is emblematic of how the law has failed, death penalty opponents say.

Allen was 76, making him the second-oldest person ever executed in the United States. He had been on death row for 23 years and his appeals cost the state more than $750,000. Many current condemned inmates are even older — some in their 80s and 90s — and their appeals even more drawn out and expensive.

“It’s just a broken system,” said Michael Hersek, former executive director of Habeas Corpus Resource Center and an ex-state public defender.

Taxpayers foot the bill for both the defense and the prosecution in post-conviction capital cases, as well as the administrative judicial costs associated with years of complicated appeals in state and federal court.

The existing appeal requirements were instituted to counter long-standing racial bias in capital sentencing. Attempts to reform and expedite the appeals process over the years have further gummed up the system.

“There is no indication that the situation has improved, and … [there are] data indicating that it has worsened,” Justice Leondra R. Kruger wrote for the California Supreme Court in 2024.

It’s estimated that death penalty appeals alone constitute about a quarter of the work of the California Supreme Court.

“It’s ludicrous, the amount of time, resources and energy put into these cases,” Hersek said.

Some victims’ families agree.

“The death penalty is this promise to people who are angry and broken that you’re somehow going to make them feel better by executing this person,” said Bethany Webb, whose sister Laura was among eight people killed in a mass shooting in Seal Beach in 2011.

Their mother was also shot and badly injured in the attack.

“It is brutalizing to family members, the whole system,” Webb said.

Others say Newsom’s latest move is a betrayal of the justice they were promised.

“It’s total disrespect for the victims. It’s a slap in the face,” said Sandy Friend, whose 8-year-old son Michael Lyons was abducted, raped and murdered in 1996.

She and other relatives stressed the unique brutality of many capital crimes, saying Newsom did not consider victims’ suffering when commuting their killers’ sentences.

The commutations would go to inmates such as Charles Ng, who was convicted of killing six men, three women and two infant boys in Northern California in 1984 and 1985. Also in line to benefit is Richard Allen Davis, who abducted and murdered 12-year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma in 1993, sparking a months-long search that gripped the nation. Another condemned inmate, Christopher Cheary, was convicted of murdering, raping and torturing his girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter, Sophia Acosta, in Tulare County.

Gov.-elect Xavier Becerra also opposes the death penalty. If state leaders wanted to resume executions, experts say it would take the better part of a decade and millions of dollars in new spending for the state to design and approve a workable protocol for lethal injections, rebuild a death chamber and secure the gray-market drugs necessary to perform executions.

Legal experts believe the end of the death penalty is likely inevitable in California, with or without Newsom’s involvement.

In 2024, the Office of the State Public Defender sued California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office, arguing “persistent and pervasive racial disparities infect California’s death penalty system.”

This spring, the California Supreme Court ordered Bonta’s California Department of Justice to show cause why it should not declare the death penalty unconstitutional — a move widely read as signaling the justices’ ultimate intent to end it.

“The statistical findings in the studies invoked by petitioners are extraordinarily disturbing,” Bonta wrote in his reply to the order in August. “Evidence of pervasive racial disparities in the administration of the death penalty could show that California’s capital punishment system gives rise to a constitutionally intolerable risk of arbitrariness.”

Around 60% of the inmates in line for commutations would require review and approval by the California Supreme Court before Newsom’s term ends in January. Those cases involve prisoners who had a felony conviction on their record prior to receiving a death sentence, or racked up additional crimes while awaiting execution.

The high court previously rejected 10 clemency cases without much clarification when Gov. Jerry Brown submitted them in 2018 months before he left office.

If approved by the California Supreme Court, the immediate effect could be relatively muted. The death chamber was taken down and all but a handful of the remaining condemned inmates were relocated from segregated housing in San Quentin to other facilities across the state after Newsom’s 2019 moratorium.

The decision to formally pause executions drew support from the late Pope Francis during Newsom’s 2024 trip to the Vatican, according to the governor’s retelling of a brief conversation between the two men.

In a subsequent interview, the governor said his Catholic background and the inequities in the criminal justice system influenced his refusal to sign off on executions. His father, the late William Newsom, also opposed the death penalty.

His father and grandfather were involved in the case of Pete Pianezzi, a friend who was wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder in the shooting and killing of a gambler and busboy in Los Angeles in 1937.

Pianezzi escaped the death penalty by a single vote and served 13 years in prison. He was later exonerated.

Even if it were possible to limit inequity and wrongful convictions in the criminal justice system, Newsom has said he would still be against the death penalty.

“The decision is among the most difficult in my career, not because I doubt its necessity for our state but because I know its announcement may surface excruciating memories for victims’ families,” Newsom wrote in the letter to Californians. “Today I am acting on my long and deeply held conviction that individually and collectively we are stronger as a society when we reject state-sanctioned killing.”

Nov. 3, 2026 10:52 AM PT

We’re tracking races across California, including elections for U.S. congressional districts that were recently redistricted. Results for governor, statewide ballot measures and officers such as the attorney general and insurance commissioner, as well as state Senate and Assembly contests are available on this page.

Initial results are expected shortly after the polls close at 8 p.m.

Races are called by the Associated Press, which surveys the numbers posted by local election officials and projects the winner using vote returns and other data. Landslide victories may be called within minutes of the polls closing. Or it can take several days for a winner to be known.

Every registered voter in the state receives a ballot by mail. Ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 have seven days to be delivered and counted. Results from provisional and conditional ballots also take longer and will be added to the tally once they are cleared.

The secretary of state will certify results in early December.

Governor

The election to determine California’s next governor has narrowed to two candidates: Xavier Becerra, a Democrat and veteran of California politics, and Steve Hilton, a Republican immigrant and ally of President Trump.

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Statewide races

Statewide races include lieutenant governor, insurance commissioner, state schools superintendent and controller. Incumbents including Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber are running for new terms.

In California, not all legislation is decided by lawmakers and the governor. This election, voters are tasked with evaluating a laundry list of 14 propositions as part of the state’s direct democracy process.

Some ballot measures have garnered national attention. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent in opposition to Proposition 40’s billionaire tax (and in support of the two counter measures, Propositions 41 and 42). Proposition 39 draws Californians into the national conversation about election integrity by asking voters to consider a strict voter ID requirement.

Propositions

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Board of Equalization

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U.S. House

We’re tracking election results for all of the state’s 52 U.S. House districts.

California’s congressional map was redrawn last year after the passage of Proposition 50. Several seats are expected to flip from red to blue because of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s redistricting effort. In some cases, districts were moved slightly and incumbents remain unchallenged. However, in one area, lines have been redrawn with no overlap at all with their current boundaries: Rep. Ken Calvert’s 41st District in the Inland Empire was eliminated and completely redrawn in Los Angeles County. Calvert is now challenging Republican incumbent Young Kim in the 40th District. Both are marked as incumbents on the table below.

Several races are competitive, according to the Cook Political Report’s House Ratings.

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State Senate

Half of the 40 seats in the California Senate are up for election. Republicans and independents who caucus with them would need to gain three seats to block a Democratic supermajority.

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State Assembly

All 80 seats in the California Assembly are up for election. Republicans and allied independents would need to gain seven seats to prevent Democrats from retaining a supermajority for a sixth consecutive term.

WASHINGTON — Corruption topped the list of concerns for voters who ousted Republicans and handed Democrats control of Congress in the midterm elections. Now, the newly empowered Democratic Party is putting the issue front and center as its leaders chart their course for investigations and policymaking.

Senior Democrats in both chambers of Congress have vowed to marshal the subpoena powers and larger investigative staffs that come with their soon-to-be majorities to probe what they say is the self-enrichment that President Donald Trump and people in his orbit have done at the public’s expense. The Republican president and his White House have long denied any wrongdoing.

House Democrats are preparing a vast oversight agenda to look at how Trump and his family have become wealthier since he returned to office — and Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who’s in line to become House speaker, has not ruled out trying to impeach Trump for a third time.

Months ago, Jeffries tasked the ranking Democrats on the Oversight and Judiciary committees, Rep. Robert Garcia of California and Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, with leading the effort, as Democrats work to link the costs of public corruption to the affordability concerns hitting Americans’ pocketbooks.

“Lawyer up,” Garcia posted on X as election results favoring Democrats began coming in on Tuesday night.

The Senate is expected to conduct similar investigations.

“Americans want us to clean up corruption in government,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who is poised to return as Senate majority leader next year. “No American should have to make tradeoffs at the supermarket while Trump is making inside trades on the stock market.”

Investigation targets could include ICE raids, Epstein and DOGE

Garcia, the top Democrat on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has outlined five priorities, including Trump family business dealings, the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation and Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. Rep. Jared Huffman of California, the ranking Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee, said he wants to dig into Trump’s White House ballroom and other construction projects, as well as the Trump family’s role in mineral deals.

With the House majority comes an infusion of congressional committee staff and resources, and the effort is expected to be sprawling, involving House committees with authority to conduct oversight on Cabinet officials and the agencies they lead.

In the Senate, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who is expected to become the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said his panel will want to look into Trump’s real estate projects around the nation’s capital and his crypto dealings with special envoy Steve Witkoff. Witkoff is a longtime ally who partnered with Trump on the president’s family cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial.

“The tentacles of corruption reach deep in this administration, and they have added costs to everyday Americans,” Blumenthal said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday. The senator added that he also wants hearings on ICE raids, the actions of the Department of Government Efficiency and Medicare plans he says are too restrictive and have cost some patients care.

Meanwhile, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, who is in line to become Senate Finance Committee chairman, ticked off several investigative targets that he describes as part of an “accountability” agenda, including banks that he contends ignored red flags about the financial dealings of Epstein and pharmaceutical companies that have profited from their ties to the Trump administration.

“When I am chair, they will be forced to answer to the Senate Finance Committee for their role in hurting the American people and enabling Trump’s corruption,” Wyden said in a statement Wednesday.

The issue of corruption resonated for voters, The AP Voter Poll shows

Many U.S. voters in Tuesday’s elections expressed deep concerns about government corruption and the state of democracy, according to The AP Voter Poll, which surveyed more than 100,000 voters nationwide.

While roughly 4 in 10 voters said the economy was the top issue facing the country, about 3 in 10 said that “the state of democracy” was the top issue. About half of U.S. voters said government corruption was “crucial” to their vote for Congress, and most of those voters supported the Democratic candidate in their local U.S. House race, while about one-third said they voted for the Republican.

About 8 in 10 voters who said “the state of democracy” was the top issue facing the country supported the Democrat, while about 2 in 10 supported the Republican.

Older voters, those age 65 or older, were more likely than voters under 65 to say “the state of democracy” was the most important issue facing the country. About 4 in 10 older voters pointed to this as the nation’s top problem, compared with about 3 in 10 who said the economy. That view was reversed with younger voters, who were more likely to call the economy the top issue.

That explains why anti-corruption played such a central role in Democratic campaigns this cycle, with candidates accusing their Republican opponents of looking out for themselves or their donors rather than a broader constituency. They embraced stock trading bans and bans on former members of Congress becoming lobbyists and promised to be part of an effort to root out corruption.

Democrats’ challenge: Focusing on corruption without ignoring cost-of-living issues

In his public comments since his party lost the elections, Trump has taken a conciliatory tone toward Democrats, conceding that they “did a good job” in their campaigns as he’s tried to skirt personal blame for the GOP’s midterm thrashing. That could change as investigations ramp up.

“As the president has said, he’s willing to work with anyone to continue delivering victories for hardworking Americans,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said Wednesday. “If Democrats choose to pursue sham investigations and radical left policies, they are choosing to work against the American people.”

Schumer insisted that congressional Democrats will be able to balance legislating on key issues, such as affordability, while launching investigations to target “rampant corruption.”

In a letter to Democratic lawmakers announcing his candidacy for House speaker, Jeffries said the “days of the House functioning like a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump administration are over.”

“The massive corruption the country has experienced from the Trump Cartel explains why very little is getting done to help everyday Americans,” Jeffries wrote as he promised to target price gouging and push for a stock trading ban for lawmakers. “That changes immediately.”

The challenge for Democrats will be to continue to tie corruption to the affordability issues that topped the list of concerns for voters.

The Congressional Integrity Project, an advocacy group initially created to combat Republican investigations into President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, is now shifting its focus to help Democratic lawmakers make that connection. In a memo, the group urged congressional Democrats to trace the Trump administration’s actions to people in and outside government, as well as corporations, who may be profiting from those moves.

“Corruption is not just corruption,” said the group’s senior adviser, Jack Miller. “It is costing taxpayers and costing Americans in their everyday lives.”

Some Democratic lawmakers are already stressing that congressional investigations have to be directly tied to affordability issues, while urging restraint.

Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said that Democrats need to earn voters’ trust, and while investigations are an important part of the Democratic agenda, “we can’t turn this into just a vengeance tour.”

“We have to be careful, cautious and judicious about that,” Welch said.

Kim and Jalonick write for the Associated Press. Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro and polling writer Linley Sanders contributed to this report.

Just after 11 on election night, Nithya Raman took the stage in a plum-colored dress outshined only by her smile.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had a narrow lead in early returns. But to Raman and her supporters who packed the plaza in front of the Greek Theatre, they had already won.

A blue deluge had swept across the U.S. to clear out the MAGA status quo that has gaslit Americans for too long. The clueless Republican ruling class’ only defense was that the liberal alternative was worse than the crap President Trump fed Americans while calling it apple pie.

Los Angeles is as blue as the Pacific, yet the same anti-establishment wave, fueled by voters frustrated with the high cost of living and a mayor who face-planted during crisis after crisis, had crashed hard here. Raman, a City Council member, was standing on its crest.

A campaign that started on the last possible day, dismissed by rivals as amateurish and given little chance to succeed against an incumbent with decades of experience and the support of nearly the entire L.A. Democratic establishment, was poised to win. Raman, 45, was expected to pull ahead as more ballots from younger, left-leaning Angelenos were counted.

Standing before Raman was the coalition that made her unlikely rise happen — one that, despite the obvious differences between L.A. and heartland politics, paralleled the one that made the Democratic Party’s takeover of the House and Senate possible.

There were the democratic socialists, who embarrassed mainline Democrats in L.A. once again with a blockbuster night for candidates endorsed by the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter. In addition to Raman’s strong initial showing, Marissa Roy was ahead in the city attorney’s race, and Angela Gonzales-Torres had a substantial lead in her Eastside congressional matchup against incumbent Jimmy Gomez, a scion of the fabled Eastside Latino machine.

There were young people like Arthur Johnson, a 23-year-old Cal State Northridge student who waited in a long line on campus earlier that day to vote in person, “because I wanted that old-school feeling.” Johnson told me that many of his friends were voting for the first time “because they hate Trump, they hate Karen, and they wanted change, however it came.”

There were Latinos like Eloisa Galindo, 45, of East Los Angeles, who showed me a cellphone video of her hanging a handmade pro-Raman manta — a bedsheet sign — on a freeway bridge over the weekend. In Texas and California, Latino voters turned out in huge numbers, helping to make history in each state by electing one of their own as governor for the first time. Galindo and her fellow members of Eastside Padres Contra la Privatización, a group created to help residents affected by the Lineage warehouse fire, felt that Raman represented a new, better way.

“She paid attention to us, and the mayor didn’t,” Galindo said in Spanish. “We felt discriminated against, we felt forgotten — but Nithya did none of that.”

Galindo and her crew were far in the back but cheered so loud that it practically echoed across Griffith Park. The Four Tops’ ”Reach Out (I’ll Be There)” faded out, and Raman beamed.

L.A. mayoral candidate Nithya Raman dances with her campaign chair, Kathleen Murray, at her election night party on the patio in front of the Greek Theater.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“Do you love Los Angeles?” she exclaimed. “Are you ready for an L.A. that loves you back? Look at the space around you. Look at what we built together.”

Her rousing speech surveyed the course of L.A. history, from its striving immigrants to Cecil B. DeMille to LGBTQ+ history to the creation of San Pedro’s harbor. She tied her campaign to an election year in which voters across America “demanded change” because they were “angry about a broken status quo, and the politicians who failed them over and over again.”

Angelenos, she said, have become convinced “that this is the best that we can do. Our City Hall became a place where we became so used to saying, ‘No,’ we forgot how to say ‘Yes.’”

She decried the “cynicism that started to take over this city, that started to make us believe that L.A.’s problems weren’t just bad, but they were permanent. That L.A.’s best days were behind us.”

Raman praised her supporters for believing in “hope” — for a better city, a better future, but also hope that even the most entrenched longtimer could be brought down by people who were just tired of being told their concerns didn’t matter.

She spoke for about half an hour and apologized for going on so long in the chilly weather — but no forgiveness was needed on a night like this. Supporters cried tears of joy and hugged one another, sharing political news of the city and also the country, as the energy in the crowd further amped up seemingly every half-hour. James Talarico won in Texas! Dr. Abdul El-Sayed took it in Michigan? Mississippi was in play?!

Was the blue wave real? Could it hold against an angry, vengeful Trump? On this night, at least, it would.

“We have shown Los Angeles” that it’s “a city that is worth fighting for every single day of our lives,” Raman said.

She ended her speech by inviting her Indian American family to the stage — parents, brother, husband and twin 10-year-old children. Faces of a new, more progressive America, now likely the First Family of L.A. They descended the stairs together, and then a crush of Raman supporters stopped her for photos and congratulations.

Another Motown classic — “Dancing in the Streets” — blared, a song of freedom and boogie and promise from a previous generation.

Early in Raman’s speech, she asked the crowd for a favor: “Will you all get on the dance floor with me?” Many obliged, joining their leader to shimmy to Selena and other SoCal favorites.

Tomorrow would come the hard part: What to do next. But on this night, Raman and blue America would dance.

A few hours later, with more votes counted, she was ahead of Bass.