Good morning. It’s Tuesday, June 9.
- Steve Hilton is projected to advance in governor’s race.
- Election fraud fever grips GOP after Spencer Pratt loss.
- And dreams of a new utopia take hold in Sonoma County.
Election 2026
1.
Steve Hilton, a British-born Republican, advanced to the general election for California governor, Decision Desk HQ projected on Monday, extinguishing the last hopes of progressive billionaire Tom Steyer for a comeback fueled by late ballots. As of Monday night, Democrat Xavier Becerra had 27.7% of the vote, Hilton had 25.1%, and Steyer 22.4%. With a partisan showdown now set, the burden will be on Hilton to win over substantial numbers of moderate Democrats needed to overcome his disadvantage in a deeply blue state. Bloomberg | The Hill
2.
President Trump’s portrayal of Spencer Pratt’s mayoral loss in Los Angeles as a Democratic scam is a rehearsal for how he might greet disappointing results for his party during the November midterm elections, the New York Times reported. The House majority rests on a thin margin, and California has a chance to flip a number of Republican-held seats. “In other words,” the Times wrote, “the races that may decide control of Congress could be counted in precisely the slow way Mr. Trump reflexively calls fraud.”
3.
It wasn’t just radicals and attention-seekers who joined Donald Trump in alleging fraud in California’s vote count. The claims have also came from producers for major radio shows, Fox News figures, right-leaning celebrities, sports pundits, corporate executives, Christian intellectuals, U.S. senators, and the speaker of the House. Jonathan Chait writes in the Atlantic: “The most important outcome of the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral primary may be that the Republican Party no longer accepts the legitimacy of election defeats.”
4.
Other developments:
- Tax proposals aimed at the wealthy did not fare well. San Diego voters rejected a tax on second homes. And in San Francisco, the latest vote tally showed the failure of a tax increase on highly paid corporate executives. The defeat was seen as a sign of the city’s more moderate tack in recent years. Mission Local | S.F. Chronicle
- The Hollywood Reporter assessed Spencer Pratt’s failed bid: “Pratt should be acknowledged as perhaps one of the most consequential local political figures in recent memory. His improbable campaign … has both ushered in America’s era of the influencer candidate and reframed the narrative around the city’s key intractable social issue: homelessness.”
Correction
Monday’s newsletter mischaracterized the historic nature of a potential Xavier Becerra governorship. He would be California’s first elected Latino governor, not its first Latino governor.
Northern California
5.
“I can’t see a negative aspect of this project in any way.”
In 2024, a young software engineer named Devon Zuegel arrived in Sonoma County with renderings of a village that she wanted to build along a bend of the Russian River. Esmeralda, as she named it, would be a West Coast version of Chautauqua, a hamlet in western New York “where kids run free and people gather for intellectual talks, music and plays.” As officials prepare to formally consider the plan, the San Francisco Chronicle spoke to locals energized by the dream of a new utopia.
6.
When the Pentagon declared Anthropic a “supply chain risk” in February, many assumed the artificial intelligence company would be severely harmed. Instead, its technology has only become more deeply embedded in the systems used by Pentagon contractors and the U.S. military. Just five years old, Anthropic appears stronger than ever, changing how industries function, lives are lived, and wars are fought, wrote the author Zachary Karabell in the Washington Post:“It is not hyperbole to say that Anthropic may be the single most powerful company in the world.”
- OpenAI filed for an initial public offering, following rival Anthropic and setting up a test of investor appetite for the AI boom. Wall Street Journal
7.
A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration’s move to impose $100,000 fees on H-1B visas, used amply in Silicon Valley to recruit tech talent, saying it amounts to an unlawful tax on companies. In a 42-page decision, which came in a lawsuit spearheaded by California, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin said the administration appeared to have stepped on Congress’s “exclusive power” to levy taxes. A Trump official denounced the ruling as “blatant judicial activism.” Courthouse News | Reuters
8.
Construction is now underway on what will be Fresno’s fifth Amazon warehouse, and some are wondering when enough is enough. Local leaders have welcomed the e-commerce facilities as a path to job growth, while critics lament the pollution, trucks, and reshaped landscapes that they entail. As Amazon embraces robotics, with the ultimate goal to automate 75% of its operations, many also worry that the jobs could prove to be a false promise. Fresno Bee
Southern California
9.
Before President Trump’s immigration raids in Los Angeles’ fashion district last summer, stores owned by Joel Galvez and his wife, Leanor Torres, hummed with girls and mothers buying dresses for proms and quinceañeras. Business plummeted and never recovered. The couple now struggles to make rent. “Six months without sales,” said Torres. “It drains you.” The uncertainty threatens not only to unravel years of sacrifice but the couple itself. Leonor sometimes goes to her mother’s to avoid fights about money. “Sometimes when I’m alone, I cry,” Galvez said. L.A. Times
10.
In May, Orange County leaders announced that homelessness had dropped by 13% since 2024. Asked what accounted for the change, they weren’t sure. But the Voice of OC suggested where to look for an answer: the county jails. An analysis found that the incarceration rate of homeless people surged 40% since 2022 after a Supreme Court decision made it easier to lock people up for sleeping on the street. City and county leaders embraced the ruling with zeal, beefing up anti-camping laws and dispatching police to sweep encampments.
11.
During a party for his birthday on March 9, 2024, Justin Jennings drank two quarts of Jack Daniel’s, grabbed a rifle, and started firing it inside his Laguna Niguel home. When a sheriff’s department helicopter responded, Jennings fired at the aircraft from his second-story window. In court for sentencing on Monday, a chastened Jennings, 41, told the judge, “I have a serious alcohol abuse problem.” The judge sentenced him to nine years in federal prison. L.A. Times | O.C. Register
12.
At Dataland in Los Angeles, arguably the most ambitious museum for artificial intelligence art to date, psychedelic images from Brazil’s Amazon slide down a gallery wall and across the floor. Patterns from butterfly wings — green, yellow, and red — splash across the room. Other pictures drift through the air in 3-D. The hyperkinetic work of art is powered by 84 synchronized projectors and data from a vast ecological archive. The New York Times got an advance tour of Dataland, scheduled to open June 2, and came back with some wild visuals.
- See video from the exhibit.
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