The Brief

Most of the United States' fruits and nuts, like avocados and almonds, come from California. But scientists say human-caused climate change means more extreme heat and intensifying periods of drought for the state. That has led some farmers to seek out less-thirsty crops — like agave.

The succulent has long been grown in Mexico and is the key ingredient in making tequila and mezcal. Agave, though, as a crop is a new idea for the United States. In California, it's more often seen as part of decorative landscaping.

That's changing. Juan Rodriguez is among dozens of farmers who see the potential in the resilient plant.

During the day he works as a roofer, something he has done most of his life. But in the evenings and on weekends, he works with his wife, Cecilia Rodriguez, and cousin Orlando Flores on cultivating the 2-acre field on his Vacaville property, near Sacramento.

Raul Chavez tends to rows of Agave tequilana and Agave americana plants at Muller Ag in Woodland, California.

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That's where he planted his agave in neat rows a couple of years ago. While the plants are not mature yet, they've grown enough that their pointed, outstretched leaves can brush his hip when he walks between the rows to check on them.

It's a familiar plant for Rodriguez. He grew up in a small town in the Mexican state of Jalisco, where agave is everywhere. Generations of his family have cultivated the crop. He'd imagined working with it himself one day, but after he moved to the U.S. at 16, he thought that the opportunity was behind him.

"We came here, and there wasn't any of this," Rodriguez says of growing agave, in Spanish. "We didn't think that would work here."

But a trip to Mexico with his wife a couple of years ago to visit family inspired the couple.

"When he came back and started to want more information, that's when I started to look around," says Cecilia Rodriguez in Spanish. "I told him, 'OK, it's possible.' And then we started."

Rodriguez's two acres of agave are possible in part because of California's climate. The U.S. Department of Agriculture calls California the most agriculturally productive state in the country. In past years, though, the state has seen some of its mainstay crops struggle amid historic drought conditions. Agave, however, can withstand hotter and drier conditions.

Before 2023, fewer than 50 acres of agave were growing in California, according to a University of California, Davis report. That number has increased to over 200. Interest also led to the formation of the California Agave Council in 2022. The nonprofit supports growers, and it now includes 80 growers and eight distillers.

When Flores heard his cousin Rodriguez's plan to plant agave, Flores says in Spanish, he began to feel an itch: "Like a thorn of 'I want to do this, and we want to do this.' And we got to work."

Raul Chavez, field manager at Muller Ag, harvests Agave tequilana using a coa on June 10. Mexican agave farmers, also called jimadores, have long used the tool to slice off the plant's leaves. This leaves behind the plant's core, which is key to making agave spirits.

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Growing agave in California's weather extremes

Flores knows how agave is grown in Mexico, but he says California's climate is a different story.

"We're learning," he says in Spanish. "Why? Because it's very different — the cycles, the climate, the type of soil." But Flores says that little by little, they're gaining a better understanding of how to grow the crop.

Dry periods are normal in California, as are periods of relief. But experts say droughts will likely persist and even intensify with climate change. When drought strikes, water gets affected. And in California, farmers have struggled to keep crops like almonds, that require a lot of water, healthy.

Agaves, however, can take the heat. They're easy to maintain and don't need a lot of water. Craig Reynolds, founder of the California Agave Council, compares the plant with almonds: While almonds need about 48 inches of water per acre per year, agaves need only 3 inches. Reynolds says this is why he sees great potential in the plant.

"For me, it's all about climate change and how can California farmers adapt and not have to fallow thousands of acres that are predicted to be fallowed in the next 20 years," Reynolds says.

Already, Reynolds has seen California officials incentivize farmers to fallow their land — that is, leave it unplanted to preserve water resources. Agave could allow farmers to use lands they'd otherwise leave alone, because the plant doesn't require as much water as other crops.

"It's not going to replace any entire crop, but it's already proving to be a viable alternative," Reynolds says. "And as it grows, I think it's going to prove even more so."

But growing the crop in California still comes with challenges.

"In light of the climate change, we don't know what is going to happen for sure," says Paula Guzmán-Delgado, a plant physiologist with UC Davis. "For sure, there is going to be less water and it's going to be warmer, so agave is a good candidate."

Guzmán-Delgado is a researcher with the recently formed UC Davis Agave Center. She is looking specifically at how different species of agave grow throughout California. The goal, she says, is to identify best practices for growing the plant in a place where temperatures can swing from intense heat to extreme cold.

Guzmán-Delgado says the climate is more consistent in agave-growing regions in Mexico. Now, California farmers have to learn what kinds of agave grow best in different parts of the state — like Agave tequilana, often called blue agave, or Agave americana.

"We have a huge climatic variability and soil variability," Guzmán-Delgado says. "Even if we get information from Mexico, we have to adapt to the conditions of California."

Craig Reynolds, president of the California Agave Council, drives a load of freshly harvested agave piñas. These will be cooked down in a pit for a week before being used to make agave spirits.

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It takes patience to grow agave

Raul Chavez started growing agave years before Guzmán-Delgado's research began. He's the field manager at Muller Ag in Woodland, near Sacramento.

He met Reynolds, another early enthusiast, about a decade ago. Alongside cultivating their own crop, the two have connected new growers — like Rodriguez — with plant starts and information they need to start growing their own.

It's work Chavez loves. He grew up in Tonaya, a town in Jalisco that calls itself the Land of Mezcal. Many of the family members he knew growing up were agave farmers, or jimadores, and still are today.

Chavez feels most at peace when he's tending to the agave, he says in Spanish: "That's when you calm down, see the plants, see what needs to be done, and I have a lot of fun with that."

It's also hard work. Chavez mostly grows Agave tequilana on the approximately 8 acres he leases from Muller Ag. It takes around seven years before the crop is ready to be harvested. Once the plant matures, its thick leaves are sliced off with a coa — a sharp metal disc attached to a wooden pole.

All that remains afterward is the core, the piña. For Agave tequilana, each piña weighs about 200 pounds. The jimador will usually cut it in half to make it easier to haul to an earthen pit where it'll be cooked down. Later, the cooked agave gets turned into an agave spirit.

Chavez learned to harvest agave from his brother, an experienced jimador who now lives in San Francisco. Guzmán-Delgado says she has noticed that many people who harvest agave by hand in California have similar backgrounds.

"It [agave harvesting] needs skilled workers," she says. "In this case, Mexican people know how to do it — they are the ones teaching others." Guzmán-Delgado says there aren't enough of those skilled workers in California. She says farmers will have to figure out a way to mechanize the process for the agave industry to really flourish.

"It is impossible to harvest all the agave that [is] going to be in California," she says. "They will have to build a machine for harvesting."

David Ortega (left) and Gian Pablo Nelson unload Agave americana piñas from their truck on Aug. 3.

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A growing market for California agave spirits

Rodriguez's agave crop won't be ready to harvest for a few more years. If it's a success, he hopes one day to leave his job as a roofer and grow agave full time.

"The plan is to see what happens next and, if we see there's a future, dedicate ourselves completely to the agave," says Rodriguez in Spanish.

Growing agave is only one-half of the equation. The other is distilling it to make agave spirits.

"Agave spirits" differentiates California's product from mezcal or tequila, both monikers that are attached to the regions in Mexico where they're produced (just like Champagne, which can get that title only if it's a sparkling wine made in the Champagne region of France).

In 2022, California solidified the use of the term "agave spirit" into law. It stated that anything labeled as a "California agave spirit" must be made from 100% California-grown agave without any additives or coloring.

Sean Venus, who owns Venus Spirits in Santa Cruz, started distilling agave in 2014. He initially relied entirely on agave syrup from Mexico to make the spirit.

But after partnering with Reynolds, he started using California-grown agave. Venus says there isn't enough of it for all the agave spirits he makes, so he still relies on syrup from Mexico — but he expects that to change.

"I would say four to five years," Venus says. "There's going to be a lot of it available as the farmers that are just getting into it right now are getting mature plants."

Until then, Venus and other distillers are planning to make sure the operations and the distribution system are in place.

Gian Pablo Nelson, a Napa-based distiller and the owner of Jano Spirits, says this preparation requires some innovation. He started distilling agave a couple of years ago and says, unlike Venus, he decided to use only agaves that are native to the U.S., like Agave americana.

As he waits for more growers' crops to mature, he and his business partner have had to get creative in how they source that agave.

"We have to find those agaves out in the wild," Nelson says. "If we see a bunch of wild agave on the side of the highway, we'll pin them [on our map]."

After that, he says he'll find the plant's owner and ask whether he can harvest it.

"We're doing this in a kind of organic — not grassroots, but almost agave roots movement," Nelson says.

For now, Nelson says, this work is mostly a labor of love rather than a lucrative one.

Agave piñas are loaded into an earthen pit, where they will be steamed for about a week over hot stones. Then they will be used to make agave spirits.

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More agave, more growers

At the farm where Chavez grows agave, the voice of Colombian singer Carlos Vives blares through speakers. Reynolds says the music is a good way to get people in the mood to cook the piñas.

Distillers and growers take shots of agave spirit made by a California distiller alongside mounds of piñas laid out on blue tarps by a stone-lined earthen pit.

They toss pencas — the agave leaves — over heated stones to protect the piñas from burning and to help steam them. Next, they haul the heavy piñas into the pit under Chavez's direction, each one landing with a satisfying thud. 

"Put it right there," Chavez says, switching between Spanish and English and nodding to a spot among the growing pile of agave cores. "That one on the top, right?"

Chavez and others stamp the piñas with their feet to pack them in tight. The pit is covered with a tarp, and dirt gets shoveled on top to trap the heat. The piñas will steam here for a week before being processed into agave spirits.

Chavez has done this many times and enjoys explaining the process to newer growers — like Abraham Granados, who grew up in a town in Jalisco. His family grew corn instead of agave. Even so, Granados says that he, like others, was intrigued by the broad-leafed plant and wondered what it would be like to grow it.

It would be some years before he'd find out. He followed his father's footsteps after moving to the U.S. and worked in construction, later starting his own company in San Francisco. But Granados says in Spanish, "In reality, everything I like to do has to do with being out in the fields."

He planted his agave in Tracy, a town south of Sacramento, last October.

"I feel a little like I'm inside the dream I had as a child," Granados, now 50, says in Spanish.

While he waits for the agave to mature, Granados says, he's making plans to launch his own distillery. That requires some patience.

"As I've just barely planted, I have six years to plan what I'm going to do for my distillery," he says.

Granados says he doesn't have enough water to grow most other crops on his land — but agave's sturdiness and adaptability make it the exception.

These qualities are exactly why agave has gained so much traction in California that this year, state lawmakers passed a bill that would establish an agave commission. Reynolds says he expects Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign the bill, especially because Newsom has shown support for climate-resilient agriculture.

"If you look at it [agave] as an infant industry, this is kind of — OK, we've been crawling for two years and now we're toddlers," Reynolds says. "We're on our own two feet walking."

It was a good night for normie Democrats, a bad one for self-funded campaigns, a mixed bag for state legislators aspiring to higher office and another electoral reminder of President Donald Trump’s dominant role in our politics — even in deepest blue California.

At the top of the ticket, Republican former Fox News host and British political adviser Steve Hilton and longtime Democratic politico Xavier Becerra hold the top two spots needed to progress to the November election for governor. Tom Steyer, the billionaire former hedge fund manager turned left-leaning political donor, is holding a distant though technically viable third. The Associated Press has not called the race.

Veteran state election observers will know that it may be weeks before the final score of the June primary election is tallied. But a few early takeaways are already coming into focus:

Money can’t (always) buy you love

Whether Steyer ultimately claws his way into the top two spots in the governor’s race after spending a record-setting sum on his self-funded campaign, it’s got to be a disappointing return on investment.

Steyer ultimately spent nearly a quarter of a billion dollars on his populism-coded gubernatorial bid. The fact that all that advertising didn’t translate to an electoral blowout is no surprise, said Garry South, a longtime California Democratic strategist.

“It may sound facetious to say that you can have too much money in a campaign, but in fact the way these rich self-financing candidates spend their money becomes a liability. …They wear out their welcome.”

Steyer isn’t the only candidate to have drawn deeply on his personal finances only to flounder at the ballot box. Patrick Wolff put $600,000 of his own money toward his insurance commissioner campaign, Yvonne Yiu invested $750,000 in her race to join the state Board of Equalization and Saikat Chakrabarti put up the bulk of the millions he spent in his bid to replace Nancy Pelosi in Congress. In Los Angeles, Zach Sokoloff put up $1 million — with millions more coming from his mother — to unseat the sitting city controller.

Chakrabarti couldn’t crack the top two in his race, losing to state Sen. Scott Wiener and San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan. As of Wednesday morning, the remaining three trailed in their respective races.

A good night for ‘standard’ Democrats

Anti-incumbent populism may be in the national zeitgeist, but California voters seem perfectly happy with — or at least, fine settling with — experienced, garden variety Democrats.

“What they want is a Democratic elected official who can go and fight Donald Trump,” said Andrew Sinclair, a Claremont McKenna University political science professor.

Hence the sharp, sudden rise of Becerra following the political implosion of former frontrunner Eric Swalwell. Swalwell was also well known as an experienced politician who “Donald Trump didn’t like,” said Sinclair. Mild-mannered Becerra with a deep political resume and limited baggage was the next logical choice. “What’s your standard, out-of-the-box Democrat who you can get to fight Republicans? Becerra is probably that guy.”

It helped that Becerra’s main Democratic opponent, the self-styled populist Steyer, had the easily-attacked billionaire status, and Democrats worried about being locked out of the general election wanted to get behind whoever was polling best.

Tom Steyer speaks at his watch party on election day during the California gubernatorial primary at The Regency Ballroom in San Francisco on June 2, 2026.

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Many of the Democratic incumbents in Congress also appeared to be fending off challenges from younger, more progressive insurgents — or at least keeping them firmly in second place. Those include Mike Thompson, Brad Sherman and Doris Matsui.

Party still matters

Back in 2010 when California adopted the top-two primary system, proponents pitched it to voters as a way to shake the partisan gridlock out of California politics. Rather than have Democratic and Republican primary voters predictably electing candidates who appeal to the ideological poles, a system that lets every candidate from every party compete on the same ballot was supposed to encourage across-the-aisle reaching candidates who can appeal to voters in the middle.

Voters in the middle are less likely to show up in primary elections, said South.

Nor has the state’s top-two system ever produced a general election race for governor with two Democrats. For all the talk of then-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom squaring off against Antonio Villaraigosa in 2018 or the possibility of a Becerra vs Steyer showdown this year, California governor races have always reverted to the partisan pattern with energized Democratic voters gravitating around their candidate and Republicans doing the same.

Similarly, the top two spots in both the lieutenant governor and treasurer’s races are also blue vs. red. The one exception: As of Wednesday, two Democratic candidates to become the next insurance commissioner — Jane Kim and Sen. Ben Allen — appear to be headed to the November election.

The shut out that wasn’t

Democrats can now officially stop worrying about a dreaded “shut out” scenario.

With so many Democrats packed into the race and none dominating the field, many party members worried early on that the two most prominent Republicans running, Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, could claim the first and second place spot in the primary.

Concerns over such a paradoxical, and for Democrats, nightmarish outcome prompted party chair Rusty Hicks to commission a poll to push some of the lowest-polling Democratic candidates to step aside for the good of the party and state.

Almost none did. But either because Democratic voters were sufficiently spooked into strategically avoiding that outcome — or because a shutout was never that likely in the first place — it doesn’t appear likely to happen.

Democrats have dodged such electoral bullets before. In 2018, a glut of anti-Trump Democratic congressional candidates threatened to hand Republicans both top spots in competitive races across the state. There were no shutouts in that year's primary. California Democrats ended up cleaning up in the subsequent “blue wave” general election. There was similar Democratic hand-wringing in the run-up to the recall election over a possible procedural fluke that could have handed the governor’s office to a Republican. Newsom swatted down the recall in a landslide.

Despite the recurring bouts of Democratic angst, the most prominent top two “lock out” in recent memory was in a deeply conservative state Senate district in the Sierra foothills in 2022 which a crowded pack of Republicans ended up cannibalizing the GOP vote leaving two Democrats in first and second.

The victor in that race, Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil, ended up switching parties to join the Republicans anyway. As of early Wednesday, she is trailing in third place in her re-election contest behind Jaron Brandon, a Democrat, and Alexandra Duarte, a Republican.

Senator who?

Anthony Rendon was the former speaker of the California Assembly. In an org chart of state governance, that made him one of the three most influential people in the Capitol, alongside his counterpart in the Senate and the governor.

Alas, that wasn’t enough star power for Rendon to secure the largely symbolic position of superintendent of public instruction. As of Wednesday, he sits in fourth place.

Likewise, state Sen. Anna Caballero, a Merced Democrat who once served as the state Senate’s powerful appropriations chair, is a distant third in her bid to become treasurer — far behind Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and little-known Republican Jennifer Hawks. Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, a moderate Democrat, is also trailing in her race to unseat Republican Rep. David Valadao in the Central Valley, currently boxed out of the second place spot by Sen. Bernie Sanders-backed college professor Randy Villegas. And former state Sen. Steven Bradford is bringing up eighth place in the insurance commissioner contest.

It wasn’t all bad news for state lawmakers looking for other employment opportunities. Sen. Ben Allen is in second place in the insurance race, while Wiener and Sen. Aisha Wahab, two Democratic legislators from the San Francisco Bay Area, both easily claimed the top spots in their respective races for Congress.

Jeanne Kuang contributed reporting.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

CBS fired veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley late Monday evening after his fiery remarks at a staff meeting held by the program's new executive producer, Nick Bilton, who has never worked in TV news.

Pelley told Bilton that he was "murdering" the program, according to three people with direct knowledge of the conversation.

In a statement shared with NPR, Pelley alleges that new management attempted to inject falsehoods, bias, and unverified claims into his reporting — efforts he says he fended off.

It's all part of CBS Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss' effort to wrest control of the network's signature news program. Last week, Weiss fired the show's top executives and forced out two of its correspondents.

With Anderson Cooper's departure, the show is down from seven correspondents to just three.

This story was taken from an audio report by NPR's David Folkenflik. 
Copyright 2026 NPR

Updated June 03, 2026 at 00:20 AM ET

Polls are officially closed in New Jersey, South Dakota, Iowa, New Mexico, Montana and California, where voters are casting ballots in primary races for U.S. House, Senate and statewide offices.

Most of the attention is on California and Iowa, where there are competitive primaries for governor. In both states, the Democratic Party also sees a road map to control of Congress in the fall.

In California's unique primary system, voters send the top two vote-getters to November's general election, regardless of candidates' political parties. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is term limited, and California voters will also pick who should move on to the general election in five new Democratic-leaning congressional districts.

In Iowa, Democratic voters picked state Rep. Josh Turek as their candidate in a key Senate race. In order to win a majority in the Senate, Democrats must pick up four seats, forcing the party to win in Republican-leaning states like Iowa. For the first time in years, Iowa Democrats have a shot at winning the governor's office.

Here are key races to follow:

California governor | California U.S. House | Iowa governor | Iowa U.S. Senate | New Jersey and Montana

You can also check out June 2 voter resources from the NPR network.

California decides top two gubernatorial contenders

It's been a chaotic scramble to pick the next leader of the country's largest state. After three prominent Democrats — former Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Alex Padilla and state Attorney General Rob Bonta — decided not to run, Democratic voters haven't had a clear front-runner for the first time in decades. Voters have more than 60 candidates to choose from, but only a fraction of those are considered serious contenders. Only the top two vote-getters will move on to the general election in November.

California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra hugs a supporter at the Long Beach Arena on May 31 in Long Beach, Calif.

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The race got a shakeup when former Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, the presumed favorite, dropped out of the race after he was accused of sexual misconduct by several women. Most recently, polls show the contest could be between two Democrats — the Health and Human Services secretary under former President Joe Biden, Xavier Becerra, and billionaire philanthropist Tom Steyer.

Before Becerra was appointed to Biden's Cabinet, he served 12 terms in Congress and was elected as the California attorney general in 2016. He's considered by many as the candidate with the strongest political background. Becerra's pitch is that he is a proven leader who can hold his own and protect California from President Trump.

Steyer has forked over more than $213 million of his own fortune on the race and is also financially backed by Our Revolution, a group aligned with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Steyer's platform is centered on taking a stand against special-interest groups in politics.

Polling just a few points behind Becerra and Steyer is Republican Steve Hilton. The former Fox News host was endorsed by President Trump in April, after which Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, another Republican in the race, quickly dropped in the polls. Hilton's platform focuses on increasing affordable housing supply for first-time homebuyers, bolstering tech industries and reviving California's film industry.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer speaks with students during a Get the Youth Vote with Bruin Democrats event at UCLA's campus on June 1 in Los Angeles, Calif.

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The outcome of California's new congressional districts

In response to Texas redrawing its congressional lines to create five Republican-leaning districts at the behest of President Trump, Californians approved Proposition 50 in November last year. The measure temporarily sidestepped the independent redistricting commission tasked with drawing nonpartisan influenced congressional boundaries, in favor of politically gerrymandered districts. That allowed state Democrats to redraw their map so five previously Republican-held districts now lean Democratic.

This has left those Republican incumbents figuring out their political futures. Rep. Ken Calvert, the longest-serving Republican from California, and Rep. Young Kim are running in the same district, for example, in a race that's gotten quite heated.

Then there's Rep. Kevin Kiley. After being drawn into a much more Democratic-leaning district, he decided to run in a new seat and announced he was leaving the Republican Party and running as an independent instead, though Kiley said he would still caucus with the Republicans.

Because of California's primary system, some of these more competitive seats are creating competitive primaries between Democrats, allowing primary voters to signal to the party what kinds of candidates speak to them most in places that have the most to lose — and gain.

Follow results here.

Iowa's GOP gubernatorial primary

While the Associated Press hasn't called the race, Republican candidate businessman Zach Lahn narrowly led in the polls late Tuesday night. Out of five candidates vying for the spot, Rep. Randy Feenstra was the only one endorsed by Trump, but he conceded the race even though he trailed Lahn by less than 1%.

The governor's office is an important race for both parties. It's the state's first open race for governor since 2011, as sitting Gov. Kim Reynolds opted not to run for reelection.

There is a good chance, though, that Iowans won't know the outcome of the race on Tuesday because a candidate must secure 35% of the vote to win outright. If no one clears that threshold, the nominee will be decided at a Republican convention where delegates — not primary voters — make the final choice.

But the Republican-backed candidate isn't a shoo-in come November. Cook Political Report categorizes the governor's race as a toss-up with a slight Republican advantage. Whatever Republican wins on Tuesday will face unopposed Democratic state Auditor Rob Sand in the general election. Sand is popular among voters and has, so far, outraised any other candidate for governor.

Iowa Senate matchup set: Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson and Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek

Democratic voters in Iowa selected state Rep. Josh Turek as their nominee against Trump-endorsed Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson for a competitive Senate seat, according to race calls from the AP.

The seat is one that Democrats believe they have a shot at flipping come November. It's part of a larger strategy of expanding their map — and winning in states currently held by Republican senators — if they want a chance to retake the Senate majority.

Turek, a two-time gold medal paralympian, won the nomination against state Sen. Zach Wahls. Both candidates are courting different Iowa voters though. Turek sought the independent-leaning vote, while Wahls was hoping to gain the support from committed Democrats. Turek flipped a state House district held by a Republican, and now Democrats hope he can do the same with the Senate seat.

And with three competitive congressional races on the ballot, some Democrats in the state are feeling like the road to a Democratic majority in Congress runs through Iowa.

Looking beyond Tuesday

New Jersey and Montana also have competitive races that could decide which party has control of Congress.

In New Jersey, Democrat Rebecca Bennett won the primary in the competitive Congressional District 7, according to an AP race call. Voters there believe Bennett is the best shot the party has flipping the swing seat blue in November.

Bennett will face the uncontested Republican Rep. Thomas Kean Jr. in the general election. The sitting congressman has been notably absent from Washington for weeks due to what Kean cites as unspecified medical issues. He has missed more than 100 House votes since his last recorded vote on March 5.

Bennett, who is a former Navy helicopter pilot, beat three other Democrats for the nomination. Bennett's platform is centered around affordability, lowering healthcare costs and protecting America's national security interests.

Two races in Montana may be more competitive than originally expected with the last-minute announcements — shortly before the filing deadline — by Republicans, Sen. Steve Daines and Rep. Ryan Zinke, that neither would seek reelection. When Zinke announced he was retiring from Congress, it was seen as an opening for Democrats to compete.

But the Democratic nominee for Montana's 1st Congressional District is too close to call, according to the AP. As of Tuesday night, Ryan Busse, an author and sales professional, maintained a small, 2-point lead, against Sam Forstag, a smokejumper who is supported by popular progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. Whoever wins the Democratic primary will face Republican Trump-endorsed nominee Aaron Flint.

While an open Senate seat does not make Montana, which has long been considered a Republican stronghold, necessarily competitive for Democrats, an independent candidate is outraising candidates in both major parties. Seth Bodnar, Iraq war veteran and former president of the University of Montana, is hoping voters will send him instead, mostly on the message that he won't work for either party and is focused on changing the direction America is heading. In Bodnar's case, he has enough voter signatures to land himself on the November ballot, but the Montana Secretary of State's Office hasn't yet certified those signatures.

But two Senate candidates who will for sure appear on November's ballot are Republican nominee Kurt Alme, an attorney endorsed by Trump and Democratic nominee Alani Bankhead.

June 2 voter resources from the NPR Network

California | Iowa | Montana | New Jersey | New Mexico | South Dakota

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