The Brief

My 5-year-old son Hank has been eating bowls of soup bigger than his head since he could hold a spoon. He is such a matzo ball head that the last time we were at our regular place he got to utter that iconic line “I’ll have the usual.” (It was actually more like “I’ll get that one thing that I always get here.” He’s still working on the idiom).

Josh Heller's son, Hank, surveying the soup at Factor's Deli

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He’ll be in his element, along with his twin sister Lucy, next week, when Chanukah begins sundown Dec. 25 (aka Christmas Day — the first time they’ve coincided since 2005). Instead of Chinese food, (or along with, whatever you do) we’ll likely have hearty bowls of matzo ball soup at our table.

My dad’s ideal bowl is a thick matzo ball — the kind of thing he says you could throw across the room at a cousin. He also wants the carrots and celery to be so soft they fall apart instantly in your mouth. It’s pretty hard for him to find this at the deli. He said occasionally someone in the kitchen at Jerry’s Deli (RIP) would send out a hardball — but it wasn’t consistent.

My mom’s matzo ball ideal is closer to the L.A. deli standard. A fluffy matzo ball, maybe made airier with the presence of seltzer. Squishy matzo balls with firm vegetables.

Sinkers or swimmers, there’s definitely an argument to be had. (Case in point: when I asked the Save the Deli Facebook group their personal favorite it almost came to blows. Firm! Fluffy! Check out some of their words of wisdom later in the story).

So I decided to speak to the masters, aka L.A.’s delis, to get the inside scoop on making a great matzo ball soup.

Wexler’s (DTLA, Santa Monica, Las Vegas)

Wexler's matzo ball soup

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Wexler’s is a new school L.A. Jewish deli with an old school flavor.

When they opened in 2012 they were the first of a generation to bring handmade chef-driven Ashkenazi cuisine to a wide audience at Grand Central Market. They’ve since added a Santa Monica shop and a location inside the Aria resort in Las Vegas.

Customers regularly kvell over the deli’s ability to make matzo balls that taste like those from their childhoods.

Owner Michael Kassar said the key to great matzo balls “is using extremely high-quality, pasture-raised egg yolks, and not adding too much matzo meal”.

“The goal is to keep the matzo ball light and fluffy,” he said. “Form the balls delicately, use high quality schmaltz, and simmer gently.”

Frank’s Weiler’s Deli (Canoga Park)

Matzo ball soup at Frank's Weilers Deli

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When my nana and Auntie Jan moved from the old neighborhood to Canoga Park in the 70s they’d still have their favorite deli dishes caravanned over from Pico-Robertson.

But when Frank’s Weiler’s Deli opened in Canoga Park they had found their spot.

(The deli was a big enough deal for our family that my nana wanted to make sure that they catered her funeral.)

Frank Mesriani said their secret to a great matzo ball “is to keep the dough in a cooler for about an hour before boiling them.”

Mesriani, who left Iran in 1979, said he also “put a touch of my Sephardic heritage into my menu. I add a bit of turmeric to the soup.”

Mort and Betty’s Vegan Deli 

Matzo ball soup at Mort & Betty's

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Mort & Betty's

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If you think keeping a matzo ball together is hard, imagine the challenges of doing it vegan style — without things like eggs or schmaltz. Chef Megan Tucker of Mort and Betty’s has made it her mission to crack the code.

For her, getting a dense umami-full broth is the easier part.

She said that while some of the vegan soup bases are totally fine for home use, she likes to make her broth from scratch. She makes a mirepoix, and adds in shiitake mushrooms (to replace the chicken.)

Then she adds fresh bay leaf, a little fresh turmeric, and fresh thyme. "I can never find parsley root, so I use parsley stems, plus any alliums I have laying around, like leeks,” Tucker said.

She also includes fresh dill, onion powder, black pepper, and traditional aromatics, “to make it tasty.”

The matzo balls have taken a little more experimentation. Tucker said that for the past three years she has been using The Matzo Project, an all-natural artisanal matzo brand founded in 2014. She said the product has “a tastier base to start with, but I had to adjust it because it’s a coarser grind of matzo crumbs.”

As for replacing the egg and schmaltz, Tucker said she landed on psyllium husk: "They’re typically used as a fiber supplement, but they gel when you add water, acting as a binder.”

And instead of the 20 minutes refrigeration for conventional matzo balls, she said they make the mix, shape it immediately and refrigerate it overnight.

You can buy four matzo balls in broth by the quart on Sundays at Atwater Farmers Market.

Factors Famous Deli (Pico-Robertson)

Suzee Markowitz has been running this place with her sister Debbie for more than forty years.

She said the restaurant makes an estimated 3,500 matzo balls a week. Her customers like to customize their matzo ball soups; some just want broth and a matzo ball, others want noodles, others want rice. Her favorite way is to add kasha varnishkes, the bow-tie noodle and buckwheat groat Ashkenazi comfort food. “Try it next time you come in,” she said.

Suzee Markowitz's granddaughter, Margot, being fed soup by her grand-nephew, Benny

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Courtesy Suzee Markowitz

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The kitchen has a legacy as well. Head Chef Silverio Perez has been working in the kitchen with his four brothers and cousins since he started as a young dishwasher in 1981. His father Papa Chuy had been running the kitchen since 1979. Their family is originally from Tala, Jalisco.

His matzo ball making process is to “break an egg into some vegetable oil. Add baking powder, white pepper, salt, and chicken base. Then mix. Once they’re ready, boil in water.”

Suzee playfully interjects that “we blow kisses” into each matzo ball “because they are made with love.”

Canter's matzo ball soup

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Courtesy Jacqueline Canter

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Canter’s (Fairfax) 

Jacqueline Canter told me they’ve made over 24 million matzo balls since opening Canter’s on Fairfax. They use a 100-year-old recipe for its soup, which includes matzo balls, noodles, chicken, onions, carrots, celery, and parsnips.

Her grandfather first opened Canter’s in 1924 in Jersey City. Then, after losing the deli to the stock market crash, they relocated to Los Angeles with $500 in their pocket and opened their first location in Boyle Heights in 1931. In 1948 they moved with the Jewish community to the Fairfax neighborhood — then into their current location inside the old Esquire theater in 1953.

Jacqueline Canter said many people swear matzo ball soup is “Jewish Penicillin” and “the cure for the common cold,” to the extent that as soon as they get out of the hospital they go and pick up this comfort food.

Note: they also offer vegetarian matzo balls, as well as vegetarian broth, so everyone can have their fill.

The payoff

Not to get too schmaltzy, but chicken soup really has the power to bring your family together. Even if you’re still figuring out how to keep your matzo balls from falling apart.

“Dad, that was yummy," is the ultimate feel-good compliment. Even if it wasn’t perfect, my family still enjoyed it.

Finally, for the matzo ball lovers among you, I recommend the scene from Janicza Bravo's 2017 movie Lemon, of a family singing along to Dean Friedman’s novelty song “A Million Matzoh Balls.”

It’s just hilarious and reminds me of my family. And now my kids won’t stop singing it.

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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