The Brief

The nationwide bird flu outbreak is killing more L.A. County cats.

There’s now been four confirmed cases, L.A. County public health officials told LAist Thursday, and they’re investigating three possible others in felines from a separate household.

Dr. Sharon Balter,  director of the Division of Communicable Disease Control and Prevention with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said no L.A. County residents have gotten bird flu, and there’s no evidence of person-to-person spread, but there’s still a low risk.

“ We at the health department are definitely following this outbreak, which is primarily in birds and cattle right now, very, very closely,” she said. “We really want to encourage people not to handle sick or dead birds unless they're wearing a mask and gloves, and also to always consume pasteurized milk.”

How we got here

The four infected cats were from one household and drank raw milk linked to a recall.

Their symptoms included loss of appetite, fever, and neurologic signs. The cats later died after those symptoms got more severe.

Dr. Maria Pyrdek, Pasadena Humane’s chief veterinarian, told LAist the neurologic symptoms are the number one sign you see in birds, and are now being reported in cats.

“ It might be something really small, like small twitches, maybe an eye is twitching, a head is tremoring back and forth, and then those will progress to more and more severe signs,” she said. “Difficulty walking or balancing, sort of stumbling, that, like, looking drunk appearance, maybe not picking up their paws when they're walking.”

Public health officials announced Wednesday that they’re investigating more possible cases of bird flu in a trio of cats from another household.

They’re not believed to have been exposed to raw milk, as seen in the first few cases, but they’re looking into other possible sources, including raw meat.

Two of the cats died after coming down with respiratory symptoms. And one of the cats tested positive for Influenza A. The other two are believed to have been positive as well.

Officials noted this is a rare result. The Department of Public Health is waiting for test results to confirm the cases.

Other birds, cats, and wild animals continue to be tested for bird flu as well. And the humans who had direct contact with the cats are keeping an eye out for symptoms and have been offered antiviral medication.

What you should know

There’s been no human cases of bird flu connected to these cats, but the investigation is ongoing.

Human cases of bird flu are rare, and the risk to people remains low. However, Balter is strongly urging people to avoid raw milk and not to feed it to their pets, including frozen products.

“ The pasteurization process will kill the germs,” she said.

Raw milk can carry harmful germs like influenza, and anyone can get sick from it. Pregnant people, those 65 and older, young children, and people with weakened immune systems have the highest risk of severe illness.

Symptoms in humans can include eye redness, sore throat, vomiting, headaches, fatigue, and fever. If you’ve used the recalled raw milk products and start showing symptoms, immediately contact your doctor or local health department.

Infected cats may develop a fever and neurologic signs that could quickly lead to death. If you suspect your pets are sick, call your vet as soon as possible, and let them know if they’ve consumed raw milk or raw meat.

“ If you're worried about your cat having some sort of neurologic sign, you want to get them in to seek care as quickly as possible and let a veterinarian evaluate them and see what the level of concern is,” Pyrdek said.

You can find more information about bird flu here and here.

The restaurant:

If you’re driving along York Boulevard toward Eagle Rock, you’ll see a variety of Mediterranean, Mexican and pizza spots.

Queen’s Raw Bar & Grill stands out as a seafood spot with a menu that offers oysters, fish-centric entrees and desserts like their derby pie. The restaurant has been around since 2023, brought to life by business partners Ari Kolender, who's executive chef, and Joe Laraja, who serves as managing director.

The food: 

Queen’s Raw Bar & Grill takes inspiration from South Carolina’s seafood scene, where Kolender grew up. Unlike the New England feel of their other restaurant, Found Oyster, Queen’s focuses on southern classics and refreshing raw bar food.

The interior of Queen's Raw Bar and Grill, including the signature oyster bar.

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Courtesy Queen's Raw Bar & Grill

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What we tried: tuna tostada, mackerel tartare and pimento cheese sliders.

The verdict:

“The flavor is so incredible [and] intense,” said AirTalk Friday host Austin Cross about the tuna tostada. “Everything comes together perfectly.”

“It’s got the acids down pat,” Austin said of the mackerel tartare. “The capers are doing their part, and then the dill does give it that finish you get traditionally in some Jewish foods.”

Listen:

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Political persecution, threats of violence and the seizure of sensitive documents might sound like a plot line for a heist or thriller movie.

For California election officials tasked with enabling participatory democracy, these are now everyday realities — from Riverside County, where Sheriff Chad Bianco seized more than 650,000 ballots from his own county’s registrar of voters, to Shasta County, where threats of violence forced the longtime registrar to retire early.

The integrity of the state’s voting systems will be under intense scrutiny this year with control of the U.S. House on the line, as Californians could play a decisive role in which party wins the majority. Yet while timely and decisive results are more crucial than ever, California is famous for its ploddingly slow vote count.

That lengthy wait has increasingly sown distrust in the accuracy of California’s results, especially among Republicans, and particularly in races where a candidate leading on election day falls behind as more ballots are processed in subsequent days.

“Every day matters,” said Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation. “Election security is about security in reality and also security in perception, and they're both equally important.”

During a panel Thursday on election integrity, presented by CalMatters and the UC Student and Policy Center, Alexander argued that election administrators are boxing themselves into a “false choice” if they sacrifice timeliness in the name of accuracy. When winners aren’t decided for days, sometimes weeks, the ensuing uncertainty leaves room for doubt to take root, speculation to grow and misinformation to spread.

It took eight days in 2024 for The Associated Press to be able to declare Republicans had won control of the U.S. House, partly because of outstanding votes in California races, Alexander said. Two years earlier, it took nine days. In 2020, it took the AP seven days to determine that Democrats would retain the House, she said. Each time, outcomes in California swing districts played a decisive role.

“We're creating a window of opportunity for people to make these claims,” Alexander said, referring to largely unfounded claims of systemic voter fraud and election rigging. “We have to acknowledge that.”

Fellow panelists defended California’s meticulousness as crucial to its election integrity. Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, Democratic chair of the Assembly elections committee and former Santa Cruz County registrar of voters, argued that county officials need time to verify voters’ signatures on vote-by-mail envelopes “so people don't get disenfranchised for penmanship or for failure to sign.”

“There's nothing in law that says, I need to meet your deadline,” Pellerin said of media outlets and journalists who are eager to call races on election night. “What the law says is that I need to count the votes accurately, securely. I need to check them, and double-check them, and audit them, and then I certify them.”

Matt Barreto, director of the UCLA Voting Rights Center, noted that counties have 30 days post-election to certify their results and submit them to the secretary of state. That process, he said, should be completed as quickly as possible but “not at the expense of the county registrars doing their job effectively to make sure every vote is counted.”

Catharine Baker, head of the UC Center, emphasized — pointedly to Pellerin — that counties need more money to make sure they’re sufficiently staffed and have the equipment they need to count efficiently.

They all agreed that voters can do one thing to speed up the count: turn in their mail ballots early so counties can process them before election day.

Large partisan divide over election integrity

California voters are highly polarized in their views on the status of democracy in their state and country, largely along party lines.

A new survey from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found a third of Democrats said they are “extremely satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the way democracy works in California, while only 4% of Republicans said they felt that way. Conversely, more than two-thirds of Republicans are not satisfied at all, compared to 10% of Democrats.

Those results are practically unchanged from voters’ responses in 2024, despite several major political events, including a presidential election that President Donald Trump won, a new presidential administration and a special election in California in which voters adopted more partisan gerrymandered congressional districts.

“It speaks to the fact that in a lot of ways our democracy is stuck,” said Eric Schickler, a UC Berkeley political science professor and co-director of the institute. “Republicans have one perspective on what's wrong — they make claims of voter fraud and slow ballot counts,” he said, “and Democrats have another, which is concerns about voter suppression.”

The poll also highlighted the partisan divide over a proposed ballot initiative from Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio of San Diego that would require Californians to show photo identification to vote. When asked whether they would support the measure, but without any context about who was for and against it, 56% of survey respondents said they strongly or moderately supported it, while 39% were strongly or moderately opposed.

But those shifted the more information voters were given. When told that DeMaio was the main proponent of preventing fraud and that Democrats argue the measure is part of Trump’s agenda to keep people of color from voting, the support flipped, with only 39% supporting the measure and 52% opposed.

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

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Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmental activist and self-styled progressive candidate for governor, is on track to run the most expensive gubernatorial campaign in state history, having already spent more than $132 million.

He’s saturated the Internet and TV as special interest groups ramp up advertising of their own ahead of the June 2 primary and county officials prepare to mail out ballots.

Campaign finance disclosures filed late Thursday show that through mid-April, Steyer continued to outspend his opponents twenty- to thirty-fold, mostly to blitz the state with television ads that began airing early in the race. Nearly all of the money came from Steyer personally, $105 million of which he poured into the campaign from January through April 18.

He’s already dwarfed the $73 million Gov. Gavin Newsom’s campaign spent fighting the recall election against him in 2021 and surpassed the amount Newsom’s political committee spent last fall to pass Proposition 50, the Democratic gerrymander effort with intense national interest.

If Steyer continues at this rate, he is likely to come close to or exceed the $159 million record that former eBay executive Meg Whitman burned through — also largely of her own money — in her unsuccessful 2010 run for governor.

The campaign finance filings show that his competitor, tech-backed San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, dominated his fellow Democrats in fundraising over the past four months, bringing in $13 million. Former Rep. Katie Porter raised $2.8 million in that period, while former Attorney General Xavier Becerra brought in $1 million, former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa raised $707,000 and state schools Superintendent Tony Thurmond raised just $62,000.

Second from left, Katie Porter speaks during a gubernatorial candidate forum hosted by California Immigrant Policy Center, California Latino Legislative Caucus Foundation, and ACLU California Action at the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center in Sacramento on April 14, 2026.

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Fred Greaves

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CalMatters

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On the Republican side, conservative television commentator Steve Hilton’s campaign said he raised $4.4 million while Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco raised $1.5 million. Both remain at the top of the polls.

Steyer’s outsized spending is a flashpoint in a race defined by wealth, inequality and California’s affordability crisis. Progressives are eager to tax billionaires this year; the resulting backlash to those proposals has prompted wealthy Silicon Valley executives like Google’s Sergey Brin and venture capitalist Michael Moritz to spend in earnest this election year.

Steyer is promising to rein in wealthy interests like them and corporations. He says he’ll implement publicly-funded universal health care, reduce electricity bills and raise corporate property taxes to pay for state services.

His own wealth is derived from a hedge fund where he once invested in fossil fuels and private prisons before pivoting toward liberal activism. It serves as both fodder for criticism from opponents across the political spectrum and an unlikely source of his own progressive credentials. He’s been able to convince several left-wing groups such as the California Nurses Association and the Bernie Sanders-founded political action committee Our Revolution that he “can’t be bought” by other special interests, earning him their endorsements. His ads have helped boost his standing among likely voters from relative obscurity to the top of the Democratic pack.

Democrats still tied

Yet he’s hardly broken away, continuing to be essentially tied in recent polling with other Democrats just behind the two Republican frontrunners, Bianco and Hilton.

Instead, in the wake of fellow frontrunner Rep. Eric Swalwell dropping out of the race this month over sexual assault and misconduct allegations from multiple women, it was Becerra who got a surge in support. The former Biden-era health secretary had been polling around 5% and fundraising poorly before getting a boost from small donors when Swalwell’s campaign imploded just two weeks ago.

Becerra surged enough in polls to be included in the first of a series of televised debates on Wednesday night, during which he was eager to attack his opponents but faced criticism for lacking policy specifics and for giving Newsom an ‘A’ grade “on effort” for his approach to homelessness. The number of Californians who are homeless has risen steadily during Newsom’s nearly eight years in office.

Becerra will have to keep raising money to remain competitive. His campaign spent four times what he brought in between January and April 18, and he ended the cycle with just $507,000 as the race entered its most expensive stage.

Porter, a former Orange County congressmember who has been stalling in the polls, raised less than she did in the second half of last year. But she still has $3.7 million on hand.

Aside from Steyer, Mahan raised the most over the past four months. Little-known around the state, he is running on a platform of making state government more efficient. He has promised not to raise any taxes, to suspend the state gas tax and tie state agency leaders’ pay to performance.

His campaign is funded by a who’s-who of Silicon Valley executives, billionaires and groups known to clash with Sacramento’s powerful labor unions. They’re also funding a pair of independent political spending committees supporting Mahan that raised $25 million and spent $19 million on ads through April 18.

Other special interest groups are also ramping up their spending. A group opposing Steyer, funded by the state’s realtors, construction industry, electrical workers’ union and Pacific Gas & Electric, has spent $14 million on ads attacking Steyer’s prior investments. This week, PG&E and the California Chamber of Commerce poured in another $7 million. Steyer has proposed challenging PG&E’s monopoly status to lower Californians’ utility bills.

Swalwell used campaign funds to pay attorney

The filings also revealed that Swalwell used campaign funds to pay one of the attorneys defending him against the misconduct accusations.

His campaign paid $40,000 to Sara Azari, who sent press statements denying the accusations after he had already suspended his campaign and appeared on NewsNation, where she is a legal analyst, suggesting his accusers had “shame” or “regret” but that “doesn’t make it rape.”

Swalwell had also used at least two other law firms to send cease-and-desist letters to the women and others alleging misconduct; those firms do not appear in his campaign finance statement. His gubernatorial campaign has returned at least $43,000 in donations since its implosion.

Swalwell paid campaign funds to use his own campaign finance AI startup, and to cover about $22,000 in child care expenses, which he and his wife routinely did for years from his congressional campaign account. That is allowed under federal and California campaign finance law as long as the child care needs were campaign-related; Swalwell has been one of the biggest spenders in that category.

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