The Brief

It's officially summer in Southern California, and the warm evenings ahead are perfect for taking in the night sky. Today is also the start of the seasonal, free Star Parties at Griffith Observatory that run from June through September.

If you go, you might meet local amateur astronomer, Spencer Soohoo. By day, he’s a research scientist at Cedar Sinai but in his off time, he’s an active member of the Los Angeles Astronomical Society.

We asked Soohoo for some advice on how to get into amateur astronomy in Southern California — if you’re already into stargazing — how to up your game.

Getting started

To kick us off, we asked Soohoo to recommend a few places where the stars may be easier to spot:

• Joshua Tree: He says the national park "is starting to get a little more light pollution now than before but it's still fairly decent."
• I-5 near Frasier Park: "There's a couple of turnouts you can go to."
• Saddleback Butte State Park: Soohoo has this caveat: "There's a lot of light now from the Lancaster-Palmdale area. But the last time I went, you could still see the Milky Way without too much trouble."
• For really dark skies: You have to drive a distance, probably about an 1 1/2 to 2 hours away.

Not up for that drive? Soohoo says "to be honest with you, if you're OK with looking at the planets and some of the brighter nebula, you can even do that from downtown L.A."

What can you see in SoCal this time of year?

Soohoo says right now the only night object "really prominent" is Venus.

"If you are up around maybe midnight or 1 a.m., you can see Saturn and Jupiter will rise a couple hours after that," he says.

How to spot planets

We asked Soohoo what he'd recommend folks use if they want to know where the constellations and planets are specifically in the sky.

Soohoo says his favorite smartphone app is Sky Safari ("I think it's about $9 to $10") but there are other free apps to check out.

"They're tied into the GPS in your phone and they'll show you what the sky looks like at that particular time," he says. "Some of them have what they call augmented reality. So they'll actually use the camera on the phone and superimpose the background of what you're seeing along with the sky chart."

Will the northern lights be back in Southern California?

Recently and unexpectedly, people were able to catch a glimpse of the northern lights exceptionally far south. So we asked Soohoo if that's going to be possible over the summer months.

He doubts it.

"It's rare that you'd be able to see them this far south," he says. "But I know that the last time you could see the northern lights from Mount Wilson — that one night that they were visible — the marine layer had moved in and blocked out all the light pollution from downtown L.A. and so you could see the northern lights there."

What to expect at Griffith Observatory

Griffith Observatory hosts monthly star parties during the summer that are free to the public. Volunteers from telescope groups and the L.A. Astronomical Society are there and Soohoo says participants can expect 25 to 40 telescopes to be set up on the grounds.

"We basically set up our telescopes on the lawn and point them at whatever target we want to and invite people to look through them," he explains. "And I personally focus on the moon because you'd be amazed at how many people have never seen the moon through a telescope in their lives. I can't tell you how many languages I've heard people say, 'Wow, it's just incredible.'"

Soohoo said he got his "greatest thrill" from helping an 82-year-old woman who had never looked through a telescope in her life.

"I showed her the moon and just to watch the expression on her face as it lit up — that's why we do it," Soohoo said.

How to attend

The Griffith Observatory lists the following dates for public star parties:

• Saturday, June 24: 2:00 pm - 9:45 p.m.
• Saturday, July 22: 2:00 pm - 9:45 p.m.
• Saturday, Aug. 26: 2:00 pm - 9:45 p.m.
• Saturday, Sep. 23: 2:00 pm - 9:45 p.m.

You can find more resources and events at the Los Angeles Astronomical Society website or on the Griffith Observatory website.

Democrats' big wins in these midterm elections couldn't have happened without some massive voter shifts.

Young voters, Latinos and Asian Americans, urban and suburban voters, men and independents all moved heavily to the left.

One of the sharpest turns in this election was by Latinos. And Democrats had their best performance with white voters in years

In 2024, President Trump won a record share of Latino votes for a Republican presidential candidate. But they took a sharp left turn in this election after Trump's promises of lower prices never came to fruition and his administration's harsh deportation tactics backfired.

Latinos swung 21 points toward Democratic House candidates, compared to two years ago.

Asian Americans also sharply diverged from 2024, also going 21 points more in Democrats' favor, from a 22-point advantage to a whopping 43.

Democrats even tied with white voters. To put that in perspective, Democrats haven't won white voters in a presidential election since 1964. Since then, they came closest in 1992 and 1996 when former President Bill Clinton lost them by 2 points both times and then in the 2006 midterms when Republicans won them by just 4.

By age, it was a sharp boomerang, particularly with voters 18 to 29

Democrats won this group of young voters by 48 points, a 34-point swing from two years ago.

To put in context just how dramatic of a margin that is — it's wider than for former President Barack Obama in 2008 when he won the youngest voters by 34 points. The difference in 2008 is they were 18% of the electorate, compared to 11% in this midterm.

Young voters traditionally have the biggest turnout drop from presidential to midterm elections of any group, so there are likely many Republican-leaning 18- to 29-year-olds who simply stayed home.

Democrats also won by huge margins with urban and suburban voters

Urban voters swung by 25 points in their favor, while voters in the suburbs, who had voted narrowly for Trump in 2024, went for Democrats by 19 points.

But Democrats can't win in red states without minimizing losses in small towns and rural areas. Democrats lost them by 16 points this year, a 16-point shift in their favor, compared with 2024, when they lost them by 32.

Democrats won men for the first time since 2008

Women were the fuel for Democrats' wins in these elections. They broke by 19 points for Democrats, 13 points wider than in 2024 and the best mark for the party since Trump's first midterm.

But the shift with men was notable. Democrats won men by 2 points, a 16-point shift from 2024 and the first time the party has won men since 2008. It's only the third time in 34 years that Democrats have won men.

The other time was in 1992 when Bill Clinton won them by 3 points, and that was with a third-party candidate in the race, Ross Perot, who won 19% of the national popular vote.

Republicans saw their worst performance with independents since at least 1998

The number to watch heading into Tuesday night for Republicans was 46%. That was the mark they needed with independents in order to do well. When they have hit that threshold in the Trump era, they have done well, winning the presidency in 2016 and 2024 and making gains in the House in 2022.

But when they were below it, they didn't do well, losing more than 40 seats in the House in 2018 and the presidency in 2020.

In these midterms, they didn't even get close. They only won 38% of independents, their worst mark since at least 1998 when independents viewed the impeachment investigation against Clinton as politically motivated and an overreach.

The only other time that comes close was in 2006 when they only won 39% of independents, and Democrats, like this year, won both the House and Senate.

More graphics from the voter poll

Methodology

2026 data comes from a poll of tens of thousands of voters, conducted by the firm SSRS for a number of news outlets, including the Associated Press. The full sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.6 percentage points. Data may shift as votes and exit poll analysis are finalized.

2018-2024 data comes from exit polls conducted by Edison Research (now Edison Research at SSRS) for a number of news outlets. NPR accessed all data via results posted by CNN and ABC News.

2026 data combines results from in-person exit poll responses and a pre-election survey of voters, while 2018-2024 data combines results from in-person exit poll responses and responses from early and absentee voters.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Chemical manufacturer 3M will pay up to $7.35 billion to settle lawsuits by people who say they were sickened by groundwater contamination from compounds used in firefighting foam and other consumer products.

The St. Paul, Minnesota-based company announced the settlement Tuesday. It will pay the money over nine years to as many as 120,000 people who say they were harmed by exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known collectively as PFAS. The chemicals contaminated groundwater near military bases, airports and other locations where the foam was used to extinguish fires.

3M did not admit liability for the contamination under the agreement.

Called “forever chemicals” because they don’t degrade naturally in the environment, PFAS have been linked to health problems including liver and immune system damage and some cancers. The chemicals are also used in nonstick, water- and grease-resistant products, including clothing and cookware.

3M chairman William Brown called the settlement a “significant milestone” that substantially reduces uncertainty from the litigation. The company previously reached settlements in other PFAS-related lawsuits, including a $450 million agreement with the state of New Jersey to settle claims of natural resource contamination and a deal to pay more than $10 billion to many U.S. public drinking water systems.

Other manufacturers, including DuPont de Nemours Inc. and spinoffs Chemours Co. and Corteva Inc., have agreed to settlements totaling more than $1 billion to resolve PFAS claims.

Fred Thompson, an attorney with the Motley Rice law firm that helped negotiate the 3M settlement for the plaintiffs, called it welcome news for “the thousands of victims who have sought answers and accountability for nearly a decade.”

He said in a news release that the plaintiffs urgently need help covering mounting medical bills and other costs.

Under the terms of the settlement, the payouts will begin with $50 million this year, followed by yearly payments of more than $1 billion each year from 2028 to 2033.

3M could make additional payments if enough plaintiffs participate. If too few sign on, 3M has the option to cancel the settlement and continue fighting the lawsuit.

Environmental activists say PFAS manufacturers knew about the chemicals’ health risks long before they became public. They noted that the same attributes that make the chemicals so valuable in many uses — resistance to breakdown — also make them hazardous to people.

The Environmental Protection Agency has set strict limits on PFAS in drinking water from public utilities and requires testing, but those rules do not apply to private wells.

A study that would help federal regulators understand which industries dump the forever chemicals with their wastewater has been stalled for two years, awaiting review by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Longer wait times for graffiti removal and streetlight repair. Fewer police officers per shift. Completely eliminating school crossing guards.

Those are just some of the service cuts the city of South Gate made earlier this year as it stared down a $9.4 million annual budget deficit and a looming fiscal emergency.

But none of that was enough to convince South Gate voters to approve an 8% utility user tax that would have been tacked onto a wide range of utility bills, including electricity, water, cable and phone service. Now, the city is gearing up for more cuts, including closing sports fields and the city pool for the winter months.

South Gate’s utility tax was just one of the many ways Southern California cities asked their residents to give them more money via local tax initiatives this November, with proposed taxes on everything from hotel stays to cannabis businesses.

And those early results suggest South Gate is an outlier: Of the 32 total local tax measures on the ballot in Los Angeles and Orange counties, all but six appear poised to pass, according to early results. (There are still several more days of vote counting to come.)

Eleven transient occupancy tax measures, which tax overnight stays in hotels or short-term rentals, passed in cities from Burbank to Los Alamitos. Most cities sought to increase their existing hotel taxes by anywhere from 1 to 5 percentage points, while Lynwood residents voted to establish a hotel tax for the first time.

Business-related taxes, such as taxes on business licenses or on certain businesses, also mostly passed, as did most parcel taxes in cities including Pasadena and Culver City.

But sales taxes saw more mixed results. Cudahy, San Gabriel, Orange, Santa Ana and Los Angeles all approved sales tax measures, while voters in Diamond Bar, Hermosa Beach and San Clemente all voted down their local sales tax proposals.

Most of those sales taxes focused on maintaining basic city services in communities facing big budget deficits, driven by the rising costs of insurance, maintenance and infrastructure projects, and employee pensions, among other factors. But in San Clemente, the proposed 1% sales tax would have specifically funded sand replenishment and other beach projects, along with wildfire prevention work. That measure appeared to be headed for failure, with just 36% of voters in support as of Wednesday afternoon.

Voters in San Marino approved an extension of their utility tax, and increased it from 5% to 6%. Last year, the tax provided almost $2.2 million in revenue.

City officials in South Gate had hoped for a similar boon, and projected the utility tax would bring in an estimated $10.4 million per year in general fund revenue, while raising total utility costs by about $39 per month for a typical household.

Leading up to the election, the city of South Gate pointed to other neighboring cities that have their own utility taxes, including Downey, Lakewood and Norwalk, where the tax mostly hovers around 5%. “South Gate is the exception, not the rule,” noted one city presentation that pointed to these other taxes in a bid to coax voters to go along.

Voters weren’t convinced. “I’m extremely frustrated that you now want to do electricity, water, sewer, cable, cell phone, gas. ... That hurts us. You’re passing that on to us and that is absolutely not acceptable,” said one resident at a City Council meeting on the measure earlier this year.

LAist has reached out to the city of South Gate about what’s next for the city.

The city of West Hollywood has approved an ordinance to create a domestic partnership registry for people in polyamorous relationships.

The domestic partnership registry extends certain legal protections for people in the city, including visitation rights to hospitals and jails in West Hollywood and some tenant protections. The registry doesn’t replace the state’s marriage or the state’s domestic partnership laws.

“It's a landmark ordinance and really puts and continues to elevate West Hollywood as a city that is here to support queer people and queer families as they evolve in their needs,” said Chelsea Byers, a West Hollywood City Council member. “I think that's a real joy that we can bring to people — that they can live in a greater sense of being seen and understood.”

How it works

To file, people in a multi-partner relationship will submit a form in person that will be provided by the City Clerk’s office — all members of the relationship will have to provide identification to the clerk.

The ordinance also offers an option by mail, if the signatures are notarized.

The ordinance builds on historical precedent

In 1985, the city became the first city in the nation to create a similar domestic partnership registry for same-sex couples. Similar to that registry, people outside the city can also register.

“This new law not only gives polyamorous unions legal recognition, it also gives people permission to imagine a future together and to plan their lives openly,” said Christina Fialho, president and founder of Rewrite the BiLine, an advocacy group for bisexual people and nonnuclear families, who advocated for the ordinance.

Several cities in Massachusetts have also passed multipartner domestic partnership laws.