The Brief

As vote tallies in the Los Angeles mayoral election trickled in slowly over the last week, unsubstantiated claims exploded on X that a fraudulent plot was underway to deprive the MAGA-backed former reality TV star Spencer Pratt the second-place slot to advance to the November runoff against incumbent Democrat Karen Bass.

A portion of these unfounded conspiracy theories pointed to changing betting odds for the three top candidates on prediction market sites Kalshi and Polymarket to suggest something sinister is afoot with the vote count. Some influencers supercharging such fraud claims online did so in posts sponsored by the companies themselves.

"They are actually doing it. They are counting votes until SPENCER LOSES. Someone DO SOMETHING," Trump-aligned influencer Mila Joy wrote to her half a million followers a day after the election as she reshared a Polymarket post with a graph showing that Pratt's betting odds were falling on the site.

"Is CA cheating to get Spencer Pratt out?" questioned commentator David Freeman, who posts under the handle Gunther Eagleman on X, as he shared a Kalshi post showing the odds between Pratt and progressive Democrat Nithya Raman. The Associated Press called the second-place spot for Raman on Monday afternoon after her vote share overtook Pratt's on Sunday.

At the bottom of both X posts, the words "paid partnership" appear in tiny font, a subtle reference to the millions of dollars Kalshi and Polymarket have pumped into programs that pay influencers to reshare corporate posts as a way to boost engagement.

The Los Angeles mayoral race is the clearest example yet of how prediction market posts about changing betting odds for candidates are being weaponized on X to sow doubt about the integrity of elections.

It's likely a preview of what's to come this year ahead of the midterm election. Kalshi and Polymarket are increasingly pervading ever more corners of daily life. Their rise has set off dozens of legal battles and raised novel questions about the ways betting on just about anything can have real-world consequences. Now it appears they are driving the latest battlefield in political misinformation wars on X.

"From the perspective of the influencer looking to get rich, their only job is to attract attention," Emerson Brooking, a disinformation expert at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, wrote in an email. "They will do this by sharing markets that align with what their audiences want to see. And if the betting markets are wrong, it is much wiser for them to allege fraud (and keep the lucrative promotions contract) rather than acknowledge that the gambling sites got it wrong."

In recent days, Kalshi and Polymarket have attempted to rein in some of their paid influencers. After NPR asked Kalshi about several partnership posts on Friday, the company said it told the influencers to take the posts down. Some of the posts, including Freeman's post questioning "CA cheating," have been deleted. Semafor first reported on Kalshi's crackdown.

On Monday, Polymarket told NPR it, too, is pulling back its sponsorship of some creators who were spreading election falsehoods. Joy's post is still live on X with the "paid partnership" tag, but the tag has been removed from posts by two other influencers paid by Polymarket.

"Companies shouldn't be paying people to spread misinformation," said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, who has reviewed the sponsored posts that flew across X. "In the Trump Republican Party, fraud allegations are going to be often received with a lot of enthusiasm, especially when people often get confused about the difference between the odds of someone winning and vote share."

Inside Kalshi and Polymarket paid partnerships 

Paying influencers as social media promoters is a type of "growth hacking" tech startups often deploy to maximize the reach of their brand in an attempt to drive more users to the services.

"It's a high-risk, high-reward situation," said Seton Hall University's Jess Rauchberg, who studies digital media culture. "But it's a strategy that gets people talking about the brand."

Polymarket and its rival, Kalshi, are both reining in paid posts from influencers after they spread falsehoods about the Los Angeles mayoral race.

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Kalshi and Polymarket have offered creators as much as $500 per post, according to two people who formerly worked on partnerships at Kalshi and Polymarket and who were not authorized to speak publicly about the programs.

Inside Kalshi, the approach has sparked debate over what responsibility the company has when creators promote its site by spreading misinformation and other harmful content across X, according to the former Kalshi employee.

A Kalshi spokesperson confirmed on Monday that the company now prohibits anyone in its affiliate program from questioning the integrity of an election or undermining a legal ruling or official determination about an election.

Previously, the company took a mostly hands-off approach to what its affiliate creators posted to boost one of Kalshi's markets, according to the former Kalshi employee.

Before the recent controversy, one of the only times Kalshi cut ties with a paid creator over a post promoting the company was when one of their contributors posted to X celebrating the death of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, the former Kalshi employee said.

Similarly at Polymarket, affiliate posts were given wide latitude, as long as the person posting plugged the company's markets, according to the former Polymarket employee. And there appeared to be little vetting of creators, with Polymarket tapping former Rep. Matt Gaetz as one of its paid contributors. The U.S. House Ethics Committee found Gaetz paid an underage girl for sex.

On Monday, Polymarket said that while it does not have language specifically banning creators from posting election-related disinformation, any post denying the result of an election would violate its rules against spreading false and misleading information.

Polymarket told NPR posts from two of the creators it works with have lost the "paid partnership" tag. It has not asked creators to delete any posts, but told them about the company's content guidelines.

While the company would not specify which creators, NPR confirmed "paid partnership" tags have been removed from Jun. 4 posts by right-wing influencers Benny Johnson and Kangmin Lee sharing the same Polymarket post about Raman's rising odds on the betting site.

Seton Hall University's Rauchberg said the crackdowns are just the latest example of how the rival companies are constantly trying to one-up each other.

"They want to spread this rhetoric that 'Kalshi is for everyone, Polymarket is for everyone,'" she said. "They want to give the impression that they don't have a political affiliation, but consumers are becoming more savvy that both companies are engaging in a type of 'purity politics,' each trying to outdo the other over which is the best app to use."

Not disclosing whether a social media post was sponsored is illegal under rules the Federal Trade Commission adopted in 2024. The Trump administration has not rolled back these rules, but it has also not announced any enforcement actions.

Why California vote counting attracts fraud claims

The Los Angeles mayor race was particularly vulnerable to becoming the focus of election conspiracy theories for a number of reasons. Prediction market data may have been one of them.

Pratt, an outsider candidate who received outsized attention and engagement on X, was favored for second place on betting markets on both Kalshi and Polymarket's sites in the days before the election — even when the largest polls of likely voters showed him in third place.

Election workers process ballots for the California state primary election at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center on June 5, 2026 in City of Industry, California.

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While the city's mayor is a nonpartisan office, a registered Republican like Pratt faced a challenge in heavily Democratic Los Angeles. But some social media commentators cited his favorable betting odds as evidence he could reach the November runoff.

Posts about what betting markets are saying about a candidate can confuse voters who may not understand the difference between betting behavior and a poll, said Zarine Kharazian, a Ph.D candidate at the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, who studies online rumors related to elections.

"It runs the risk of confusing people into thinking that, 'Okay, these markets have the pulse on public sentiment about the election and who's going to win,' when that's not necessarily the case," Kharazian said.

Heading into the Jun. 2 primary, election experts were already worried that California's notoriously slow ballot count would provide the opportunity for baseless fraud allegations to blossom.

A large portion of voters in the state use mail-in ballots, a form of voting President Trump has tried to associate with fraud. Election officials must verify mailed-in and dropped off ballots, making them slower to count. The state accepts ballots that are postmarked on the day of the election that arrive within seven days.

Ballots that are counted later in the process typically skew Democratic since more voters from that party embrace voting by mail. This phenomenon has been the basis for unfounded allegations of fraud in recent years, including by Trump.

The challenge has been particularly stark this year because so many Californians waited until Election Day to drop off their ballots, said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

State officials are "doing what they've always done — counting all the ballots, under transparent observation from the candidates and parties, and reporting each batch as soon as they can," Becker said, "yet the profiteers and grifters are loudly echoing our foreign adversaries in spreading lies designed to delegitimize our transparent election process."

President Trump himself has claimed without evidence that there was fraud in the Los Angeles mayoral's race. He called the election race "rigged" in a Truth Social post early Monday, and wrote it was "not possible" for Pratt to lose to Raman after his initial lead when vote counting began. The first assistant U.S. Attorney for the Los Angeles area, Bill Essayli, announced on X days earlier that his office had multiple election fraud investigations underway.

Over the weekend, Essayli debunked one popular conspiracy theory circulating on X — that Pratt had received zero votes in a ballot count update — as false.

Election experts say the baseless fraud allegations in California do not bode well for the upcoming November midterm season.

"I think we're going to get punched in the face so badly on election denialism in November," said Stephen Richer, the former Republican recorder for Maricopa County, Arizona, who dealt with baseless fraud allegations in the aftermath of the 2020 election. He is now a legal fellow at the Cato Institute and a senior fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Richer recalled that during the 2020 election, people trying to undermine the election results latched on to graphs that showed a blue line representing former President Joe Biden's totals suddenly jump higher as ballots were counted.

"And so now it seems that they're using these prediction market graphs to tell a similar story," Richer said.
Copyright 2026 NPR

For 39 straight days — the entire World Cup competition from start to finish — Chef Diego Argoti of Estrano, the viral street pasta pop-up, and formerly Poltergeist, will be cooking over a live, open fire in a loading dock. There's freshly brewed beer made just steps away. No reservation, no dress code. Just cold beer, good food, and every World Cup match on.

Estrano Verano is the World Cup viewing destination you haven't heard of yet — but will.

What is it?

The gathering is a collaboration between Argoti and the founders of Skyduster Beer, Johnny Marler and Nick Smith.

Running from this Thursday, June 11, to the World Cup final on Sunday, July 19, it will be open every day one hour before the first kickoff for the 104 matches. Located inside City Market South — a century-old former produce market near the Fashion District in Downtown L.A.— neighbors include Rossoblu, chef Steve Samson's Bologna-inspired Italian restaurant, and Dama, chef Antonia Lofaso's Latin-inspired restaurant and lounge.

Who's behind it

Argoti, who has cultivated a reputation as the enfant terrible of the L.A. food world, cut his teeth at Bestia and Bavel, later earning a James Beard semifinalist nod, StarChefs Rising Star 2024 and other accolades — all out of his barcade Poltergeist in Echo Park which closed the same year. Dishes there included a crispy Thai Caesar salad with a towering rice puff crouton that defied gravity, and a butterflied masa-fried dorade — head still on — bathed in Hachiya gazpacho, pink lady aguachile, and mussels escabeche, best enjoyed against the blue hue of classic '80s and '90s arcade games.

Guests toast at the Estrano Verano preview at Skyduster Brewery Sports Bar, City Market South, Downtown LA.

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Marler and Smith, two veterans of the beverage industry, founded Skyduster in 2021. The L.A.-only brewery has since landed its beer at the Greek Theatre and Dodger Stadium. The City Market location marks Skyduster's first physical space — with a Silver Lake beer garden already in the works for 2027.

The two met in 2024 at the premiere of the PBS SoCal documentary series Rebel Kitchens Southern California, where Argoti spoke openly about losing his father. Afterward, Marler approached him and shared that he had just lost his own father as well. The two bonded over their shared grief, and their partnership soon took shape.

"We're here because both our parents died within a month of each other," Marler said. "If it wasn't for that, none of this happens."

The food and beer

At first glance, the permanent bar menu reads like standard sports bar or pub fare — but with Argoti in the kitchen, there's always more to the story. Marler had two non-negotiables: a burger and a hot dog. Everything else was Argoti's call. That means a Pad Krapow Chicken Sandwich built on masa-fried chicken thighs, holy basil, Thai chilies, papaya salad, and lime leaf aioli — and a Yuba Cheesesteak that swaps the beef for marinated tofu skin on a seeded semolina roll with celery root cheez whiz and enoki shoestrings. Starters include Jidori party wings (Szechuan Buffalo or Tamarind Sticky) and a blue corn tostada with Hokkaido scallops. That menu is available every day the doors are open.

A spread of Jidori party wings, pub burger patties, and fresh herbs from the Estrano Verano menu at Skyduster Brewery Sports Bar.

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Friday through Sunday, Argoti, alongside chefs Alan Rudoy and Sebastian Salazar, takes it a step further: a separate live-fire menu is posted day-of and available from 4 p.m. until sold out. Think of it as the bar menu's wilder, more unpredictable cousin — subject to whims. The custom-built open fire rig is the heart of the operation. "I want to get some octopus — when there is Morocco against Japan," Argoti said. "That was one of my biggest things for this, to cook something that most people don't think about here in the U.S." A Morocco-Japan matchup is projected as a likely Round of 32 fixture, which means that octopus could be coming sooner than you think.

All of it bears the fingerprints of Argoti's full body of work — from his time at Bestia and Bavel, to the street pasta chaos of Estrano and the barcade-on-acid menu of Poltergeist.

Washing it all down is Skyduster's intentionally simple four-beer lineup — a Japanese rice lager, Italian Pilsner, West Coast IPA, and Citrus Wit — all brewed on site and built to pair with food, not fight it.

Why this, why now

When I asked Argoti and Marler why the city needs a spot like this right now, Marler was direct. "I think L.A. is missing a lot of fun right now," he said. "I just don't know what happened." Estrano Verano is betting that people are ready for a place with fewer rules and more community.

The World Cup serves as the perfect unifier — every country represented in the tournament, every walk of life, welcome to catch a match or just hang. And with the historic City Market South complex as the backdrop, a century-old former produce market that's seen the city change around it, the setting feels less like a pop-up and more like exactly where you're supposed to be this summer.

Just show up: Skyduster Brewery Sports Bar, 1124 San Julian St., City Market South, downtown LA.

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"This reminds me of jumping out of an airplane and knowing everything is gonna be okay — and afterward it's just gonna be some of the most fun you've ever had in your life," Argoti said.

The U.S. Supreme Court is heading into its crunch time, the part of the year when the justices are racing to finish decisions and dissents in the cases that remain undecided.

There are 23 cases left, out of the 58 that have been argued. Two major cases have already been decided: One essentially gutted what remained of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, prompting Republicans in a number of Southern states to redraw congressional maps to diminish or eliminate majority-Black districts that have elected Black members of Congress.

The second major case that has been decided struck down President Trump's tariff program because the court said Congress had not authorized it, and Trump exceeded his authority in doing it on his own.

Many of the most difficult and controversial cases, however, remain to be decided in the coming weeks, with the justices aiming to conclude their work by the end of June or early July. The Supreme Court is next expected to release decisions on Thursday, June 11.

So what's left?

Birthright citizenship

Trump v. Barbara 

Trump has long maintained that the Constitution does not guarantee birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil, and on the first day of his second term in office, he signed an executive order barring citizenship for children born in the U.S. if parents entered the country illegally or if the parents are living and working in the U.S. legally with temporary visas. The executive order never went into effect because every lower court judge to review it concluded, in the words of one, that the order was "blatantly unconstitutional." Specifically, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, enacted after the Civil War, says that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."

While almost all scholars interpret that language broadly, and as applying to all babies born in the U.S., Trump himself maintains that it applies only to the children of former slaves, and definitely not to the children of those in the U.S. illegally or the children of noncitizens living here legally.

Read more about the case:

• A once-fringe theory on birthright citizenship comes to the Supreme Court
• Supreme Court majority seems inclined to rule against Trump on birthright citizenship
• As birthright citizenship goes to Supreme Court, here's how Americans feel about it
• Trump attends Supreme Court arguments over his executive order, a presidential first

Trans bans in sports

Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J.

At issue are laws recently enacted in about half the states that ban trans girls and women from participating in women's sports at publicly funded schools. Before the court are two cases — one involving varsity competition at colleges and universities, and the other involving sports in high schools. Supporters of the bans say the laws are needed to prevent athletes whose assigned sex at birth was male from having an unfair advantage in women's sports. Opponents of the bans say they discriminate based on sex, in violation of both federal law and the Constitution's guarantee to equal protection of the law. And for athletes at every level, the issue is deeply personal, with tennis greats Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova on opposing sides, along with hundreds of other athletes.

Read more about the cases:

• A conservative Supreme Court tackles the question of trans women in school sports
• Supreme Court appears likely to uphold state bans on transgender athletes
• Trump's ban on gender-affirming care for young people puts hospitals in a bind

Will independent government agencies remain independent?

Trump v. Slaughter

Donald Trump is not the first president to try to fire the heads of independent agencies. President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to fire one of the five Federal Trade Commission commissioners then serving in office. But in 1935, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously against the president; the court declared that under the federal law, commissioners could only be fired "for cause," meaning "inefficiency in office, neglect of duty, or malfeasance."

Every Supreme Court since then has reaffirmed that decision. If the conservative supermajority sides with Trump, he (as well as future presidents) will be able to fire, at will, agency leaders in all or almost all previously independent agencies.

Ironically, the commissioner in the crosshairs this time was also a member of the Federal Trade Commission. Trump appointed Rebecca Slaughter to the FTC in his first term and fired her in his second. The Supreme Court allowed the firing to go through on a temporary basis, over staunch dissents from the court's three liberal justices.

But the odds are that the court's six conservative justices will rule definitively in Trump's favor, the result being that independent agencies will no longer be independent.

Read more about the cases:

• Supreme Court appears poised to vastly expand presidential powers
• How Trump's firings could upend a 90-year-old Supreme Court ruling limiting his power

So does that mean he can fire members of the Federal Reserve Board?

Trump v. Cook

Trump threatened to fire the head of the Fed, Jerome Powell, and tried to fire Lisa Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Fed board. But the Supreme Court so far has refused to allow her removal. Cook's case, now awaiting decision by the court, has prompted considerable anxiety among economists, business leaders and others. When the Slaughter case was argued in December, some of the conservative justices seemed to suggest that the Fed had more protections than other agencies. Just how the court will thread that needle remains to be seen.

Read more about the case:

• Supreme Court doubtful of Trump claim he can fire Fed governors by fiat
• It's showdown time for the Fed's independence at the Supreme Court

Mail-in ballots

Watson v. Republican National Committee

By law, 29 states count at least some ballots that arrive after Election Day, including ballots from overseas and from members of the military, as long as they are postmarked on or before Election Day.

In the case before the court, Mississippi defends late-arriving ballots, noting that the Constitution gives states the right to run their own elections. That said, the Trump administration and the Republican Party take the opposite position. They maintain that under federal law the election has to happen on Election Day, and anything that happens after that is not part of the election.

Read more about the case:

• Supreme Court appears skeptical of laws counting mail-in ballots after Election Day
• The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to grace periods for mail ballot returns

Temporary protected status for eligible migrants

Mullin v. Doe and Trump v. Miot

Congress enacted the Temporary Protected Status law in 1990 to allow fully vetted and eligible migrants to live and work legally in the U.S. if they cannot return safely to their countries because of natural disasters, armed conflicts and other extraordinary conditions. Since the law was enacted 36 years ago, every president, Republican and Democrat, has embraced it. Except Trump. In his first term, he tried and failed to kill off TPS. But in the 16 months since he returned to office, he may well be more successful. Currently, there are 17 countries whose migrants have been designated with TPS status, and so far Trump is seeking to eliminate 13 of those countries from the TPS list.

The two test cases before the Supreme Court involve migrants from Haiti and Syria. The Haitians — more than 300,000 of them — have been living legally in the U.S. since a devastating earthquake in 2010, followed by a deadly cholera epidemic, domestic terrorism, including widespread kidnappings and killings by marauding gangs, and political assassinations that have continued to this day. The Syrians are a much smaller group of roughly 3,800. 

The Trump administration argues that decisions about TPS are entirely up to the president and that the courts have no power to review those decisions. If the court agrees, that could well lead to mass deportations.

Read more about the cases:

• Supreme Court appears to lean toward ending TPS for some migrants
• Supreme Court weighs Trump's effort to end temporary protected status for Haitians, Syrians

Geofencing — a new tool for law enforcement

Chatrie v. US

Geofencing entails drawing a virtual geographical fence around an area where a crime was committed. In this case, the area within the geofence line included not just a bank where a robbery took place but also a church and a senior citizens home. The government sought a warrant that required Google to search its data and turn over any of the names of users who were within the geofence line at the time of the crime.

Essentially, the question for the justices is whether this new technique is ingenious, Orwellian, or both? The government contends that because people are free NOT to give their location data to their tech provider, the data that the tech company does have must be turned over to police pursuant to a warrant. Countering that argument, opponents of geofencing contend that because the warrant directs the tech company to search millions of users' location history, millions of people were subjected to a search despite never having done anything suspicious.

Read more about the case:

• Supreme Court considers constitutionality of 'geofence' warrants
• Privacy and law enforcement clash as the Supreme Court wrestles with 'geofence' warrants
• WATCH: The Supreme Court case that could redefine digital privacy

Guns

Wolford v. Lopez and US v. Hemani

In most states, gun owners can bring firearms onto private property, unless the property owner tells them otherwise. But five states — Hawaii, California, Maryland, New York and New Jersey — have passed laws that require gun owners to get permission in advance. The question facing the justices is whether that requirement for advance permission violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

In a second case, the question is whether a federal law that makes it a felony for drug users to possess a gun violates the Second Amendment. The law is akin to one that resulted in the prosecution and conviction of Hunter Biden. Biden was convicted of the gun law in this case, along with two other charges, in connection with his purchasing a firearm in 2018.

In 2022 , the court issued a broad ruling declaring that gun regulations henceforth would be deemed unconstitutional if they had no analog to a similar gun regulation that existed at the founding. Lower courts have found the decision confusing and difficult to administer, and they have unsubtly complained about the lack of guidance on gun issues from the Supreme Court. The two gun cases this term may answer at least some of those questions.

Read more about the cases:

• Supreme Court wrestles with gun rights, marijuana, and the right to own a gun

Copyright 2026 NPR

The official start of summer is just around the corner, but temperatures are already beginning to heat up this week.

If you're at the beach today, temperatures are going to stay on the cooler side, with highs from 68 to 73 degrees in L.A. County, and between 70 and 77 degrees along the Orange County coast.

However, be careful in the water — forecasters say there's going to be dangerous rip currents and breaking waves from elevated surf up to 6 feet tall. Those conditions will last through Thursday.

Elsewhere, we're looking at highs of between 78 and 86 degrees for the valleys and up to 89 degrees for the Inland Empire.

Over in Coachella Valley, temperatures could climb up to 104 degrees. Stay hydrated!