Topline:
California is often knocked by the rest of the country as being "slow" to count votes. But here's the deal: that's a feature, not a bug, of the election system.
The context: Things take a while here largely because California works so hard to expand the ways people can vote.
Keep reading... for more details on what to expect.
Election Day is here, but now comes the waiting.
Do you have something to watch on Netflix? Maybe you've been meaning to pick up a hobby — how about crochet? Whatever you do, take a deep breath and keep busy because it could be days (or weeks) before we get some California election results.
The state is often knocked by the rest of the country as being "slow" to count votes. But here's the deal: That's a feature, not a bug, of the election system.
Things take a while here largely because California works so hard to expand the ways people can vote. For example:
But things have sped up considerably in the 26 counties that have adopted a 2016 law called the Voter's Choice Act, including L.A., Orange, and Riverside counties. In the 2020 and 2022 elections, the changes associated with that law — like voters not being locked into a designated polling location — drastically cut down the number of provisional ballots cast, which helped move things along faster than they had before.
Still, accuracy and a commitment to "expanding the franchise" — translation: allowing more people to vote — means the process is not designed to produce instantaneous results.
As you watch these results, keep in mind:
Get full results:
Keep in mind that in tight races the winner may not be determined for days or weeks after Election Day. This is normal. Here's why.
In California, ballots postmarked on or before Nov. 5 are counted toward the results as long as they arrive within seven days of the election. The California Secretary of State's Office is scheduled to certify the final vote on Dec. 13.
You'll have to get that endorphin hit elsewhere on Nov. 5.
A few things to keep in mind: You may recall that during the 2024 primary, it took about week to call the results for L.A. City Council races in District 4, where incumbent Nithya Raman was fighting to avoid a runoff election, and District 14, where challenger Ysabel Jurado wound up overtaking incumbent Kevin de León by just a few hundred votes.
It took an even longer 15 days to call the results of Prop. 1, during which opponents conceded, walked back that concession, and conceded again when the measure won by a razor-thin 0.4% margin. And it took 23 days to call the second-place winner for Orange County's 45th congressional district — it ultimately went to Democrat Derek Tran, who faces off against first-place winner and Republican incumbent Michelle Steel on Nov. 5.
It's fair to expect some of the same this year, depending on how close some of these races end up being.
TL;DR: Officially, county election officials have until Dec. 5 to certify election results, and the state has until Dec. 13 to certify the statewide vote — including a mandatory audit that requires hand-counting all of the ballots at 1% of precincts. Nevertheless, you're going to see a lot of national media headlines about California's relative "slowness." Brush it off. We have sunshine, beaches, and a highly enfranchised population.
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This story was originally reported and written in 2020 and has been updated several times, including for the March primary, with current information. Libby Denkmann contributed to the original report.
Topline:
Federal agencies responsible for immigration enforcement are set to receive tens of billions more dollars after Congress voted to fund them not just for the year, but through the rest of President Trump's term.
More details: The House narrowly voted on Tuesday to direct roughly $70 billion to the Department of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, the second multi-billion dollar infusion of money to the agencies in the last year muscled through by Republicans alone. The measure passed by a vote of 214 to 212.
Why it matters: The vote marks the end of a 115 day standoff over immigration policy. After federal officers shot and killed two protesters in Minneapolis earlier this year, Democrats refused to back more funding for ICE and Border Patrol, with the goal of forcing changes to immigration enforcement tactics.
Read on... for more on the vote.
Federal agencies responsible for immigration enforcement are set to receive tens of billions more dollars after Congress voted to fund them not just for the year, but through the rest of President Trump's term.
The House narrowly voted on Tuesday to direct roughly $70 billion to the Department of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, the second multi-billion dollar infusion of money to the agencies in the last year muscled through by Republicans alone.
The measure passed by a vote of 214 to 212.
The vote marks the end of a 115 day standoff over immigration policy. After federal officers shot and killed two protesters in Minneapolis earlier this year, Democrats refused to back more funding for ICE and Border Patrol, with the goal of forcing changes to immigration enforcement tactics.
But as negotiations fell apart, Republicans moved to circumvent Democrats using a special procedure known as reconciliation to fund the agencies without acquiescing to any of the reforms they were demanding.
In the Senate last week, one Republican joined all Democrats in an unsuccessful attempt to block the measure. The lopsided votes highlighted a Republican caucus continuing to endorse Trump's immigration agenda as Democrats warn that Congress has ceded its ability to provide oversight by funneling these agencies billions of dollars with few strings attached.
Through this legislation, Congress is giving ICE more than three times its last annual budget. Though technically this funding is meant to cover three years, unlike a traditional annual funding bill, the money comes with few stipulations on how and when it should be spent.
While most annual spending measures provide funds for just that fiscal year, this measure includes lump sums that need to be spent only by the end of fiscal year 2029, including:
Legislation passed in April to fund most of DHS except ICE and Border Patrol did include provisions that would provide funding for the agency to purchase body cameras, stipulate congressional oversight of detention centers and deescalation training for officers and agents.
Lawmakers agreed to separate funding for ICE and Border Patrol as Republicans and Democrats struggled to reach a compromise on reforms even as a record-long DHS shutdown dragged on.
But now ICE and Border Patrol will be funded without the changes Democrats were demanding, including requiring judicial warrants to enter homes and prohibiting officers from wearing masks. The package also lacks reforms with bipartisan support, such as requiring officers to wear body cameras.
Neither measure included funding for internal oversight offices that conduct investigations into detention center conditions; however, the April measure to fund all of the agency included $20 million for the DHS inspector general to specifically conduct oversight of detention facilities.
Not only is this standoff ending without Democrats achieving the reforms they pressed for, the agencies will be insulated from additional pressure through the appropriations process for three years.
Both ICE and CBP received a massive influx of funding last year, also passed by Republicans through the budget reconciliation process, that has allowed both agencies to largely continue operating even as Democrats refused to provide them annual funding for the last several months.
ICE's usual annual budget is about $10 billion. The $75 billion boost last summer made ICE the highest funded federal law enforcement agency and enabled a hiring surge that doubled its ranks in a matter of months.
Former agency leaders, Democrats and even some Republicans have warned that the surge of money limits the ability of Congress to provide oversight when it comes to how that money is spent and how the agency operates.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, was the only Republican to vote against this latest funding measure in the Senate last week. She wrote in a statement that by appropriating funding for three fiscal years instead of the usual one, the measure "weakens the normal budgeting process and sets another precedent for avoiding it when we find ourselves in disagreement."
"In doing so, it reduces Congress' ability to apply reasonable checks on immigration policy for the remainder of this administration and into the next," she wrote.
Other Republicans say they were left with no choice once Democrats decided to withhold funding for these agencies as leverage to extract reforms.
"We're attempting here to fund ICE and CBP at last year's operating budget plus inflation, that's all we're talking about here," House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said shortly before the vote. "This is not a slush fund, it's regular, normal funding. And we're going to do it not for one year, but for three years so we don't end up here again."
ICE officials have been gearing up for the potential new cash for months.
"Apparently we're going to get more reconciliation money, so I got a shopping list," said Matt Elliston, ICE assistant director for law enforcement systems and analysis, speaking on a panel at the Border Security Expo in Arizona last month.
Among the items on his list are wearable headset displays so that officers do not need to be on their phones during an operation and data to help identify where someone targeted for arrest lives.
Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott said absent the reconciliation funds, the agency was struggling to correctly pay its employees and fulfill contracts.
While the agencies welcome the funds, immigration advocates are concerned that funding the agency outside the normal appropriations process means provisions that tell the agency how to do its work are not included.
Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Coalition, said in the past DHS annual funding bills included specific guardrails on the spending including requirements for the agency to report data on who it is detaining and specific treatment of pregnant women in custody.
"It's very dangerous," Altman said. "And it means that the agency will move forward with even fewer accountability mechanisms than we've seen in the past."
Altman also raised concerns about the $350 million dedicated to immigration enforcement in areas that are not "qualified cooperating jurisdictions," meaning a locality that is not a part of programs that allow local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration law.
"The DHS secretary has wide discretion to just say these are not sufficiently cooperating with the White House's mass deportation agenda," she said. "So it's concerning in terms of where the money will go."
After the two killings in Minneapolis, Democrats and a contingent of Republicans in Congress said they wanted to take action to reign in the tactics of federal immigration officers.
For weeks this winter, debate over President Trump's immigration policy consumed Capitol Hill. But despite the protracted fight over immigration enforcement funding, that discussion has largely subsided.
Republicans criticized Democrats for pushing an unserious list of demands. Democrats criticized Republicans for dismissing attempts at meaningful reform.
A new DHS secretary, Markwayne Mullin, has dialed back some of the aggressive enforcement operations that drew the national spotlight. And other controversies, like the war in Iran, have overtaken the immigration policy debate.
So much so that when Senate Republicans finally moved to approve the $70 billion for ICE and Border Patrol, much of the debate focused on an unrelated fund proposed by the Trump administration to compensate people who claim to have been wrongfully targeted by the government.
Reflecting on what followed after the two deaths in her home state, Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., says it has been hard for her personally to come to terms with the reality that Democrats were unable to extract the policy changes they demanded.
And meanwhile, Smith says Minnesotans are still dealing with the fallout from the crackdown — like kids who did not return to school or businesses that never reopened — even as public attention shifted away.
"This is the way it goes, Americans have really busy complicated lives, they're trying to figure out how to pay rent and buy groceries, but what they saw, I don't think they're going to forget it," Smith says. "And that's what I mean when I say we've lost these votes but that doesn't mean we've lost the fight."
Even if public opinion on Trump's immigration agenda does help Democrats' take control of Congress next year, Democrats' ability to extract changes through the appropriations process will be limited now that the agencies have resources to last until 2029.
Copyright 2026 NPR
Topline:
Two Democrats will compete in November to regulate the insurance market amid increasing climate change risks, the aftermath of the 2025 Los Angeles fires.
Why now: For the first time since California insurance commissioner became an elected position, two Democrats will vie for the job in November. The top two vote-getters in the June primary were former San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Jane Kim and state Sen. Ben Allen, who received about 27% and 20% of the vote, respectively. One of them will succeed Ricardo Lara, the former Democratic lawmaker who has served two terms as insurance commissioner. Lara has presided over the Insurance Department in the past eight years, during which the state saw its deadliest and most devastating fires.
Why it matters: Kim or Allen will be taking on complicated, enormous challenges that have implications for local communities, people’s ability to buy homes and start businesses, and the state’s economy.
Read on... for more on the race.
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
For the first time since California insurance commissioner became an elected position, two Democrats will vie for the job in November.
The top two vote-getters in the June primary were former San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Jane Kim and state Sen. Ben Allen, who received about 27% and 20% of the vote, respectively. One of them will succeed Ricardo Lara, the former Democratic lawmaker who has served two terms as insurance commissioner. Lara has presided over the Insurance Department in the past eight years, during which the state saw its deadliest and most devastating fires.
Kim or Allen will be taking on complicated, enormous challenges that have implications for local communities, people’s ability to buy homes and start businesses, and the state’s economy.
In the past few years, insurance companies stopped writing new policies or renewing old ones, especially in high-risk areas, citing increasing wildfire risk from climate change and inflation that followed the COVID-19 pandemic. This caused homeowners to turn to the last-resort FAIR Plan, which is mandated by law to provide fire insurance. The plan, run by an alliance of insurers, has grown to more than 684,000 policies in force as of March, an increase of 152% since September 2022. It has warned about its ability to keep paying claims after major disasters.
Proposition 103, a law approved by voters in 1988, means that among many other things, the elected commissioner has the power to approve rate increases. It has kept the state’s rates from rising too much over the years — Californians’ homeowners insurance premiums have hovered around the middle of the pack nationwide — but that could change. Last year, the commissioner put in place regulations that include new factors insurers can use when setting their premiums, such as catastrophe modeling and reinsurance costs. Some companies have applied for and received approval to raise their rates, so they’re starting to write policies again.
Keeping insurance available but affordable will be the most pressing issue for either Kim or Allen, whose responsibilities will also include regulating auto, pet and some aspects of health insurance, plus workers’ compensation.
Another problem that will need plenty of attention: making sure insurance companies pay their claims in a timely manner that helps communities to rebuild. The L.A.-area fires shed a light on insurer practices that delay and deny claims, as well as underinsurance and the lack of standards for smoke damage, which have held up recovery. Pending legislation — such as those authored by Allen, whose district was hit by the fires last year — and lawsuits will address some of those issues. Well-organized fire survivors who called for Lara’s resignation over his department’s response to their concerns will surely keep up the pressure on his successor.
Here’s a look at each candidate’s record and how she or he would approach the job, based on their interviews with CalMatters and what they have said publicly, including at candidate forums.
Kim’s proposal to create “natural disaster insurance for all,” inspired by a program in New Zealand, has gotten a lot of attention. She plans to fund such a system with a portion of policyholder premiums that insurance companies would collect and divert to the state. The state would then guarantee fire and flood coverage, while insurance companies would continue to cover other risks.
Naysayers, including consumer advocates, wonder why she hasn’t released any specifics about how much capital such a fund would require. Kim told CalMatters that it would need to be studied, but that at its core her proposal would generate revenue.
Opponents of her proposal also say it’s a bad idea to shift catastrophic burden onto the state, pointing to what they say is the failure of splitting off earthquake insurance from homeowner insurance — most California homeowners now have no insurance coverage.
“We (taxpayers) already are on the hook,” Kim said. “When insurers and utilities refuse to pay, they just pass it on to us anyway. Sharing the risk is important.”
Kim also told CalMatters that an idea Merritt Farren, a Republican candidate for commissioner, proposed — that the state create a reinsurance authority to encourage insurers to write policies in the state — “may turn out to be a more efficient model.”
Among Kim’s shorter-term priorities if she wins:
The former San Francisco elected official, an attorney, touts among her accomplishments free community college for the city’s residents; the first $15 minimum wage ordinance in the state; and a tenant-protection ordinance to avoid unjust evictions. She worked as the California director for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 U.S. presidential campaign and most recently as California Director for the Working Families Party.
Kim has a long list of endorsers, including many unions such as SEIU California. Besides Sanders, another U.S. lawmaker, Rep. Ro Khanna of Silicon Valley, has also endorsed her.
The state senator, who will be termed out of the Legislature, wants to bring together the state, insurers, builders, local governments and firefighters to work on risk-reduction strategies.
“I think that's ultimately going to be the way that we get ourselves out of this mess,” he told CalMatters.
What he calls a comprehensive approach includes thinking about where people live and build: “We shouldn't be building new construction that is irresponsible in high-risk areas. We should be looking for ways to carefully and sensitively encourage people to pull back from high-risk areas.”
If he wins, Allen’s other plans include:
Allen has played up his experience as a legislator, including writing and passing bills related to holding insurance companies accountable. For example, a law he wrote now requires insurers to pay 60% of policyholders’ contents coverage without a detailed inventory, and gives consumers more time to provide that inventory. He also touts writing Proposition 4, the bond measure approved by the state’s voters in 2024 “for safe drinking water, wildfire prevention and protecting communities and natural lands from climate risks.”
Other pending bills authored by him include one that would require insurers to give homeowners 90 days notice before they intend not to renew their policies, along with a clear explanation. Another would penalize insurance companies that fail to correct their practices after the insurance department finds that they have violated laws and regulations.
Allen also has many endorsements, including the two leaders of the state Legislature, Senate Pro Tem Monique Limon and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas. U.S. Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, both from California, unions and the Consumer Federation of California also endorse him.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
Topline:
L.A. City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez on Tuesday pushed his colleagues to consider a November ballot measure that could extend voting rights to residents without U.S. citizenship status.
The background: Soto-Martínez introduced a motion in April. It was sent to the city’s Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee, but that group has yet to discuss it. The last action was taken on May 28, when the item was continued until an undetermined date, and it was not on the committee’s June 5 agenda.
What does this mean? If placed on the ballot and approved by voters, the mayor and City Council would have the ability to make changes to the city’s ordinance that would allow noncitizen residents to vote in local elections. It would affect residents like Grace McManus, a legal permanent resident who has lived in L.A. since 2002. “Like so many longtime residents, I contribute to this city every day, yet I’ve often felt invisible and unheard,” McManus said in a statement. “Residential Voting is about making sure people like me have a voice in the decisions that affect our families and our communities.”
Why is the council member pushing for this? Soto-Martínez and supporters of the measure say everyone who lives in and contributes to L.A. should be represented in the democratic process. “My own parents spent decades working, paying taxes, and raising their children in Los Angeles without the right to vote,” Soto-Martínez said in a statement. “Their story is the story of hundreds of thousands of Angelenos who contribute to this city every day and deserve a voice in the decisions that affect our community.”
Is there a deadline? Yes, the City Council has until June 17 to place a ballot measure on the General Election ballot in November.
Topline:
Children and teens across Long Beach will have access to free meals this summer through programs run by the city and Long Beach Unified School District.
Why it matters: Beginning June 12, the first day of LBUSD’s summer break, more than 60 locations across Long Beach will begin offering free meals through a federal program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The sites were selected to serve communities with the greatest need, in accordance with state guidelines.
The backstory: The city’s arm of the program distributed nearly 27,000 meals last summer and may serve even more this year, after adding a location in Signal Hill. The program has served millions of children since launching in Long Beach in 1979.
Read on... for more on the program.
Children and teens across Long Beach will have access to free meals this summer through programs run by the city and Long Beach Unified School District.
Beginning June 12, the first day of LBUSD’s summer break, more than 60 locations across Long Beach will begin offering free meals through a federal program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The sites were selected to serve communities with the greatest need, in accordance with state guidelines.
The Department of Parks, Recreation and Marine will host lunch at 23 park and library locations. Children and teens ages 1 to 18 can receive lunches on a first-come, first-served basis and must eat them on site. No registration or proof of income is required. A full list of park locations and their service times and dates is available here.
Long Beach Unified will provide breakfast and lunch to more than 8,000 students enrolled in the district’s Expanded Learning Opportunities Program and school-age care programs. Those students can receive their meals at the site where they attend programming. Dates, times and locations of service at LBUSD sites are available here.
During the school year, Long Beach Unified participates in California’s Universal Meals Program and offers free breakfast and lunch to all students — regardless of family income. But options during the summer months are more limited. Offerings through the city’s Parks Department and LBUSD aim to fill that gap in a district where 61% of students are classified as socioeconomically disadvantaged, according to LBUSD’s most recent Local Control Accountability Plan.
The city’s arm of the program distributed nearly 27,000 meals last summer and may serve even more this year, after adding a location in Signal Hill. The program has served millions of children since launching in Long Beach in 1979.
Meals, which are all vended from Long Beach Unified, rotate on a biweekly menu schedule and include chicken tenders, hamburgers, mini corn dogs, bean burritos and pizza sticks. Meals will also include milk, juice, fruits and vegetables.
Meal service will be available from June 12 through Aug. 24, though dates and times vary by location. There will be no meal service on June 19 and July 3. Additional information on the city’s program is available here, and information on the school district’s program here.
Do you need food? See our guide to resources across Long Beach and L.A. County.
