The Brief

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

After more than a decade being exiled from the governor’s office in California, Republicans are eyeing growing voter frustration with the dominant liberal politics of the state as a launching pad for a comeback next year.

Though lacking the statewide profiles of a deluge of Democratic contenders, a pair of GOP hopefuls with devoted conservative followings has jumped into the open 2026 gubernatorial race in recent months, hoping to persuade voters that only a radical shakeup can fix California’s problems.

“I don’t think there’s any other way of describing California today, other than the sick man of America,” said Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host and onetime political adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron who officially announced his candidacy on Monday. “It’s just undeniable that we’re in a terrible, terrible mess in California and we have to change direction.”

Hilton is kicking off his campaign today with an event in Huntington Beach, the city that has remade itself over the past few years into the bulwark of conservative resistance in California. He follows Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a hero of the right for defying state mandates during the COVID pandemic, who entered the race to succeed termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom in February.

Both believe that voters have grown sick of a generation of one-party Democratic rule in Sacramento and are banking on appeals to cut taxes and regulations — which they blame for making California unaffordable — to reach across traditional partisan lines.

“We are being led down a path of complete government control and socialism,” Bianco said in an interview. “This is no longer Democrat versus Republican. We’re at a point where it’s sane versus insane.”

But conservative candidates face a steep climb in a state that has not elected a Republican to statewide office since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger won a second term in 2006.

California Democratic Party Chairperson Rusty Hicks said the gubernatorial race is about more than just who can deliver for Californians. Voters know the governor has a powerful platform to stand up to the Trump administration and they won’t want a Republican in a role that is also critical to the future of the rest of the country and the whole world, he said.

“I certainly applaud them for continuing to try,” Hicks said. “But time and time again, we see California voters see their policies for what they are, which is not in line with the values of Californians.”

Slashing taxes and regulations

More than 20 people have already filed a statement of intention to run for governor in the 2026 primary as Republicans — though few will be serious candidates and some may never qualify for the ballot at all, which requires paying a filing fee or submitting thousands of signatures from registered voters.

Only two, including Bianco, have reported raising any money for their campaigns so far. While the first fundraising report of 2025 is not due until the end of July, major donations are filed with the state on a rolling basis.

Leo Zacky, a poultry farm heir and perennial candidate who received 1.3% of the vote in the 2022 gubernatorial primary and 0.1% in the 2021 recall election, seeded his campaign last month with $50,000 of his own money.

Meanwhile, since launching his campaign in February, Bianco has reported more than $380,000 in major contributions — enough to solidify himself as an early frontrunner for conservative voters, but a far cry from the millions that some Democratic contenders have already raised.

That leaves an opening for Hilton, 55, a native of the United Kingdom who moved to California in 2012 with his wife, a public relations executive for tech companies. Hilton has a built-in audience from hosting the weekly commentary program “The Next Revolution” on Fox News from 2017 to 2023, and Silicon Valley connections that could provide the money he needs to spread his message more broadly.

Hilton said his campaign will focus on practical solutions to rebuild a “ladder of opportunity,” so that every Californian can have a great job and a great home — though many of them are ideas that the Democratic supermajority in the Legislature is unlikely to ever support.

He would eliminate the state income tax for Californians below an unspecified income level. He wants to boost housing development by simplifying building codes, ending lawsuits under the infamous California Environmental Quality Act, and promoting construction of single-family homes. He believes the state needs mandatory phonics education and more accountability for teachers based on test scores to improve student achievement.

Though he has had a long career in politics, Hilton has never held elected office himself, which he argues is an asset.

“I would ask people, how good are the machine politicians in Sacramento who are involved in this one-party rule? How is that working?” Hilton said.

Bianco, 57, was a longtime sheriff’s deputy in Riverside County who ran for sheriff in 2018 out of frustration with what he called a “pro-criminal” approach to public safety in California. During his two terms as chief law enforcement officer of Riverside County, he has been a controversial but locally popular figure, refusing to enforce Newsom’s COVID lockdown orders or apologize for his brief affiliation with the far-right Oath Keepers militia.

Sheriff Chad Bianco of Riverside County speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on May 15, 2024.

(

Kent Nishimura

/

Getty Images

)

He said he’s now running for governor because, like many Californians, he is tired of how the government has failed a state that people otherwise love. Many of his priorities align with Hilton’s: Bianco would like to completely abolish the state income tax, get rid of laws that he said are driving farmers and ranchers out of business, and leave environmental regulation to the federal government.

And echoing the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, Bianco said he wants to eliminate wasteful spending such as the high-speed rail project and multibillion-dollar programs that have not reduced homelessness.

“The number one job of government is public safety,” Bianco said. “All the rest of it is fluff.”

The anti-Trump bump

California Republicans have been jubilant since the November election, when they flipped three seats in the state Legislature as President Donald Trump increased his vote share in nearly every county. At a party convention in Sacramento last month, they strategized over how to build on the momentum by leaning into issues such as affordability and crime that appear to be helping them gain ground, particularly among Latino voters.

“That tells us that Californians, on the local level and when it comes to the laws that are being passed in Sacramento, they’re looking to Republicans,” Corrine Rankin, the newly elected chairperson of the California Republican Party, said in an interview. “They're rejecting the failures that are coming out of the Capitol by the Democrats.”

In a February survey by the Public Policy Institute of California, only 48% of likely voters said the state is going in the right direction, compared to 51% who said it’s going in the wrong direction — underwater, albeit the highest approval in two years.

To win the governorship next year, Rankin said the state GOP would eventually unite behind a candidate who can help Californians understand how that dissatisfaction is driven by what Democrats in charge of the state are doing.

“We need change here in California. Californians expect change and we’re positioned to deliver,” she said.

But the modest advances of the last election belie a GOP that is still far from competitive in California. Trump only received about 38% of the vote, losing to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris by more than 20 percentage points, and Republicans lost three U.S. House seats.

The 2026 midterms, in which Democratic anger at the Trump administration could produce an even more liberal electorate, will be a difficult political environment for the California GOP to snap a statewide shutout that dates back to 2010. In 2022, no Republican candidate for statewide office came within 10 percentage points of victory, and most lost by about twice that margin.

Andrew Acosta, a Democratic political consultant who is not working on the governor’s race, said there are substantive problems in California for serious conservatives to campaign on. “The Republicans have a lot of fodder if they did it the right way,” he said.

But candidates so closely tied to Trump are unlikely to overcome the deep anti-Trump sentiment in the electorate and win the governorship next year, Acosta added. “There’s zero chance of these Republicans.”

Both Hilton and Bianco are vocal Trump supporters. Hilton’s campaign even references the MAGA movement with a “make California golden again” slogan, and he rolled out an endorsement on the first day from Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the architects of Trump’s DOGE initiative.

Though some Democratic candidates are already tapping into the fury at Trump to fuel their campaigns, Hilton said the focus is misplaced.

“None of that helps a single person in California,” he said. “These are real issues. So if Democrat candidates want to deflect from that and become national political commentators, then good luck with that.”

Bianco said Democrats have done “outstanding psychological warfare” for decades convincing people that Republicans cannot win in California, which has suppressed conservative participation in elections. But things have finally gotten so bad, he said, that those frustrated voters will turn out next year and elect a Republican governor.

“We can’t blame Donald Trump. Donald Trump doesn’t have anything to do with California and the laws that have been passed in the past 20 years,” he said. “I believe that the majority of people, of hard-working Californians, have conservative leanings.”

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

MyLA311, the system designed to help residents access city services for graffiti removal or streetlight outages, got a makeover last year, but since then some Angelenos and Los Angeles city staff have reported it has been plagued by problems.

The city has received “numerous complaints” about the updated website and app, including issues with GPS and logging work, according to officials.

MyLA311 is set up so residents can report non-emergency issues and track requests for tree inspections, homeless encampment services and illegal dumping, to name a few. There are 86 options in neighborhoods, according to Mayor Karen Bass’ office, which helped launch the new system.

Staffers within the city’s Department of Public Works have said they’ve been frustrated by the rollout, according to city officials. They say it now takes longer to add their responses to service requests, and the city can’t record completed work that doesn’t have a service request connected to it.

City Council members Imelda Padilla and Monica Rodriguez led a motion aimed at addressing the issues, saying they’ve caused concerns about the system’s overall functionality and accountability.

“Reports and individuals are telling us that because of this broken 311 app, folks are once again going back to using Excel sheets, phone calls, paper and pen in order to engage in service delivery, and I think that that's a problem,” Padilla said during Wednesday’s council meeting.

The motion instructs Public Works to make a formal report of any problems with the system, including how they may be affecting service timelines and completion rates, and asks the city’s IT agency to come up with potential solutions.

It was approved in a 12-0 vote Wednesday. Councilmembers Bob Blumenfield, Eunisses Hernandez and Adrin Nazarian were absent.

How we got here

Bass announced the launch of the new MyLA311 last year, saying the previous website and app were outdated and had lasted years past their lifecycle.

In a 2023 directive, she’d called for the system to be modernized with the goal of providing better customer service and communication about the status of residents’ requests.

“This new and improved way to request and receive city services is another example of how we are breaking away from the old way of doing things to make our neighborhoods cleaner and safer,” Bass said in a March 2025 statement.

But some people say the new system is falling short.

According to the North Hollywood Northeast Neighborhood Council, the new app has “actually made it harder for Angelenos to request services.”

The Sylmar Neighborhood Council agreed the system needs improvements, writing in a community impact statement that MyLA311 fails to serve L.A. taxpayers effectively if it’s difficult to use or inaccurate.

In public comments, some residents cited “major issues” with the system, including GPS and location accuracy, invalid addresses and missing or incomplete service categories. One commenter wrote that addresses were being routed to other areas, some of them outside the city.

“As a result, they frequently lead to confusion in the field, delays in response and, in some cases, requests going unaddressed due to the difficulty in locating the reported issue or misdirection caused by inaccurate data,” the commenter said.

What’s ahead

The City Council approved several instructions aimed at improving MyLA311, including the following:

• Public Works is expected to report back on its issues with the system.
• The city’s Information Technology Agency is expected to report on system performance, including operational issues, and provide solutions as needed.
• Public Works and IT are expected to provide quarterly reports on service request data, including backlogs, average response times and requests received and closed.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority seemed ready Wednesday to allow the Trump administration to potentially proceed with mass deportations of more than a million foreign nationals, including those from Haiti and Syria, who live and work legally in the United States.

Until now these individuals have been accorded temporary legal status because their safety is imperiled by war or natural disasters in their home countries.

Congress enacted the Temporary Protected Status program in 1990, and every president since then — Republican and Democrat — has embraced TPS. President Donald Trump, however, is trying to end it.

On Wednesday his solicitor general, D. John Sauer, told the justices that the statute clearly bars any court review of the administration's decisions. And he dismissed the idea that a separate law established to provide procedural fairness does not allow the courts to review the Homeland Security agency's decision-making either. Pressed by the court's three liberal justices, Sauer insisted that the courts cannot review anything.

"None of those procedural steps required by the statue are reviewable. That's your position?" asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

"Correct," responded Sauer.

"What you're basically saying is that Congress wrote a statute for no purpose," Sotomayor said.

Justice Elena Kagan noted that under the statute the secretary of Homeland Security is supposed to consult with the U.S. State Department about what the conditions are in those countries that people have been forced to flee. What if she didn't do that at all, Kagan asked. Or what if she asked, but the response from the State Department came back: "Wasn't that baseball game last night great!"

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked what would happen if the secretary used a Ouija board to make decisions?

To all these hypotheticals, Solicitor General Sauer stood firm. That prompted this from Sotomayor: "Now, we have a president saying at one point that Haiti is a 'filthy, dirty, and disgusting s--thole country.' I'm quoting him. He declared illegal immigrants, which he associated with TPS, as poisoning the blood of America. I don't see how that one statement is not a prime example … showing that a discriminatory purpose may have played a part in this decision."

Sauer pushed back, noting that Kristi Noem, the then-DHS secretary, had not mentioned race at all. That prompted this response from Justice Jackson, the only Black woman on the court, "So the position of the United States is that we have an actual racial epithet that we aren't allowed to look at all the context."

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the mother of two adopted Haitian children, interjected at that point to clarify the administration's position. Are you conceding that individuals with TPS status could bring a challenge based on race discrimination? she asked.

Sauer appeared to concede the point.

Representing the Haitians, lawyer Geoffrey Pipoly described the administration's review as "a sham."

"The true reason for the termination [of TPS status] is the president's racial animus toward non-white immigrants and bare dislike of Haitians in particular," Pipoly said. "The secretary herself described people from Haiti" and from other non-white countries as "killers, leeches, saying, 'We don't want them, not one,'" while "simultaneously enacting another humanitarian form of relief for white and only white South Africans."

That was too much for Justice Samuel Alito who asked Pipoly, "Do you think that if you put Syrians, Turks, Greeks and other people who live around the Mediterranean in a line-up, do you think you could say those people are … non-white?"

An uncomfortable Pipoly resisted categorizing each group until Alito got to his own roots.

"How about southern Italians?" Alito inquired, prompting laughter in the courtroom.

Responded Pipoly: "Certainly 120 years ago when we had our last wave of European immigration, southern Italians were not considered white. … Our concept of these things evolves over time."

At the end of Wednesday's court session, one thing was clear: President Trump may be furious at some of the conservative justices he appointed for invalidating his tariffs, but for the most part, he is getting his way. Especially in light of the court's 6-to-3 decision, announced Wednesday, which effectively guts what remains of the landmark Voting Rights Act, once celebrated as a signature achievement of American Democracy.

Copyright 2026 NPR

The last dog from the Eaton Fire taken in by Pasadena Humane has now been adopted.

Artemis the German shepherd was originally taken to the Pasadena animal shelter for emergency boarding. His family, which lost its home in the January fire, ultimately decided to put him up for adoption.

"The silver lining to all of that is — with all this tragedy — this incredible story of hope where we were able to help foster these animals we’re returning home," said Sarie Hooker,  communications manager at Pasadena Humane.

During his stay at Pasadena Humane, the cream-color pup won over many hearts.

"He's just such a striking boy. He's got this really fun, loving personality. He's very regal," Hooker said.

Hooker said Artemis was adopted by a family through the shelter's foster-to-adopt program.

"He just did amazingly. And the next thing we knew, he was adopted," Hooker said. "So it's a happy story."

Artemis says hello to a new family.

(

Courtesy Pasadena Humane

)

The Eaton Fire destroyed nearly 9,500 structures, including about 6,000 homes. Two days after the fire broke out, Pasadena Humane reported receiving more than 350 pets from displaced residents.

By the second week of the fire, the shelter had taken in some 600 pets, Hooker said.

" In totality, we were able to help with thousands of animals specifically for emergency boarding," Hooker said, including every kind of pet you can think of, as well as wild animals.

" We were seeing skunks, squirrels, hawks, owls, peacocks, raccoons, possums," she said.

Artemis isn't just the last dog to find a home — or return home — from the Eaton Fire.

He is the last animal.

" Artemis was our final, final animal — like dog, cat, critter. Anything else under the sun.  He was the last boy. So we're very happy," she said.

National and local organizers are calling on communities to abstain from work, school and shopping Friday in recognition of May Day.

The “economic blackout” is modeled after January protests in Minnesota following the surge of immigration enforcement and shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens.

“Our vision includes an economy that works for everyone with a living wage, strong labor protections and programs that keep families housed, fed, educated and healthy,” said Francisco Moreno, executive director of the Council of Mexican Federations in North America, in a Tuesday press conference.

The organization is one of more than 100 involved in planning a Los Angeles May Day rally with the theme, “solo el pueblo shuts it down:  no school, no work, no shopping.”

This year’s largest planned gathering starts at MacArthur Park, a longtime hub for day laborers and street vendors. Last July, immigration agents in armored vehicles descended on the park. The ongoing immigration raids and city policies have contributed to the challenges street vendors face.

“Starting there really sends a message that we're here,” said Kristal Romero, press secretary for the  Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. “We're standing with this community, and if you take on one of us, you take on all of us.”

May Day’s history in LA

May Day, sometimes called International Workers' Day, started after an 1886 strike tied to the fight for an eight-hour work day. The protest turned violent after police attacked workers. In the 1990s, L.A. organizers started to connect the labor movement with advocacy for immigrant rights.

This year’s event also marks the 20th anniversary of 2006’s massive rallies in support of immigration reform.

Romero said the Federation has offered training on de-escalation, conflict resolution and non-violent protests and that hundreds of people will act as “peacekeepers” during Friday’s rally and march.

“ A lot of times, folks can get caught in echo chambers and it may really feel hopeless,” Romero said. “The big point of these events is to inspire hope to show people we're all here, we're all fighting for the same thing.”

Los Angeles County

MacArthur Park

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: March begins at the corner of South Park View Street and Wilshire Boulevard and heads toward downtown L.A.
Organizers: Los Angeles May Day Coalition

L.A. City Hall

Time: Noon
Location: City Hall, 200 N. Spring St., downtown L.A.
Organizers: Union del Barrio and the Community Self-Defense Coalition

Boyle Heights

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: Mariachi Plaza, 1831 First St.
Organizers: Centro CSO

Long Beach

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: March starts at The Marketplace, 6501 Pacific Coast Highway, and ends at Mother’s Beach.
Organizers: Long Beach Indivisible, more details here.

San Fernando Valley

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: Northeast corner of Topanga Canyon and Victory Boulevard, Woodland Hills
Organizers: Indivisible Woodland Hills, SF Valley Brigade, others

Santa Clarita

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: 24292 Valencia Blvd.
Organizers: Indivisible CA27

Orange County 

Orange

Time: 3 p.m. rally
Location: City Hall, 300 E. Chapman Ave.

Time: 5 p.m.
Location: Orange Plaza Circle, Chapman Avenue and Glassell Street
Organizers: OC Indivisible Coalition

Santa Ana

Time: 3:30 p.m.
Location: Sasscer Park, 600 W. Santa Ana Blvd., Santa Ana
Organizers: OC May Day Coalition