The Brief

Ask Logan Sudeith how many bets he places in a week and he'll laugh. It's a comical line of questioning for the 25-year-old former financial risk analyst, who estimates he clocks about 100 hours a week on prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket. After a while, understandably, some of the bets blur together. What are his net profits, though? That's a number he's got at the ready.

"Last month, I made $100,000," said Sudeith, who does most of his trading from his laptop while bed-lounging in his Atlanta apartment. He's executing so many orders on the sites, he says, that he has no time to cook. So he DoorDashes every meal.

"My last salary was $75,000 a year, so I left my job to trade full time," he said

Some of his biggest hauls in recent months include lucrative stakes on Time Magazine's person of the year ($40,236), the most-searched person on Google last year ($11,083) and a wager on the New York City mayoral race ($7,448). And of course, a couple thousand here, a couple thousand there on questions like, how many times will a sports announcer say "air ball"? And will President Donald Trump use the phrase "drill baby drill" at an upcoming press conference? (Traders had $500,000 on the line on this market.)

"I'm not a fan of Trump, though I do spend most of my day listening to him and tracking what he is doing," said Sudeith, noting that whatever candidate in the next presidential race is the most friendly to prediction markets has his vote. "I could be a single-issue voter. If they're super-super heavy anti-prediction markets, it would be hard for me to vote for them."

The boom of online prediction markets is being driven by the Sudeiths of the world. He's one of millions of traders logging on every day to services like Kalshi and Polymarket to place high-dollar and incredibly risky bets on the outcome of the world in real time, whether it's an award host's turn of phrase to the number of migrants the U.S. will deport this year.

Much like previous financial crazes around meme stocks and NFTs, true believers view prediction markets through a stick-it-to-the-man prism. It's a movement against the elite establishment, they say, whether it's the mainstream media, pollsters or government agencies. This growing group of renegade traders maintain that core truths emerge only after thousands of people express their opinions with their pocketbooks.

"Markets are the most efficient way to get to real information," Sudeith said. "If you're watching on election night, I think you'll know who the winners are before the news can report it."

While the industry may position itself an alternative to the mainstream, the mainstream is embracing it.

CNN and CNBC have struck deals to incorporate Kalshi prediction markets into coverage. The Wall Street Journal's owner, Dow Jones, is partnering with Polymarket, as did the Golden Globe awards this year, with announcers updating viewers on Polymarket odds before every commercial break.

Founders of the prediction markets apps say they enable people to turn their opinion into a financial hedge against things like inflation or a government shutdown, yet skeptics say that is twisty and self-serving logic.

"They are gambling sites no different than FanDuel or DraftKings, a corner bookie or a casino in Las Vegas," said Dennis Kelleher, chief executive of Better Markets, a nonprofit that pushes for Wall Street reform.

Kalshi says 'there's no house'; not all agree

Traditional gambling often means wagering against "the house," where the casino acts like the banker, extracting fees and maintaining a competitive edge.

Prediction markets like Kalshi say they're different.

Here's how they work: A staff member creates "a market," often after one has been suggested by a user, like what will President Trump say at his next Oval Office briefing?

Then anyone can propose a "strike," the lingo for a term that's being bet on, whether, for instance, Trump will say "Greenland," or "Minnesota," or some other word or phrase.

Kalshi staff pick what terms will be bet on for both sides of that "yes" and "no" wager.

In order to work, however, there needs to be money on both the "yes" and the "no" side of the market, so Kalshi relies on institutional partners, like the hedge fund Susquehanna International, or everyday users with large enough portfolios to front the cash. This is called being a "market maker." Kalshi provides financial perks and data access to traders who do this.

But because traders are competing with other traders, Kalshi argues there is no house involved in these transactions.

Several federal lawsuits against Kalshi have challenged this notion, claiming that the Wall Street firms that Kalshi taps are indistinguishable from a traditional "house."

One suit filed this month in the Northern District of Illinois highlights that the company itself has a separate entity, Kalshi Trading, that supplies cash on the opposite side of trades.

"Thus, Kalshi users are betting against the house exactly the same way it would in a brick-and-mortar casino," wrote lawyer Russell Busch in the complaint.

Kalshi denies this. Company spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana told NPR that market makers merely price bids and asks and do not have a competitive advantage.

"Market making is completely different from being a house because a house has monopoly pricing power, whereas market makers compete with thousands of other market makers to take bids," she said.

The Trump family invests in prediction markets. The administration is taking a friendly policy stance

While the Biden administration sought to rein in this industry, Trump's regulators are breaking down barriers to allow it to flourish.

More than $2 billion is now traded every week on Kalshi, an amount the company says is 1,000% higher compared to the Biden years.

Polymaket, which was forced in 2022 to shut down in the U.S. for operating as an unlicensed betting site, recently won the Trump administration's blessing to re-launch in the U.S.

The Trump family is also getting in on the action. The president's son, Donald Trump Jr., is on the board of Polymarket, and his venture capital firm invests in the company. He is also a "strategic adviser" to Kalshi. Truth Social, the president's social media site, is planning to launch its own prediction market called Truth Predict.

The explosive growth and permissive regulatory environment has ignited a debate about the underbelly of an industry that essentially turns many features of modern life into potential monetary wins and losses. Fears persist that when elections, politics and foreign invasions become a gamble that insiders could abuse their access for profit and market odds could influence what actually happens.

Donald Trump Jr. speaks during The Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas on May 27, 2025.

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Ian Maule

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Then there's the most prosaic, but perhaps more immediate worry: That the prediction markets gamify trading with slickly designed apps, one-click checking account deposits and constant push alerts, catering to compulsive online bettors. They're not unlike other app-based trading platforms, but now almost anything is a potential betting opportunity, which economists and other financial experts say can enable a new generation of gambling addicts.

While individual bets on Kalshi are not public, the app has a leaderboard showcasing top profit winners.

That offers hope to some traders who turn to Discord and Reddit to discuss how losses have set them back.

"I'm down 2000 this week when I was up 1200 last week," wrote a Kalshi trader who goes by Educational_Pain_407 on Reddit. "Lost it all and keep trying to claw it back. So I don't know what to tell you but right now I don't have enough to pay my bills in my bank account so I can't bet even if I wanted to."

There are three federal lawsuits against Kalshi seeking class action status alleging the apps have sucked young traders into gambling addiction.

Officials at Kalshi have said if traders "lose their shirt that's on them," and even the Reddit user behind on his bills concedes it's a matter of personal responsibility: "Live and learn and pay for your mistakes. The consequences of being an adult," he wrote recently.

While online sportsbooks and gambling are nothing new, the rapid speed, volume of cash and ease at which transactions flow across prediction market apps set them apart from other forms of betting, according to legal and financial experts.

"Like sports betting, these platforms can be addictive. It is the adrenaline rush that the target demographic is chasing," said Melinda Roth, a visiting professor at Washington and Lee University's School of Law who studies prediction markets. "I do believe this is a looming public health crisis."

Decoding the lingo: 'Mogged,' 'Fudded,' 'PMT'

Evan Semet, 26, is another diehard prediction markets trader who left his salaried position in finance as a quantitative researcher after he started raking in six figures a month on Kalshi."I don't feel the need for another job at the moment," he said.

His first golden ticket came via bets on the number of Transportation Security Agency screenings that happen across a certain period on Polymarket.

Semet said he set up a dedicated server through Amazon Web Services to host statistical models that he runs to help him decide where to place bets.

"It was pretty modelable," he said, noting that he leans on the finance savvy he gleaned at a trading firm to make money on predictions. "Most day traders draw some shapes on a chart and think it has some statistical significance but it's really just astrology," he said. "They're old-school gamblers going off of intuition. I try to be driven by statistics."

To stay tapped in, he's often toggling between multiple live trades on one screen and following a discussion among other traders on the social network Discord.

Keeping up on what's happening there requires understanding a hyper-specific type of lingo that's a blend of Generation Alpha and Gen Z slang, repurposed finance terminology and a grab-bag of other cultural influences from gaming to crypto to the gutter humor of fringe sites like 4chan.

If you've been out-maneuvered by another trader, you've been "mogged."

Advertisements by the company Kalshi predict a victory for Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral election before the polls closed Nov. 4, 2025.

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Olga Fedorova

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If a market has "fudded," people are selling their positions out of fear, uncertainty and doubt. A "rulescuck" is someone who is a stickler for the rules of a betting market and will try to win on a technicality.

A "bondsharp" is a well-known community member who frequently puts up money on the other side of a bet.

These are just a handful of the terms required to stay apace of the chats on Discord, where PMTs are often discussing their full port (prediction market trader, and full portfolio, of course).

"It is a good amount of terminology. It's borrowing lingo and terms from stuff I've heard at real trading firms mixed with online pop culture," Semet said.

Prediction market trading can be a compulsive sport for many of them, who admit they can be dopamine junkies. Others prefer to avoid the pressure-cooker feeling of watching a bet win or lose live.

"It's an antsy, gambling-like feeling watching it all happen live," Semet said. "It's intense, almost feels like the fog of war, trying to decide what to do," he said. "Sometimes I prefer to not look at all and see how I did later."

How predictions markets got into politics

Kalshi's big day came, as it were, on Election Day in November 2020.

That's when they got word that Trump's Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates futures contracts, greenlit it as a "designated contract market," a blessing that essentially gave the platform a license to operate as a financial exchange.

It was a long time coming.

For years before that, Kalshi's co-founders Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, former Wall Street traders who met at MIT, had been battling a skeptical CFTC, which had long rejected similar applications over concerns that an events contract platform would operate a type of gambling outside the purview of state gambling commissions. Regulators also feared the bets invited insiders to rig the outcomes of events from sports to elections.

As Kalshi hired lawyers and lobbyists leading up to their CFTC approval, another prediction market, where most are betting with cryptocurrencies, Polymarket, was exploding in growth. It, however, had not bothered to even try to receive federal buy-in. The Biden administration shut down the exchange for operating without a license. Now, Polymarket has the CFTC on its side, and is staging a U.S. comeback.

Two developments helped Polymarket's return: the company acquired a little-known derivatives exchange QCX, which had already obtained CFTC approval. And the Trump administration's CTFC and Justice Department abandoned investigations into Polymarket.

States, however, are on the attack. Massachusetts has sued to push Kalshi out of the state. Eight other states, including New York, New Jersey and Maryland, have sent the company cease and desist letters alleging that it is operating as an illegal and unlicensed sports gambling site. The motivation is clear: Gambling brings in serious tax revenue for states, while prediction markets bring in none.

For both Kalshi and Polymarket, one of the most controversial areas of prediction market trading is elections, an issue Biden-era regulators took Kalshi to court over.

Under the 1936 Commodity Exchange Act, which was updated in 2008 after the financial crisis, future event contracts cannot involve terrorism, assassinations or "games," but political betting is not explicitly banned.

Biden administration lawyers argued that placing wagers on races amounted to a game, a word that is not defined at all in the law. Election bets, the regulators contended, could turbocharge the spread of political misinformation and create financial incentives for voters to cast a ballot even when it's contrary to a voter's political views.

It also puts the CFTC in the awkward position of having to investigate news, whether real or fabricated, that moves a prediction market. Former CFTC officials told NPR that the agency has never been equipped to be "an election cop."

The federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. rejected that framing and handed Kalshi a major victory. The court also pointed out that the harm these markets would cause the government was not "concrete" enough.

The Trump administration dropped the appeal, unleashing what is expected to be an unprecedented torrent of prediction market cash into this year's midterm elections, which is raising alarms among those pushing for stricter regulations on this industry.

"AI, deepfakes, and other nefarious activities to attack candidates could easily impact the betting activity and odds, as well as the actual outcome of elections," said Kelleher of Better Markets. "They don't really care who wins or loses. They only care about the volume of bets and driving that volume as high as possible."

Regulators appear unprepared. The CFTC usually has five commissioners but currently only has one. Meanwhile, Kalshi's board includes former CFTC Commissioner Brian Quintenz, who was among the officials who gave the platform its federal approval in 2020.

Former CFTC Commissioner Kristin Johnson, who left the agency in 2025, said that lack of commissioners comes on top of high levels of turnover among the most senior staff lawyers.

"We're essentially asking the CFTC to get involved in engaging and policing an element of our democratic process that we really haven't thought carefully enough about," Johnson said.

Insider trading scrutiny grows

Before a U.S. operation ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, one trader on Polymarket banked a nearly half-million-dollar profit on a bet Maduro would not remain president for long.

While the trader's identity remains a mystery, speculation continues to rattle around the internet about whether the person had insider information. The episode has renewed scrutiny on how the companies ensure bets aren't rigged.

On Discord, when traders see a large bet placed that immediately stands out as an outlier, cries of "the market is insidered" are common. Proving it is another matter.

As is often the case on the platforms, open-shut evidence of insider trading is elusive. Kalshi requires a government-issued ID to sign up in order to trace any possible market manipulation back to a real person. Polymarket does not, but it has yet to publicly re-launch its U.S. app. Internal and third-party surveillance tools, the companies say, are on the lookout for unusual activity.

Congress has begun to take notice. Following the Maduro trade, Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-NY, and 30 other Democrats, sponsored legislation banning federal officials from using prediction markets to trade on policies or political outcomes using non-public information.

Being up against an insider is always a risk, said full-time prediction markets trader Semet.

"There's always going to be someone who has more information than you, unless you're the insider," he said. "There are certain accounts that miraculously have every single Google and OpenAI release date nailed perfectly, and it's like, all right, just don't fade those people," he said using the slang word for voting against another trader.

When asked if he thinks Kalshi and Polymarket are doing enough to combat insider trading, he gave a blunt assessment: "F*** no," Semet said. "I really don't think they care."

"Tailing," or making a bet joining in on a suspiciously large bet is common on the platforms. Bloomberg on Monday reported on a new tool that allows traders to get alerts when anomalous transactions occur so they can potentially cash in on what could be a winning wager.

From the vantage point of these traders, nearly everything has a trading implication.

And that kind of thinking can fuel conspiratorial theories about why something did or did not happen.

Take, for instance, a recent White House press briefing in which press secretary Karoline Leavitt left the room seconds before hitting 65 minutes. To most, that was unremarkable.

Yet on Kalshi, that looked like a secret message, because many thousands of dollars in bets were at stake that she would cross the 65-minute mark.

The chatter about Leavitt was mentioned on CNBC, which got the attention of traders on Discord, who wondered if this or another incident will ever lead to a PMT, prediction market trader, testifying in Washington about rigging the markets.

"PMT getting called before Congress," wrote a Discord user, whose handle is "permanent resident of hell," they added: "Let's get a market on it."

Los Angeles will boost the number of housing and shelter opportunities for people experiencing homelessness and focus more on moving people inside rather than clearing encampments, under an agreement approved by a federal judge Friday.

The updated agreement from a 2022 settlement is the latest step in a long-running legal saga focused on the city's response to the homelessness crisis. It also means the city will offer nearly 1,100 additional beds and maintain its obligations for years longer than what was originally promised in the prior settlement agreement as officials continue to try to curb homelessness in the region.

Friday’s hearing was called by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who has been overseeing the settlement in a lawsuit brought against the city by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a group of downtown business and property owners.

Here are some key takeaways of the new agreement, which is detailed in 24 pages of court documents:

• The city will create a total of 14,000 housing and shelter opportunities by the end of June 2027, an increase from the 2022 settlement.
• L.A. will keep open at least 12,915 housing or shelter opportunities until the end of June 2029. The original agreement ended June 2027.
• The city will make sure that 19,600 people experiencing homelessness are moved into housing or shelter beds rather than being obligated to clear thousands of encampments.
• Reports will be filed with the court detailing L.A.’s housing and shelter, including the total number of people experiencing homelessness served. 
• The court can appoint a monitor to help oversee and enforce the agreement, which the judge also approved Friday.

Matthew Umhofer, one of the attorneys for L.A. Alliance, told LAist after the hearing that the new agreement means “accountability” for the city of Los Angeles.

“We now have the city to a point where it's actually committed to doing what it promised to do under the agreement,” Umhofer said. “We have an extension of the agreement. We have more beds coming in. It's a really good result.”

There are more than 43,500 people experiencing homelessness across L.A., with a majority living on the street rather than in shelters, according to the latest point-in-time count.

During the brief hearing, Carter thanked the parties for their work and acknowledged that they were required to make difficult decisions “for the benefit of the public.”

Carter said the agreement underscores “public need for transparency and accountability” moving forward.

What will the data monitor do? 

The data monitor is now Nardello & Co, a global investigations firm that was approved by the L.A. City Council in closed session earlier this week.

The team will be led by Wendy Wu, the head of digital investigations and cyber risk, who is based in Los Angeles.

Under the updated agreement, the monitor responsibilities include:

• Verifying the number of housing or shelter opportunities created, the address and the number of beds opened, as well as the number of people experiencing homelessness served under the court agreements, according to documents.
• The monitor is able to do field work, including observing Inside Safe operations.
• The monitor cannot have direct access to any database maintained by the city or Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority without “extraordinary good cause."
• The monitor can report issues to the court if concerns around city data and verification go unresolved.

What does the new agreement mean for LA? 

The judge’s approval also means that a months-long hearing that considered whether to hold the city in contempt of court is over.

The latest agreement means there will be no more witness testimony, no rulings and no contempt sanctions tied to the hearing, according to court documents.

Attorneys for the city repeatedly pushed back against the contempt hearing, filing objections with the judge and making an unsuccessful emergency request with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to block it from happening.

The hearing, which started last November, called several witnesses to testify, including officials with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority and Matt Szabo, the L.A. city administrative officer.

The parties have been in “extensive mediation efforts to resolve the various disagreements” since last December with another judge, according to court documents. Carter ended up continuing the contempt proceedings in February, encouraging the parties to continue to work toward an agreement in mediation.

On Tuesday, nearly three months later, the parties reached a resolution for the contempt hearing and the city’s various appeals.

The Los Angeles Catholic Worker and Los Angeles Community Action Network are considered “intervenors” in the suit, representing people experiencing homelessness. Their attorneys include those from the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.

Shayla Myers, director of Impact Litigation and Policy at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, said from the intervenors’ perspective, the most important aspect of the new agreement is that it does away with the encampment reduction plan — which included clearing 9,800 tents, makeshift shelters, cars and RVs — and instead focuses on measuring the number of unhoused people brought into shelters and housing.

“That is the only thing that has ever solved homelessness, destroying unhoused people's property has always made it worse,” Myers told LAist after the hearing. “The fact that the earlier settlement agreement included that quota — it was a dark day for these court proceedings and removing it is a substantial step forward in recognizing what's at stake in this case.”

How did we get here? 

L.A. Alliance sued the city and county in 2020, accusing both of failing to adequately address homelessness by not providing enough shelter and housing for thousands of unhoused people.

In May 2022, the city and L.A. Alliance entered into the settlement agreement, which was approved by the court about a month later.

Umhofer noted that they’ve been involved in the case since before the pandemic, and “the fight is not over.” But he said there are people who will advocate for those suffering on the streets.

“The goal really is to get people off the streets, into treatment, into shelter, into housing and back on their feet,” he said. “And I'm hopeful that this agreement helps.”

Bradley Hamburger, an attorney with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the law firm representing the city, declined to comment after the hearing.

The Democratic candidate for Orange County assessor has lost her party’s endorsement as a result of complaints from her campaign staff that she repeatedly sought to use campaign contributions to pay for personal expenses, LAist has learned.

Such expenditures would violate state law, which allows candidates to tap campaign contributions only to pay campaign expenses.

The candidate, Janet Keo Conklin, denied trying to misuse campaign funds.

“ I have not done anything wrong,” she told LAist.

Multiple former campaign staffers who spoke with LAist also allege Conklin engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior in the workplace, including taking staffers’ hands and placing them on Conklin’s breasts.

Conklin denied the allegations in an interview with LAist. She acknowledged that during a conversation with a staffer who was working on Conklin’s cellphones — both a work phone and a personal phone — she alluded to receiving a nude photograph from a former client.

Conklin is a licensed real estate broker and La Palma City Council member. She is on the June ballot, where she faces Republican Party-endorsed incumbent Claude Parrish.

Parrish has had his own troubles.

Last year, LAist was the first to report on a workplace misconduct investigation commissioned by the county that found Parrish violated gender discrimination and retaliation policies in the assessor’s office and harassed a subordinate over a medical disability.

Parrish was found to have downplayed the employee’s chronic illness, shared her private medical information with coworkers, regularly commented on her diet and told her to stop taking her medicine and to “drink baking soda mixed with tap water to ‘fix’ her medical condition.” Citing the 2023 investigation’s findings, the county’s HR director sent a letter to Parrish late that year telling him to stop violating harassment policies.

Parrish told LAist he was not at fault.

The primary job of the assessor, an officially nonpartisan office, is to supervise appraisals of all taxable property in the county.

Florice Hoffman, the chair of the Orange County Democratic Party, said in an interview that party activists first told her about Conklin’s alleged improper campaign spending requests in February.

She said she and Lauren Johnson-Norris, the party’s vice chair, quickly met with Conklin and urged her to drop out of the race. Instead, she said, Conklin agreed to give up the endorsement, which the party had made weeks earlier.

Hoffman, who is a lawyer, recalled telling Conklin, “Our advice is you need to get a lawyer, a criminal lawyer.”

Janet Keo Conklin

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Johnson-Norris did not respond to LAist’s requests for comment.

When asked about Hoffman’s advice in an interview with LAist, Conklin said, “ Lawyers, they sometimes get a little too dramatic.”

She added:  ”Lawyers, they get spooked easily over any allegation, seriously, so I'm not concerned. I have not done anything wrong.”

Endorsements removed from campaign website

When LAist began reporting this article, Conklin was endorsed by key figures in the Democratic establishment, including O.C. Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento and U.S. Rep. Derek Tran, according to her campaign website as of April 24.

Tran’s endorsement was removed from Conklin’s campaign website before the entire list of endorsements was eventually removed as well.

Sarmiento told LAist he reached out to Conklin’s campaign to rescind his endorsement on Saturday pending further investigation.

“I certainly don’t want to support anyone involved in any misconduct, especially after my experience with a former colleague who is serving five years in federal prison,” he said, alluding to former Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do serving time in federal prison for his role in a corruption scheme uncovered by LAist.

Tran did not respond to a request for comment.

LAist asked Conklin about losing Tran and the Democratic Party of O.C.’s endorsements.

" Endorsements come and go. If it doesn't come with money, so what?” Conklin said.

Details of the allegations 

LAist interviewed eight of Conklin's current or former campaign staff, including her former campaign treasurer.

Cine Ivery, the former treasurer, said Conklin fired her after she requested receipts for a campaign credit card and rebuffed the candidate’s repeated requests to use campaign money to pay personal expenses, including rent for Conklin’s two-bedroom apartment in La Palma.

Ivery told LAist Conklin was “constantly trying” to use campaign funds for personal use.  

“She was always trying to find a way: 'Can I pay my rent? Can I pay the house bill? Can I do this?'” Ivery recounted from meetings with the candidate.

Ivery recalled explaining federal campaign finance laws to Conklin in detail.

“You can't skate around. You can't pretend. You can't hide,” she said, recounting their back and forth.

Ivery showed LAist email exchanges with Conklin in which she asked Conklin, unsuccessfully, to produce receipts for about $1,100 in charges on a maxed-out $2,500 campaign credit card. She said Conklin fired her after these email exchanges.

Michael Trujillo, Conklin’s new campaign consultant, told LAist in an interview that allegations of misuse of campaign funds are “100% not true.”

“If they believe it to be true, they can file an FPPC complaint. They haven't, and they won't because it's not true,” he said.

Fair Political Practices Commission oversees campaign finance laws.

Over email, Trujillo told LAist Conklin terminated Ivery in January and scheduled her last day for Feb. 9.

Conklin told LAist in an interview it was staffers who lost the receipts for expenses they incurred. She added she has since brought in a new treasurer.

LAist reviewed the credit card statement, and the expenses without receipts were mainly incurred at restaurants. Former staffers, who asked to speak anonymously with LAist to protect their job prospects, told LAist those expenses were all incurred by Conklin personally.

In a written statement to LAist, Conklin’s campaign said Ivery “made the transition process unnecessarily difficult and combative.”

Ivery restricted the campaign’s access to fundraising and compliance platforms, according to the statement, and refused to transfer needed information to the campaign’s new treasurer.

The statement goes on to say that the campaign sought legal counsel and has considered filing a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission.

Ivery, the former treasurer, refused to transfer campaign funds until the receipts were provided for the outstanding credit card charges, according to the statement.

Conklin asked Ivery to retain $2,500 in campaign funds to pay off the credit card and transfer the rest of the money, according to the statement.

Ivery told LAist she could not use campaign funds to pay off the credit card charges without the receipts. Ultimately, Ivery said, she used her own personal funds to pay off the credit card charges as the credit card was issued through Ivery’s company. And, Ivery said, she transferred over the campaign materials to the new treasurer after making sure she followed federal campaign finance guidelines.

Trujillo, Conklin’s campaign consultant, told LAist, when candidates lose receipts on a campaign, they eat the charges. And, Trujillo said, campaign treasurers can pay off credit card charges with campaign funds without receipts.

Per FPPC guidelines, all expenditures above $25 require receipts.

“ It is literally the craziest thing in the world to try to figure out our credit card charges when the campaign's not even over,” Trujillo said. He said at the end of the campaign when they close out the books, they’ll chase every receipt. If a receipt is not found, the candidate will eat the charge with an in-kind donation to the campaign.

LAist checked the FPPC database Friday. No complaints appear for Ivery or Conklin.

Some of the former campaign staffers also allege that after they left the campaign, campaign payments were made to Conklin’s daughter, Natalie Khay, and to Shauna Harris, a friend of Conklin’s, who they said, did not work on the campaign. Both were reported as consultants on Form 460, a state filing required by people running for office on donations they receive and payments they make with campaign funds.

When asked about these transactions, Conklin told LAist her daughter did some work on the campaign last year and she finally paid her back when she raised money.

“ I took her for granted and I said, look, I don't have any money at this time if you can be patient, please just be patient, and allow me to raise enough money because we're grassroots,” she recalled telling her daughter.

When asked about the payments to Harris, her friend, Conklin first said she rented office space from her friend. Former staffers told LAist they were unaware of any campaign office space. They said they would work out of Conklin’s home office, cafes or over Zoom.

Trujillo, Conklin’s current campaign consultant, told LAist, it is normal for campaign staffers to work from home post-COVID.

The payment to Harris on the Form 460 filed with the Fair Political Practices Commission however was listed as a payment for a campaign consultant.

When asked about that, Conklin said,  ”Well, she gives me advice, too.”

“ She is a silent partner. And if it's a problem with the filing, then we will adjust that. But she has been with me since last year,” she said. “She's been with me from the get go.”

Harris, Conklin said, provided “advice in the background” and “ she looks over the math; she looks over the numbers.”

Harris is a longtime public educator, according to her LinkedIn profile, working over 20 years at Los Angeles Unified School District. She currently runs a Mathnasium in Lakewood. The profile does not list any experience related to campaigns.

Khay and Harris did not respond to LAist’s requests for comment.

Former staffers allege sexually inappropriate behavior

Four former staffers allege Conklin engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior in the workplace. They all told LAist they left the campaign because of these allegations.

In one incident, two former staffers, who asked not to be named due to fears of hurting future job prospects, told LAist the candidate grabbed both of their hands and placed them on her breasts during a campaign meeting at a cafe in Newport Beach.

“She was telling us about how her breasts were not real and that she has, quote, 'she has no feeling in her nipples,' end quote,” one staffer recounted.

“ We hesitated because we didn't want to touch her at all in that aspect, but she proceeds to grab both of our hands and lays them on her breast,” he said.

She then told the female staffer to “give it a squeeze,” he said.

“We took our hands off because we were just in shock,” he said.

LAist spoke with three additional people who had been told of the incident and corroborated the details of the allegations they heard at the time.

Conklin denied the incident happened.

“No, no, no, no, no, no,” Conklin told LAist when asked about the allegation. “That's really ridiculous.”

Another former staffer alleged in a separate incident Conklin asked her to organize files on two cell phones, and in the process, she said Conklin joked to avoid “d*ck pictures” while going through the phones.

When LAist asked Conklin about the allegation, she told us she had a nude photograph on her phone that she received from a client during a prior job as a salesperson.

“He sent me a d*ck pic,” Conklin told LAist. ”That's the only thing that I alluded to, OK, is that story. But no, I wouldn't say anything inappropriate to a staffer because it's not a thing.”

Conklin said she believed the former staffers are “pulling things out of context to villainize me, and I'm not comfortable being staged as this person who is acting inappropriate.”

Conklin added that she viewed her staff as family and would sometimes share personal details with them.

“Trauma dumping is emotional bonding.  That's how you bond with people when you're vulnerable,” she said.

LAist’s Ted Rohrlich contributed to this article. 

In the race for oversight over California’s budget, the two main contenders are an incumbent with three years of experience and a challenger who is set on exposing fraudulent and wasteful spending.

Malia Cohen: The incumbent

Democrat Malia Cohen has served as controller (AKA California’s chief accountant) since 2023, and has raised more than $1.2 million for the race to keep her seat. She oversees spending for a state with a budget of nearly $350 billion and one of the world’s largest economies. It’s her job to make sure the state spends wisely and efficiently.

As the governor and the Legislature hash out a budget deal for this year, Cohen has urged caution, saying higher-than-expected spending “reinforces the need for restraint.”

Cohen also has improved the state’s ability to deliver a key financial report that was chronically late for years. Cohen made up the backlog by releasing four reports in two years, and she told CalMatters that the upcoming report (called the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report) will almost be on time — late a mere two months, compared to the years others were delayed.

While running for office in 2022, Cohen told CalMatters she planned to scrutinize the state’s homelessness spending and take a critical look at the Employment Development Department and the Department of Motor Vehicles. A 2024 report by the state auditor found that California fails to adequately track its homelessness spending.

Cohen did not meet those campaign promises. She said that’s because the state auditor had already looked at those agencies. Instead of duplicating that work, she decided to focus on improving some internal functions of the state’s financial arm. She’s in the midst of ongoing efforts to modernize FI$Cal — the IT system that manages the state’s finances — and the system that pays state employees.

“The bottom line is that I do believe that Californians deserve to know where their money is going,” she said. “So that’s what I'm working to do.”

Herb Morgan: The challenger

Cohen’s main challenger, Republican Herb Morgan, has promised to pick up the slack he says his opponent has dropped. Like Cohen promised in 2022, Morgan said if elected, he will carefully scrutinize the state’s spending on homelessness. He wants to create a system where every time a state-funded nonprofit pays for anything, that transaction goes into a state database. Then, he said, he’ll use AI to monitor those purchases and flag anything suspicious.

As an example of how state spending can be transparently tracked, a public dashboard on his website logs his campaign donations in real time. He’s raised $367,000 as of the end of April.

Morgan acknowledged he’s an outlier as a Republican running in a state historically dominated by Democrats. But he believes voters will look at both candidates’ qualifications instead of voting along party lines.

“I don't care where you are on the social spectrum, 99% of us are fiscally responsible,” he said. “It doesn’t mean cutting spending. It doesn't mean defunding. It just means being responsible with our money. And that, I think, appeals to all political ideologies."

Also running is Meghann Adams, a Peace and Freedom Party candidate. A school bus driver who lives in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood, she is president of her union and manages its finances. If elected, Adams promised to expose corporate landlords that drive up rent prices, analyze the cost of imposing a single-payer Medi-Cal system and divest state investments from companies that support Israel’s war against Gaza.

She’s raised $16,000 as of the end of April.

• Read about the third candidate on the ballot Meghann Adams

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

Community college students who make use of CalFresh benefits during their freshman year are more likely to stay on track academically and return for a second year, according to a new working paper from the California Policy Lab and UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education.

CalFresh, known federally as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), provides monthly food benefits to low-income individuals and families in California. The program enables them to buy food with an Electronic Benefit Transfer card.

The research finds that community college students who had CalFresh benefits throughout their first year were more likely to complete a full-time course load, consisting of 30 or more credits. These students were also more likely to enroll the next year, compared to similar students who were also eligible for benefits but did not receive them.

“The key message is that basic needs matter and food assistance in particular can help college students to do better in school,” said co-author Igor Chirikov, a senior researcher at the Center for Studies in Higher Education.

How comparing students with similar backgrounds led to more precise findings

For the study, Chirikov and his colleague, Jesse Rothstein — a public policy, higher education and economics professor at UC Berkeley — linked administrative data from all California community colleges. They also incorporated financial aid records and data on students’ monthly participation in CalFresh.

The researchers compared students who were alike in key ways, including income, family background and prior participation in CalFresh. The students differed in whether they continued to receive benefits consistently during their first year of college. The researchers also examined whether students completed at least 30 credits in their first year and whether they returned to school for a second year. Both are indicators that students “are on track to completion,” Chirikov said.

“While it intuitively makes sense that when students have enough to eat and are less financially strained, their academic outcomes would improve, this study lets us measure that effect much more precisely,” Rothstein said in a news release. “By comparing students with similar backgrounds and financial circumstances, we’re able to isolate the role that food support plays in improving student outcomes, marking an important step forward in understanding how safety-net programs support student success.”

How does CalFresh help students?

According to Chirikov and Rothstein’s research:

• Students who received CalFresh benefits were more likely to complete a full-time course load during their first year of college (a 5% increase) than comparable, eligible students who did not receive CalFresh.   

• CalFresh raises persistence in college. Students who received the benefits were more likely to re-enroll for a second year of college (a 4% percent increase). 

• For students whose goal is to earn an associate’s degree or to transfer, CalFresh’s impact on credit completion was slightly larger (+1.8 percentage points).

Chirikov noted that while these gains may seem modest, the food assistance program averages about $860 per student. In contrast, many traditional student success interventions can cost thousands of dollars per student.

“These may sound like very small numbers, but in [California’s] large community college system— the largest community college system in the country — even small percentage point gains . . . can affect thousands of students over the years,” he said.

What challenges does CalFresh face?

The findings come on the heels of President Donald Trump signing the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” into law last summer. This legislation will reduce SNAP funding by approximately $186 billion over 10 years — a 20% cut that marks the largest reduction in the program’s history, according to Sara Bleich, a public health policy professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Key changes include the loss of eligibility for thousands of lawfully present immigrants.