Politics

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California spiraled toward a primary election Tuesday with its two marquee races defined by uncertainty and with a pair of outsider candidates looking to crack open the state’s durable Democratic hierarchy.

In the governor’s race, former Fox News TV host and British political adviser Steve Hilton is urging Republicans to unite behind him as he fights for one of two spots in the November election alongside two Democrats, billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer and former state attorney general Xavier Becerra.

In the Los Angeles race for mayor, reality TV personality Spencer Pratt is hoping to turn his insurgent campaign into a surprise upset of Democratic Mayor Karen Bass. The two are tightly clustered with Nithya Raman, a progressive city council member running to Bass’ political left.

“We can’t give up on LA,” Pratt told applauding supporters at a block party Sunday. “We’ve got to fight.”

Democrats once feared that the party’s large field of gubernatorial candidates could open a path for two Republicans to advance to November. But now, in the campaign’s closing days, Hilton is warning the opposite could happen — what he called a “doomsday scenario” in which only Democrats advance.

Hilton is pleading with his chief Republican rival, county Sheriff Chad Bianco, to pull out of the contest, fearing an all-Democratic ticket would dampen GOP turnout across the state and reorder races for Congress and the Legislature.

Becerra and Steyer locking out a Republican from the November ballot would be “a disaster for California, it means no change. It’s a disaster for everyone who’s running as a Republican up and down the ballot,” Hilton said on the social platform X.

Mail voting began in early May, but just 15% of voters had returned their ballots as of Sunday. That’s left the candidates seeing room for a last-minute shake-up in the race’s closing days.

In heavily Democratic Los Angeles, Bass’ shaky first term has left her vulnerable. She points to a drop in homelessness, though encampments and rows of rusting RVs remain a common sight in many neighborhoods. Meanwhile, she’s still trying to overcome lingering fallout from the 2025 Palisades Fire, the most destructive in Los Angeles history. Bass was in Ghana as part of a presidential delegation when the flames ignited. Pratt lost his home in the blaze and has made the fire and the city’s recovery a foundation of his campaign.

At Pratt’s block party, Vivian Escalante, a historian who lives in the heavily Hispanic Boyle Heights neighborhood adjacent to downtown, said the quality of life has been sliding for years — dirtier streets, more homeless encampments and a lack of pride in the neighborhood she’s called home all her life.

“It’s gotten completely worse,” Escalante said, with a Pratt cap perched on her head. The Democratic Party, she said, has “completely abandoned us.”

The LA race is officially nonpartisan, but Bass is a Democrat, as is Raman, who made a last-minute decision to challenge her one-time ally and is among the top group of contenders.

Pratt, who rose to fame alongside his wife, Heidi Montag, on “The Hills,” is a registered Republican who has received a nod of approval — if not an outright formal endorsement — from President Donald Trump. He has sought to distance himself from national politics, saying his concerns are strictly within city limits.

A University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by The Los Angeles Times, found Bass tightly clustered with Raman and Pratt, with other candidates trailing. The poll of 1,351 likely voters conducted between May 19 and May 24 gave no candidate a statistically significant edge.

The city is at a difficult juncture.

Hollywood jobs have been decamping for years for cheaper filming locations. A downtown renaissance was crushed by extended pandemic closures and many office buildings remain desperate for tenants. The city has long struggled to provide basic services, whether paving buckled streets and fixing sidewalks or keeping streetlights on.

The governor’s race has been the most wide open in a generation. More than 50 names are on the ballot.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is banned by law from seeking a third term. Other candidates seeking to replace him include former Democratic U.S. Rep. Katie Porter,Democrat Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, and Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff.

Rebecca Katz, a strategist with Steyer’s campaign, said Sunday that they are “feeling pretty good” but emphasized how close the race was with a sporting reference, “It’s three candidates for two spots, every possession counts.”

Steyer, a former hedge fund manager turned liberal activist, has set spending records hoping to advance to the November contest. Hilton, a former Fox News host who has been endorsed by Trump, has promised to bring down costs in a state with some of the nation’s highest gas prices, utility costs and taxes. Becerra has been stressing his experience in arguing he’s best prepared to lead the nation’s second most populous state, having served as the Biden administration’s health secretary, a former U.S. House member and state attorney general.

Broadly, Republicans in the race are promising drastic change after years of Democratic governance — Democrats haven’t lost a statewide race in two decades and Republicans last elected a Los Angeles mayor in 1997. Democrats, though in charge for years, are promising to bring down costs and continue to fend off the Trump administration in its numerous conflicts with Democratic California.

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Associated Press writer Jesse Bedayn in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

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By Courtney Rozen

WASHINGTON, May 31 (Reuters) – New Jersey State Police closed off an area outside a Newark immigrant detention center after tensions escalated at protests over the weekend, while FBI and Homeland Security investigators were on the scene on Sunday.

After two nights with arrests of activists outside the Delaney Hall immigrant detention center, law enforcement officials have expanded the area off-limits to protesters even as the facility started allowing detainee visits to resume.

Families escorted by police will be able to visit their relatives at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, Governor Mikie Sherrill said on Sunday. That announcement came several hours after Newark Mayor Ras Baraka imposed a nightly curfew in the ​half-mile area surrounding the facility.

Sherrill, a Democrat, ordered state police on Friday to take control of the area around the facility after days of tense confrontations between protesters and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. State police have now secured a “broader area than just outside Delaney Hall” for safety reasons, state Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said at a Sunday news conference.

Newark and State Police have kept protesters well back of the ends of two roads in front of Delaney Hall.

The clashes pose a challenge for Sherrill’s administration, which is wary of giving the federal government grounds to justify deploying federal agents to New Jersey on a larger scale. Since returning to power in January 2025, President Donald Trump has cited protests against immigration enforcement as a rationale for sending federal law enforcement into U.S. cities.

ICE “is not a law enforcement agency we want on our streets in any way,” Sherrill told reporters on Sunday. 

She also repeated her previous call for demonstrators to “bring the temperature down” by remaining peaceful. State police said they arrested three people on Saturday night during demonstrations, after detaining six protesters on Friday. 

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, the federal agency that oversees U.S. immigration enforcement and Delaney Hall, said in a statement on Sunday that operations will “continue as normal.” 

Delaney Hall is a 1,000-bed facility operated by the private company Geo Group on behalf of ICE. Critics, including immigrant advocates, Sherrill and other Democratic politicians, have called for closing the facility, which they have described as a poorly run site with inhumane conditions.

“The situation is unacceptable,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, in a statement on Sunday morning after visiting the facility with three members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation. “Delaney Hall must be shut down immediately.”

Sherrill on Saturday said out-of-state ​agitators inflamed tensions at protests outside the detention center, adding the majority of protesters “want to be there peacefully.” 

Senator Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat, described the level of tension related to the ICE protests as unprecedented.

“I’ve not seen my state with this level of precariousness through my entire time in elected office,” Kim told CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who oversees security at the nation’s airports, on Thursday threatened to curtail processing of international travelers at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International ​Airport because local law enforcement in the state was not assisting federal immigration officials. The airport is a major gateway to New York City.

Closing the airport is an idea that “makes no sense,” Kim said. “That would be just shooting ourselves in the foot,” he said, in reference to restricting international travel. 

(Reporting by Courtney Rozen and David “Dee” Delgado; Editing by Sergio Non and Chris Reese)

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Colombians voted to select a successor to President Gustavo Petro in an election Sunday, as armed guards and police kept watch. Candidates Iván Cepeda and Abelardo de la Espriella advanced to the second round.

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This gallery was curated by AP photo editors.

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By Karen Freifeld

NEWARK, New Jersey, May 31 (Reuters) – Out-of-state agitators have escalated tensions at protests outside a Newark immigrant detention center, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill said on Saturday, as the city imposed an overnight curfew around the embattled Delaney Hall facility.

Sherrill, who had ordered state police to take control outside the facility, said five of six arrested Friday were from out of state, and that “national extremist groups” had joined Saturday’s protests, heightening tensions in the city.

“You should not be here,” she said of those who came to create chaos. “You are not helping the people detained at Delaney Hall. You’re not helping detainee families and you’re certainly not keeping New Jersey safe.”  

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka imposed a nightly curfew in the half-mile area surrounding Delaney Hall effective from early on Sunday.

“Beginning at 12 a.m., Doremus Avenue will be closed to all pedestrian traffic. Vehicle access will be strictly limited to those with verified official business in the area. This curfew will remain in effect nightly from 9 pm. to 6 a.m. until further notice,” he said Sunday in a post on X.

State police on Friday set up “protected protest zones” after days of confrontations between protesters and federal agents outside Delaney, a 1,000-bed facility whose detainees went on a labor and hunger strike over what they called inhumane conditions and to demand their release.  

“That’s exactly where our focus needs to be right now, advocating for better conditions for those inside the facility,” Sherrill said. “We can’t let what’s happening outside Delaney Hall take us away from that mission.”

Sherrill said she was “grateful to the vast majority of protesters who have assembled peacefully and raised their voices about Delaney Hall conditions.”

The company Geo Group (GEO.N) operates Delaney for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has denied the allegations about the facility and called the involvement of state police a “win for law and order.”

But Sherrill, a Democrat, suggested federal officials had made the situation worse, with ICE using batons on protesters and taking other actions that she described as inappropriate for crowd control.

“They have been increasing tensions in a way that’s not helpful to public safety,” she said.

GOAL TO ENSURE SAFETY, PEACEFUL PROTESTS – SHERRILL

The governor, who has called for the closure of Delaney Hall, said her goal was to ensure peaceful protests and public safety — and avoid a surge of federal agents.

“What we have been working towards now is ensuring that ICE has no pretextual reason whatsoever to exacerbate this situation,” Sherrill said at a news conference.

Clashes between immigration officers and protesters occasionally have turned violent in other states, most notably in Minnesota, where federal personnel fatally shot two people and injured others. 

State police have tried to set up areas for protesters to peacefully assemble, New Jersey officials said. But protesters who were ordered to disperse Friday night surrounded a law enforcement vehicle and made threats toward personnel, state police Lieutenant Colonel David Sierotowicz said on Saturday.

Some activists were seen retrieving face coverings, gas masks, fireworks, rocks and other projectiles from a nearby tent area, Sierotowicz said.

Video from Friday showed police advancing with riot shields and firing tear gas. Sierotowicz said police used standard tactics to move the crowd back, with no significant injuries to the public or law enforcement.

“We were not striking anybody last night,” he said.

Protests are fine as long as they remain peaceful, state officials said. At mid-afternoon on Saturday, dozens of protesters were chanting slogans but remaining behind the barriers that police had set up.

“Today and going forward, I urge those protesting outside of Delaney Hall to bring the temperature down, so we can focus on the detainees and their families,” Sherrill said.

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York and Eduardo Munoz; additional reporting by Anusha Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Sergio Non, Franklin Paul and Bernadette Baum)

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One of the country’s messiest and most consequential governor’s races is hurtling toward an inflection point on Tuesday in California.

Voters are looking for a replacement for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, and their decision will help determine the future of a state government that is a testing ground for progressive ideas and a punching bag for Republican President Donald Trump. California is not only the nation’s most populous state, it has one of the world’s largest economies and is home to Hollywood tastemakers, Silicon Valley disrupters and Central Valley farmers.

The race was upended in April when Rep. Eric Swalwell, who had been consolidating support among establishment Democrats, was accused of sexual assault and dropped out.

California eliminated partisan primaries in 2010 in favor of a “ jungle primary.” All voters will get the full list of candidates, and the top two finishers will advance to the general election regardless of party.

Two polls conducted in mid-to-late May suggested that Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton each have the support of about 2 in 10 likely voters. In one of the polls, Democrat Tom Steyer landed closer to Becerra and Hilton, with Republican Chad Bianco and Democrat Katie Porter trailing further behind, but similar shares of voters were supporting Steyer, Bianco and Porter in the other poll. None of the other candidates were polling in double digits in either poll.

Among the 61 names on the ballot, money and attention have accumulated around a handful of candidates with track records in politics. Here’s a look at those top contenders.

Becerra has a 35-year history in California and national politics. He was a member of Democratic leadership in the U.S. House when then-Gov. Jerry Brown picked him to be California attorney general after Kamala Harris was elected to the U.S. Senate. He used that perch to aggressively fight Trump and his agenda in court during the president’s first term.

He later served in President Joe Biden’s cabinet as secretary of Health and Human Services.

That experience is at the core of his pitch to voters as a steady hand to guide California and stand up to Trump. It has also invited scrutiny.

Some Biden administration alumni have disparaged his record as health secretary, and he has faced persistent questions since a former top aide was convicted of stealing his campaign funds.

After Swalwell dropped out, Becerra consolidated support from many of California’s Democratic power players, including major labor unions, Planned Parenthood and the LGBTQ rights group Equality California.

Trump’s endorsement gives Hilton a leg up with Republicans and perhaps the clearest path of any of the candidates into the general election. But it could be a liability in November in a state that voted overwhelmingly against the Republican president. Hilton largely avoided mentioning Trump unless prompted during a series of debates.

Hilton is a conservative commentator and former Fox New host. Originally from England, he advised former British Prime Minister David Cameron.

In a nod to the dominance of Democrats in California, he is urging voters to elect a Republican as a check on the majority in Sacramento. In contrast with Bianco’s focus on cultural issues, Hilton’s message is tied more closely with the traditional Republican focus on lower taxes and smaller government. He has pledged to make people’s first $100,000 of income tax free and to dramatically lower gas prices.

The billionaire founder of a San Francisco-based hedge fund, Steyer — or his face, at least — is everywhere ahead of the primary. His record-breaking spending, mostly from his personal fortune, has made his advertising inescapable. That has helped him become one of the race’s frontrunners.

Steyer, who has never held elected office, first made a name for himself as a donor to Democratic politicians and groups committed to fighting climate change. He bankrolled a campaign calling for Trump’s impeachment during his first term, and he later financed his own campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination but dropped out after a disappointing showing in early-state primaries and caucuses.

Steyer is running as a progressive populist, railing against the political power wielded by special interests and corporations. His message has endeared him to unlikely allies for a billionaire financier, including the Bernie Sanders-aligned group Our Revolution.

As mayor of San Jose, Mahan is a moderate Democrat rooted in the pro-innovation ethos of Silicon Valley. His business-friendly pitch and his own background as an entrepreneur have made him a favorite with some in the tech world.

Mahan says California should get “back to basics,” emphasizing technocratic problem solving over factional skirmishes. He entered the race late as an outsider to Sacramento leadership, building a statewide profile mainly by criticizing Newsom and the Legislature’s response to homelessness and crime.

His backing from tech executives — and their millions of dollars — has been controversial in some corners of the party, particularly among labor unions and populists worried Silicon Valley elites wield too much power.

Still, he has struggled to consolidate support on the pro-business left, and even some of his benefactors are hedging their bets. Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale also gave to Republican Steve Hilton.

Once a college professor, Porter made a name for herself with a whiteboard and simple policy messages during three terms representing Orange County in Congress. Her verbal sparring with business executives testifying on Capitol Hill went viral.

Porter is leaning on her populist, anti-corporate background, arguing that she can fight on behalf of normal Californians against powerful interests. Before running for office, she was California’s independent monitor of banks in the national mortgage settlement following the 2008 financial crisis.

Her grasp of policy has helped her amass support from newspaper editorial boards. But she has battled an image as a mercurial leader. Leaked videos showed her berating an aide who could be seen behind her in a Zoom video and threatening to walk out of a television interview. She has apologized and pledged to treat people more respectfully.

Porter ran for Senate in 2024, but she failed to make it through the primary.

The former mayor of Los Angeles and speaker of the state Assembly has struggled to gain traction after more than a decade out of public office.

A one-time union organizer, Villaraigosa was the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles in more than a century, a role he filled from 2005 to 2013.

Villaraigosa is pitching his experience in LA and the state Capitol, running as a pragmatic, centrist problem solver in an implicit contrast with his Democratic rivals emphasizing their commitment to a progressive ideology.

Villaraigosa’s roots are in the Southern California political ecosystem, which would be a contrast after four terms of Brown and Newsom, both governors from the San Francisco Bay Area.

He ran for governor in 2018 but finished third in the primary.

Bianco is the sheriff of Riverside County and is emphasizing his three-decade career in law enforcement, pledging to tackle crime and homelessness.

A staunch Trump supporter, Bianco stoked national notoriety when his office seized 1,000 boxes of election material including more than a half million ballots from a 2025 special election on redistricting. He says it is part of a legitimate criminal investigation, but critics see it as a nod to discredited conspiracy theories that have motivated Trump’s base. The state Supreme Court in April ordered him to halt the probe.

The seizure put him at odds with California’s Democratic attorney general and raised his profile among Republicans.

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By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON, May 30 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge in Florida said she will review a deal between the Justice Department and President Donald Trump to settle his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, intensifying scrutiny of the heavily criticized agreement.

Trump filed the lawsuit against his own government over an alleged mishandling of his tax records that resulted in leaks to the media. The proposed agreement would create a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate victims of political “weaponization.”

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ordered Trump’s lawyers on Friday to respond by June 12 to a motion filed by 35 retired federal judges alleging that the settlement “is a product of collusion and is itself a fraud on the court” and to address the question of whether the case should be reopened over the contention the suit was the result of “deception” by Trump and the government.

Following the settlement, Trump moved to dismiss the lawsuit in a bid to prevent any judicial scrutiny of the deal.

Williams initially granted that dismissal on May 18, but her new order said the “court is empowered to investigate serious misconduct.”

It is unusual for a judge to order the government to respond to a motion after a case has been dismissed. If the judge reopens the case, she could order a hearing or take further action.

The retired judges said the settlement, which was never placed before the court, raises profound questions about Trump and the government’s actions “and manipulation of the judicial system, which threatens to undermine confidence in the administration of justice.”

Separately, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from setting up the “Anti-Weaponization Fund”. Brinkema’s order will remain in effect at least until ​June 12.

The fund spurred a backlash, even from some lawmakers in Trump’s Republican Party, who expressed anger that some people who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, could receive taxpayer-funded payouts. It was derided by some critics as a “slush fund.”

The settlement also would bar the IRS from pursuing any audits into past ​tax claims for Trump, his relatives ​and his companies for any tax returns filed before May 18 or for ‌any ⁠matters “that were raised or could have been raised.”

Legal experts described the arrangement as highly unusual both because of the nature of Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS and because funds of this scale typically are either created by an act of Congress or supervised by a court.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Nia Williams)

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The Gambia-flagged cargo ship Lian Star ignored more than 20 warnings from U.S. forces overnight as it tried to enter an Iranian port, the military said. The ship remained adrift in the Gulf of Oman and U.S. forces have not boarded it, said a U.S. official with knowledge of the situation, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.

The U.S. blockade seeks to limit Iran’s own shipments and further weaken its access to cash, creating more pain for its long-weakened economy.

Commercial traffic has quietly continued to flow through the strait, despite Iran’s assertions that it must approve any transits, though at a much lower volume than before the war.

“Any violation of these regulations will place the security of their passage at serious risk,” Iran’s joint military command said Saturday in a statement carried by state TV, warning that any military vessels trying to interfere with that would be targeted.

Qatar’s deputy prime minister, Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman bin Hassan bin Ali Al Thani, said on Saturday said that the Gulf nation opposes charging fees to transit, “but for certain times when they say they are going to use it for mine clearing or some usage of the fees for a temporary time, this is something that is negotiable, and it could be something that will help the transit of the Strait of Hormuz to be back to normal stage.”

The U.S. official previously told The Associated Press that the U.S. has not found or destroyed any mines in the strait.

AP PHOTO

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The end of California’s chaotic primary season for governor and Los Angeles mayor was approaching as leading candidates rushed to deliver their closing arguments days before voting concludes on Tuesday.

Former U.S. health secretary Xavier Becerra has called for “hot competence summer” in his bid for governor, promoting his decades of public service as evidence he has what it takes to lead the nation’s most populous state.

Republican Steve Hilton pledged an end to a “bloated, nanny-state bureaucracy” during remarks outside the state Capitol on Wednesday.

Billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer told reporters this week in Berkeley, California, that he has made it his life’s work to advance progressive causes, a mission he’ll bring to Sacramento.

They are seeking to stand out in a field of roughly 60 names on a single gubernatorial ballot, regardless of party, under California’s top-two primary system. The two candidates who receive the most votes Tuesday will face off in the general election to replace Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who can’t seek a third term.

The crowded race includes Democrats Becerra, Steyer, former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, and Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose. Hilton, a former Fox News host backed by President Donald Trump, and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco are the most prominent Republicans in the race.

As of Friday afternoon, 13% of voters had cast their ballots. That included 13% of Democrats and 18% of Republicans, according to a tracker by Democratic strategist Paul Mitchell. The breakdown is unusual because Democrats in recent years have tended to vote early while many Republicans wait until Election Day.

Some Democrats have been waiting to cast their ballots to see if a candidate breaks away from the pack in the final days, or because they are unimpressed with the crowded field.

In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass is vying for reelection against critics who question her leadership of the nation’s second-largest city, and had several stops planned Saturday to try and pull ahead of her competitors.

Those include Spencer Pratt, a registered Republican who gained a name on the reality TV show “The Hills,” and Nithya Raman, a progressive city councilmember. The race is officially nonpartisan.

The contenders have been traveling across the state that includes roughly 23 million registered voters as they seek an edge over rivals. Becerra, Hilton, Steyer and Bianco will all be in the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend. Fresno and Los Angeles have also been popular campaign stops.

Becerra has been highlighting the more than 35 years he’s spent in state and federal office.

“This is not a place for on-the-job training,” he said on a podcast hosted by political commentator Ana Navarro. “You better know what you’re doing.”

He’ll hit a text-banking event with Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta in San Francisco and rally with the Service Employees International Union in San Jose.

Hilton has been selling himself as someone who would bring a fresh set of eyes to state government, reduce regulations, and bring down housing and energy costs. In an interview posted Saturday on Breitbart’s The Alex Marlow Show, Hilton told Republican voters to support him over the other conservative candidate, Bianco, to try and ensure that at least one Republican moves forward in the top two candidates.

“Right now, there’s only one candidate for change who can possibly get into the top two, and that’s me,” he said, “it’s not personal.”

Otherwise he’s pushed a message he has said is not ideological but commonsense, with a focus on cutting prices. Hilton will host a town hall in Silicon Valley on Saturday night.

Hilton has been cautious not to emphasize Trump’s endorsement. If he advances to the November election, he will need to appeal to voters outside his party to win in the Democrat-dominated state that hasn’t had a Republican governor since 2011.

Steyer is a billionaire who, on X Saturday, said he’s the “only candidate who would support the billionaire tax in November.” The candidate has framed the race as a contest between three candidates: himself, Hilton and Becerra. Steyer has described Hilton as “a hard-right Republican who’s endorsed by Donald Trump.”

Steyer on Saturday focused several social media posts on Becerra, repeating an argument he recently told a crowd of supporters at a sports bar in Berkeley. Becerra, “to my surprise, is a corporate Democrat,” he said, referencing Becerra’s acceptance of campaign contributions from Chevron.

“And the third person’s me,” he said. “And I am running because Californians can’t afford to live here anymore.”

Steyer’s headed to a campaign rally Saturday in San Francisco to put a finer point on his message to voters.

Mahan, meanwhile, will mingle with voters in Los Angeles, Porter gave a speech in Orange County, and Bianco will lay out his vision at a church in San Jose.

Bass is pursuing her second term after a tumultuous first, which included devastating wildfires and a rebuilding process that critics say is too slow.

The mayor has focused her reelection on the progress that has been made, such a decrease in street homelessness, which she leaned into on a livestream on Instagram Saturday before going after her opponent, Pratt.

“You have a failed reality TV star who wants to be famous,” she told two actresses on the livestream, before seemingly referencing President Donald Trump. “We know what it means if you put somebody who is a reality TV star in a seat of power.”

Pratt, who loss of his home in the wildfires became central to his campaign against Bass, is running a buzzy, social media driven campaign with populist messaging with promises to rid the city of disorder and dysfunction. On Saturday on X, Pratt threw out a few attacks at Raman, the city councilwoman, who both Pratt and Bass have, in different ways, tried to paint as too progressive.

Raman’s campaign is partly focused on affordability and infrastructure. Both Raman and Pratt have attacked Bass for her response to the wildfires, though their recent posts have been directed at each other.

In a video posted to Instagram Saturday, Raman cited a recent poll. “After millions of dollars of spending against us, we are still here and we are still competitive,” she said, before asking people to vote ahead of Tuesday.

A November runoff appears likely because there are more than a dozen names on the ballot.

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Associated Press journalist Terry Chea in Berkeley, California, contributed to this report.

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By Karen Freifeld

NEWARK, New Jersey, May 30 (Reuters) – New Jersey state police who deployed near an immigrant detention center found that out-of-state agitators escalated tensions during protests, Governor Mikie Sherrill said on Saturday. 

At a news conference the day after Sherrill ordered state police to assume control outside the Delaney Hall detention facility in Newark, she said five of six people arrested Friday night were not from New Jersey and said “national extremist groups” became involved in the protests Saturday, adding to tensions in the state’s most populous city. 

“You should not be here,” she said of those who came to create chaos. “You are not helping the people detained at Delaney Hall. You’re not helping detainee families and you’re certainly not keeping New Jersey safe.”  

State police on Friday set up “protected protest zones” after several days of confrontations between protesters and federal agents outside Delaney, a 1,000-bed facility whose detainees had announced a labor and hunger strike to draw attention to what they called inhumane conditions and to demand their release.  

“That’s exactly where our focus needs to be right now, advocating for better conditions for those inside the facility,” Sherrill said. “We can’t let what’s happening outside Delaney Hall take us away from that mission.”

Sherrill said she was “grateful to the vast majority of protesters who have assembled peacefully and raised their voices about Delaney Hall conditions.”

The company Geo Group (GEO.N) operates Delaney for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has denied the allegations about the facility and called the involvement of state police a “win for law and order.”

But Sherrill, a Democrat, suggested federal officials had made the situation worse, with ICE using batons on protesters and taking other actions that she described as inappropriate for crowd control. “They have been increasing tensions in a way that’s not helpful to public safety,” she said.

The governor, who has called for the closure of Delaney Hall, said her goal was to ensure peaceful protests and public safety — and avoid a surge of federal agents.

“What we have been working towards now is ensuring that ICE has no pretextual reason whatsoever to exacerbate this situation,” Sherrill said at a news conference.

Clashes between immigration officers and protesters occasionally have turned violent in other states, most notably in Minnesota, where federal personnel fatally shot two people and injured others. 

State police have tried to set up areas for protesters to peacefully assemble, New Jersey officials said. But protesters who were ordered to disperse Friday night surrounded a law enforcement vehicle and made threats toward personnel, state police Lieutenant Colonel David Sierotowicz said on Saturday.

Some activists were seen retrieving face coverings, gas masks, fireworks, rocks and other projectiles from a nearby tent area, Sierotowicz said.

Video from Friday showed police advancing with riot shields and firing tear gas. Sierotowicz said police used standard tactics to move the crowd back, with no significant injuries to the public or law enforcement.

“We were not striking anybody last night,” he said.

Protests are fine as long as they remain peaceful, state officials said. At mid-afternoon on Saturday, dozens of protesters were chanting slogans but remaining behind the barriers that police had set up.

“Today and going forward, I urge those protesting outside of Delaney Hall to bring the temperature down, so we can focus on the detainees and their families,” Sherrill said.

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York and Eduardo Munoz; Editing by Sergio Non and Franklin Paul)

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ATLANTA (AP) — The U.S. Department of Justice is asking a judge to recuse herself in a fight over Georgia election records, arguing that she attended an event honoring Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who prosecuted President Donald Trump, raising questions about the judge’s ability to be impartial.

A federal judge in 11th Judicial Circuit received a “private reprimand” after a court investigation found that the judge had sex in the courthouse with a high-ranking uniformed police officer within earshot of staff, attended a partisan event and then initially lied to deny the allegations.

The court’s investigation did not publicly identify the judge or the court location within the 11th Circuit’s jurisdiction, which includes Alabama, Florida and Georgia. The Justice Department is relying on media reports that identify U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross in Atlanta as the judge in question.

The Associated Press has not independently confirmed the judge’s identity. A person who answered the phone in Ross’ chambers Friday said the judge was unavailable and referred questions about the allegations to the court’s media office which said, “Judge Ross has no comment right now.” The media office did not immediately respond Saturday to a second email seeking comment about the Justice Department motion seeking Ross’ recusal.

Federal judges are appointed for life but can be subject to disciplinary action, including censure, public or private reprimands and temporary withholding of cases. They can only be removed through impeachment by Congress.

Ross was nominated in January 2014 by then-President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and she was confirmed by the Senate in November of that year. She had previously served as a state court judge in DeKalb County, which includes a small part of the city of Atlanta, since 2011. Prior to taking the bench, she had worked as a state and federal prosecutor, mostly in Atlanta, for more than a decade.

Ross is overseeing the election records case filed by the Justice Department against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

The Justice Department has sued multiple states seeking statewide voter lists. Raffensperger has said that Georgia law prohibits the release of voters’ confidential personal information unless certain qualifications are met and that the federal government hadn’t met those conditions. He has said that he sent the public part of the voter roll to the Justice Department in December.

Ross has scheduled a hearing in the case for Wednesday, though the Justice Department has asked to delay that hearing because of its request for the judge to recuse herself.

In the disciplinary case against the unnamed federal judge, the Judicial Council of the 11th Circuit chose in a February order to impose a private reprimand that kept the judge’s name secret. The Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability of the Judicial Conference of the United States on May 22 affirmed that order.

An investigation report attached to the order says the judge went to an event hosted by a district attorney’s campaign. The judge acknowledged having gone to the event to visit with former colleagues in the district attorney’s office at a private mixer but said it was held in the same place but was separated from the prosecutor’s victory party. The investigative committee found that the mixer was part of the larger partisan event that was sponsored by the district attorney’s campaign or donors and that the judge should not have attended the event.

Ross previously worked in the Fulton County district attorney’s office and overlapped with Willis there before Willis was district attorney.

Willis began investigating Trump and others for possible interference in the 2020 election in Fulton County soon after becoming district attorney in January 2021. Among the things she looked at was a January 2021 phone call in which Trump urged Raffensperger to help “find” the votes needed to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s win in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election.

Willis in August 2023 obtained an indictment against Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. That case was ultimately dismissed in November after an appeals court found an “appearance of impropriety” created by a romantic relationship Willis had with the outside lawyer she had hired to lead the prosecution.

“A judge who attended a party celebrating the election of a Democrat best known for prosecuting a Republican President for alleged election interference cannot then preside over a case concerning that President’s efforts to ensure election integrity,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in their filing Friday.

The Justice Department argued that any “objective reasonable observer” would see Ross’ presence at Willis’ election night party as an endorsement of her election and her actions in office.

“If Judge Ross is indeed the Subject Judge, that conduct gives rise to an appearance of bias, which requires Judge Ross to recuse herself from this election-related case,” the Justice Department filing says.

The Justice Department filing makes passing mention of the allegations of improper sexual activity with a police officer in the judge’s chambers and the subsequent false statements the judge made to deny those allegations, but says “those are not the subject of this Motion.”

Separately, the Atlanta Police Department has said it has opened an investigation to determine whether the “high-ranking law enforcement officer” found to have had sex with a federal judge in the judge’s chambers is a member of their department.

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