California Voters Are Annoyed. You May Have Heard.
Plus: 60 Minutes becomes the story. No intelligence experience? No problem. The diplomatic F-bomb. A Q&A on the looming economic impact of the Iran war. And a real shot against melanoma.
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What’s happening at 60 Minutes is more than an internal drama.
60 Minutes represents something genuinely rare: a news organization with a mass audience, deep resources, and the editorial independence to pursue powerful targets. To absorb years of litigation. To anger the people who could make life very difficult. To send journalists across the world and let them stay until the story is ready.
That combination is built over decades, and it is not easily replaced.
The alternatives all have limits. Some independent outlets are backed by funders with specific political agendas. Independent journalists and creators can do essential work, but we are building audiences, products, and revenue in real time — while operating on tech platforms that can change the rules overnight. That makes sustained, years-long adversarial reporting hard to support without new infrastructure.
If 60 Minutes is hollowed out, we won’t just lose a television show. We’ll lose one of the last places in American video journalism built to support expensive, risky investigative work. More on that news below.
Also today: The economic impact of the Iran war.
We keep hearing that another economic shock is coming if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed. But for many Americans, with $7 gas and $6 eggs, the shock is already here.
So I spoke with Gregg Carlstrom, Middle East correspondent for The Economist, currently in Riyadh. He explains why prices could spike even if a deal is reached soon; how the closure could ripple through oil, fertilizer, jet fuel, food, and medical supplies; and why leaders in the Gulf are increasingly worried about the lack of a clear endgame. It’s about more than gas prices and the next few weeks matter.
In today’s newsletter: The California races — we explain who the candidates are and what they’d actually do. The 60 Minutes exodus. Todd Blanche on the Hill: Two different stories in two days. The Supreme Court, Alabama, and a ruling that overturned a ruling. An update on the ballroom. The expletive-filled Trump-Netanyahu call, confirmed. Plus a melanoma vaccine that has researchers paying attention.
Here Are Your Headlines
Breaking: Four House Republicans joined Democrats to pass a war powers resolution to end the war with Iran. The Senate will consider the resolution, and may have the votes to pass it. (We’ll see.) It’s the fourth time House Democrats have tried passing a war powers resolution, and is an important symbolic rebuke of Trump — symbolic because it likely won’t force the administration to actually withdraw troops. The House also voted 218-204 to advance legislation that would impose new sanctions on Russia and deliver more aid to Ukraine.
Winners and Losers: Primary results are coming in from across the country. Voters showed the limits of Trump’s influence and the power of inflammatory campaign tactics.
Golden Boys: California’s gubernatorial race narrowed from over 60 candidates to three frontrunners. As of Wednesday, with 55% of votes counted, former Fox News host Steve Hilton leads with 28%, former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra has 25%, and billionaire Tom Steyer is hanging on with 20%. Millions more votes must be counted, a process experts warn could take days or even weeks.
Devil’s In the Details: The Democrat, Xavier Becerra, spent nearly 25 years representing California in the House, voting a reliable Democratic line. He helped shape and pass the Affordable Care Act — then defended it in court as California’s attorney general, filing 100+ lawsuits against the first Trump administration. As Biden’s HHS Secretary, he faced criticism over his handling of migrant children and the Covid pandemic, with some colleagues questioning his leadership. Becerra’s gubernatorial candidacy was on life support until Rep. Eric Swalwell’s sudden exit opened the door to a last-minute surge. His promises include freezing utility and home insurance rates, building twice as many homes statewide as Newsom, protecting “coverage continuity” for state residents affected by Trump’s Medicaid cuts, and lowering drug prices.
Hold On To Your Socks: The Republican, Steve Hilton, is a British native who helped reinvent the country’s (now struggling) Conservative Party. He served as the right-hand man to controversial Prime Minister David Cameron, where he was a fierce advocate for Brexit and earned a reputation for dispatching orders while not wearing shoes. He came to California in 2012, became a Fox News host and US citizen, and is running for office for the first time. On policy: He wants to lower gas prices by suspending environmental regulations and boosting state oil production, force people off the streets and into sober housing, and eliminate state income taxes on the first $100,000 and shift to a flat tax — which his own campaign acknowledges would reduce tax revenue by $65 billion a year. He says he’d make up for it by rooting out waste and corruption and shrinking state agencies. (DOGE goes to California?) California voters might blink at his anti-abortion, pro-mass-deportation stances. Another catch: Trump endorsed Hilton, which Republican competitor Chad Bianco was quick to note could harm him in deep-blue California.
Hollywood Drama: In the Los Angeles mayoral race, incumbent Karen Bass will face either former reality TV villain Spencer Pratt, who’s in second place with 63% of the vote counted, or progressive city councilmember Nithya Raman. Pratt’s campaign was powered by rage and resentment over the (arguably improving) homelessness crisis, crime, slow response to the wildfires, his own viral AI videos, and outsize attention from the national media. His voters, he says, are tired of “having to step over the naked drug addicts and step into human poop to get their $20 matcha.” He’s happy to peddle conspiracies about unhoused people — calling them “zombies” on “super meth” who are supposedly “bused in from other states” so NGOs and politicians can profit.
Fall Short: Iowa Republicans just showed the limits of Trump’s influence. Rep. Randy Feenstra, whom Trump endorsed at the last minute, narrowly lost the state gubernatorial primary to outsider Zach Lahn — becoming the highest-profile Trump-endorsed candidate to lose a Republican primary in almost a decade. Lahn, a businessman and farmer, was endorsed by MAHA PAC. He’ll face state auditor Rob Sand, the only Democrat in statewide office, a moderate promising improved education and taxes on data centers. Meanwhile, Democrats chose paralympian Josh Turek, backed by a Schumer-aligned group, for Senate, over progressive state Sen. Zach Wahls.
Attack Dog: Trump named Bill Pulte as acting Director of National Intelligence. Pulte has no known experience in either national security or intelligence. But he does have experience using his perch at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which he’ll retain, to target Trump’s political enemies. “Trump wanted someone” as DNI “who is a true loyalist,” one source told CNN, “who will do what he wants him to do.” Multiple Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Sens. Mitch McConnell, and Bill Cassidy, have voiced opposition. Susan Collins questioned whether Pulte even has security clearance. Thom Tillis blasted Pulte as an “incendiary attack dog” who has no chance of being confirmed by the Senate. But Pulte can take the role in an acting capacity without confirmation.
Keep reading for…
Blanche says the slush fund is dead. Trump isn’t so sure.
Three Republican judges said Alabama’s gerrymander was racist. The Supreme Court shrugged.
The latest victim of Bari Weiss’s CBS News purge isn’t going quietly.
Why Trump told Netanyahu he’s “fucking crazy.”
The Trump administration insists the war with Iran is over. But strikes just turned deadly again.
What happened to the billion-dollar taxpayer-funded ballroom fund.
Why a new, personalized vaccine could change the fate of people with advanced melanoma.
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