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This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Fertility isn’t a topic that tends to come up in the macho, male-dominated world of wildland firefighting—at least not according to Jasper Kehoe, 23, who served as a Colorado wildland firefighter for four summers.

But whenever Kehoe talked about his job in the off-season—working as a student researcher at Colorado State University to assess the impact of wildfire smoke on semen—his colleagues’ ears perked up.

Even more surprising to Kehoe, they wanted to get involved: When he posted about the study in an industry Facebook group, he received more than 150 messages from firefighters who wanted to participate.

“After you get over the stigma of talking about fertility, somewhat of a taboo subject in our community,” Kehoe said, “these firefighters are concerned with the ability to conceive.”

Kehoe helped recruit 144 wildland firefighters to submit pre-, mid- and post-fire season semen samples over the past year. He hopes that his work helps lead to a greater understanding of smoke’s health consequences, as well as more protections for wildland firefighters and others.

“It’s not yet understood whether these impacts on sperm may translate to a change in pregnancy.”

When it’s published later this year or the next, the firefighter study will join a new body of research on how wildfire smoke influences human fertility. In comparison to smoke’s effects on pregnancies, it’s a topic that’s been understudied. But with climate change causing more fires, especially in the West, and infertility affecting 1 in 6 people worldwide, interest in the field is growing. And so far, the results hold some warning signs for Westerners who want to have children.

Several recent studies involve episodes of poor air quality in the Pacific Northwest. Portlanders, for example, suffered from 10 days of severe smoke from nearby wildfires in 2020. At the time, the city’s air quality index, or AQI, almost went off the current scale altogether, with ratings near 500—the highest and most dangerous level, indicating a health serious health hazard.

When researchers at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) studied the situation later, comparing before-and-after semen samples from men who’d been undergoing fertility treatment, they discovered that the men’s sperm quantity and motility had dropped in the months following the smoky air’s sudden arrival.

Another study, published earlier this year, analyzed semen samples from 84 men before and after smoke events in Seattle in 2018, 2020 and 2022. Following the exposures, the researchers found that most men’s sperm quality and count declined.

“The changes we found were fairly subtle, and it’s not yet understood whether these impacts on sperm may translate to a change in pregnancy or truly a change in fertility,” said Tristan Nicholson, an assistant urology professor at the University of Washington and senior author of the paper. “But I think this has really motivated, for me and others, an interest in expanding this as [an area of] study.”

The male side of infertility has historically gone underexamined, Nicholson said, and she hopes her research will draw much-needed attention to it.

“Men, my patients, are often the forgotten partner,” she said. “There’s been a lot of focus on infertility being a women’s problem, and I think it really is beneficial to raise awareness that the male partner has an important contribution.”

During that same period of hazardous air in Portland in 2020, OHSU researchers also examined whether wildfire smoke had any impact on embryos made during in vitro fertilization, or IVF.

As part of that process, female patients undergo about two weeks of drug treatment before their eggs are retrieved and fertilized with sperm. After roughly five days, any resulting embryos are mature enough for transfer into the patient’s uterus.

For this retrospective study, the researchers grouped IVF patients according to when in their cycle the smoke episode occurred: in the weeks prior to their egg retrieval, during their embryos’ development, or after their embryos had already matured.

The patients whose embryos developed during the period of hazardous air were far more likely to find that none of their embryos did well enough to be suitable for transfer. Those whose embryos did mature ended up with a median number of two—55 percent fewer than those whose embryos had finished growing prior to the episode.

“I would advise [families trying to conceive] to avoid wildfire smoke exposure, given what we know so far.”

Even though the lab had several filters, its air still smelled faintly of smoke, said Molly Kornfield, an IVF doctor and the study’s lead author. Her new lab has a “submarine mode” that can prevent outside air from entering at the press of a button. 

Kornfield said it’s well-known that long-term exposure to bad air can harm fertility. But she was alarmed to see that “even this acute episode of only 10 days—which, of course, is really severe—can have a negative impact.”

Still, she cautioned that the study had a small sample size. And some of the results were unexpected: Patients who had been exposed to poor air during the weeks before their eggs’ retrieval did not see significant harm to their embryos’ development. Kornfield, who was surprised by that finding, said it underscored the need for more research.

Nicholson agreed. One big question, she said, is whether fertility can bounce back following severe smoke events—and if so, how long it takes. Such information, she said, would help aspiring parents know just how cautious to be.

At the moment, the government’s air-quality recommendations have stricter guidelines for “sensitive groups,” a category that includes children, older adults, pregnant people and those with heart or lung issues.

“What I wonder, and I don’t know yet, is whether people who are trying to conceive, who are trying to start their families, should fall into that category,” Nicholson said. “But I would advise patients to avoid wildfire smoke exposure, given what we know so far.”

Regardless of fertility goals, Westerners should monitor air quality using a reliable data source like airnow.gov. To reduce exposure to unhealthy air, consider limiting outdoor time, keeping windows and doors shut, and wearing an N-95 mask when venturing out.

People who live in smoke-prone areas should consider investing in an indoor air purifier and changing the filters regularly. If that’s not financially possible, some cities have programs that help residents buy or borrow purifiers for fire season. It’s also relatively easy to build an air filter using a box fan and other materials.

After spending years researching the impacts of smoke as an undergraduate student, Kehoe started washing his hands and face as often as he could while on the fire line. He also tried to avoid getting into his sleeping bag when he was dirty. Back home in Kansas City, Missouri, he now has air purifiers running 24/7.

There’s still a lot left to learn. But one thing has come through the smoke: Breathing it in doesn’t seem great for anybody.

At campaign stops across California’s Central Valley, Randy Villegas asks a simple question: Do you or someone you know drive to Tijuana to get medicine or fix your teeth? Almost inevitably, hands go up.

For Villegas—a 31-year-old community college professor running for Congress in a largely Mexican American district—the outrage has a personal dimension. In the wealthiest nation in the world, many of his neighbors are forced to seek healthcare from the country his own parents left behind.

I first heard Villegas ask about the trips to Tijuana during a forum in Stratford, an unincorporated community about 40 miles south of Fresno. The border is more than six hours away, but, in an area where the poverty rate exceeds 30 percent, people still make the journey. The solution, said Villegas, who has been endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, is Medicare for All and a recognition that healthcare is a human right.

“Tell me who you’re with and I’ll tell you who you are.”

This is not the typical message in the 22nd Congressional District, which includes parts of the city of Bakersfield, as well as vast rural tracts that are well known for sending moderates from both parties to Sacramento and Washington. That describes Villegas’ Democratic primary opponent, State Assembly Member Jasmeet Bains, a family doctor attuned to the realities of representing an area where the local economy is often dominated by agricultural giants and oil companies. It also describes Rep. David Valadao, the Republican incumbent in what political analysts say is one of the most competitive House races in the country.  

Voting is already well underway in advance of the June 2 primary. The intraparty contest gets at some of the biggest questions now dividing Democrats in races across the US. Is Sanders-style progressivism or pragmatic centrism a more promising strategy for winning back working-class and Latino voters who have abandoned Democrats in recent years? Should Democrats speak out against Israel’s actions in the Middle East, even if it means inviting opposition—and massive negative ad buys—from groups aligned with AIPAC? Should party leaders in Washington continue to elevate moderates over populist candidates on the left?

Volunteers chat after a morning of canvassing in Bakersfield.Adam Perez

Just before I arrived in Bakersfield earlier this month, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee—the party’s official campaign arm for House races—formally backed Bains over Villegas. Later that week, the super-PAC Democratic Majority for Israel started buying commercials on local stations attacking Villegas. Neither development was good news for Villegas, though they play directly into the slogan he uses in ads and campaign stops to emphasize his independence from the party establishment: “Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres.”

“Tell me who you’re with and I’ll tell you who you are.”

No one I spoke with felt confident predicting who would win the primary. They assume the race is close, but there’s hardly any public polling. Whoever prevails will have the best chance of unseating Valadao since 2018, when the congressman lost by less than 900 votes before staging a comeback two years later.

Support for Donald Trump surged in the district in 2024—one of many places around the country where Republicans made inroads with Latino voters. But Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump veteran of the California GOP and a leading national expert on Latino politics, is betting that Democrats will win again in November, regardless of who emerges from the primary. The backlash to the president is simply too great. “I’ve been asked about this district…a hundred times in the past decade,” Madrid told me. “The only other time I said that Valadao was going to lose was 2018.” 

If Madrid is right that a Democrat will win—and there’s no guarantee he is—the bigger question will become: What kind of Democrat? Villegas sees the race as a fight for the “soul” of the party, while Bains rejects that premise entirely. “You’ll never hear me say that,” she told me over the phone. Nor, she noted multiple times, would voters hear her “whine” about who is endorsing her opponents, which is how she describes Villegas’ complaints about the party’s campaign committee. “You’re going to see Dr. Bains doing a press conference on the things that matter to voters,” she added. “It is a point of privilege to have so much time in your life that you’re going to put things together to whine about endorsements. That is sick.”  

California’s Central Valley makes up less than 1 percent of the nation’s farmland but produces a quarter of its food.Adam Perez

The Central Valley has long been a place where migrants accustomed to country life come to find a more prosperous version of home. Over the years, there have been shepherds from Basque country, Okies escaping the Dust Bowl, and African Americans fleeing the South. All three candidates in this year’s contest are children of immigrants. Valadao’s parents were part of a wave of Portuguese migration to the valley from the Azores. Bains’ parents are Sikhs from Punjab in India. Villegas’ family comes from the Mexican states of Guerrero and Michoacán.

Latinos make up most of the Central Valley’s population, including about 75 percent of residents and 65 percent of voting-age citizens in the 22nd District. It’s one of the youngest congressional districts in the country, as well one of the poorest. Despite making up less than 1 percent of the nation’s farmland, the Central Valley produces a quarter of its food. But the money often doesn’t stay where it’s made.

The Democratic Party “needs to stop picking candidates and pushing candidates out. It needs to focus on bringing voters in.”

In theory, these economic inequities—combined with Trump’s attacks on immigrants—should have galvanized Democratic power in the region. Instead, the party’s support among Latino voters collapsed between 2016 and 2024. Consider Arvin, a city near the site of a New Deal project that once housed Depression-era migrants and features prominently in The Grapes of Wrath. In 2016, voters in Arvin, which is now 95 percent Latino, backed Hillary Clinton by a 67-point margin. In 2020, Trump closed that gap by 15 points. In 2024, he improved by another 32 points—finishing with more than three times as many votes in the city as he did during his first run. A similar story played out across the valley. 

I saw that firsthand during the final days of the 2024 campaign. Voters there told me over and over that they were frustrated by the economy, especially the rising cost of living. They decided to go with Trump, whom they often credited with delivering something closer to prosperity during his time in the White House. 

One of the most insightful people I spoke with at the time was a Democratic consultant named Pedro Ramirez. He told me that he was encountering a strange phenomenon: young Latino Democrats who wanted to know if local Democratic candidates were backing Trump—and who were hoping the answer was yes. It happened so many times that Ramirez had to double check to make sure the voters on his lists really were Democrats. 

A canvasser with the Community Water Center Action Fund in BakersfieldAdam Perez

Earlier this month, I met with Ramirez again at his office in Fresno. In a reflection of what polls show nationwide, he’s now seeing Latino voters revolt against Trump and his broken promises to control the cost of living. He added that the president’s persecution of immigrants has been particularly salient among the young Latino men who moved right in large numbers in 2024; he attributes that partly to social media making the reality of Trump’s crackdown more stark than the TV news programs favored by older generations. 

Esmeralda Soria, one of Bains’ fellow Central Valley–based Democratic Assembly members, has seen a similar anti-Trump shift among her own constituents. Like Ramirez, she attributes it to economic turmoil and horrifying immigration raids like the ones launched in the valley by former Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino shortly after the 2024 election. Operation Return to Sender, as Bovino called it, was a wake-up call for locals who’d voted for Trump under the assumption that his administration would mostly target violent criminals, Soria said. “Oh my God,” she continued, summarizing the response, “what did we do?”

Soria has endorsed Bains, while Ramirez has stayed neutral. Ramirez says he is happy to see a competitive contest that he hopes will produce the strongest possible challenger to Valadao. He wishes the national party hadn’t chosen sides, though the move did not surprise him. Madrid was also critical. “They need to stay the hell out of it,” he said about the party’s campaign committee getting involved in the race. “Any party needs to stop picking candidates and pushing candidates out. It needs to focus on bringing voters in.”

In the Central Valley, Democratic support among Latino voters collapsed between 2016 and 2024.Adam Perez

By early May, Villegas had his stump speech down to a tight two minutes. Son of Mexican immigrants. Political science professor and small business owner. Make gas and food more affordable. Running against opponents who accept money from big corporations and a congressman who voted to cut Medicaid. Endorsed by Sanders and labor leader Dolores Huerta. “Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres.”

Despite forswearing donations from corporate PACs, he’s managed to outraise Bains, a two-term Assembly member with half a million constituents and a record of supporting wealthy Central Valley industries. He’s been showing up at events all over the district, while Bains has been less visible on the campaign trail and has declined to debate Villegas.

After the forum in Stratford, I joined Villegas for the city of Hanford’s weekly night market. I had expected something relatively small but arrived to a massive event with a carousel, live music, and thousands of attendees. The first person I spoke with had just voted early for Villegas. His reasoning was straightforward: He didn’t have much time to decide, so he went with the guy who was most obviously like him. “I’m going to be honest, he just appealed to me because he’s Latino.” 

As the event wrapped up, two young men recognized the candidate. They said they had just turned 18, and Villegas wasted no time in showing them how to register to vote. The more talkative of the two, Emmanuel Peña, was wearing a Stussy T-shirt and gym shorts. He knew Villegas was running for something but he wasn’t sure what. 

A switch seemed to flip on in the professor. There are two national legislative bodies, he explained: the House and the Senate. He’s running for the House.

“The House of California, though?” Peña asked. “Not like the country?” 

No, the whole country. 

“Oh, shit,” Peña replied. “David Valadao is that big?”

Peña wanted to know if Villegas identified as a social Democrat and appeared skeptical when the candidate didn’t immediately embrace the label.

“Basically, it’s us against them.”

Instead, Villegas called himself a populist. “Basically, it’s us against them,” he said. “I’m endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders—I love Bernie, he’s like my political hero—but I’ve talked to people at the door who were Republicans who were like, ‘Yeah, gas is crazy. Why are we spending a billion dollars a day in Iran?’” 

“It’s the top vs. the bottom,” a won-over Peña interjected. “There’s no war but the class war.”   

Peña said Sanders had been robbed in 2016 by the Democratic establishment. He was only 8 years old at the time, but it was clearly central to his understanding of the party. Four years later, Sanders defeated Joe Biden in the Democratic presidential primary in the Central Valley and in other heavily Latino parts of the country. Now, in his first election as an adult, Peña has the chance to support a fellow Mexican American who’s been inspired by the Vermont senator.

California’s 22nd Congressional District, which includes the city of Arvin, comprises vast rural tracts that are well known for electing moderates from both parties.Adam Perez

In the booth of a brightly lit Mexican restaurant a few minutes away, Villegas described a journey not all that different from Peña’s. After immigrating from Mexico, his father worked as a car mechanic. In 2006, he decided to open his own business after noticing that nobody nearby specialized in BMWs. Villegas remembered the family driving around to put business cards under the wipers of every Bimmer they could find to promote the shop, which Villegas now co-owns. Another family hustle was selling animals—and, at one point, fake Yu-Gi-Oh! cards—at the Bakersfield swap meet.

Judging by our conversations, as well his posts on Instagram, Villegas spent much of his youth devoted to three things: a high school sweetheart who is now his wife, playing the snare competitively on drumlines, and politics—ranging from a college selfie with Carl Bernstein to later praise for the historian Michael Kazin’s analysis of populism. While in college in Bakersfield during the 2016 campaign, he met Sanders when the senator came to town. “I was like, holy shit, this man is someone I believe in and someone I can get behind.”

In 2017, Villegas became the first person in his family to graduate from college, then left Bakersfield to get a PhD at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He said he spent his first year overcoming imposter syndrome. He still laughs about wearing a Spider-Man T-shirt to an admitted students day as Ivy Leaguers arrived in business casual. 

He now serves on a local school board while also teaching at the College of the Sequoias, a community college with three campuses in the Central Valley. He tries to meet his students where they are—including an extra credit assignment in which they use memes to illustrate a concept learned in class. One student recently went with a photo of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars. Smith represented “Super Pacs and interest groups”; Rock was labeled “Having a fair election.” 

In the Central Valley, the local economy is often dominated by agricultural giants and oil companies.Adam Perez

As a child, Jasmeet Bains lived just up Highway 99 from Bakersfield in Delano, a city known nationally for a historic grape strike launched by Filipino farmworkers in 1965. Her mom came to the United States from India on a journalism visa, while her father joined a brother already in the country. They lived in Ohio until her dad visited a friend in Delano when Bains was a toddler. He was shocked, Bains later recalled, to discover a place in America without snow, and they moved immediately.

Like Villegas’ father, Bains’ dad worked for a time as a car mechanic; he eventually acquired his own Chevrolet dealership. After college in Chicago, Bains sold cars for him for a time, then enrolled in medical school. She graduated in 2013, returned to the valley for her residency, and began working as a doctor of family medicine.

She was elected to the Assembly in 2022, when she was 37, to represent a district that overlaps with much of the one she is running for now. In Sacramento, she has established a reputation as one of the state’s most moderate and business-friendly Democrats. In some cases, she has broken with her party to defend the oil and agriculture companies that are central to the Central Valley’s economy. Whether her voting record has always benefited the workers at those companies is more debatable. 

In 2024, Bains declined to vote on legislation that that requires California to reevaluate the use of paraquat, a pesticide that has been linked to increased risk of Parkinson’s disease and is prohibited in more than 70 countries. Not voting is a common practice in Sacramento when lawmakers want to avoid taking controversial positions, and Bains has employed that tactic repeatedly—including on bills limiting security deposits charged by landlords and so-called “junk fees” that companies add to the price of goods and services.

California Assembly Member Jasmeet Bains talks with colleagues during a session in 2023.Hector Amezcua/The Sacramento Bee/ZUMA

Still, her legislative record has earned her plenty of supporters, and she’s endorsed by the California Federation of Labor Unions, a key player in state politics. Tania Salinas, president of the AFL-CIO’s labor council in and around Bakersfield, said Bains has excelled at getting funding for the district and protecting the jobs of the union members she represents—many of whom work in the fossil fuel industry. Salinas said she worries that Villegas’ refusal to take corporate money would hinder his ability to attract investment to the district. “How does that translate when you’re talking about industry?” Salinas added. “If you cannot talk to industry…how is that going to translate to jobs?”

The party leadership clearly sees Bains as the more electable of the two. Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has said the committee gets involved only in “primaries when we feel that one candidate stands out as the strongest possible nominee to ensure that we win in the general election.” DelBene argued that Bains will benefit from contrasting her work as a doctor with Valadao’s vote to cut Medicaid spending as part of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” The GOP’s Congressional Leadership Fund, which has sent mailers designed to push Democratic primary voters toward Villegas, appears to agree that Bains would be harder to defeat.

“It is a point of privilege to have so much time in your life that you’re going to put things together to whine about endorsements. That is sick.”  

Right or wrong, most of these political insiders seem to be motivated by pragmatic calculations rather than any personal objections to Villegas. Bains is a different story. Beyond blasting Villegas for “whining” about the campaign committee’s endorsement, she wanted to make sure I knew that he lives outside the district. She’s not wrong about that, but Villegas is hardly a carpetbagger. He grew up in Bakersfield, co-owns an auto shop there, and now lives 15 miles or so from the boundary line.

I was also eager to get Bains’ perspective on one of the stranger controversies of the campaign. During a Zoom event hosted in February by the Fresno County Young Democrats, both candidates were asked whether they believed Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Both gave the same one-word answer: “Yes.” But weeks later, after a video of their responses leaked, Bains walked back her claim. “I approach the word genocide with care, and I don’t believe it applies to Israel,” she said in a statement posted on her campaign website.

The legal debates around which atrocities amount to genocide are complex, but it’s an issue Bains has grappled with before. As her statement noted, she spearheaded California legislation officially designating the 1984 massacres of Sikhs in India as genocide. So I asked whether she could clarify why she had initially called Gaza a genocide and where she stood now.  

Juan Hernandez Garcia, a field representative for Bains’ campaign, prepares a yard sign in Bakersfield. Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times/Getty

“The problem is litmus tests,” Bains began. “Litmus tests for complex issues are the problem.” But it was clear that Bains did not actually want to say anything specific about Israel or Gaza—neither of which she mentioned by name over the course of a more than three-minute answer. “For a physician like me, who holds her Hippocratic oath higher than her oath for office, any innocent life lost is a devastation,” she said. “There has been loss of life on both sides. There has been loss of life in many areas.”

For his part, Villegas issued no such retraction. “Increasingly, people are aware that we are sending billions and billions of dollars to this genocidal regime that has universal healthcare…while we do not,” he told me.

When I spoke with Bains, it had just been revealed that Democratic Majority for Israel would be launching a major ad campaign on her behalf. The group has now shelled out half-a-million dollars on spots that don’t seem to mention Israel at all. Instead, they are attacking Villegas over votes he cast as a member of the Visalia school board to approve settlement agreements with alleged victims of sexual assault. Legal experts have criticized the ads, which are based on opposition research produced by the Bains campaign, as misleading.

Another group, 314 Action, has spent more than $900,000 to help Bains. Combined, these two super-PACs have spent roughly as much as Villegas’ entire campaign. Overall, outside spending for Bains far exceeds the amount being deployed in support of Villegas.

Perhaps the most revealing divide came in response to an issue closer to home. I asked Bains what she hoped to do in Congress to promote healthcare access and affordability. She immediately looked back to a more optimistic era for Democrats. “The most amazing thing was when the ACA was passed,” she said, referring to President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. It was an obvious contrast to Villegas’ push for Medicare for All.

The two candidates are both millennials, just nine years apart in age. Yet they represent starkly different generations of Democratic politics. One is shaped by Obama’s success; the other by the long tail of Sanders’ defeats. Bains may consider it absurd to see the race as a fight for the soul of the party. But there is no avoiding it.

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket exploded during a ground test last night, causing extensive damage to the launchpad and putting another dent in NASA's lunar timetable. The rocket was erected at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Launch Complex 36. It was undergoing pre-flight testing, having been cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last week following a second-stage anomaly that doomed AST SpaceMobile's Bluebird 7 satellite. The rocket was fueled for a static firing test of its seven BE-4 engines, during which it exploded. The force of the explosion appears to have comprehensively wrecked much of the ground infrastructure. Fortunately, all personnel were accounted for, according to company kingpin Jeff Bezos, who called the incident a "very rough day." He also posted: "We'll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It's worth it." The launchpad will need substantial reconstruction in addition to the loss of the rocket. A SpaceX Falcon 9 explosion on the SLC-40 pad in 2016 resulted in a gap of more than a year before the facility was used again. A quicker turnaround for New Glenn's pad would be optimistic. The fallout from the failure is likely to be broad. Even if the BE-4 engines are not the culprit, a thorough investigation will be required. It is difficult to imagine United Launch Alliance (ULA) launching another Vulcan Centaur – which is powered by a pair of BE-4 engines – until investigators have ruled out any connection to the powerplant, even considering ULA's own booster nozzle mishap earlier this year. Then there's the impact on NASA's Artemis program. Two days ago, the space agency awarded contracts to several companies, including Blue Origin, for lunar missions aimed at paving the way for a base on the Moon. The New Glenn was expected to launch the company's Blue Moon Mark 1 and Mark 2 lunar landers, with a Mark 1 lander scheduled to deliver NASA's VIPER rover to the Moon in 2027. A variant of the crew-capable Mark 2 lunar lander was also expected to form part of 2027's Artemis III mission. Those plans could face substantial revision or delay. While the exact cause of the explosion is yet to be determined, the blast radius will reach far beyond Blue Origin's facilities at LC-36. ®

The Santa Cruz City Council conducted a public hearing this week on proposed city charter amendments to update and clarify language, and to make a number of other changes to comply with state law. Staff is expected to return in June with a resolution to put the proposed changes to voters on the November ballot.

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

Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton are holding on to the lead in the latest poll ahead of the California governor election. 

That’s according to the Public Policy Institute of California, which surveyed 986 likely voters earlier this month. Nearly a quarter of those surveyed (23%) said they’d vote for Becerra, followed by Hilton at 20%, Tom Steyer at 15%, Chad Bianco at 13% and Katie Porter at 12%.

Some Californians are watching governor polls in part to decide how they’ll vote. The state’s open primary allows the top two vote-getters to advance to November regardless of party, and for several months Republicans Hilton and Bianco appeared to have a shot at locking Democrats out of the ballot.

Becerra, the former state attorney general and health secretary to former President Joe Biden, began to pull ahead after U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out of the race amid allegations of sexual misconduct. 

• Jonathan Underland, spokesperson for Becerra’s campaign: “Becerra has built real momentum — strong poll numbers backed by working Californians who are energized and ready.”

Steyer’s campaign in a written statement contested the PPIC survey’s findings, saying it missed recent movement toward the liberal billionaire. The campaign pointed to its own internal tracking and another poll conducted for Hilton.

Aside from the governor’s race, the PPIC survey held clues about how voters feel ahead of midterm elections that will decide which party controls Congress in the final two years of President Donald Trump’s second term. Three-quarters of likely voters said the country is headed in the wrong direction — the highest percentage in over two decades, according to PPIC.

Though it’s not surprising that the majority of the Democrats polled — 92% — agreed with this sentiment, 50% of Republicans also felt the same way. The percentage of Republicans who said the country was heading in the right direction also declined sharply — from 64% in a February PPIC poll to 49%. 

A solid majority — 64% — of likely voters said they would vote for the Democratic candidate in their local U.S. House race if the midterm elections were held today. Only 35% of likely voters said they would vote for the GOP candidate.

Those numbers are warning signs for Republicans as they try to hold on to their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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ShinyHunters claims it has dumped the personal details of millions of Charter Communications customers after the US telecom giant apparently declined to play along with the gang's latest extortion demands. According to Have I Been Pwned, the breach exposed the personal details of 4.9 million customers, including names, email addresses, phone numbers, and physical addresses. It says a smaller subset of roughly 85,000 records originating from an internal staff directory also contained job titles. Charter appeared on the ShinyHunters leak site earlier this month, with the extortion crew claiming to have stolen more than 42 million records belonging to consumer and business customers. The listing, seen by The Register, warned: "Over 42M records containing PII have been compromised. This is a final warning to reach out by 27 May 2026 before we leak along with several annoying (digital) problems that'll come your way." After the alleged deadline passed, the criminals updated the post with a familiar message for organizations that decline to pay. "Over 42M records containing PII have been compromised. The company failed to reach an agreement with us despite our incredible patience, all the chances and offers we made. They don't care." Charter, one of the largest broadband providers in the US through its Spectrum brand, confirmed it is investigating the incident but disputed the sensitivity of the data exposed. "We are aware of the situation, following our security protocols and are working with appropriate authorities," the company said in a statement provided to multiple outlets. "No sensitive personal information (PI) or customer proprietary network information (CPNI) data was exfiltrated by the threat actor as a result of recent activity." That may be technically true, but millions of names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses still represent a useful haul for scammers, phishers, and identity thieves. The incident is also not Charter's first brush with high-profile intrusions. The telecom provider was among the organizations reportedly caught up in China's Salt Typhoon espionage campaign last year, alongside a growing list of US telcos. The leak lands hours after Carnival Corporation, the world's largest cruise operator, admitted that ShinyHunters had also made off with the personal data of nearly six million people, suggesting the gang has been enjoying an unusually busy week. For companies weighing whether data theft is less disruptive than ransomware, ShinyHunters keeps providing fresh case studies in why that difference may not matter much to the people whose information ends up online. ®

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

Despite making up one-fifth of the state’s voting population, most Gen Z Californians won’t vote in the June 2 primary, which is stacked with several gubernatorial candidates.

The primary election tees up the ballot in November, which will also host other high-profile races and issues, such as the rest of the executive candidates, as well as propositions like the billionaire’s tax. 

Generation Z, or those aged 14 to 29, makes up nearly 21% of eligible California voters, but their historical turnout is disproportionately low compared to the general voting population. 

Young voters aren’t necessarily checked out. Rinu Nair, the president of the History and Civic Engagement Club at De Anza College in Cupertino, said that the student club’s meeting on the gubernatorial race drew the most participants of any meeting this year: 20. But students were often disillusioned by each candidate having a history of controversial actions. 

“There’s an interest, but also that feeling of, ‘Am I doing what I want to do? Can my vote even make a change?’” Nair said. “[Young people] don’t feel represented in politics but they feel like it’s a duty they have to do.” 

In a statewide survey published by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies in May, voters aged 18 to 29 polled similarly to all voters on reasons why they may not vote in the primary election. But a few reasons jumped out in particular.

Of young voters who said they were unlikely to vote, 47% said they are not well-informed enough on the issues and candidates, compared to 38% of total unlikely voters. Another difference was that 31% of young voters said they were too busy, compared to 19% of all unlikely voters. 

Cost of living and inflation, healthcare and housing costs are the top three issues Gen Z voters are tracking leading up to the 2026 midterms, according to 2026 survey data from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, a nonpartisan research organization based at Tufts University in Boston. Jobs and unemployment and immigration ranked fourth and fifth among survey respondents respectively.

How candidates are – or aren’t – addressing the youth vote

CalMatters reached out to gubernatorial candidate front-runners to learn more about their methods for engaging youth voters. Steve Hilton, Chad Bianco, Tony Thurmond and Matt Mahan’s teams did not respond.

Antonio Villaraigosa said in an interview that he hired a diverse staff of people primarily aged 22 to 26 to help him connect better with youth voters. Katie Porter and Tom Steyer said they have visited many college campuses across the state in an effort to connect with young voters.

Maiya De La Rosa, the president of California Young Democrats, a youth organizing group affiliated with the state Democratic Party, said that Xavier Becerra has visited and formed relationships with more Young Democrats chapters across the state than any other candidate, having visited 30 chapters since July 2025. She said that the organization endorsed him because of that strong relationship as well as his policies. 

The California College Democrats, an organization of students that mobilizes around Democratic candidates and advocates progressive policies, similarly endorsed Becerra in March. 

“He’s made a really big effort to put college students at the front of his campaign,” said Daniel Guerrero, the organization’s president and incoming senior at UC San Diego. “We believed in his message, and it’s been really rewarding to see everyone else see what we saw in him, especially in the young community.”

Steyer and Becerra have both been using short videos and partnerships with content creators to reach young audiences. Both are caught up in a controversy over content creators allegedly failing to disclose that campaigns had paid for their endorsements. The influencers often posted endorsements without disclaimers that they had been paid. 

According to each candidate’s endorsement pages (except Hilton, who does not have one), Becerra has the most endorsements from youth groups – 15 total, mostly consisting of Young Democrats and College Democrats chapters.

Steyer has three youth group endorsements and Thurmond has one. Peter Opitz, a representative for Porter, said she is endorsed by UAW and Teamsters, which contain unions that represent workers and educators in higher education. 

A strong social media presence has been integral to reaching young voters – and any voter – in a race where it’s difficult to stand out.

Even so, California Assemblymember Alex Lee, who has endorsed Steyer, said in an interview that he believes social media strategy comes second to good policy, and that Democrats often get criticized for being boring online. 

“Zohran Mamdani’s popular not because he’s good at Instagram alone, but because he campaigned on free childcare, housing and a rent freeze,” Lee said, who was 25 years old when he was elected. “You can pump so much money into viral cringe, but it will not resonate with people.” 

Seated next to Steve Hilton (left) and Xavier Becerra, Tom Steyer (right) speaks during a gubernatorial forum in Sacramento on April 14. Credit: Miguel Gutierrez Jr. / CalMatters

At a televised debate held at Pomona College in April, as candidates squabbled for speaking time, hundreds of students tuned in from a nearby dining hall where the debate was being livestreamed. They giggled at Hilton’s British accent, hollered over the shade thrown on stage and kept a close eye on the crowded field for standouts.

Throughout the debate, as candidates like Villaraigosa directed their responses to “the young students at Pomona,” groans erupted from students watching the livestream. Rising junior at Pomona College Sarah Russo said the candidates’ comments felt overly performative. 

“It belittled us and infantilized us,” Russo said in a talkback session with other students after the debate.

Incoming Pomona College junior Alex Benach said no one candidate really stood out. “The whole field of candidates trying to have that viral moment watered [the debate] down,” they said.

Despite the debate being held at a college campus, students attending said that the candidates failed to address key priorities for youth in college, including the job market, AI and federal crackdowns on campuses for alleged anti-semitism and equity issues.

Youth turnout is low, but young voters are hardly apathetic

No matter the kind of election – gubernatorial or general – youth turnout is historically lower than other age groups, said Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California, a hub for civic and electoral engagement research. In the 2024 general election, 42.5% of eligible voters aged 18 to 24 cast a ballot, compared to 62% of all eligible voters in California, according to a July 2025 report from the center. 

While young people do not show up to vote as much as older voters, it’s “not because they’re apathetic,” emphasized Romero. Rather, it is because youth feel disconnected from the political process.

From the 2010 to 2018 primary elections in California, eligible youth voter turnout ranged from as low as 3.6% in 2014 to 17.1% in 2016, according to California Civic Engagement Project data. In comparison, total eligible voter turnout ranged from 18.4% in 2014 and 33.5% in 2016. 

Likely voter modeling often shows campaigns that youth voters aren’t worth investing in due to historically low turnout. However, that same lack of investment is what can lead to low youth turnout itself – and create what Romero calls a “vicious cycle” of campaigns failing to engage youth voters because they believe it’s not worth it. 

From left, candidates Tony Thurmond, Chad Bianco, Tom Steyer, Steve Hilton, Xavier Becerra, Katie Porter, Matt Mahan and Antonio Villaraigosa stand on stage for the CBS California Gubernatorial Debate at Bridges Auditorium on the campus of Pomona College in Claremont on April 28, 2026. Credit: Jules Hotz for CalMatters

When they do focus on young voters, candidates primarily target college campuses, usually skewing towards four-year university students, which means non-college goers, low-income voters and people of color are less likely to receive their outreach, according to Romero. 

“The political and social context in which young people have come of age has made them not see government as a helpful thing that they have a say in, but rather a government that is not as responsive, gridlocked, and about spewing hate and not serving,” Romero said. “Generally speaking, young people don’t have a lot of positive to look to. They’ve seen only negative.”

Young people also might be more skeptical after seeing such negativity, whereas older generations have memories of a more civil past, giving them the perspective of a government that could function in a non-partisan way. 

“Young people are tapped in politically, that’s undeniable,” said Christopher Smith, a student at Evergreen Valley College who attended a Steyer event. “Anybody who claims that is not true is not listening to young people enough.” 

Romero suggested that the competitiveness of the race could push more young people to vote, but the turnout would still be unrepresentative of the actual youth population. In the UC Berkeley IGS Poll, 56% of respondents across all age, race and party demographics said that a low youth turnout was a “major concern” for a representative democracy in California. 

The UC Berkeley IGS poll also showed that 48% of young voters who said they were unlikely to vote said access to an “unbiased and trusted source of election news” would increase their chances of voting. A quarter of them said more convenient voting would also increase that likelihood.

Andrew Luong, a De Anza College student at the Steyer rally, said he feels that it’s partially on young people to educate themselves and vote. “In the governor’s race, I know young people care about it, but don’t care to learn more about it,” he said. 

Among young Democrats, De La Rosa said she has seen youth voter engagement increase “significantly.” She recalled how when she was president of California College Democrats in 2020, phone banking events would turn out about 20 people. Now, in a phone banking event for Becerra, 60 people came.

Students drop off their ballots at the Price Center at UC San Diego on Nov. 4, 2025. Credit: Ariana Drehsler for CalMatters

Young progressive leaders say some youth are looking for a candidate to stand up to Trump.

“In a time where young people have been at the forefront of the attacks from the Trump administration, having someone who’s been there and has already gone up to bat to fight the Trump administration is really, really important,” Guerrero said.

Where candidates stand on Gaza, affordability

In April, Steyer made his first stop of “A California You Can Afford” bus tour a few blocks away from San Jose State University, where he made his progressive bid to a majority middle-aged crowd. 

A handful of people who appeared below 30 years old were present. That’s not to say young people don’t support him – a Democratic Party poll conducted May 14 through 16 shows he and Becerra both garnered the support of 23% of respondents aged 18 to 34. Meanwhile, 17% of respondents aged 18 to 34 said they still were undecided.

CalMatters spoke to college students at the bus tour, many of whom said that the genocide in Gaza was a moral touchpoint for them. 

Nair attended the event to learn more about Steyer. She said that she’s still unsure of who to vote for. 

“The fact that he wasn’t willing to take a solid stance on the Gaza question, that was more than enough for me,” Nair said. “I do hold my politicians to a higher standard than some do, and that was enough for me to not feel convinced.”

Smith said that young voters especially care whether a candidate believes Israel has committed genocide. 

In exclusive video interviews with CalMatters, eight candidates currently in the race were asked whether they considered Israel’s actions in the war in Gaza a genocide. None of the candidates went that far. Porter and Becerra criticized Netanyahu’s actions, while Hilton simply responded “no.”

In these interviews, CalMatters also asked candidates what is the single biggest thing they would do to make life more affordable in California. Five of the eight candidates said they would focus on combatting high housing costs, primarily with plans to make it easier to build. Hilton and Villaraigosa said they would first bring down the price of gas, while Bianco said overregulation was California’s primary affordability issue.

When asked about their greatest hope for youth in particular, the most common answer among candidates was making sure California remains a state where people want to settle permanently.

Kahani Malhotra and Chrissa Olson are contributors with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

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