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Two men topple boulders at Nevada national park as young girl watches in fear: ‘Daddy, don’t fall!’
Two men have landed on federal authorities’ radar after the pair were seen on video pushing boulders over at a Nevada national park this month — apparently while a frightened daughter of one of the suspects watched.
The National Park Service said Saturday that park rangers are looking for the vandals who appeared in a viral video on April 7 disturbing the incredible rock formations in a part of Lake Mead National Recreation Area.
The video shows a heavyset man in a red top and a skinnier man in a dark top at the Redstone Dune Trail topple two large rocks off the side of an incline.
“He’s gonna fall,” said a man in the background who appeared to be recording the vandalism from a distance.
In one snippet, a young girl yells, “Daddy, don’t fall” as the man in the dark struggles to move a rock, according to KVVU.
She then screamed, “Daddy, daddy!” The same man nearly fell as he dislodged one of the formations before regaining his footing.
A National Park Service official called the vandalism “almost a personal attack in a way.”
“That’s so beautiful, it’s one of my favorite places in the park and they’re up there just destroying it. I don’t understand that,” John Haynes, a public information officer at the park, said in an interview with KVVU.
The park is 1.5 million acres large with two massive lakes and a part of the Colorado River.
If the two men are caught, the charges could land them in prison for six months and a $5,000 fine, Haynes told the station.
“Information from visitors is often very helpful to investigators,” the National Park Service said in a statement seeking the public’s help.
“If you were on the Redstone Dunes Trail on the evening of Sunday, April 7, 2024, or if you have information that could help identify the suspects, please submit a tip. You don’t have to tell us who you are, but please tell us what you know.”
The final matchup for the Los Angeles mayoral runoff remains unsettled, but precinct-level returns show the contours of the race. The incumbent mayor, Karen Bass, secured one of the two spots in the November election, but Spencer Pratt and Nithya Raman are battling for second.
The results on the map reflect the nearly 500,000 votes that were tabulated on election night, which include early and mail-in votes that were returned early and ballots cast in-person on Election Day. Election officials are still in the process of counting hundreds of thousands of ballots in the race, and high-level updates will continue to be reported each day through at least June 12. But updated precinct-level data is not expected to be released until the end of June.
That means these results reflect voters who participated earlier in the process. On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, as ballots that arrived later began being processed, the updated results were notably more favorable to the Democrats than they were to Mr. Pratt. The lead Mr. Pratt had over Ms. Raman as of the end of election night had been cut in half as of Friday.
Even so, the incomplete results highlight the socioeconomic fault lines that have divided the city in this election and the coalitions that each candidate has built:
Karen Bass
Ms. Bass leads handily in the Black, Latino and white liberal strongholds that underpinned her 2022 election.
Three areas of support in particular stand out for her: South Los Angeles, where she got her start as a grass-roots activist during the crack cocaine epidemic; East Los Angeles and the East Valley, where organized labor routinely turns out Latino voters; and bastions of older white Democrats, like Mar Vista, which were part of her district when she served in Congress.
Wealthy precincts like Pacific Palisades, which was ravaged by wildfire last year, spurned her, but the Palisades also overwhelmingly opposed her in 2022.
Spencer Pratt
Mr. Pratt has done well so far in the most affluent parts of the city, including Pacific Palisades, where he grew up and where his family’s home burned down in the fires last year.
As a registered Republican, he also did well in pockets of MAGA conservatism like the Sunland-Tujunga area in the far northeast San Fernando Valley.
He won over some Jewish communities on the city’s Westside with direct appeals to pro-Israel voters and also did well in expatriate Iranian-American hubs like Tehrangeles in Westwood.
Nithya Raman
Ms. Raman, who was elected to the City Council in 2020 with the support of the Democratic Socialists of America, has maintained her urban progressive base in places like Echo Park and Silver Lake, where she lives.
Her focus on affordability and her public policy expertise yielded support in dense neighborhoods with lots of cash-strapped, educated renters, like Los Feliz.
She has also done well in precincts around college campuses like Occidental College and the University of Southern California.
Of course, these results will change as the rest of the ballots are tallied over the next few weeks. Election officials have not provided an estimate of how many ballots remain uncounted specifically in the Los Angeles mayoral race, but countywide figures suggest that a substantial share of the vote is still outstanding.
As of Friday night, Los Angeles County had reported 1.6 million ballots counted and estimated that roughly 540,000 ballots remained countywide, with more still arriving. Late mail-in ballots have been more favorable to the Democrats this cycle, so the final results may move toward Ms. Bass and Ms. Raman at even higher rates than they did for Ms. Bass in the 2022 primary.
Rick Caruso, a centrist Democrat and former Republican, led on election night in 2022, but Ms. Bass steadily gained ground over the following weeks. She ultimately overtook him, winning the primary with 43 percent of the vote to Mr. Caruso’s 36 percent.
Democratic candidate for governor in California, Xavier Becerra, speaks to supporters during his election night gathering at La Plaza de Cultura y Artes on June 2 in Los Angeles, Calif.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
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SAN FRANCISCO — Democrat Xavier Becerra will advance to the November election for California governor, according to a race call by The Associated Press. After days of counting ballots, it remains unclear who will claim the second spot in the fall.
In California’s unusual primary system, all candidates, regardless of party, appear on a single ballot open to any registered voter. The top two candidates then move on to the general election. An estimated 3.5 million uncounted ballots remain. The state also counts mail-in ballots that arrive up to seven days after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day.
The state hasn’t had a wide-open primary like this one since the late 1990s. The winner in November will lead the country’s most populous state, facing a large deficit and other obstacles, including the state’s high cost of living, homelessness and wildfire risk. Incumbent Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, is term limited and is widely thought to be running for president in 2028.
Becerra, former Health and Human Services secretary under President Joe Biden, has staged one of the most surprising comebacks in recent state political history. As recently as April, polls were showing Becerra — also a former member of Congress and California attorney general — languishing in single digits in a crowded field.
“The people of the great state of California, in the greatest nation on earth, have spoken — loudly and proudly,” Becerra said in a written statement. “We will not be bought. We will not be bullied. And we are never backing down. November, here we come.”
For second place, Republican businessman Steve Hilton still has an edge over billionaire Democratic activist Tom Steyer, but Steyer has been gaining ground as ballots continue to be counted.
Hilton was endorsed by President Trump in April, and in later polls, he pulled ahead of Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, the other major Republican in the race. British-born Hilton is a former Fox News commentator who also served as a political adviser to former British Prime Minister David Cameron. He has campaigned for change in California after 16 years under total Democratic control.
A Hilton win would set Becerra on a glidepath to victory. Winning statewide would be an uphill battle for any Republican in a state where there are nearly twice as many Democrats as Republicans, and no GOP candidate has won statewide in 20 years.
Steyer would present a rockier road for Becerra. If the billionaire former hedge fund manager makes the runoff, it will set up a costly intraparty fight. Steyer has spent more than $213 million of his own money to boost his candidacy, making the race the most expensive gubernatorial election in California.
It’s already been an election season of unexpected developments. Some of the state’s most high-profile Democrats — former Vice President Kamala Harris, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla and California Attorney General Rob Bonta — all stayed out of the race from the beginning.
In April, the race was disrupted when then-U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell’s campaign for governor imploded amid allegations of sexual assault and harassment. Swalwell resigned from Congress shortly after the accusations surfaced and has denied assault allegations.
Swalwell had been gaining in polls and racking up high-profile endorsements and his exit seemed to primarily benefit Becerra.
The narrowing field also quieted Democrats’ fears of splitting their vote to the extent that Bianco and Hilton would win the top spots in the June primary. That would have resulted in a guaranteed Republican governor in a state where Democrats outnumber GOP voters 2 to 1. Instead, though, Becerra surged. He has been aided by political groups operating independently of his campaign.
Topline
Graham Platner, Maine’s presumptive Democratic nominee for Senate, faced a new set of allegations Thursday reported by The New York Times, which interviewed multiple women who accused Platner of disturbing behavior and creating “toxic” relationships—just days after he and his wife dismissed reports he sexted other women while married.
Platner is the presumptive Democratic nominee for the Senate race in Maine (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images).
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Key Facts
Some of the women interviewed by the Times described Platner as fun, caring and safe to be around, though others detailed “toxic” relationships they had with him.
Lyndsey Fifield, 40, who said she dated Platner from 2013 to 2015, told the Times that Platner was “cavalierly contemptuous of women’s emotions, of our ‘weakness.’”
Fifield also accused Platner of being rough with her while he drank, clarifying to the Times she was never struck by him but was regularly grabbed by the shoulders.
Jenny Racicot, 41, who said she dated Platner between 2019 and 2021, referenced controversial online posts he made in the past about sexual assault and rural white Americans, saying she “recognized a version of him that I had experiences with.”
Forbes has reached out to Platner’s campaign, which told the Times he “strongly disputes” claims of physical intimidation or altercations—though it did not dispute the claims around his remarks.
The Times noted it could not independently corroborate Fifield’s altercation claims.
Has Platner responded to the allegations?
In an MS NOW interview, Platner was confronted with the latest allegations and he said they were not true. After interviewer Chris Hayes read out a snippet from the article, the Democratic candidate responded: “There are some allegations in this piece that I just want to be kind of unequivocal about, are simply not true. Anything alleging physicality, anything alleging that I knew what my tattoo was, these are the statements of someone who’s politically motivated.” Platner noted that the reporting about him “struggling, not being a good boyfriend, certainly self-medicating with alcohol,” is something he’s been “very up front since the beginning of this campaign that that was a pretty dark period of my life after I came back from my combat service.” He added there are things in the article he “absolutely will take responsibility for…But those serious allegations are just not true.”
What Do We Know About Platner’s Sexting Scandal?
Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, reported that Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, told his Senate campaign last year about sexually explicit texts he sent to several women to ensure they didn’t impact his campaign. Former Maine state legislator Genevieve McDonald, who also served as the Platner campaign’s political director until October last year, told the Times that Gertner reached out to her before a rally with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to inform her about the texts he sent to as many as a dozen women. McDonald also told the Times the Senate is “not a training ground for redemption,” and instead a “place for proven leaders with moral clarity and integrity.”
How did Platner and his campaign respond to the sexting scandal?
After a campaign event on Sunday, Platner was asked about the reports and said he wasn’t surprised that “establishment media outlets” were running “gossip” instead of issues that “actually matter in this race.” The Democratic candidate, who was standing with his wife, accused the Times and the Journal of “journalistic malpractice” and claimed that they ran stories without any evidence “besides the gossip from a former staffer” He added: “I’m confirming that what Genevieve McDonald said in the New York Times is not true.” His campaign also released a video statement from Gertner in which the Democratic candidate’s wife said she was “really angry, disappointed” that her disclosure was made public and she “[finds] it really shameful that there’s a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip instead of talking about real issues that Graham is running on.”
How have betting markets reacted to Platner’s scandals?
Platner’s odds of winning Maine’s Senate race against Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins have plummeted this week on election betting markets. Bettors on Kalshi predict the race is now a toss up with the Democratic candidate’s odds falling from 72% last month to 55% early on Friday. On the crypto betting platform Polymarket, Platner’s odds have a similar drop, falling from 78% in on May 23 to just 54% as of early Friday.
Crucial Quote
“Let’s be very clear: This is a lifelong G.O.P. operative who’s dedicated her career to electing Republicans.” Platner’s campaign told the Times about Fifield, who has worked for Republican campaigns in Virginia.
Tangent
Platner’s odds of winning one of Maine’s Senate race have plummeted this week on Kalshi. The GOP nominee (expected to be longtime Sen. Susan Collins) is now the 52% favorite, a dramatic change from the 72.7% odds Democrats held on May 22.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
Maine’s primaries are June 9.
Further Reading
Progressive Leaders Brush Off Graham Platner’s Sexting Controversy: ‘He Has Grown’ (Forbes)
Graham Platner And His Wife Dismiss Reports Of His Alleged Sexting As ‘Gossip’ (Forbes)
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