Politics
A California congressman (and former Bernie booster) tries to get New Hampshire voters to write in Biden
In a long black pea coat and loafers, California Rep. Ro Khanna looked the part of a New England politician.
“You know, I gotta get better boots,” he joked to a group packed into a Concord home Saturday.
The Fremont congressman and former Bernie Sanders presidential campaign co-chair had returned to the state where he once stumped for Sanders to support another candidate who’s not on Tuesday’s primary ballot — President Biden.
This year, the Democratic National Committee has pushed aside New Hampshire, which historically holds the first presidential primary in the nation, for South Carolina, the state that put Biden on the path to the nomination four years ago.
But Biden allies, including Khanna, are still hoping that write-in votes will allow the president to secure a strong showing in the state’s unofficial Democratic primary Tuesday.
“It’s all come together, huh?” Khanna said, surveying a gathering of roughly 50 people in the cheery yellow kitchen of a Concord home. “Pretty amazing turnout.”
Tables and chairs had been pushed against the walls to make room for the crowd. Outside, piles of “Write-in Joe Biden” signs lined the driveway.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) talks to Cinde Warmington, who serves on New Hampshire’s Executive Council and is running for governor. The Democrats are pushing a write-in campaign for President Biden for Tuesday’s primary.
(Faith Pinho / Los Angeles Times)
Standing in the living room corner, flanked by a bookshelf covered in family photos and a table adorned with a framed local newspaper article, Khanna urged the audience to support the write-in effort.
“It’s a hard thing to win in a write-in campaign,” Khanna said. “The whole country is going to notice, as they always do in New Hampshire, and they’re gonna say this president has enthusiasm. This president’s economic visions are connecting. This president is inspiring the nation.”
But in a room packed with press, it was difficult to tell how many attendees were actually New Hampshire voters. And despite Khanna’s optimism, polls show that most Democrats are little enthused about the incumbent president. Biden’s approval rating is at 39.1% nationwide, according to the latest numbers from polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight.com.
In California, only half of voters have a favorable view of Biden, a poll last week by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times, found. An October poll reported that a majority of Californians disapproved of the president.
Khanna refused to quantify what a “win” for Biden would look like on Tuesday. Instead of the absent president, the Democratic ticket in New Hampshire is packed with less well-known candidates, including author Marianne Williamson and Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips.
“My hope is as the election draws nearer and nearer … people will recognize the stakes and get out there,” Khanna said.
The California congressman wasn’t the only far-flung Biden supporter in New Hampshire on Saturday. Zena Martin, a marketing consultant in Atlanta, flew up to New England on her own dime to help the write-in campaign. Simply voting is not enough, she said. She spent the last few days preparing for the weekend’s events and standing in the frigid cold with signs.
“From what I understand, I have come the furthest — but of course Ro Khanna has come further,” Martin said with a laugh.
As for Khanna, who took a selfie with her, Martin said his visit “shows that wherever we are, if you really care about saving our democracy, you’re going to do what you can.”
Rep. Ro Khanna speaks to Aaron Jacobs, from the Biden write-in campaign, at an event in Concord, N.H., on Saturday. Democrats are pushing for voters to write Biden’s name on the ballot Tuesday.
(Faith Pinho / Los Angeles Times)
Chris Johnson and Megan DeVorsey clung to the edges of the busy kitchen scene, watching as Khanna made his rounds, taking pictures and shaking hands. As Concord residents for 23 years, they’re accustomed to the rhythm of politicians’ visits to the Granite State every four years — but they said it doesn’t get old.
“It’s energizing. It’s exciting,” said DeVorsey, her glasses fogging up from the humidity of the house. “I like coming to people’s houses … and meeting congressmen from across the country. I love it.”
“We tell ourselves retail politics in New Hampshire is a real thing,” added Johnson, who grew up in Hollywood. “I think it’s kind of a privilege — we get to see powerful political figures in small settings like this. It’s a little nutty, in a way.”
Both Johnson and DeVorsey plan to carry signs for the write-in campaign at polling sites on Tuesday. Many Granite State residents don’t even know writing in the president’s name is an option, DeVorsey pointed out.
With an incumbent president and all eyes on the Republican primary — not to mention the DNC’s snub — there’s little reason to expect strong voter turnout among Democrats in New Hampshire. But apathy is not the only opponent for the Biden write-in campaign; activists are lobbying for New Hampshire voters to pen “ceasefire” on the write-in line on the ballot, a direct complaint about Biden’s approach on the war between Israel and Hamas.
Although he was in New Hampshire to support Biden, Khanna’s own ambitions were not far beneath the surface. The Californian has worked for years to position himself as a national progressive leader, allying with other progressive politicians in D.C. and building name recognition with visits to key battleground states. He’s basically “the fifth member of our congressional delegation,” said Cinde Warmington, a gubernatorial candidate and one of New Hampshire’s executive councilors.
Khanna has taken other steps that often signal aspirations to national office. He has been author of two books about his vision for progressive politics in the digital age. He tucks details of his own background — the son of Indian immigrants, raised in Philadelphia, believing that America would become “this first cohesive multiracial democracy” — into his stump speech for Biden.
In his speech, Khanna playfully alluded to the possibility that he may one day run in New Hampshire himself.
“I was joking with someone, I’d much rather have Joe Biden as a name than Ro Khanna. He’s blessed with good luck,” he said to a roomful of laughter. “If you want to have a write-in candidacy, have a name that’s easy.”
A reporter asked whether he would ever run for president.
“Who knows!” Khanna said. “But right now I’m here to support President Biden.”
As the snow began to blow outside, Khanna emerged from the warm Concord home and boarded his vehicle to head to his next stop: another write-in campaign party an hour away in Portsmouth.
After the polls close in California on Tuesday, NBC News chief data analyst Steve Kornacki will just be getting started.
Since December, the khaki-clad vote-counting guru has been going live and uninterrupted on streaming platforms to provide results and analysis of every special election and even some state Senate contests.
The stream — called the Kornacki Cam — provides unadulterated number crunching without any pundits weighing in. Rather than getting updates that last a few minutes, Kornacki provides continuous real-time results until the last available total is counted.
“This all happens in full view,” Kornacki said Monday in a phone interview. “The audience gets to see the whole thing. They get to see the buildup, the anticipation, the payoff.”
In the 10 Kornacki Cam sessions streamed by NBC News so far, 19 million viewers have sampled them across all platforms. The coverage — consisting of Kornacki, his Big Board, his producer and a Stedicam operator — is available on YouTube, NBCNews.com, the NBC News app and the division’s social media accounts on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
The Kornacki Cam will focus on the primaries for Los Angeles mayor, California and several congressional districts, shortly after the state’s polls close at 8 p.m. Pacific. NBC News has its own decision desk, which the network said has called the results of 70% of the 2026 elections ahead of the Associated Press.
In a Monday chat with The Times, here are the trends Kornacki says he’ll be looking for on the night.
Polling in mayoral races is typically pretty unreliable. What do you make of the contest based on what you’ve seen?
You don’t always have super-competitive mayoral elections and they’re not all created equal. It’s not quite like a presidential election so you just don’t have a wealth of data to draw on for expectations either.
I’ve seen the polling you’ve seen. It suggests that of the three candidates (Mayor Karen Bass, reality TV star Spencer Pratt and City Council member Nithya Raman), Bass is in the best position to get into the runoff. It also suggests that Spencer Pratt has had the most positive movement in the last month or so of the campaign. But we go in knowing there will be volatility and I’m open to any and all possibilities.
Spencer Pratt is an unusual candidate who has been able to take up a lot of oxygen in the race. Is there a hidden vote for him that people might not be eager to admit to pollsters?
You can look at the city and know where to look for whether Pratt is having a big night. The San Fernando Valley is gonna be more than a third of the vote, probably close to 40%. If he gets in the general election, he wants to be winning there by a big margin. If it’s not happening there for Pratt, I don’t think it’s happening anywhere else. Karen Bass is going to rely on central and South L.A., with probably a third of the vote coming out of those two places. Those should be her bulwarks. The Westside, I think could be more of a toss-up. There’s a fair chunk of the vote there.
We don’t do a ton of mayoral races around the country. So we’re still trying to figure out exactly how detailed we’re going to be able to zoom in, at the neighborhood level and the precinct level.
Turnouts usually are low for Los Angeles mayoral races. Will this year be different?
This mayoral race has received a lot more national attention than 2022. So my thought is that the turnout would be higher, just based on that. But this is something that is resonating nationally because Pratt has that celebrity factor. The number was 646,000 (total votes) for 2022. So that’s something we’ll be following — are we trending over or under that?
And what will be the best indicators for the gubernatorial race?
The place that I kind of got circled here is Orange County. In the last two sort of major statewide elections, it was the first to report out (its) vote. At 8:06 p.m local time in California, in 2024, Orange County reported out half of its vote, right? So you’re getting, you know, you’re getting hundreds of thousands of votes, potentially, from this enormous county within, potentially within 10 minutes of polls closing. There were a couple others — the Central Valley, and we got a good chunk of Merced and Fresno quickly.
So how long are we going to have to wait for a result on Tuesday night?
One of the other things that just surrounds everything in California, whether it’s the mayor’s race, or governor’s race, or anything else, is nothing is definitive in the first hour or so after the polls close. We’re probably realistically looking at a days or even weeks-long process of getting all the vote counted.
I know it drives many people nuts. Without editorializing on that, it’s just a fact that they can get out of about two-thirds of their vote on election night, and if the races aren’t clear and definitive, then you’re generally in for a pretty long haul.
We do know in California that they’re not going (to count) nonstop until they get a result. They’re going to then start doing updates as they process and count the remaining vote by mail, which is usually a considerable pile in a lot of these places. The vote by mail in California can continue coming in for seven days after the election.
So do you think your coverage reflects a shift in what the consumer wants? We already know how fragmented the audience is. Are there now enough political junkies who want the pure uncut stuff?
I’ve been doing this about 20 years, and when I would tell people that I reported on politics for a living, they either moved away from me or changed the subject. And now, you know, I found the last, you know, 10 years or something, has just totally changed. People come up to me, even if they don’t know I work in politics, and they want to talk politics. Everybody seems into it whatever side they’re on.
new video loaded: Judge Decides to Keep Charlie Kirk Hearings Open to Public
transcript
transcript
Judge Decides to Keep Charlie Kirk Hearings Open to Public
Utah district judge, Tony Graf, rejected the defense’s bid to close the hearings in the Charlie Kirk murder case. The defendant, Tyler J. Robinson, is accused of fatally shooting Mr. Kirk, the conservative activist.
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A party seeking to close a preliminary hearing must show that adverse publicity traceable to the opening hearing poses a realistic likelihood of prejudice to a fair trial. Public access to the judicial — to judicial proceedings also serve in an important role in maintaining confidence in the fairness and transparency of the judicial process. This court finds these showings have not been made here.
By Meg Felling
June 1, 2026
Politics
Trump admin backs off controversial $2B fund, clearing path for stalled GOP immigration bill
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The Department of Justice (DOJ) pressed pause on the Trump administration’s “anti-weaponization” fund on Monday, giving Senate Republicans runway to hammer through a massive immigration enforcement funding package in the process.
The DOJ announced on X that it would abide by a Virginia federal court’s order to not move forward with the fund. It comes as Republicans in the upper chamber punted their plan to advance a $72 billion immigration enforcement package over deep concerns about who could access the flow of taxpayer dollars from the nearly $2 billion fund.
The DOJ said in a statement that it “disagrees strongly with the decision on the Anti-Weaponization Fund” by the Virginia district court, “wherein the Court stated that, under no circumstances, may the Department of Justice proceed with the Anti-Weaponization Fund recently established in order to make up for the tremendous abuse, harm, and hate unfairly shown to so many people.”
SENATE GOP ERUPTS OVER TRUMP DOJ ‘ANTI-WEAPONIZATION’ FUND, PUNTS ICE, BORDER PATROL FUNDING
President Donald Trump looks on during a swearing-in ceremony for new Chairman of the Federal Reserve Kevin Warsh in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on May 22, 2026. (Aaron Schwartz/AFP via Getty Images)
“This fund was open to anybody who was so weaponized, targeted, or persecuted, whether they were Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Independent, or otherwise,” the agency said. “The Department will abide by the Court’s ruling.”
For the time being, that could ease Republicans’ concerns over whether those convicted of assaulting police officers on Jan. 6, 2021, could access the money. And it will likely allow the GOP to restart the budget reconciliation process with that political pressure point now sidelined.
It comes as Democrats are gearing up for a deluge of bills and amendments that likely could have passed had the administration not halted the fund. But still, it’s unclear if it means the fund has totally been nixed, or if it’s just a temporary pause.
GOP’S PRIMED FOR PRIMARY SEASON PAYBACK ON TRUMP’S MOST AMBITIOUS, CONTROVERSIAL POLICY
When asked if he thought Democratic amendments and bills would survive, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said that the administration would have to be crystal clear about what happens next.
“If the administration effectively shuts it down, and makes that very, very clear, and that, to me, should answer the question,” Thune said.
Whether the fund has permanently come to an end is still an open question. Fox News Digital was referred to the DOJ by the White House for comment, and the DOJ did not immediately respond.
Given that grey area, Senate Democrats plan to move full-steam ahead with their slate of legislation and amendments geared toward completely terminating the “anti-weaponization” fund.
CONGRESS BARRELS TOWARD DEADLINE PILE-UP AS GOP DIVISIONS THREATEN TRUMP AGENDA
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks during a news conference after a weekly Democrat policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 2026. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“If Trump and Republicans are truly abandoning this corrupt scheme, they should have zero problem banning it in law,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on X. “This week, Senate Democrats will push legislation to ban this slush fund and ensure no president can ever do this again. Trump’s word is nowhere near enough.”
Schumer had already primed Democrats to take advantage of the brewing dissent within the GOP with an aggressive legislative strategy during the forthcoming “vote-a-rama,” where both sides of the aisle will get a near unlimited number of amendments to vote on for the immigration package.
Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., already plans to introduce three bills that would redirect the funding to address growing affordability concerns in the country.
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“My bills will redirect the $1.8 BILLION slush fund money to SNAP, Medicaid, and law enforcement programs like those that help our local police departments hire more officers,” Rosen said on X.
“You work hard for your money, and I’ll be damned if I let Donald Trump or anyone else use it for a slush fund for their friends. Let’s see if Washington Republicans agree,” she continued.
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