California

I booked a bedroom and a roomette on the same overnight Amtrak train. The bedroom is worth the splurge for longer rides.

Published

2 months ago

March 21, 2026

I booked a bedroom and a roomette on the same overnight Amtrak train. The bedroom is worth the splurge for longer rides.

If you’re traveling somewhere between Chicago and San Francisco, I highly suggest making a trip of it by taking the California Zephyr, an incredibly scenic overnight Amtrak train through the American West.

I’ve ridden it twice. In January 2025, I took a 15-hour leg of the route from Denver to Salt Lake City and booked a roomette for $400. Then, in February 2026, I took the entire 53-hour journey from Chicago to Emeryville, California, and booked a bedroom for $2,200.

If you’re wondering if the bedroom was worth the upgrade, I think it depends on how long your trip is. But I’ll give you all the details so you can decide for yourself.

I’ve taken two overnight train trips aboard the California Zephyr.

A parked double-decker Amtrak train on a platform with a mountain in the background — The California Zephyr stopped at a platform in Colorado.

Joey Hadden/Business Insider

The California Zephyr is a double-decker Amtrak Superliner train that runs between Chicago and Emeryville, California.

The train has coach cars with regular seating and sleeper cars with private cabin accommodations — roomettes (the lowest tier), bedrooms, and bedroom suites (two joined bedrooms). There are also larger, family-sized bedrooms and accessible bedrooms.

First, I stayed in a roomette for a 15-hour trip from Colorado to Utah.

The author sits with her feet up in an Amtrak roomette looking out a window to the left — The author relaxes in a roomette on the California Zephyr.

Joey Hadden/Business Insider

For the shorter journey from Denver to Salt Lake City, I booked a roomette for $400. With two seats and two beds, the roomette sleeps up to two passengers, though I was traveling alone.

Then I booked a bedroom for a 53-hour trip from Illinois to California.

The author standing smiling in the Amtrak bedroom with a bunk bed in the background — The author enjoys a bedroom in the California Zephyr.

Joey Hadden/Business Insider

I booked a bedroom for the full journey from Chicago to Emeryville for $2,200. The bedroom is roughly twice the size of a roomette and also includes a full bathroom. The bedroom also sleeps two, but again, I was traveling solo.

At 50 square feet, the bedroom was more than twice the size of the roomette.

Inside an Amtrak bedroom with two seats across from eachother in front of a wide window — Inside the bedroom accommodation.

Joey Hadden/Business Insider

The bedroom had a couch and a seat facing each other, with a table between them. I appreciated having a couch for the longer trip because I could stretch out and relax during the day.

I also liked that there was a bit more floor space in the bedroom.

In the roomette, the two chairs folded down to form a lower bunk.

A composite image of two train seats converted into a bed with a blue blanket — Seats in the roomette folded down into a bed.

Joey Hadden/Business Insider

The bed was cushy and wide enough to snuggle up comfortably.

In the bedroom, the couch folded down to form a cot that appeared to be slightly wider than the roomette bunk.

A composite image of the bottom bunk in the Amtrak bedroom with sheets and a blue blanket on top, and the author lying in bed looking out the window — The author rests in the lower bunk in the bedroom.

Joey Hadden/Business Insider

The lower bunk in the bedroom felt more spacious than the one in the roomette.

Both rooms also had a top bunk that pulled down from the ceiling.

The author lays on the top bunk in an Amtrak bedroom. There's a couch below and a ladder on the left — The author relaxes in the bedroom’s top bunk.

Joey Hadden/Business Insider

Since I had two nights in the bedroom, I spent one night in each bunk.

The bedroom had a full en suite bathroom.

A composite image of a toilet behind a shower and a sink and vanity with a storage cabinet on the right in an Amtrak bedroom — The bathroom inside the bedroom.

Joey Hadden/Business Insider

Inside the bedroom, there was a sink and vanity with a built-in cabinet where I found hand towels, soaps, toilet paper, and space to store my own toiletries. The toilet and shower were in a tiny space separated by a door.

For two nights on a train, I was thankful to have my own shower.

Roomette passengers shared a bathroom and a shower with other sleeper cabin passengers.

A composite image of a glass shower door with a skyline etching on it and the inside of the shower — The shared shower in the sleeper car.

Joey Hadden/Business Insider

Since I only spent 15 hours in the roomette, I didn’t mind not having a bathroom in my room. I didn’t use the shared shower; instead, I washed up once I arrived at my destination.

The bedroom had more storage space than the roomette.

A composite image of luggage storage in the roomette and bedroom — Storage in the roomette (left) and bedroom (right).

Joey Hadden/Business Insider

Each room had a mini closet with two hangers inside, as well as a shelf that appeared to be for storing luggage. In the roomette, the shelf was only large enough for my backpack, but in the bedroom, it held my carry-on suitcase.

On both trips, I also had access to shared luggage storage space in the train car.

The bedroom also had a larger mirror.

A composite image of the author in mirrors in the roomette and bedroom — The mirror in the roomette (left) and the bedroom (right).

Joey Hadden/Business Insider

Both rooms had mirrors, but the roomette mirror was shorter and thinner. So I appreciated the wide, full-length mirror in the bedroom. It wasn’t just convenient for getting ready — it also made the space feel larger.

Both bookings included meals.

Inside an empty train dining car with blue booths — Inside the dining car on the California Zephyr.

Joey Hadden/Business Insider

Passengers had the option of eating in the dining car or in their rooms.

I think I booked the right room for each trip.

A composite image of the author sitting in a seat inside an Amtrak train's roomette accommodation, looking out a window on the left, and the inside of an Amtrak bedroom with a sofa and closet on the left, a sink on the right, and a sliding door with a curtain in the middle — The author in the roomette (left) and a peek inside the bedroom (right).

Joey Hadden/Business Insider

The bedroom served me well for the two-night journey, and I would splurge on it for any Amtrak trip 24 hours or longer. I think it’s worth the added price for the extra space and full bathroom.

At the same time, I’m glad I booked the roomette for the 15-hour journey. It was a short trip compared to other overnight rides, so sacrificing some comforts and privacy to save money was a good move for me.

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Midterm primaries 2026 live: results and reaction after six states including California and Iowa cast ballots

Published

10 hours ago

June 2, 2026

Press Room

Midterm primaries 2026 live: results and reaction after six states including California and Iowa cast ballots

Lucy Campbell

Millions of voters across the country are heading to the polls today in crucial primaries in a slew of key gubernatorial, Senate and House races.

Here’s a quick rundown of what we’re watching:

California
Voters are casting ballots on who should lead the nation’s most populous state (and the world’s fourth largest economy), where there is no clear leader among candidates vying to advance in the race to succeed term-limited Democratic governor Gavin Newsom. The race for Los Angeles mayor is also on the ballot, along with a series of high-stakes US House contests in the state’s newly redrawn congressional districts – which are set to play an outsized and potentially decisive role in the battle for power in Washington in November’s midterm elections. My colleague Lauren Gambino has more:

Iowa
Per my colleague Chris Stein, with Trump’s approval ratings deep underwater, gas prices high and historical political trends favoring the party out of power, Democrats this year are considering a comeback in Iowa, putting the state at the center of their campaigns to win back control of both the US House and the Senate. That effort for a “once-in-a-generation” breakthrough in the GOP-dominated state is being led by pro-hunting Democrat Rob Sand, who is running for governor. Chris wrote about him below. Democrats also believe they have a shot at winning three of the state’s US House seats and a competitive chance at securing a US Senate seat, where the GOP frontrunner recently called Trump’s war on Iran a “political liability”.

New Jersey
One of this year’s most closely watched House midterms will take place in the battleground district currently represented by now-infamous Republican Tom Kean Jr, who has drawn public scrutiny and concern after missing more than 100 House votes due to an undisclosed illness. Voters are deciding which Democrat will run against him in November – and the seat is a must-win for the party. The frontrunner, veteran army trauma surgeon and political newcomer Adam Hamawy, has secured endorsements from the likes of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar. My colleague Joseph Gedeon has more:

New Mexico
Contests in the state include primaries for congressional seats, a US Senate seat and a long list of statewide offices, but the governor’s race is the main event. Deb Haaland, who was Joe Biden’s interior secretary, is running for the Democratic nomination, which could put her on a historic path for Native American leaders.

Montana
In Montana, a five-way Democratic fight is under way for the retiring Republican senator’s seat. Independent Seth Bodnar, former president of the University of Montana, is outraising them all at the moment but they’re refusing to step aside, Politico reports this morning.

South Dakota
The race is on for state governor, Sioux Falls mayor, a US Senate and House seat, a Republican primary for local lawmakers. The incumbent GOP governor Larry Rhoden faces three primary challengers in his first run for a full term. He stepped up into the role from the lieutenant governorship when the former governor, the since-ousted Kristi Noem, left to lead the Department of Homeland Security.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

Key events

Joseph Gedeon

On the day Donald Trump endorsed him as a tireless advocate for New Jersey’s seventh district, the representative Tom Kean Jr was, as he has been since early March, nowhere to be found.

Kean, a New Jersey Republican, was last seen when he cast a House floor vote on 5 March, and he is running unopposed in Tuesday’s Republican primary. The Democratic race in his district, meanwhile, has attracted multiple candidates and ample fundraising.

In late April, his office said he was dealing with a “personal medical issue” and would be back “very soon”. He told the New Jersey Globe last month he expected to return within “the next couple of weeks”. In the meantime, Kean’s social media accounts have continued posting regularly, with staff attending ribbon-cuttings and graduation ceremonies on his behalf.

In my home state of New Mexico, voters from both parties will nominate candidates to become the next governor, as Michelle Lujan Grisham is set to step down from the seat she’s filled since 2019. Increasingly recognized as a solidly blue state, the Democratic nominee is likely to win the general election.

Candidates for governor of New Mexico participate in a public forum in Rio Rancho, N.M., on April 28, 2026, ahead of a June 2 primary election: From left to right, they are Democratic Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman, Republican businessman Doug Turner; Republican cannabis entrepreneur and health care expert Duke Rodriguez, Democratic former U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, and Republican former Rio Rancho mayor Gregg Hull. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee) Photograph: Morgan Lee/AP

Democratic voters will choose to nominate either Deb Haaland, who served as Joe Biden’s interior secretary, or Sam Bregman, the Bernalillo County district attorney. Haaland has polled safely in the lead in the run-up to the election. Her win would be a victory for Native American advocates across the country and a rebuke of the Trump administration.

A single, working mother, Haaland came on the national scene in 2018 when she was elected to Congress alongside a wave of freshman, female lawmakers known as “The Squad” who’d run in reaction to Donald Trump’s election in 2016. Haaland resigned from the House of Representatives in 2021 when Joe Biden chose her to lead his interior department, making her the first Native American to serve in the roll, which includes overseeing much of the nation’s public lands and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

During her time in congress, Haaland – who is from Laguna Pueblo – introduced legislation to stem the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, and as interior secretary she oversaw the formation of a new Missing & Murdered Unit (MMU) within the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Last year, New Mexico became the fourth state in the country to create its own law enforcement alert system for missing Indigenous people. Haaland also launched a historic effort to investigate the legacy of Native American boarding schools.

If elected in the November general election, Haaland would become the first Native American woman governor elected in the country.

United States President Joe Biden looks on as US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland delivers remarks during a signing ceremony to restore and protect 3 national monuments on the North Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

Haaland has campaigned as a fierce critic of Donald Trump, saying in campaign ads that, “Governors are the first line of defense against the horrific policies of the Trump administration.” Since Trump returned to office, New Mexico has been one of few Democratic strongholds in the south-west – with the state working to shore up protections for abortion patients, transgender people and SNAP and Medicaid recipients.

California’s primary elections, including its fiercely fought gubernatorial contest, will be at the mercy of a notoriously slow vote-counting system after the polls close on Tuesday, and it could be days or even weeks before the outcomes of the tightest races become clear.

Voting experts expect the state’s 58 county elections offices to be deluged with last-minute absentee ballots, as they have been in the last few election cycles, and spend weeks undertaking a painstaking ballot-by-ballot verification process.

That presents a procedural problem whenever races are close, as they tend to be in the state’s most competitive congressional districts, and the whole country is left waiting – as it was in 2020, 2022 and 2024 – to find out which party controls the House of Representatives.

Knocking on strangers’ doors on a warm May afternoon in Trenton, New Jersey, Adam Hamawy did not seem fazed when more than a few went unanswered.

It’s his first time running for office, but this is an area where he has experience. After returning from a medical mission in Gaza in 2024, Hamawy went to Washington to describe the crisis – which he viewed as a US-funded genocide – to lawmakers, only to encounter “too many doors that were closed, that didn’t even want to listen”.

“I could only define it as a genocide, because I saw the bodies of the people that came in,” the veteran army trauma surgeon and political newcomer reflected, while walking between houses. “And it wasn’t an accident. You can’t have an accident, every single day for three years.

Rob Sand, the best known Democrat in Iowa, is running to lead a state that Republicans have come to dominate under Donald Trump, and Democrats believe his candidacy for governor could be the breakthrough needed to win key Iowa offices in the November midterm elections.

With Trump’s approval ratings deep underwater, gas prices high and historical political trends favoring the party out of power, Democrats this year are considering a comeback in Iowa, putting the state at the center of their campaigns to win back control of both the US House of Representatives and the Senate. On Tuesday, voters will cast ballots in primary elections that set the stage for months of what is likely to be fevered campaigning by candidates of both parties.

“I think this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us to be able to win here in Iowa. I mean, this is a state that has completely hit the bottom,” said Josh Turek, a state representative who is one of two Democrats vying to represent Iowa in the US Senate.

Voters in six states have been casting their ballots in the US midterm election primaries. Here are some of the images from polling stations that have dropped on the news wires today:

A voter fills out their ballot as Prairie Oak Lodge is used as a polling place in Marion, Iowa. Photograph: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Colton Kapicka, 18, gets some help from his mother, Kelly Kapicka as he marks his ballot while voting in his first election, in Sacramento, California. Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/AP

A sheriff’s deputy and his dog inspect ballots at the LA county ballot processing center in City of Industry, California. Photograph: William Liang/AP

Election workers process ballots during the California primary election in City of Industry, California. Photograph: Daniel Cole/Reuters

Fabiola Cineas

A wave of Democratic doctors, scientists and public health professionals across the country are seeking office in the midterm elections in a rebuke to Donald Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr’s health policies.

They share a diagnosis of what ails American governance – disinformation, funding cuts and the rollback of research, among other things – and the belief that their clinical and scientific training equips them to treat it.

They have watched the Trump administration’s health policies play out in their exam rooms, their labs and the communities they serve, and they want to stop the bleeding.

Explained: what is California’s ‘jungle primary’?

Uwa Ede-Osifo

In California, voters can select any candidate among the long list of gubernatorial hopefuls, regardless of which party they have registered with.

The system was put in place under former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who supported the open primary, or “jungle primary”, as a way to create more competition in races that Democrats won year after year. Schwarzenegger, who left office in 2011, was the last Republican elected to statewide office in California.

In a crowded race like this year’s gubernatorial primary, the system could cause some unexpected results – such as the possibility that emerged earlier this year of two Republicans advancing to the general election in deep blue California.

That situation now appears unlikely, but the possibility has prompted some Democrats to push to overhaul the way the state votes.

Lucy Campbell

Millions of voters across the country are heading to the polls today in crucial primaries in a slew of key gubernatorial, Senate and House races.

Here’s a quick rundown of what we’re watching:

The Associated Press contributed reporting

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California

California Democratic gubernatorial candidate criticized over meeting with trans athlete | Fox News Video

Published

20 hours ago

June 2, 2026

Press Room

California Democratic gubernatorial candidate criticized over meeting with trans athlete | Fox News Video

‘Fox News @ Night’ panelists Roxanne Hoge and Stella Escobedo discuss the debate over transgender athletes in California and the state’s closely watched mayoral and gubernatorial races.

Roxanne Hoge and Stella Escobedo delve into the latest Berkeley IGS poll, revealing the frontrunners in California’s heated gubernatorial race. The discussion extends to the Los Angeles mayoral race, where candidates Karen Bass and Spencer Pratt are locked in a tight contest. Panelists weigh in on candidate endorsements and the broader political landscape ahead of the upcoming elections.

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Steve Hilton says he is ‘well prepared’ to make changes in California

Published

1 day ago

June 1, 2026

Press Room

Steve Hilton says he is ‘well prepared’ to make changes in California

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