Barring divine intervention or the West Coast falling into the sea, President Biden will handily win California in the November election.
But should he — or presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump — secure a second term in the fall, the future of either’s policy agenda rests heavily on which party controls Congress, where Republicans currently hold a wafer-thin majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
With the Golden State home to some of the most hotly contested swing districts in the country, the House’s fate will almost certainly come down to California.
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The battle for the next two years of partisan political control will be waged door-to-door, from California’s beachside suburban cul-de-sacs to the tiny farm towns in the state’s fertile Central Valley.
Those battlefields will look a lot like Bridgecreek Plaza — a sun-bleached shopping center a few hundred yards from a freeway onramp in Orange County’s Huntington Beach. The mall is home to a crystal store, several insurance brokers, a dentist and the local Republican Party headquarters.
It’s also where about two dozen GOP faithful gathered on the morning of election day, bowing their heads for a quick prayer and pledging allegiance to a portable flag before turning their attention to Jessica Millan Patterson, chair of the California Republican Party.
Patterson was in a very good mood.
When she was first elected to lead the party, in 2019, California Republicans were “essentially the third-largest party in the state,” having sunk below the share of voters registering “decline to state” under party preference.
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But Patterson had presided over a massive voter registration drive over the last five years, and the party had moved back into second. People across the country liked to dismiss “blue California,” she said, but they were forgetting that California has more registered Republicans than any other state.
“California Republicans are the reasons why we have a House majority,” she added, to raucous cheering.
That majority was what they hoped to hold on to, and the group would spend the morning of the March 5 primary election canvassing for Scott Baugh, a Republican attorney and former state Assembly member vying to push Democratic Rep. Katie Porter’s soon-to-be-open congressional seat back from blue to red.
Scott Baugh is trying again to flip Orange County’s 47th District back to the red column. The seat is a chief target of state and national Republican efforts to maintain control of the House. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
The latest round of redistricting put more conservative enclaves such as Huntington Beach and Newport Beach into California’s 47th Congressional District, and Baugh lost to Porter only narrowly in 2022 despite being vastly outspent, making the coastal Orange County district one of the most competitive in the nation.
The charismatic Porter will be out of the House picture after a failed Senate run; her seat is one of the National Republican Congressional Committee’s three offensive targets in California and top priorities. And it’s equally prized by Democrats.
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Read more:How Trump propelled Schiff to the general election — and likely a Senate seat
In a country where enmity and distrust separate the two major political parties on most issues, California’s utmost importance to any November House strategy is one of the few things on which Republicans and Democrats can agree.
California is home to 10 races rated as competitive by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report — five of them in districts that are represented by Republicans but that President Biden won in 2020. In the months to come, both parties will beinvesting significant resources in those races, as national attention inevitably turns west.
With an expected Biden-Trump rematch, voter turnout in 2024 is also likely to be supercharged compared with the 2022 midterm election. That could give an edge to Democrats, given the registration advantage that they hold in many of the competitive districts. Republicans gained one California House seat in the 2022 midterms, a nonpresidential election when turnout was substantially lower than when Biden and Trump topped the ballot two years prior.
“At the end of the day, the path to 218 runs through California,” said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Dan Gottlieb, referring to the number of seats needed to garner a House majority.
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Dave Min will face Baugh in November’s runoff for the 47th District seat, which Katie Porter is vacating. Min’s bruising primary battle for the crucial seat has already cost Democrats millions. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)
Gottlieb was bullish on his party’s chances, citing the high turnout expected for the presidential election, along with strong Democratic candidates and “a bunch of dysfunctional and out-of-touch Republicans enabling the worst of their party’s chaos and dysfunction and extremism.”
But Gottlieb’s GOP counterpart was equally roseate in his outlook, with National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Ben Petersen reveling in the ugly and expensive primary fights that consumed Democrats in several of the state’s most crucial swing districts.
In the O.C. district where GOP volunteers fanned out for Baugh on primary morning, Democrats had sunk millions into a bruising primary battle between state Sen. Dave Min and fellow Democrat Joanna Weiss. Min ultimately emerged victorious, but only after surviving a barrage of negative advertising centered on his 2023 arrest for driving while intoxicated — arguably a gift to Republicans ahead of his fall battle with Baugh.
Read more:Two Democrats battle to keep Katie Porter’s Orange County U.S. House seat blue
“Extreme Democrats are stumbling out of their vicious primary fights broke and bested by Republicans, who saw a groundswell of support for a commonsense safety and affordability agenda,” Petersen said, adding that the primary results made clear the GOP was “playing offense in California” in a way that would set the stage for victories in November.
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Baugh, though, is not expected to go unscathed. In 2022, Porter’s ad campaign ripped the Republican for his antiabortion stance, as well as his work as a lobbyist and criminal charges he faced over campaign violations, for which he ultimately paid $47,000 in fines.
In the San Joaquin Valley, there were last-minute fears that a bruising primary battle would lock Democrats out of one of the races where they have the best chance of flipping a seat, but those concerns proved overblown.
Rudy Salas, backed by the Democratic establishment, vanquished fellow Democrat Melissa Hurtado to secure a spot in the fall against incumbent Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) in the 22nd Congressional District, but that race also put a dent in Democratic coffers.
The November race will be a rematch of the pair’s 2022 runoff, when Salas lost to Valadao by several thousand votes. And Salas and Valadao won’t be the only rematch on the November ticket.
In a heavily agricultural San Joaquin Valley district that includes all of Merced County and parts of Fresno, Madera, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties, incumbent GOP Rep. John Duarte will once again face off against Democratic challenger Adam Gray. Duarte won the 13th Congressional District in the midterm election by fewer than 600 votes, one of the closest races in the nation.
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Several hundred miles southeast, in Southern California, Democratic challenger Will Rollins will again take on GOP incumbent Rep. Ken Calvert, the longest-serving member of the California delegation. The recently redrawn 41st Congressional District stretches from the suburban Inland Empire, where Calvert has long lived, to Palm Springs, where Rollins and his partner make their home.
Read more:LGBTQ+ culture wars surface in heated Riverside County congressional race
The district’s new boundaries — which now include one of the largest concentrations of LGBTQ+ voters in the nation and liberal pockets of Californians in the desert — are far more friendly to Democrats. They also set up Rollins, who is gay, as a potent challenger to Calvert, who voted against LGBTQ+ rights in the past, but who says his views have since evolved.
One race that will have some new blood this year, after the same pair of candidates dueled in three previous elections, is California’s 27th Congressional District in northern Los Angeles County.
Once solidly Republican, the district has been reconfigured by redistricting, and has undergone a political transition driven by younger, more diverse transplants from L.A. seeking affordable housing in Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valley. The district briefly switched from red to blue with former Rep. Katie Hill’s victory in 2018, but the young Democrat’s very public scandals and ultimate resignation helped hand the seat back to the GOP.
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Now-incumbent GOP Rep. Mike Garcia beat Democrat Christy Smith in a 2019 special election to fill the seat, then twice more for full terms in 2020 and 2022. He will face off against George Whitesides, a fresh Democratic challenger, in November.
Ludovic Blain, executive director of the California Donor Table, a progressive group that pools donor funds, said his organization hopes to invest about $10million in California House races in the fall, working with local nonprofits in key areas to turn out voters of color.
They’ll be focusing on seven key races: the three aforementioned rematches, Porter’s open seat and two other Orange County races, and the Garcia-Whitesides matchup.
One point of concern Blain raised is that Republican Steve Garvey’s place near the top of the ticket, facing off against Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) in the Senate race, might affect Democrats in House races.
Schiff engaged in a controversial strategy in the primary, boosting Garvey to lock out Porter and his other major Democratic challenger, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), whom Blain’s organization supported.
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It was a gambit that some in the Democratic establishment said would actually help Democrats in other tight races, since a less-competitive Senate race would siphon away far less money from the party’s coffers.
Read more:Steve Garvey touts ‘family values’ in his Senate bid. Some of his kids tell another story
But others, like Blain, argue that Garvey’s presence could hurt down-ballot Democrats. Plus, having him on the ballot may draw in moderate Republican and independent voters who remain sour on Trump.
“Having Garvey, I think, does spike or further encourage Republican voters to turn out, and more importantly, to vote down the ticket,” Blain said.
Patterson agreed. Unlike Trump, Garvey will likely campaign across the state, providing a lift for other Republicans while he’s at it.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Fifteen years after she lost her first baby to a rare and devastating birth defect, Andrea Lopez takes comfort in knowing that other Latina mothers might finally avoid the same pain.
In January, California became the first state to require food makers to add folic acid, a crucial vitamin, to corn masa flour used to make tortillas and other traditional foods widely used in her community.
It’s a long-delayed move aimed at reducing Hispanic infants’ disproportionately high rates of serious conditions called neural tube defects, which claimed Lopez’s son, Gabriel Cude, when he was 10 days old.
“It’s such a small effort for such a tremendous impact,” said Lopez, 44, who lives in Bakersfield and is now a lawyer with two young daughters. “There is very little that I wouldn’t do to spare anybody this heartache.”
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A similar law takes effect in Alabama in June, and legislation is pending or being considered in Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma and Oregon. Four more states — Texas, Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania — have expressed “active interest” in the issue, according to the Food Fortification Initiative, an advocacy group that focuses on addressing micronutrient deficiencies.
“All women and children in the United States should have access to folic acid and have healthy babies,” said Scott Montgomery, the group’s director.
Corn masa was excluded from a national mandate
For nearly 30 years, folic acid, a key B vitamin, has been required to be added to enriched wheat and white breads, cereals and pastas in the U.S.
Decades of research show the 1998 requirement cut rates of serious defects such as spina bifida and anencephaly by about 30%, preventing about 1,300 cases a year. It is regarded as one of the top public health triumphs of the 20th century.
But corn masa flour, a staple used in Latino diets, was left out of the original fortification requirement — and rates of conditions such as spina bifida and anencephaly in that community have remained stubbornly high.
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In 2016, federal regulators allowed, but did not require, folic acid to be added to corn masa products. By 2023, only about 1 in 7 corn masa flour products and no corn tortillas contained folic acid, a review found.
Higher rates of birth defects among Hispanic moms
Nationwide, Hispanic women have the highest rates of having those defects during pregnancy. In California, the rate among Hispanic mothers is twice as high as for white or Black women, state data show.
California’s new law — and the state’s huge buying power — could help expand its adoption nationwide, said state Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula, who sponsored the legislation passed in 2024.
“You have to be the first oftentimes to get the ball rolling,” he said. “So, I’m glad other states have taken up that mantle.”
California’s action and pressure from advocates have already spurred changes.
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Gruma Corp., the parent company of Mission Foods and Azteca Milling, has been involved in the fortification issue for nearly two decades. Azteca began selling some — but not all — varieties of Maseca, its largest brand of corn masa flour, with folic acid in 2016.
As of this year, 97% of the company’s retail sales in the U.S. include folic acid. The rest are expected to be fortified before July, Gruma said in a statement.
Mission Foods began fortification in 2024. It now adds folic acid to all of its branded and private label corn tortillas in the U.S.
Such actions by large producers have helped pave the way for smaller manufacturers to follow suit, according to a recent report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group that has pushed for fortification.
Initially, the industry was concerned folic acid could affect flavor and the cost of changing labels, said Jim Kabbani, head of the Tortilla Industry Association. But he now expects tortilla makers will start selling fortified products on a broader scale.
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“I think overall the train has left the station and it will be more and more states,” he said.
Public health experts cheer the growing momentum.
“The science is clear: Folic acid fortification works,” said Vijaya Kancherla, an Emory University epidemiology professor and director of the Center for Spina Bifida Prevention. “It’s safe. It’s proven. And it’s cost-effective.”
RFK Jr. calls corn masa fortification ‘insanity’
That view contrasts sharply with critics — including some at the highest level of government — who regard fortification of the food supply as a form of government overreach.
Late last year, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. criticized California’s new law in a post on X: “This is insanity. California is waging war against her children — targeting the poor and communities of color,” he wrote.
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A spokesman for Kennedy declined to explain the comments.
Social media feeds are rife with people claiming that folic acid fortification is “toxic” or that people with a certain gene variation known as MTHFR can’t properly process the vitamin.
None of those claims is accurate, according to advocates and medical experts.
“What’s truly insane is that our nation’s top health official is spreading false claims and frightening people into avoiding a nutrient that’s proven to prevent birth defects and save babies’ lives,” said Eva Greenthal, CSPI’s senior policy scientist.
At fortification doses, folic acid “has never been shown to harm individuals or populations,” said Dr. Jeffery Blount, a pediatric neurosurgeon at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who works to prevent neural tube defects in the U.S. and globally.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emphasizes that “people with the MTHFR gene variant can process all types of folate, including folic acid.”
Even Kennedy’s new federal dietary guidelines support fortification. Documents backing the guidelines advise pregnant women to eat folate-rich foods, such as leafy green vegetables, beans and lentils. But they also acknowledge that folic acid from fortified foods or supplements is “critical” before conception and during early pregnancy to prevent neural tube defects.
“Folic acid fortification of corn masa flour could help prevent” neural tube defects, the CDC website adds.
Without fortification, ‘It’s just too late’
Neural tube defects, which affect about 2,000 babies each year in the U.S., occur in the first weeks after conception, when the tube that forms the spine and brain fails to develop properly.
That’s often before many women realize they’re pregnant. More than 40% of U.S. pregnancies are unintended. In those cases, many women won’t have been preparing for pregnancy, noted Dr. Kimberly BeDell, medical director of a rehabilitation clinic that helps children with spina bifida at Miller Children’s Hospital in Long Beach, California.
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“Even women’s best efforts in going to an OB right away and starting prenatal vitamins, it’s just too late,” BeDell said.
Adding folic acid to corn masa, the way it is added to other grains, is a way to ensure the nutrient reaches the wider population that needs it, she added.
At age 28, pregnant with her first child, Andrea Lopez didn’t know about the importance of folic acid or that the vitamin might be missing from her diet.
Then, an ultrasound mid-way through pregnancy showed that her baby had anencephaly, a fatal condition in which the skull fails to develop properly.
Lopez carried the pregnancy to term and Gabriel lived for 10 days. The pain of his loss never goes away, she said, adding that Gabriel would have been a high school freshman this year. She supports California’s law requiring folic acid fortification of corn masa and finds it “mind-boggling” that the action took so long to enforce.
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“Trust me, you don’t want to go through this,” she said. “He’s the love of my life. I have two little girls that survived, but he’s my first born. He is my only son.”
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: CDCR hosted a first-ever film festival celebrating the work of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated filmmakers inside a women’s correctional facility. The San Quentin Film Festival held its first event outside of San Quentin Rehabilitation Center on March 28, bringing the festival to Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla. The event featured screenings of award-winning short films from the 2025 San Quentin Film Festival, followed by a filmmaker panel moderated by comedian and television host W. Kamau Bell. Awards were presented for a Narrative and Documentary Pitch Competition, open exclusively to incarcerated women at CCWF and the California Institution for Women. The event also included a “Women in Film” panel and Q&A, providing incarcerated women insight into the entertainment industry and an opportunity to interact with working professionals in the industry.
“San Quentin Film Festival at CCWF offers incarcerated participants a powerful platform for self-expression and storytelling, and valuable exposure to the film industry and potential career pathways.”
BIGGER PICTURE: The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is committed to rehabilitation and reentry, providing incarcerated people with the tools they need to successfully and safely reenter their communities. The San Quentin Film Festival is an example of this commitment, offering incarcerated filmmakers mentorship and an opportunity to be recognized for their work. Since its inception, participants have leveraged their media experience gained at the festival to pursue careers in the film industry after release, including earning internships and job opportunities.
FILM FESTIVAL DETAILS: The San Quentin Film Festival was created in 2024 by award-winning playwright, screenwriter and author Cori Thomas (Lockdown, When January Feels Like Summer) and formerly incarcerated filmmaker, podcaster and writer Rahsaan “New York” Thomas (Friendly Signs, What These Walls Won’t Hold).
“We are deeply moved to be playing a small part in helping to even the playing field for these women. We hope the experience will empower them to tell their own stories and bring their unique perspectives to the table, and that today’s event will lead to additional industry engagement.”
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Cori Thomas, SQFF Co-founder and Artistic Director
Ten days since sexual abuse allegations were disclosed in a chilling New York Times investigation against farmworkers rights advocate César Chávez, the race to erase his name and likeness from public life is moving at a breakneck pace.
Municipal governments and agencies from the Bay Area to Phoenix, Denver and Texas are removing statues, renaming his holiday (March 31) and cutting mentions from history classes and beyond.
While action has been quick in removing Chávez’s name, there has been plenty of debate on how best to move forward.
A similar process played out a few years back in Burbank, when a student-led investigation propelled the changing of David Starr Jordan Middle School to, coincidentally, farm labor leader Dolores Huerta.
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Four years removed, the school’s former principal, Jennifer Meglemre, and a former Burbank Unified Board of Education member, Steve Frintner, have advice for those not sure how to navigate a controversial name change.
Burbank name change background
In early 2018, Jordan student Ixchel Sanchez Jimenez investigated her school’s namesake as part of a class project.
What she found led her and her mother, Laura Jimenez, to push for a name change in May 2018.
Jordan was known for being the founding president of Stanford University and a famed ichthyologist, or fish scientist.
But he was also a believer and supporter of eugenics, a system of controlled breeding and separation of certain people to increase the chances for desirable heritable characteristics. It was a belief espoused by the Nazis.
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University of Vermont associate professor and historian Lutz Kaelber estimated that roughly 20,000 people in California deemed undesirable were forcibly sterilized until 1964 due to eugenics policies. Most were sterilized because they were believed to be mentally ill or mentally deficient.
The name-changing process
Burbank Unified set up committees to debate the topic, first to decide whether there should be a name change, and then what the new name should be.
The committees took input from students, teachers, administrators and community members.
Frintner said it was critical not to rush the decision and allow for thorough conversations.
“It’s important to make sure you’re giving people in the community a voice because they want to feel a part of this process,” Frintner said.
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After agreeing to drop Jordan, Burbank Unified’s renaming process centered on a few considerations: should the school replace David Starr with another notable Jordan (Texas lawmaker Barbara Jordan), should the school be named after another individual or something less contentious like a tree or a street.
Those decisions mirror the current Chávez debate. Los Angeles is changing César Chávez Day to Farm Worker’s Day, while some advocates, including former farmworkers, are asking that Chávez be replaced with Dolores Huerta, the civil rights leader who fought alongside the man who allegedly raped her.
Resistance to change
Meglemre said resistance to the school name change came from all sides: from those not wanting to drop Jordan and others who did not want the school renamed for a living person.
“The discussions were about how people are flawed and we don’t want to get into a situation where something is named after a person still alive and something terrible ends up happening,” Meglemre said.
After three years of debate, hampered in part by COVID-19, the committee settled on Dolores Huerta. (César Chávez was never a top contender.)
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“Almost all the schools in Burbank are named after a person and we wanted to continue that tradition,” Meglemre said.
Frintner said the district committees wanted to choose someone with Southern California ties and was either a minority or a woman.
Last piece of advice
Meglemre said that while there was heated debate and pushback from community members, after a couple of years, most people “moved on with their lives.”
Frintner believes more research is always a positive.
“My advice is make sure you’re doing as much background as possible,” he said. “You do want to honor people but you don’t want to be in a position where you’re having a hard time defending your decisions.”
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