Democrats claimed the final congressional seat in the 2024 election cycle Tuesday as Merced Democrat Adam Gray ousted Republican incumbent Rep. John Duarte in a photo-finish race in California’s Central Valley.

California’s 13th Congressional District was the final outstanding race for the U.S. House of Representatives, and had the closest margin in the country. Gray was ahead by 187 votes when Duarte conceded Tuesday evening.

After trailing in the first three weeks of vote-counting, Gray took the lead on Nov. 26 as mail ballots tilted in his favor.

Gray, 47, said in a prepared statement Tuesday that he was honored to be elected and thanked the volunteers, voters, donors, campaign staff and family members who had helped him win.

“This district is ready for independent and accountable leadership that always puts the Valley’s people ahead of partisan politics,” Gray said.

Gray said he would work to build bipartisan relationships and deliver “clean water, better educational opportunities, stronger infrastructure and more good-paying jobs.”

Duarte conceded Tuesday night, a campaign spokesman said.

“That’s how it goes,” Duarte told the Turlock Journal on Tuesday. “I’m a citizen legislator, and I didn’t plan on being in Congress forever. But whenever I think I can make a difference, I’ll consider public service in different forms, including running for Congress again.”

Republicans will retain a thin majority in the House of Representatives next year. With Gray’s victory, Republicans will hold 220 seats — barely above the 218-seat threshold needed to control the chamber — and Democrats will hold 215.

The GOP will have an even narrower majority for parts of January. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) resigned from the House last month. Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida has been tapped to be President-elect Donald Trump’s national security advisor and is expected to step down, as is Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York if she is confirmed as United Nations ambassador.

The 13th Congressional District was one of a half-dozen seats in California seen as pivotal in the fight for control of Congress, and was one of three in the state that Democrats flipped from Republican control.

In Orange County, Democrat Derek Tran ousted Republican Rep. Michelle Steel, and in northern Los Angeles County, Democrat George Whitesides beat Republican Rep. Mike Garcia. Democrats also held onto a seat being vacated by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine), with state Sen. Dave Min beating Republican Scott Baugh.

Republicans fared better in the Central Valley’s other swing district, where Rep. David Valadao defeated Democrat Rudy Salas by almost 7 points. Salas on Tuesday filed to run for Congress again in 2026.

The GOP also held a seat in Riverside County, where voters reelected longtime Republican Rep. Ken Calvert over Democrat Will Rollins, a former federal prosecutor.

The rural 13th Congressional District stretches from Coalinga to Modesto, encompassing Merced County and parts of Fresno, Madera, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties.

The district appears blue on paper, with 42% of registered voters affiliated with the Democratic Party, compared with 29% registered as Republicans and 22% registered with no party preference.

But the Central Valley is more purple than the deep-blue districts that surround the Bay Area and Los Angeles, and conservative Democrats in the area often cross party lines to elect Republicans.

The 2024 campaign was a rematch of 2022, when Duarte beat Gray by 564 votes, the second-closest margin in the country.

This year, Duarte campaigned on lowering gas prices and the cost of living. Duarte, whose family owns a large farm in the San Joaquin Valley, pitched himself to voters as a moderate Republican, saying he had bucked his party on abortion and immigration, instead sticking to middle-of-the-road policy proposals.

Gray cast himself as a “radical centrist,” pointing to his decade in the state Assembly as proof that he could work across party lines. In August, he told The Times that he chose to run against Duarte again because he thought the incumbent and Republicans had accomplished little in Congress to help everyday Americans.

Turkey Vultures (Cathartes aura) in southern California are still exposed to anticoagulant rodenticides (ARs) even though legislation was passed to drastically reduce the presence of these poisons across the state.

This is according to the short communication “Turkey Vultures (Cathartes aura) from Southern California are Exposed to Anticoagulant Rodenticides Despite Recent Bans,” recently published in the Journal of Raptor Research.

The harmful nature of these rodenticides is what led to their ban in California. If they persist, this could spell trouble for additional non-target wildlife species, including those with an endangered status like the Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia).

Anticoagulant rodenticides cause system failure in animals by interfering with the synthesis of vitamin K-dependent coagulation factors in the liver. This is true for rats as well as raptors. Of the non-target wildlife species that encounter ARs, raptors are disproportionately harmed because toxins accumulate as they move up the food web, reaching their highest levels in top predators.

In southern California there are three especially vulnerable raptor species for which this is of immediate concern: the Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia), White-tailed Kite (Elanus leucurus), and the well-known scavenging California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus), the latter of which already faces constant health risk from residual lead shot fragments inside carcasses on the landscape.

Turkey Vultures possess a suite of characteristics that make them uniquely representative of poison accumulation in their environments. They are more widely distributed than many of their raptor cousins, including the California Condor. They also cruise over large swaths of land encompassing many different habitats and consume a wide variety of prey items. These qualities make them important sentinels in the world of raptor toxicology. The field focused on identifying primary toxicants threatening raptor populations.

To investigate the prevalence of vulture exposure to eight different types of rodenticides, a team of researchers led by Drs. Peter Bloom, Miguel D. Saggese, and Andrea Bonisoli-Alquati trapped 27 Turkey Vultures in southern California near Anaheim between 2016 and 2021. The birds were fitted with wing-tags and their blood was sampled. All birds were subsequently released back into the wild.

Each was tested for first-generation ARs and second-generation ARs, the latter of which is thought to be more toxic than the former due to its higher strength and slower metabolic breakdown. The results showed that 11% of the vultures tested showed evidence of AR exposure. Although 27 birds is a small sample size, these findings suggest that if vultures are being exposed, other raptors probably are too.

“The presence of rodenticides in the blood of a few individuals is just the tip of the iceberg and demonstrates that these compounds are still out there. Even a small percentage of exposed wildlife should be considered a loss,” says Saggese, a faculty member at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Western University of Health Sciences.

The researchers recommend future studies focused on comparative analysis of both liver and blood samples from Turkey Vultures because liver, while difficult to collect, provides a more accurate and timely snapshot of AR exposure. Rehabilitation centers care for many birds that eventually succumb to their afflictions, providing a potential source for ground truthing this methodology.

Furthermore, the team emphasizes the importance of continuing to monitor AR exposure in Californian Turkey Vultures and keeping an eye on the adherence of pest control companies to the active legislature regarding rodenticide use.

SACRAMENTO —  California lawmakers met at the state Capitol Monday to devise a plan to shield the state from President-elect Donald Trump’s conservative policies, including his vows to repeal environmental protections and initiate mass deportations.

The goal of the special legislative session called by Gov. Gavin Newsom is to establish a $25 million fund for legal challenges to federal polices that the governor said could “harm the state,” including when it comes to civil rights, abortion access and immigration.

But with Trump’s return as president, the politics of leading the resistance are trickier as Democrats assess how they lost the White House and grapple with why support for Trump in California increased since the 2020 election despite his felony convictions, pattern of lies and role in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol after his loss to President Biden.

Legislative leaders — under pressure to prove that the special session is more than just political theater, as alleged by some Republicans — tried to balance their concerns about a second Trump term with state issues important to constituents such as the rising cost of living.

As the Legislature welcomed 35 new members — including a record number of women — Democrats, who maintain a supermajority, said the legal preparation was a necessary precaution. During Trump’s first term as president, California filed more than 100 lawsuits against the federal government, winning protections for undocumented people who came to the U.S. as children and securing clean air rules.

“If Washington, D.C., refuses to tackle climate change in the coming four years, mark my word that California will continue to lead as we always have,” Senate Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) said on the Senate floor Monday. “Because here in the Golden State, we fight to lift up every person, no matter your background, no matter your skin color, who you are, who you love and how you identify.”

As lawmakers introduced bills that tighten up abortion rights and further affirm California as the Trump antithesis, California leaders were more tempered in their messaging and put their focus on bipartisan pocketbook issues.

“Our constituents don’t feel that the state of California is working for them,” Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) said Monday, pointing to last month’s election, in which voters rejected progressive backed measures and revoked prison reform laws.

Rivas reduced the limit of bills allowed to be introduced and requested that all proposals focus on “affordability and prosperity.”

The speaker vowed to continue to protect Californians from any federal overreach targeting their rights.

“If LGBTQ people come under attack, if hard-working immigrants are targeted, if women’s reproductive freedom is threatened, we will fight back with everything we have,” Rivas said.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said if the Legislature approves the legal fund, it will be used to pay attorneys and other staff ready to take action in court immediately if Trump does anything the state believes is unlawful.

The proposed $25 million is “a start,” Bonta said.

“If there are no cases for us to bring because the Trump administration is acting completely lawfully, we won’t use any of it. We don’t expect that, based on what he did in the past — what he has said he will do,” Bonta said at a news conference in Sacramento on Monday. “Under Trump 2.0, we believe we will need to use all of it.”

California has been here before. Eight years ago, the legislative session kicked off with a similar motto, as Democratics rushed to thwart Trump’s policies, introducing bills that aimed to protect immigrants from deportation threats similar to proposals coming from the administration now.

“Californians do not need healing. We need to fight,” then-Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) said in December 2016, calling Trump’s appointments then “white nationalists and antisemites” who “have no business working in the White House.”

Republicans tried to block the approval of the special session that kicked off Monday, painting it as an out-of-touch strategy and urging Democrats to avoid panic and resist egging on the federal government.

“The people of California sent a clear message during this election season. They are done with the majority party’s failure to address the most important issues we face and they are ready for a return to commonsense, solution-focused governing,” said Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones (R-Santee). “We are thrilled to see Californians standing up against the Democrat machine and declaring, ‘enough is enough.’”

Even Newsom — an ever-willing Trump foe — has shifted his messaging after Republicans won the White House, Senate and House in the November election. In a statement on Monday, the governor said the special session is about “setting this state up for success” regardless of who is in the White House.

“We will work with the incoming administration, and we want President Trump to succeed in serving all Americans,” Newsom said. “But when there is overreach, when lives are threatened, when rights and freedoms are targeted, we will take action.”

Assemblymember Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles) introduced a bill on Monday that would repeal taxes on car seats and baby wipes — a bill he said “pro family” Republicans should support. He said members of his party need to “slow down” as they promise to lead the Trump resistance, and focus on policy that helps people instead of talking points.

“I think it’s different this time. No one’s growing their base attacking Trump right now,” Bryan said. “You can do real policy work and not just play politics with it.”