LEAD STORIES: California Primary Results, SCOTUS OK's Racist Ala. Map, CBS Fires Pelley

Californians voted June 2 in a top-two primary, with the marquee race the crowded contest to succeed term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom. With over half the vote counted, Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, opened a narrow lead over Democrat Xavier Becerra, the former HHS secretary, around 27 percent to 26 percent. Billionaire Tom Steyer trailed and didn’t concede, while former Rep. Katie Porter conceded, saying she wouldn’t advance. In the nationally watched Los Angeles mayor’s race, incumbent Karen Bass led with about 36.5 percent, followed by Republican reality star Spencer Pratt and progressive councilwoman Nithya Raman, with Bass advancing to a November runoff. State Sen. Scott Wiener advanced in the CA-11 race for Nancy Pelosi’s former San Francisco seat. Congressional races were shaped by Prop. 50, Democrats’ counter to GOP redistricting.

What to look for

Watch the days-long count of California mail ballots to confirm which two governor candidates advance — a possible Hilton-Becerra runoff. Track who joins Bass in the LA runoff and faces Wiener in CA-11, plus how Prop. 50-redrawn House districts shape the November midterm map.

The Supreme Court on June 2, 2026, allowed Alabama to use a congressional map favoring Republicans in this year’s elections, blocking a lower-court ruling that the plan intentionally discriminates against Black people. The justices granted the state’s emergency appeal to use a map, adopted three years ago, with a majority-Black population in just one of its seven districts, even though Alabama is about 27 percent Black and a three-judge panel had ordered a second majority-Black district. The court-ordered map had elected Black Democrat Shomari Figures in 2024; the new order gives the GOP a chance to reclaim that south Alabama seat. The unsigned order came over the three liberal justices’ dissents, with Justice Sotomayor writing that the court “doubled down on chaos” after Alabama “doubled down on racial discrimination.” It fits a broader Trump-backed redistricting push to protect the House majority.

What to look for

Watch the three-judge panel’s next move after it reaffirmed “undisputed evidence” of intentional discrimination. Track the Court’s eventual ruling on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which could reshape minority representation nationally, plus August special primaries and how the seat plays in November.

CBS News fired longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent and former “CBS Evening News” anchor Scott Pelley one day after a tense, confrontational exchange with the newsmagazine’s new executive producer, Nick Bilton, during a staff meeting. In a termination letter, Bilton accused Pelley of a “performative display of hostility” that hijacked his first meeting with staff to disparage him with “incivility and contempt.” At Monday’s meeting, Pelley accused CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss of “murdering the show” and said she was “brought in to kill it,” while calling Bilton’s qualifications “slender.” He also condemned as “cruel” the prior week’s firings of producer Tanya Simon and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, and was applauded by staff. The shake-up followed Weiss’s memo declaring it was time for a “new approach” at the top-rated program.

What to look for

Watch how other “60 Minutes” staff and correspondents react to Pelley’s ouster after applauding him. Look for any public response from Pelley or Weiss, further departures or firings under the new leadership, and signs of how Bilton’s “new approach” reshapes the broadcast.

The Marshall Project published a fascinating article detailing how “under Trump, the U.S. increasingly sends immigrants all over the nation with little warning, leaving families and attorneys unsure where they are.” It included this passage:

“Quick and repeated transfers have become more common in President Donald Trump’s second term, a Marshall Project investigation has found. From the final year of the Biden administration to the first year of Trump’s latest term, the number of people transferred five or more times more than tripled. The number of people transferred out of state within 24 hours more than doubled, according to a Marshall Project analysis of ICE detention data obtained by the Deportation Data Project.”

I just want to remind everyone: all this is being done in our names with our tax dollars.