Subpoenas Attorney General... Epstein probe

House Oversight chair subpoenas Attorney General Pam Bondi for deposition in Epstein probe

By Annie Grayer

House Oversight Chair James Comer on Tuesday issued a subpoena to Attorney General Pam Bondi to appear for a deposition on April 14 as part of the panel’s Jeffrey Epstein probe.

Comer wrote in the subpoena cover letter that his panel is investigating the “possible mismanagement of the federal government’s investigation” into Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

“The Committee has questions regarding the Department of Justice’s handling of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and his associates and its compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act,” Comer wrote, referring to the law passed by Congress last year mandating the Justice Department’s release of the files.

Separately, the committee announced that Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche are slated to brief members of the panel behind closed doors on Wednesday. A source familiar with the process told CNN that the Justice Department requested it brief the committee on its Epstein investigation and compliance with the law in order to promptly answer lawmakers’ questions, given that scheduling a deposition with the committee will take time.

A DOJ spokesperson called the subpoena “completely unnecessary,” but did not say whether the attorney general would comply.

“This subpoena is completely unnecessary. Lawmakers have been invited to view the unredacted files for themselves at the Department of Justice, and the Attorney General has always made herself available to speak directly with members of Congress,” the spokesperson said.

“She continues to have calls and meetings with members of Congress on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which is why the Department offered to brief the committee tomorrow. As always, we look forward to continuing to provide policymakers with the facts,” the spokesperson continued.

DOJ’s release of the files has prompted complaints from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, with critics saying they believe the files were overly redacted and demanding greater transparency.

“As Attorney General, you are directly responsible for overseeing the Department’s collection, review, and determinations regarding the release of files pursuant to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and the Committee therefore believes that you possess valuable insight into these efforts,” Comer wrote.

The move comes after the GOP-led committee voted on a bipartisan basis earlier this month to subpoena Bondi for testimony about her role in the release of the files.

Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the panel, on Tuesday nodded to the bipartisan effort that led to the subpoena.

“Thanks to united Oversight Committee Democrats, along with the support of several Republicans, the Attorney General will now appear before our committee under oath. No more lies. No more distractions. We want the truth—and justice for the survivors,” Garcia said.

They want you to die....

Dr. Oz Calls Medicare Fraud an Epidemic. Trump Keeps Pardoning the Culprits.

At an oversight hearing Tuesday, the GOP seemed more interested in so-called “ethnic” fraud than Trump’s effective license to steal.

Julia Métraux

On Tuesday, the oversight and investigations arm of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing to discuss alleged Medicare and Medicaid fraud—a major talking point of the Trump administration and Robert F. Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services, which have deployed fraud claims to help justify cuts to critical funding and programs used by a huge swath of aging, disabled, and low-income Americans.

“For too long, states have been permitted to run Medicaid programs with weak guardrails, making them easy targets for criminals to exploit,” subcommittee chair John Joyce (R-Pa.) said in his opening statement. “Under the leadership of Dr. Mehmet Oz, this administration is taking bold steps to stop this fraud more than any other presidential administration before it.”

There are false and exaggerated claims in systems the size of Medicare and Medicaid—both Republican and Democratic members agreed that fraud from providers does exist. But only Democratic members raised concerns that withholding Medicaid funds from Minnesota, for example—where investigations into large-scale social services fraud have become a major conservative talking point—will hurt disabled and aging people, as well as children. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, who has made similar allegations about “ethnic” fraud in the Los Angeles area, was not present, something Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) took offense to.

“I think he’s just a grandstander who likes to go on TV but doesn’t really do anything substantively that’s meaningful to help Medicare and Medicaid recipients,” Pallone said.

In Oz’s absence, CMS deputy administrator Kimberly Brandt claimed that the agency’s “fraud war room” was using artificial intelligence to root out alleged Medicare and Medicaid fraud, particularly increased rates of home and community-based services billing in New York and California.

“We are constantly using heat maps and data analysis to be able to look and see where we think the largest shifts are,” Brandt said.

A recent article published in the Health Affairs journal by four academics focusing on health and disability warned that such a focus by the Trump administration could lead to HCBS, an optional Medicaid program, being further dismantled. “Growth in HCBS spending does not reflect evidence of systemic corruption but rather bipartisan federal policy choices, demographic change, and structured statutory evolution,” they wrote. It is also not an easy process to qualify for HCBS, with each process slightly different per state, and over half a million people on waiting lists to even qualify.

Rep. Kevin Mullen (D-Calif.) said that he was very concerned that his constituents could lose access to Medicaid services if California came under the kinds of attacks that Minnesota now faces from federal agencies.

“My constituents deserve better than to have their lifesaving health care used as a pawn,” Mullen said.

During her turn on the floor, Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) raised doubts that the Trump administration actually cares about rooting out Medicaid and Medicare fraud.

“Donald Trump unilaterally fired the HHS inspector general immediately after taking office, contradicting his claim that combating fraud is a central goal of this administration,” Trahan said. “Not only did the President move the leading official for detecting fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, but he left the role unfilled for almost an entire year to then fill it with a partisan loyalist.”

Trahan also listed the names of convicted fraudsters of Medicaid and Medicare fraud who were pardoned by Trump, including Philip Esformes.

“These cases involve large-scale fraud against taxpayer funded health care programs intended to serve seniors, people with disabilities and low income families—and the President of the United States freed every single perpetrator of those crimes,” Trahan said.

What can go wrong............

This Is Your Kid’s Brain on AI Slop

“It’s toddler AI misinformation at an industrial scale. It’s very risky for the developing brain.”

Emily Tate Sullivan

In a video that has been played almost 50,000 times since it was posted five months ago, two cartoon children sing along as they guide viewers through the experience of riding in a car amid a vividly colored, utopian backdrop. 

At first, the video seems harmless. The song is upbeat and informative. The animation aligns with the promised subject. 

Except, hold on a second, did those lyrics just say, “Red means stop, and green means right”? And why are the characters changing in every frame—different hairstyles and colors, slightly different outfits for the girl and boy? 

Worst of all, for a video that purports to be “educational,” the visuals are sending precisely the wrong message about riding in a car. 

The video opens with the children riding, without seatbelts, in the front row of a moving vehicle. The next scene shows the girl defying physics, floating alongside a moving car, while the boy is seated in what appears to be the hood of the vehicle as it travels backward down a busy street.

The third and fourth scenes show the children walking in the middle of the road with moving cars behind them. 

It’s not hard to imagine how the video could have gotten so many views. 

Maybe a parent needs to complete a task—fold some laundry, get dinner ready, hop in the shower—and is searching for an age-appropriate video on YouTube to entertain their toddler during that short time. Perhaps that toddler, increasingly independent and prone to running off, needs a better grasp of road safety. “Vroom Vroom! Car Ride Song | Educational Nursery Rhyme for Kids” presents itself as a win-win solution. 

But children’s media experts say this is AI-generated “slop,” and that it has infiltrated the internet, preying on young children and their unsuspecting caregivers.

“We’re at the beginning of a monster problem, and we have to get hold of it quickly,” said Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Temple University and senior fellow at Brookings Institution who studies child development. 

She and other researchers, including Dr. Dana Suskind, a professor of surgery and pediatrics at the University of Chicago, have warned that AI-derived products for babies and children need to be reined in. 

“This is not neutral content,” said Suskind, author of the forthcoming book Human Raised: Nurturing Connection, Curiosity, and Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI. “I think of this as toddler AI misinformation at an industrial scale. It’s very risky for the developing brain.”

It’s hard to say just how pervasive this type of content is, but it’s clear the problem is widespread and getting worse. One report published by video-editing company Kapwing in November 2025 found that about 21 percent of YouTube’s feed consists of low-quality, AI-generated videos. 

Jo Jo Funland, the creator of the “Vroom Vroom! Car Ride Song,” has posted more than 10,000 videos since its first release just seven months ago, in August 2025. That’s an average of about 50 new videos each day. Sesame Street, meanwhile, has published about 3,900 videos on YouTube in its entire 20 years on the platform.

The cognitive decline associated with the consumption of AI slop—such as a shortened attention span, decreased focus, and mental fog—is sometimes referred to as “brainrot.” But when the audience is children, there’s not much to rot, Suskind said. Because a child’s brain is still in its early development, still being built, what you get instead, she said, is “brain stunt.”

“Every experience is building a million new neural connections,” Suskind said of children who are still in their early years. “You will be unintentionally wiring the brain in incorrect ways.”

That comes at a cost. A child may absorb the implicit messages of something like the Vroom Vroom video and end up mimicking the “downright dangerous” behaviors they saw depicted there, said Carla Engelbrecht, who has created digital experiences for children’s media brands such as Sesame Street, PBS Kids, and Highlights for Children and considers herself an AI educator and creator.

Engelbrecht is also something of a whistleblower when it comes to child-targeted AI slop. She has found countless examples of AI-generated videos that could cause real physical harm.

“The more content I find,” she said, “the more horrified I get.”

They include videos of a scared child being chased by a T-Rex; a crawling baby biting into an apple that appears bloody, swallowing whole grapes (a major choking hazard), and eating honey (which carries the potentially fatal risk of infant botulism) and a teacher eating raw elderberries (which are toxic when uncooked).

But there’s another category of AI slop in kids’ media, she said, with consequences that are more difficult to capture. These videos claim to pertain to learning and development, focusing on topics like literacy and numeracy, but due to the speed with which they are produced and the lack of quality checks, they end up introducing or enforcing the wrong lessons. And sometimes, the errors don’t come until midway through the content. That means if a parent previews the first few seconds of a video, they may miss the unreliable information that appears later in the clip.

A video about vowels includes visuals of consonants. It also depicts letters on screen that don’t align with the audio overlay. A video promising to teach about the 50 US. states sings along as butchered state names appear in text at the bottom of the screen — Ribio Island, Conmecticut, Oklolodia, Louggisslia. A video about the seven continents frequently shows a compass with more than four points and indecipherable symbols where the “N,” “S,” “E” and “W” should be.

These may seem like silly slips from a machine, but for a child, every “input” is part of their learning process, Engelbrecht explained. “Mixed signals means you are delaying them learning the cause and effect of a thing,” she said. “If you learn that red is blue and blue is red, that’s a delay.”

“If you’re inconsistent, it takes that much longer to learn,” she added. “Every delay they have means everything else gets pushed back. That’s taking their executive function offline to go learn nonsense.”

Amid all of this internet muck, the question of responsibility is a tricky one.

“Fundamentally, everybody has a responsibility,” Engelbrecht said, including platforms like YouTube; companies that operate large-language models, like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic; the people creating and publishing these poor-quality videos intended to reach kids; and parents. 

YouTube’s current policy requires creators to disclose videos that have been generated by or altered with AI when that content “seems realistic.” This does not apply to cartoons and animated content—which seems to be the majority of what’s reaching children—because it has long been assumed to be fictional content, Engelbrecht explained. 

The platform does have stricter “quality principles” for content targeting children than it does for its general viewership, said Boot Bullwinkle, a YouTube spokesperson, in a statement. It also has a “child safety policy.” (These web pages, however, do not specifically address the use of AI.)

Due to the volume of content on the platform, YouTube does not catch every video that violates its policies. (It did take action against at least seven channels on the platform in response to The 74’s reporting, including terminating two.) 

“The trust that parents and families put in YouTube is a responsibility we take very seriously, and we’ve invested deeply in age-appropriate environments that empower parents,” Bullwinkle wrote in the statement. “YouTube Kids, for instance, offers industry-leading parental controls and rigorous quality principles designed to provide a safer experience for families.”

YouTube Kids is a distinct version of the platform with content that has been curated for children from birth to 12. Many families continue to use the main YouTube platform to view children’s content, though, which means many creators still have an audience and earning opportunities there. None of the AI-generated videos reviewed for this story were found on YouTube Kids, although recent reporting in The New York Times found AI videos had penetrated that space as well.

Sierra Boone, executive producer of Boone Productions, a children’s media production company that makes original content for children ages 2 to 6, noted that kid-friendly competitors to YouTube, such as Sensical by Common Sense Media and Meevee, do exist. But they have struggled to break through to families. 

“Overcoming that juggernaut is extremely difficult,” Engelbrecht said of YouTube. “There’s a graveyard full of failed attempts to create a safe YouTube alternative.”

Boone suggested that some effective labeling would go a long way, not unlike the “content credentials” LinkedIn is phasing in, which aim to disclose when media has been created or edited by AI, in part or in whole. 

Engelbrecht thinks labels are a good idea, not least because they would be important for AI literacy, but she also believes they would penalize creators like her who use AI “thoughtfully” in their work. (She is developing, among other projects, an AI tool that detects AI slop in children’s videos on YouTube.)

As for who’s behind the videos, some of it is coming from overseas, but plenty of it is home-grown, created by Americans with access to phones or computers who are just trying to “make a quick buck,” as Boone put it. 

These people are often using AI at every step of the process — to develop themes and scripts for children’s videos, to generate the videos, and to automate the process of publishing the content regularly on “faceless” YouTube channels, in which the creator is anonymous and has no on-camera presence, Engelbrecht explained.

A little over a year ago, a popular content creator posted a video to YouTube in which she raves about a “huge opportunity” that would lead to “many millionaires.” The opportunity? AI-generated animated videos that inexperienced users could create with a simple prompt in just minutes. The target audience? Young children. 

That video has been viewed more than 335,000 times. 

“AI in general isn’t inherently good or bad, but it exposes people’s intentions,” said Boone, whose production studio is responsible for The Naptime Show. 

The flood of AI-generated content, she added, reveals how many people have “no regard for children or how they’re impacted,” as long as it benefits them.

For Boone, who works painstakingly with her team on every episode of The Naptime Show — researching, writing the script, editing the script, placing props, doing table reads, going to set, filming, editing the video, publishing and promoting the final product — creating children’s media is an “honor” that should be taken seriously. 

“The very foundation of creating children’s media is you are creating something that a child, in their core developmental years, is going to be consuming,” Boone said. “So what is the level of intention that you’re bringing to that? I think we need to be holding the people who are uploading this content more accountable.”

Ultimately, though, in the absence of more regulation or content moderation, the burden falls on parents. 

Parents are likely putting YouTube videos in front of their children in the first place because “they are already so stretched,” said Suskind, who still sees patients in her pediatric practice and interacts with families often. So it’s inherently challenging to ask them to more closely monitor the content that is coming through their children’s screens. 

Yet that is what must be done, Hirsh-Pasek said. Until a better solution emerges, the onus is on parents to separate the slop from “the good stuff.”

“We owe it to our kids to protect them,” said Hirsh-Pasek. “That’s what they look to parents for, to keep them in safe spaces. If we don’t deal with that or do anything about that, we’ve absconded [from] our responsibility.”

It’s the latest legal challenge against the Grok....... Shows they are not that smart...

Tennessee Teens Sue Elon Musk’s xAI Over Child Sexual Abuse Images

It’s the latest legal challenge against the Grok chatbot’s mass creation of nonconsensual sexual imagery of women and girls.

Katie Herchenroeder

Tennessee teenagers are suing Elon Musk’s company xAI over allegations that its artificial intelligence tool Grok undressed photos of them as minors—the latest challenge against the wealthiest living person’s chatbot. 

The three plaintiffs, two of whom are currently minors, are seeking damages after AI-generated images of them spread across Discord and Telegram and were eventually used as bartering tools for users to obtain other child sexual abuse material, according to the complaint detailed in new Washington Post reporting. 

“xAI—and its founder Elon Musk,” the complaint reads, “saw a business opportunity: an opportunity to profit off the sexual predation of real people, including children.”

One of the plaintiffs said she received a link to a Discord server “which contained images and videos of at least 18 other minor females, many of whom Jane Doe 1 recognized from her school,” the lawsuit alleges. 

Some of the images stemmed from her homecoming or yearbook photos. 

The lawsuit comes after months of backlash against Musk’s chatbot after the company allowed Grok to undress people nonconsensually using the “Imagine” tool. The complaint argues that a “model that can create sexualized images of adults cannot be prevented from creating CSAM of minors.” According to earlier reporting from the Post, Grok’s previous leniency towards fulfilling users’ sexually explicit requests was a marketing technique, meant to increase the popularity of the chatbot. 

Musk and his company didn’t respond to the Post in their coverage of the Tennessee lawsuit. Musk has repeatedly placed responsibility onto the individual users requesting such content and has held that Grok “will refuse to produce anything illegal,” despite the chatbot itself, in at least one instance, posting that its actions might have violated the 2025 TAKE IT DOWN Act, legislation criminalizing the nonconsensual publication of intimate images, including AI-generated deepfakes.

According to an investigation by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, Grok generated approximately 3 million sexualized images in just an 11-day period, from December 29 to January 8. Around 23,000 of those, according to researchers, appeared to depict children. In a January 14 post, Musk claimed that he was “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero.”

Later than month, 35 state attorneys general penned a letter to xAI demanding the company “take all necessary measures to ensure that Grok is no longer capable of producing” this kind of nonconsensual sexual imagery and child sexual abuse material. The European Union and regulators in the United Kingdom and California have launched investigations into Grok. 

In January, following rising international ethical and legal objections to the mass spread of nonconsensual sexual imagery, some of Grok’s Imagine image generation features were limited to paid X users. Yet Grok image tools are still seemingly offered for free on the standalone website and application. And even if restricting elements of the service to paying users could limit the quantity of material, introducing a nominal fee for those hoping to create nonconsensual sexual imagery of people, including minors, doesn’t answer a key legal question: Will Grok be meaningfully changed to protect women and girls from this kind of digital abuse?

The Tennessee teens are just some of the scores of girls and women impacted by Grok’s undressing, reportedly including at least one woman who Musk knows personally. 

Ashley St. Clair, a conservative content creator who has a child with Musk, said that Grok created nonconsensual sexual imagery of her. Some of the images, according to an interview she did with NBC News, were from when St. Clair was a minor. 

Annika K. Martin, the lead counsel in the suit, had a question for Musk as a father:

“Your child’s voice on video screaming. Can you imagine that as a parent?” she asked. “Can you imagine that for your child and feel okay with what you’ve done?”

What our eyes can't see...

A lone tree stands in a quiet meadow in Guadalajara, Spain, silhouetted against the Cygnus region rising above like flames in the night sky. This deep night skyscape is a composite of exposures that reveals a range of brightness and color human eyes can't quite see on their own. Spanning over a thousand times the angular size of the full moon, Cygnus sets the sky afire with active star formation where clouds of gas and dust collapse under gravity until nuclear fusion ignites and new stars are born. These stars ionize the surrounding hydrogen gas, causing it to glow crimson, while tendrils of interstellar dust absorb some of that light and cast dark shadows across the sky. Cygnus is a trove of celestial treasures, notably the Veil, Crescent, and Pelican nebulae, as well as Cygnus X-1, the first confirmed black hole. Cygnus continues to yield fresh science, including a new three-dimensional model of the Cygnus Loop made possible by the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Judge orders.....

Judge orders sidelined Voice of America employees back to work

The ruling amounted to a rebuke of administration efforts to dismantle the international broadcast organization.

By Ben Johansen

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered that the near shutdown of Voice of America was illegal and has ordered the government to reinstate more than 1,000 people who were placed on leave from the media organization.

The order by District Judge Royce Lamberth amounted to a sharp rebuke to the administration, which has aggressively sought to shrink and remake VOA through Kari Lake, the ally of President Donald Trump who has served as CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

Lamberth said in a pair of rulings that Lake’s moves to close the agency violated federal administrative law and directed that the employees return to work by March 23. He also ordered a resumption of international broadcasting, which the U.S. has used for decades to promote press freedom around the world.

Beginning in early 2025, hundreds of journalists were placed on administrative leave and then targeted for layoffs, with more than 600 cuts announced by summer and ultimately roughly 85 percent of staff eliminated across the agency. The reductions were so deep that VOA, which once broadcast in nearly 50 languages to hundreds of millions of people, was pared down to a skeleton operation with only a handful of language services still running.

“We are thrilled with Judge Lamberth’s ruling and look forward to getting back to work,” said Michael Abramowitz, the VOA director who was placed on administrative leave by the administration. “Voice of America has never been more needed.”

Lamberth issued a scathing review of the government’s “flagrant and nearly year-long refusal” to uphold statutory requirements set by Congress, adding that Lake “thumbed her nose” at the requirements.

Lamberth ruled earlier this month that Lake was illegally empowered to run USAGM and her actions in that role were illegitimate, saying she was ineligible to serve as acting CEO when she was formally elevated to the position last July in an “acting capacity” and without Senate confirmation. She relinquished that title on Nov. 19.

Last week, at the request of Lamberth, USAGM announced that Sarah B. Rogers, under secretary of State for diplomacy and public affairs, will be Trump’s nominee for USAGM CEO. Until she is confirmed by the Senate, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Michael Rigas will serve in the position.

Employees who brought the case, including Patsy Widakuswara, Jessica Jerreat and Kate Neeper, celebrated the latest rulings.

“We are eager to begin repairing the damage Kari Lake has inflicted on our agency and our colleagues, to return to the trust of the global audience we have been unable to serve for the past year,” they said in a statement. “We know the road to restoring VOA’s operations and reputation will be long and difficult. We hope the American people will continue to support our mission to produce journalism, not propaganda.”

A spokesperson for USAGM did not immediately return a request for comment.

“This egregious ruling is the latest example of judicial overreach and this Department of Justice will continue to defend Article II authority wherever challenged,” a DOJ spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday.

Steve Herman, a former White House correspondent for VOA, called the ruling “a comprehensive legal defeat for Elon Musk’s DOGE lackeys, the self-proclaimed USAGM ‘deputy CEO’ Kari Lake and others in the Trump administration who sought to eviscerate the Voice of America.”

While Lamberth’s latest order reversed the involuntary leave and firings imposed on full-time employees of the agency, he declined to restore the contracts for about 600 personal service contractors who worked for USAGM or VOA prior to the Trump administration cuts last March. The judge said Supreme Court rulings over the past year have made clear that litigation related to contracts can only be pursued through a specialized court, the Court of Federal Claims.

Last April, Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction ordering the restoration of both the employees and the contractors. However, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals later lifted those requirements, while leaving in place a directive to maintain VOA’s activities.

One of the lawyers challenging the cutbacks, Norman Eisen of the Democracy Defenders Fund, hailed Lamberth’s latest decision.

“It’s a vast repudiation of the illegal actions taken to attempt to dismantle Voice of America and USAGM,” Eisen said.“The court’s prior rulings already counteracted some of the worst decisions of the administration, but this one really offers the opportunity for a substantial renewal of operations.”

No Tech Bro's...........

This tech-backed mayor jumped into California’s gov’s race with a bang. Now ‘he might as well drop out.’

Matt Mahan, a centrist Democrat with an anti-establishment streak, is polling at 3 percent.

By Dustin Gardiner

Matt Mahan’s late foray into the race for California governor started with a Super Bowl ad, a rush of Silicon Valley support and speculation fanned by Mahan’s camp and others about tech titans underwriting a campaign to upend Democratic politics in the nation’s most populous state.

But seven weeks later, Mahan’s campaign is stalled.

The latest polling from POLITICO and its partners puts the San Jose mayor at 3 percent, almost exactly where he stood in other surveys before entering the race. He has qualified for one upcoming televised debate, but is polling below the threshold to make another. And while Mahan has raised more money than any candidate other than billionaire Tom Steyer, the more than $13.3 million that two major PACs supporting him have amassed is far less than the tens of millions some supporters had telegraphed, according to two prominent Democratic fundraisers in Silicon Valley, who were granted anonymity to describe private conversations.

A 43-year-old, centrist Democrat with an anti-establishment streak, Mahan may still have time to make a mark in a race that has no clear frontrunner, with the election nearly three months away. Viewed when he got into the race as a vehicle to power for the tech industry and a disruptive force in Sacramento, a cavalry of donors could still arrive to pull him into contention.

Mahan has been on a media blitz in recent days, traveling to New York to appear on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart, MS Now’s “11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle” and “Morning Joe,” while touting his recent endorsement from Majority Democrats, a center-left group that has backed Democrats like Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger and Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico.

But vast resources are required to compete statewide in California, and nothing Mahan has done to date suggests he is finding enough traction in his home state.

“He completely overestimated his standing politically in the state of California as the sitting mayor of San Jose,” said Garry South, a veteran Democratic consultant who’s run several prior campaigns for governor and who previously advised Gov. Gavin Newsom. “He’s gone. He might as well drop out.”

At a minimum, it’s been a disappointing start for the ambitious mayor, who some supporters view as not only the future of California, but Democratic politics writ large. Within Mahan’s orbit of allies, supporters are working to tamp down donors’ anxiety about his polling. One fundraiser supportive of Mahan, who was granted anonymity to describe private conversations, said a few major donors have gotten cold feet in recent days, while a strategist backing Mahan, who was also granted anonymity, blamed “gossipy” tech insiders for fueling unrealistic fundraising expectations.

Now, even some in Silicon Valley are writing him off.

“Tech people talk a big game, you allow yourself to listen to it and get smitten,” one of the Silicon Valley fundraisers said. “Then, they’re slow to act and quick to change their opinions when polling comes back. All those guys are like, ‘Maybe I’ll sit this one out and allow myself to write a much smaller check.’”

Mahan, who has never run for statewide office, was always going to face an uphill climb in a race against Democrats better known to California voters, including Rep. Eric Swalwell, former Rep. Katie Porter and Steyer. His team points to polling that shows a plurality of likely voters remain undecided in the race, arguing they could be persuaded to back Mahan once they learn about his moderate, anti-establishment message.

“You have an electorate that isn’t enamored with the gaggle of politicians and the politics-as-usual solutions,” said Eric Jaye, Mahan’s top consultant. “Our theory of the case hasn’t changed at all.”

Jaye said Mahan hasn’t had enough time to build his statewide name recognition. The campaign is sitting on most of the $10.54 million Mahan has raised, he said, planning to target voters with ads closer to the June 2 primary. He said the campaign expects to be in a different position in the polls by mid-April.

He added, “We haven’t launched our communication yet.”

While Mahan’s campaign is holding back, the outside PACs supporting him — and who financed the Super Bowl ad — are pouring money into TV ads in the state’s major media markets outside of his base in the San Francisco Bay Area, including a $2.3 million buy this week to introduce him to voters in Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento.

“We have got to let that sink in,” said Matt Rodriguez, campaign manager for two committees backing Mahan. “Everyone just needs to keep calm and carry on, as that old phrase goes.”

But while nearly 30 percent of respondents in the Citrin-POLITICO poll last week said they hadn’t heard of the mayor, it’s not clear that California voters, if they knew more about Mahan, would like him any better. His favorability rating in that survey was upside down — 18 percent favorable to 22 percent unfavorable.

Newsom, the politician Mahan is angling to succeed, is popular in this heavily Democratic state, and the strategic choice Mahan made to build his political profile criticizing the governor may be catching up with him. Mahan pivoted soon after entering the race, saying Newsom is “focused on the right issues” after long criticizing him for everything from his handling of homelessness and crime to his online trolling of President Donald Trump.

Mahan’s critics, including progressive groups and labor unions, pounced when Mahan accused his rivals of being too fixated on Trump, with the mayor saying “the best resistance is delivering results” on solving California’s problems like homelessness and unaffordability. And while the mayor said he called Newsom and sent him text messages when he entered the race, Newsom never responded. One Newsom ally, who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, said the governor’s supporters have communicated to major donors how they feel about Mahan’s past criticisms.

Jim DeBoo, another Newsom ally and longtime political adviser, said the concern for Mahan is now less about meeting high expectations for his campaign than avoiding an embarrassing showing.

“Because he jumped in with so much fanfare, if he ends as the fourth or fifth Democrat, it could do long-term damage to his career,” DeBoo said.

Mahan is not without supporters, many of them centrist Democrats drawn to his moderate, pro-growth ideology. He’s tapped into a subculture of influencers intrigued by his plain-spoken promises to remove wasteful state spending, slash barriers to new housing and force homeless people to accept shelter.

Jay Cheng, a longtime San Francisco operative, helped organize three fundraisers for Mahan in the city in recent weeks, including gatherings for Asian American business owners, young venture capitalists and the city’s traditional donor class of real estate and corporate titans. He said Mahan’s pragmatic tone is hitting a chord with powerbrokers eager for a Democrat who’s willing to challenge Sacramento’s establishment.

“It was like the Second Coming, I’m serious,” Cheng said, describing the scene as Mahan spoke at a gathering hosted by Garry Tan, CEO of the startup incubator Y Combinator and a prolific local donor. “After he spoke, it was like he got swarmed, literally swarmed by people as he was leaving the stage.”

But the challenge is whether Mahan can reach enough moderate-leaning voters before the primary. He will appear on the ballot alongside better-known rivals: Steyer, a former presidential candidate who’s spent nearly $90 million of his own wealth; Swalwell, a cable news star who also ran for president; and Porter, a liberal firebrand known for her viral whiteboard takedowns of corporate CEOs.

Between Swalwell, Steyer and Porter, no clear frontrunner has emerged, though Swalwell and Steyer have recently locked up key labor endorsements. But Mahan is nowhere near them — and nothing he has done so far has moved the needle enough for his campaign.

“For him, and the tech bros that are supporting him,” said Lorena Gonzalez, head of the powerful California Labor Federation, “they don’t understand voters and they don’t understand the moment.”

Democrat Daniel Biss wins Illinois House primary

AIPAC attacks fall flat as Democrat Daniel Biss wins Illinois House primary

The suburban Chicago mayor, who has criticized Israel, will succeed retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky.

By Shia Kapos

Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss won Tuesday’s Democratic primary to succeed Rep. Jan Schakowsky, dealing a blow to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in a race that had turned into a referendum on the group’s ability to influence the party.

Biss, whose mother is Israeli and whose grandparents are Holocaust survivors, has sharply criticized Israel’s war in Gaza — and faced an onslaught of attack ads from a group aligned with AIPAC as a result.

He defeated a crowded field that included social media influencer Kat Abughazaleh, a Palestinian American who is a more vocal critic, as well as AIPAC’s preferred candidate, state Sen. Laura Fine. Biss is now favored to win the general election in the heavily Democratic district.

The race had become one of the country’s most closely watched Democratic primaries, in large part because of AIPAC’s involvement in a district whose population is more than 10 percent Jewish and which has had a Jewish representative for more than 60 years.

An AIPAC-aligned group spent more than $5 million dollars in ads to boost Fine and attack Biss, then later, Abughazaleh. That group pulled down its anti-Biss attacks at the end of the race, before a different shell PAC emerged to prop up another low-polling progressive in the race in an attempt to divide the progressive vote.

Biss, meanwhile, had the endorsement of the more liberal pro-Israel organization J Street and publicly slammed AIPAC’s interference in Democratic primaries.

He is a former University of Chicago math professor who also served in the Illinois House and Senate and lost the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary to current Gov. JB Pritzker.

Schakowsky, the 14‑term incumbent who announced her retirement last year, formally backed Biss in January, praising his legislative experience and alignment with her priorities (they share similar views on Israel as well as other issues). That endorsement, coupled with his deep roots in the district, helped Biss fend off the crowded field and negative attacks.

Throughout the campaign, Biss pitched a broad policy platform that included boosting federal investment in affordable housing, expanding Social Security benefits and banning stock trading by members of Congress. He also drew national attention last year for his confrontations with federal immigration enforcement agents at a local gas station and his presence at anti‑ICE protests.

Another Black female senator

Stratton wins Illinois primary, giving Dems another Black female senator

Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton won with the help of outside spending — much of it from Gov. JB Pritzker.

By Shia Kapos

Democrats are now all but certain to elect another Black woman to the U.S. Senate after Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton won Tuesday’s bitter and expensive primary in Illinois.

Stratton overcame a crowded Democratic contest for the state’s open Senate seat, defeating front-runner Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi with the help of millions of dollars of outside spending — much of it from her old running mate, Gov. JB Pritzker.

She is widely seen as the favorite to succeed Sen. Dick Durbin in the blue state and would become the sixth Black woman to have ever served in the upper chamber.

The contest was defined by heavy outside spending and intraparty fissures over race. It became contentions during the final weeks, with Krishnamoorthi and Stratton trading sharp attacks on the debate stage and blasting each other in TV ads over corporate money and immigration policy.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus — who backed a different contender, Rep. Robin Kelly, in the primary — also warned that Pritzker’s interference could split the Black vote and cost Democrats a chance at electing a Black woman to the Senate this year.

Stratton’s late surge was powered by a combination of endorsements, outside spending and targeted messaging. She benefited from the support of Pritzker and Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.). Illinois Future PAC, which received major cash infusions from Pritzker and other allies, spent at least $11.8 million boosting Stratton’s campaign and attacking Krishnamoorthi.

Stratton will face Don Tracy, a former Illinois Republican Party chair, in November. If elected, she would become the second Black woman to be nominated to the Senate from Illinois, following Carol Moseley Braun — who endorsed Stratton in the contest.

King of Illinois

King of Illinois: Pritzker swings Senate race as he targets Trump

Juliana Stratton’s victory in a heated Senate primary vindicates the governor’s political operation heading into 2028.

By Shia Kapos, Aaron Pellish and Brakkton Booker

Gov. JB Pritzker emerged as the kingmaker in deep-blue Illinois after pouring millions of dollars and staking his political reputation to deliver his hand-picked Senate candidate a primary victory on Tuesday.

The result strengthens Pritzker’s standing within his party at a critical moment, as he prepares for a November gubernatorial campaign for his third term and looks ahead to a potential presidential run in 2028.

“It’s going to reflect well on him,” retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky said Tuesday night shortly after Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton was declared the winner in the Democratic primary for Illinois Senate.

Robyn Gabel, the Illinois House Majority Leader, added: “I think it will show that he has coattails, and that he has a big following, and that people respect his opinions on who to vote for.”

Pritzker has built a reputation as an influential governor by leveraging institutional authority, strong party support, and his own vast financial resources to shape policy statewide, including addressing energy challenges, cost-of-living concerns and making infrastructure improvements. With Democrats holding control of the state legislature, he has also been able to further strengthen his dominance in Springfield.

And on the national stage, Pritzker has positioned himself among the chief antagonists of President Donald Trump, regularly attacking his immigration enforcement surges, among other issues.

Pritzker’s grip on the party was on full display in downtown Chicago, where he celebrated his uncontested gubernatorial primary victory by touting his accomplishments and attacking Trump as Illinois Democrats stood behind him.

“For working families, the Trump presidency has been an unmitigated disaster. Oil prices are up. Measles is back. Farms are folding. Tariffs have raised the price of groceries and cars, and Illinoisans have been sent abroad to fight another Middle East war,” Pritzker told dozens of cheering supporters. “In response, what is the Illinois Republican Party doing to help everyday people? Nothing.”

The crowd’s enthusiasm was aided by an open bar — a detail noted by some attendees after reports circulated from the watch party of Stratton’s well-funded opponent, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, that his campaign was charging for drinks at the event.

Pritzker, who put millions of dollars into a super PAC supporting Stratton and campaigned regularly alongside his former running mate, brushed off concerns that a potential Stratton loss could tarnish his image. Another candidate he supported, Brad Schneider, won the Democratic nomination for Illinois’ 10th Congressional District.

“I’m not choosing candidates because I’ve taken a poll ahead of time and decided that I can only support a candidate that I know absolutely 100 percent is going to win otherwise,” Pritzker said at a candidate luncheon at Manny’s Deli on Chicago’s near South Side before polls closed. “Here’s what I know, when you’ve got somebody that is hyper-qualified for the job, that’s who I’m supporting.”

But later at Stratton’s watch party on Chicago’s West Side, Pritzker, who belongs to one of the nation’s wealthiest families, acknowledged the stake he held in Tuesday’s outcome.

“A lot of people have suggested this was personal to me,” he told hundreds of Stratton campaign staff and supporters, his voice noticeably strained late into the evening. “They were right. It was.”

The fractious Senate primary was defined by massive spending, racial dynamics and lingering intraparty rivalries. Krishnamoorthi had a $30 million war chest and significant outside support but couldn’t compete with Pritzker’s financial muscle and institutional backing of Stratton.

Rep. Robin Kelly, who came in third in the race, drew criticism from some for potentially splitting the Black vote. She, like Stratton, is Black and there were fears they’d cancel one another out, opening a path for Krishnamoorthi, who took advantage of that and even ran ads propping up Kelly to give himself an edge.

Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, which backed Kelly, issued a rebuke of Pritzker’s involvement in the race earlier this month, accusing the billionaire governor of trying to “tip the scales in Illinois” which she said was “beyond frustrating.”

Kelly reiterated that sentiment before polls closed Tuesday.

“He’s put his thumb on the race. Seventy-three percent of her donations came from one family,” Kelly said Tuesday afternoon, referring to Pritzker’s financial backing of Stratton.

The tensions between Pritzker and Kelly date back to a 2022 power struggle over control of the Illinois Democratic Party, when Kelly was pushed out amid concerns from Pritzker’s allies about her ability to fundraise while serving in Congress. While both sides have since publicly downplayed the feud, the Senate primary reopened old wounds with outside groups and Democratic factions lining up behind different candidates.

Another CBC member, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who previously ran for the White House, said on Capitol Hill prior to polls closing in Illinois that “it would be a damn shame if Robin Kelly” lost.

“Isn’t it a shame that I don’t have billions of dollars?” Booker said. “Look … the way the rules are right now, JB Pritzker as the governor of that state is free to support anybody he wants and he has a tremendous amount of resources. I hold no ill will there.”

Illinois state Rep. Kam Buckner, the speaker pro tempore and a member of the national Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, defended Pritzker getting involved in the race.

“Political capital is a lot like financial capital, it does not grow because you admire it. It grows because you deploy it,” Buckner said in an interview. “He’s putting his political equity into circulation, which I think is the right thing for him to do.”