The top candidates for California governor crisscrossed the state Friday, all venturing to friendly political territory to woo voters and undermine their rivals as the June 2 primary election fast approaches.

The top Republican in the race, former Fox News host Steve Hilton, spent the day railing against transgender athletes before a high school track event in the Central Valley, an event sure to appeal to his base of President Trump supporters.

The front-running Democrats, former Biden administration Cabinet member Xavier Becerra and billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, rallied one of their party’s most influential constituencies: union members.

While both stuck with mostly an upbeat message and reiterated promises to lift up Californians struggling to make ends meet, Steyer afterward accused Becerra of being “a corporate Democrat who’s taking money from all these big corporations” who “doesn’t want to change things.”

Steyer’s had good reason to go after Becerra.

A new poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times showed Becerra leading the race with 25% support from likely voters, followed by Hilton at 21% and Steyer within striking distance at 19%. The two candidates who finish in first and second place in the primary will advance to the November general election, leaving the third-place finisher on the sideline.

Though he told reporters Friday morning that “I don’t pay attention to polls,” Steyer was energetic at a Northern California campaign event, where he held a private meeting with leaders of a union representing long-term caregivers. In brief remarks at the offices of SEIU Local 2015, Steyer described the race as a choice between a billionaire champion of working people and the corporate-backed Becerra.

“Does California work for Californians or does California work for corporations? The corporations think it works for them. They want it to continue to work for them and they’re putting up tens of millions of dollars to make sure they continue to make record profits,” he told dozens of home-care workers, teachers, construction workers and nurses at the West Sacramento gathering.

Groups including PG&E, the California Assn. of Realtors and the California Chamber of Commerce have spent more than $34 million opposing Steyer’s candidacy. The former hedge fund manager has pledged to lower energy bills by breaking up large electric utility monopolies.

As a billionaire who has so far poured $216 million of his own money into his gubernatorial campaign, Steyer has faced skepticism from some left-wing and working-class voters. But he is endorsed by progressives, including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-San Jose), and unions including the California Nurses Assn. and both major teachers unions.

“I voted for Tom. I was looking for a change,” said Alvenia Scott, a union board member who works as an in-home caregiver to her disabled sister.

“He really has some good ideas,” she said, adding that she had more qualms about Steyer’s lack of government experience than his wealth. “He made his way in life, more power to him.”

Hundreds of miles south in the Inland Empire, Becerra pledged to be on the side of unions if he is elected governor and urged voters to turn in their ballots in what has so far been a remarkably low-turnout election.

“I am with you. When I become governor and I sit behind that desk, you’ll have a union man sitting at that desk,” Becerra told about 500 people at the United Food and Commercial Workers hall in Bloomington.

He asked the crowd if they had cast their ballots and noted that not everyone raised their hand.

“Less than one in five Californians have actually cast their vote so far. We got to get that number way, way up,” he said, arguing that the election is about “sending a message all across the country that California will be counted, that California cannot be neglected, and that California will not take a knee to anyone in Washington, D.C.”

Only 12% of the state’s registered voters have cast ballots as of Thursday evening, according to the election tracking firm Political Data Inc.

Community college counselor Diego Rodriguez, 32, said he decided to vote for Becerra in recent weeks after seeing the former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary’s momentum in the race and researching his record.

“Also just his story. As someone who works in higher education, and seeing how Xavier, being first-generation, has benefited from higher education, and how he advocates for higher education,” the Rialto resident said. “Additionally, today, him being here at a labor union and advocating for the working class and labor, I think, is very important.”

Rodriguez said he first started looking into Becerra after he was among the candidates excluded from a USC debate that was ultimately canceled.

“I think that people became aware of him more because of that,” Rodriguez said. “There was a lot of conversation online regarding that, but I think it allowed the spotlight to be brought onto him and it made people aware of his record.”

At a campaign stop in Clovis in the central part of the state, Hilton marveled that his campaign had spent only about $2 million in campaign advertising but was still polling above Steyer, according to the latest Berkeley IGS survey.

“We’re feeling confident,” said Hilton, standing in a suburban stretch of the city. Still, he warned that voters need to get out to support him and avoid a “complete disaster for California” of two Democrats advancing to the November election.

Hilton, who was endorsed by Trump in April, joined other politicians and leaders in Clovis in opposing trans athletes from competing at the 2026 CIF State Track & Field Championships.

The group met near where the championship events were scheduled to take place this weekend.

Asked why he was focusing on sports and gender in the final days of the race, Hilton said it’s “one of the main issues” that come up at town halls. If elected, he said he would seek to overturn the state’s 13-year-old law that allows students to participate in school activities and use facilities such as bathrooms based on their gender identity.

Hilton argues the law violates the state Constitution and will “suspend” it while he initiates legal proceedings to overturn it.

He also praised Spencer Pratt, a Republican and former reality TV star who is running for Los Angeles mayor, saying his candidacy has brought “excitement and energy” to the state’s primary election.

“For a long time in California, there’s been this sense that it’s all inevitable — there’s nothing you can do, Democrats run this place, just the way it is,” Hilton said. “I think that that’s changing. I think there’s this sense that something’s happening.”

There’s a planet out there called LHS 3844 b, orbiting a star about 48 light-years away. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) found it in 2018 when the planet transited across the face of its star. The James Webb Space Telescope zxeroed in on the planet and found it to be a barren, rocky place with no atmosphere.

The planet, informally named Kua’kua, after a Central American Bribri word for “butterfly”, is about 30 percent bigger than Earth (making it a super-Earth). It orbits its red dwarf star host (named Batsu), once every 11 hours and is in a tidally locked orbit. That means it shows the same face to its star all the time. That tight proximity means Kua’kua’s dayside roasts under a constant 1000 Kelvin temperature. As you can imagine, that’s not an environment like the Earth we know today. In fact, it may be more like Mercury, only bigger.

The exoplanet LHS 3844 b could have a surface appearance very similar to Mercury’s (shown here). JWST observations allow scientists to get more information about distant worlds. Courtesy NASA.

A team of researchers led by Harvard CFA PhD student Sebstian Zieba and Laura Kreidberg, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy Heidelberg, used the Mid Infrared Intrument (MIRI) on JWST to analyze Kua’kua’s surface composition. The instrument is often used to study exoplanet atmospheres, as well as the geological surface properties of such worlds. “Thanks to the amazing sensitivity of JWST, we can detect light coming directly from the surface of this distant rocky planet,” said Kreidberg. “We see a dark, hot, barren rock, devoid of any atmosphere.”

Understanding Kua’kua from JWST Data

JWST’s MIRI studied the infrared radiation coming from the sizzling dayside of the planet to get a spectrum of the surface. Zieba and Kreidberg’s team ran models and compared the JWST data to template libraries of rocks and minerals known from Earth, the Moon, and Mars. That gave them a good idea of what could be producing the infrared signatures seen at Kua’kua. Comparing observation-based data with team computations confidently ruled out that Kua’kua’s surface is like to Earth’s crust (which is typically silicate-rich rocks such as granite).

*Infrared spectrum of LHS 3844 b’s hot dayside derived from the brightness contrast to its host star in ppm (parts per million = 0.0001%) at different wavelengths. The observational data obtained from the James Webb and Spitzer Space Telescopes are consistent with mantle or lava rock, whereas they rule out an Earth-like crust. Courtesy Sebastian Zieba et al./MPIA*

The team’s findings will ultimately reveal details of Kua’kua’s geological history. Earth-like silicate-rich crusts are thought to form through a prolonged refinement process that requires tectonic activity and typically relies on water as a lubricant. The rocky material repeatedly melts and solidifies as it is mixed with mantle material, leaving the lighter minerals on the surface. “Since LHS 3844 b lacks such a silicate crust, one may conclude that Earth-like plate tectonics does not apply to this planet, or it is ineffective,” said Zieba. “This planet likely only contains little water.”

In addition, the lack of an atmosphere suggests that the planet hasn’t been geologically active for a long time, since volcanism produces gases that help form atmospheres.

Walking on Kua’kua

What if we could travel across this planet’s surface? What would it be like? The best idea so far is that it might look like terrestrial or lunar basalt, that is, volcanic in origin and rich in magnesium and iron. There could be a lot of crushed material, such as rocks or gravel. There probably isn’t a lot of powdery or sandy stuff there, whereas grains or powders are inconsistent with the observations due to their brighter appearance, at least at first glance.

Without a protective atmosphere, planets are subjected to space weathering, predominantly driven by hard, energetic radiation from the host star and impacts from meteorites of various sizes. “It turns out, these processes not only slowly dissolve hard rocks into regolith, a layer of fine grains or powder as found on the Moon,” explained Zieba. “They also darken the layer by adding iron and carbon, making the regolith’s properties more consistent with the observations.”

Regolith coats the surface of the Moon in a fine dust. It’s created by constant bombardment by micrometeorites that crush rocks into dust. Courtesy NASA.

There are two scenarios of what it might be like on Kua’kua. The surface could be covered by dark, solid rock, maybe very recently laid down by volcanic activity. Since space weathering shows up quickly and looks bright in infrared, this supports the idea of a freshly deposited surface. On the other hand, it’s also possible that such a dark surface could have been laid down long ago and undergone recent space weathering that covered it in darkened regolith layers. That’s what exists on our Moon, and its surface is fairly ancient. If that’s what Kua’kua’s surface is like, then it may not have been volcanically active in recent times.

More Data Will Yield Better Understanding

Zieba, Kreidberg, and their colleagues are already on the case to explain the surface. Additional JWST observations will likely give them more information on the surface conditions so that they can discern between how solid surface slabs and powders emit or reflect infrared light. Surface roughness, for example, affects the amount of radiation received at a given viewing angle. So, continued observations will yield differing views of the same regions over time. This concept is successfully applied to characterizing asteroids in the Solar System. “We are confident the same technique will allow us to clarify the nature of LHS 3844 b’s crust and, in the future, other rocky exoplanets,” said Kreidberg.

For More Information

Astronomers Explore the Surface Composition of a Nearby Super-Earth

The Dark and Featureless Surface of Rocky Exoplanet LHS 3844 b from JWST Mid-infrared Spectroscopy