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Nithya Raman will face Mayor Karen Bass in the Nov. 3 runoff, AP says, edging out Spencer Pratt

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Nithya Raman had 115 days to make her case to Los Angeles voters.

The City Council member made a surprise late entry into the mayor’s race, the last of the major candidates to file for the primary. That left little time for her to form a campaign team, build her name recognition and persuade voters that she would be the best choice to lead the city.

On Monday, the Associated Press called the race, concluding that Raman would have enough votes to make a Nov. 3 runoff against Mayor Karen Bass, the first-place finisher who secured her spot in the showdown last week.

Reality television personality Spencer Pratt, who was in second place on election night, saw his lead over Raman steadily erode as mail-in ballots postmarked as late as June 2 were counted.

On Monday, Raman widened her gap over Pratt to nearly 3 percentage points. Bass had 34.3% of the vote, compared with 28.6% for Raman and 25.8% for Pratt, the latest results showed.

Raman, in a statement, said she was “incredibly honored” by the results, and invited Angelenos who are “frustrated by the broken status quo” to join her campaign.

“For too long, City Hall has prioritized giving political advantage to powerful interests that fund elections. Meanwhile, working people pay the price in higher rents, depleted services, and a city that has stopped working for them,” she said.

Raman led Pratt by 21,819 votes, 229,576 to 207,757, elections officials reported Monday evening, with an estimated 148,100 votes countywide still outstanding.

Pratt, a Republican and onetime star of MTV’s “The Hills,” grabbed much of the national spotlight, appearing on “Fox & Friends” and chatting up podcaster Joe Rogan. He didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bass strategist Douglas Herman responded to Monday’s results by issuing a broadside against Raman.

“A campaign against Nithya Raman, who allows encampments near schools and cuts the police force, is one Mayor Bass looks forward to winning,” he said in a statement.

Raman spent her time crisscrossing the city, going to dozens of events and zeroing in on renters and younger voters — groups she viewed as her base. Her team also navigated the city’s complex matching funds program, which quickly secured $1.25 million in taxpayer money to power her campaign.

Raman attended nearly 100 community meet-and-greets, her political team said. Those included numerous sessions with restaurant owners, including one in Echo Park, a “Families for Nithya” event in South L.A. and a comedy show at Upright Citizens Brigade.

Pratt “made a lot of noise and did a lot of television and got a lot of social media amplification, while she was out actually campaigning, meeting with voters, canvassing,” said Mike Bonin, a progressive former City Council member who now runs the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State L.A. “That matters.”

In the end, Raman accomplished two crucial goals: Make herself better known to Angelenos outside her Hollywood Hills-centered district, while framing Pratt as someone whose views were radically out of step with L.A. voters.

While Bass largely floated above the fray, Raman worked to amplify Pratt’s political views, linking them to President Trump and the far right. During a freewheeling debate on NBC4 Los Angeles, she said Pratt — who had been portraying the city as a dystopian hellscape — was offering a “MAGA Republican’s idea of what Los Angeles looks like.”

Raman’s team went much further on social media. In one video, the campaign excerpted Pratt’s interview with an ABC7 Los Angeles reporter, distorting his voice as he claimed that the city’s homeless residents are all drug addicts. That video cut back and forth between images of Pratt and footage of Trump.

In another video, Raman urged voters directly to keep Pratt from making the runoff. Using clips from his appearances on “The Alex Jones Show” — one where he questioned global warming, another where he discussed claims that 9/11 was an inside job — Raman portrayed Pratt as a far-right extremist.

“These are the politics that Spencer Pratt wants to bring to Los Angeles — hatred, fear, conspiracy theorizing, stupidity — the same thing that we’ve seen from the Trump administration,” Raman said. “If his campaign is allowed to continue for even a few more months … it’s going to make this city a lot more hateful and a lot more stupid.”

Pratt repeatedly sought to downplay his party registration, pointing out that the election is nonpartisan. He insisted that his campaign was aimed at Angelenos angry about how the city was being managed, as evidenced by disrepair of city streets and unchecked homeless encampments.

Still, Pratt limited his own appeal by going on Trump-friendly news outlets and doing “Trump performative stuff,” said Mike Murphy, a Los Angeles-based political strategist. Although that type of behavior grabbed attention on social media, it did not resonate with a significant percentage of L.A. voters, he said.

“There was a lot of hype, because he was different, loud and provocative,” said Murphy, a conservative who has advised former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and many other Republicans. “But a lot of the hype was on the internet, not in the city of Los Angeles voter rolls.”

If Raman was assailing Pratt on the right, she was also fending off an insurgent campaign from the left run by another member of the Democratic Socialists of America, the Rev. Rae Huang.

Huang pitched herself as the true progressive in the race, saying Raman had drifted too close to the middle during her time on council.

Raman’s campaign attempted to get Huang to drop out just weeks before the election, saying such a move was needed to defeat Pratt. Huang declined and went public about those efforts.

A;though the push to get Huang out of the race failed, the leftist’s campaign ended up falling flat, securing less than 3% of the vote in the primary.

Leslie Chang, a Raman supporter and co-chair of DSA’s L.A. chapter, said Raman had a sophisticated field operation to reach voters directly, while also relying on influencers and actors on social media to boost her name recognition.

Chang also said DSA’s voter guide, which recommended Raman, played a part in winning over progressive voters who may have considered Huang.

The voter guide recommended Raman, while not formally endorsing her, and questioned Huang’s experience in politics, saying it raised “significant questions on on how she plans to accomplish the specifics of such an ambitious agenda.”

One of the major differences between Huang and Raman’s campaigns was the amount of cash each had on hand to reach out to voters.

Huang’s campaign tried and ultimately failed to receive matching funds from the city, whereas Raman’s campaign unlocked the maximum allowed, $1.25 million.

Raman’s campaign also received contributions from writers and comedians who have made up the council member’s donation base in her previous elections. Her husband, Vali Chandrasekaran, is a prominent television writer.

Raman’s campaign expenditures included $300,000 to Middle Seat, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting business that also worked on the independent expenditure group supporting Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign in New York City.

The company helped the Raman campaign with digital advertising.

While Pratt ran as an outsider, critiquing Bass over her handling of the 2025 Palisades fire and the homelessness crisis, Raman pursued a different lane, saying Angelenos want a well-run city — one where potholes and streetlights are repaired in a timely manner. She also argued that City Hall makes decisions on favors and political expedience, not what’s best for the public.

Her campaign’s slogan reflected that.

During an early conversation with staffers and volunteers, conducted in a back house behind Raman’s Silver Lake home, she said: “We’re trying to build a city that works.”

“Those of us in the room at the time said, ‘That’s it. That’s the slogan for the campaign,’” said Adam Conover, a comedian who volunteered for Raman.

Days later, the campaign was printing the slogan on lawn signs and using it on social media.

News

Berlin Pride Event Attacker Killed in Police Shootout, Officials Say

The confrontation with the suspect in what has been described as a likely act of Islamist terrorism occurred as a large-scale manhunt was underway, the authorities said.

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JWST May Be Missing Water Hidden Deep Within Mini-Neptune Worlds

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Sub-Neptune exoplanets, exoplanets that are slightly smaller than Neptune, have been designated as the most common type of planet in the Milky Way Galaxy based on their vast discovery numbers, totaling almost 3,300 out of the more than 6,300 confirmed exoplanets to date. Despite these numbers, the characteristics of sub-Neptunes remain relatively unknown. This is primarily due to our own solar system not having its own sub-Neptune to use as an analog, along with their atmospheres being thick and hazy. As a result, this makes telescopic observations, even from powerful instruments like NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, extremely difficult.

Now, a team of researchers from the United States and Canada and led by the University of Chicago (UChicago) might be one step closer to better understanding the compositions of sub-Neptunes, which they discuss in a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal. For the study, the team used a series of computer models to simulate the atmospheric and interior composition of TOI-270 d, which is a sub-Neptune discovered in 2019 and located about 73 light-years away. Its radius and mass are about two times and 4.2 times of Earth, respectively, and it takes about 11.4 days to orbit its red dwarf star, which is smaller and cooler than our Sun. TOI-270 d and its sister planets, TOI-270 b and TOI-270 c, all orbit within the interior of their star’s habitable zone.

JWST had previously identified the existence of carbon dioxide, methane, and hydrogen within TOI-270 d’s atmosphere, which this combination indicates the presence of water. However, the exact state of the water remains unknown, meaning scientists don’t know if the water is a solid, a liquid, or a gas, along with the conditions that enable water and hydrogen to mix or separate.

In the end, the researchers found that a combination of temperature and the water-hydrogen ratio play a role in determining the mixing and separating of water and hydrogen. Specifically, TOI-270 d has a larger amount of water than hydrogen and combined with its warmer temperatures of 537 degrees Celsius (1,000 degrees Fahrenheit) could result in the water sinking beneath the hydrogen atmosphere, with the former shielding the lower-level water from observations, even from JWST. Essentially, sub-Neptunes could possess more water than scientists had previously estimated, and this challenges longstanding hypotheses that sub-Neptunes had well-mixed interiors instead of separated interiors as proposed by this study.

“It’s very possible these planets are hiding much more water than their atmospheres let on,” said Dr. Caroline Piaulet-Ghorayeb, who is a postdoctoral researcher at UChicago and lead author of the study. “It’s an interesting question, both because water is so important for life as we know it, and because it signals we have to interpret the data coming in from new, powerful telescopes in a more nuanced way to really know what’s going on.”

Some examples of “new, powerful telescopes” that Dr. Piaulet-Ghorayeb could be alluding to include several NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), and European Southern Observatory (ESO) planned telescopes. Most notably, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is slated to launch on August 30, 2026, and whose primary mission will include using a coronagraph to directly image exoplanets. An example of a ground-based telescope that could contribute to exoplanet atmospheric science is the ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), which is currently under active construction and is slated to begin scientific operations around December 2030.

What new insights into sub-Neptunes and their deep, watery atmospheres will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

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ICE shootings protested in Pasadena on National Day of Action

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Approximately 50 demonstrators gathered Saturday morning in Pasadena as part of a national action to honor lives lost during immigration enforcement operations and in detention centers during the Trump administration.

They wore fliers around their necks, hung with yellow thread, bearing the smiling faces and names of some of the 75 people who have died since January 2025.

“Killed by ICE” was printed above a photo of each person, including local resident Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, a 52-year-old killed while trying to flee immigration agents who descended on a Home Depot in Monrovia last year.

The Los Angeles residents, part of the San Gabriel Foothills Indivisible group, carried American flags and held signs that read “No ICE No War” and “Stop ICE Murders.”

“Good morning, Pasadena,” Betsy Hanger, an organizer with the group, boomed into a megaphone as she walked through an intersection. “Honk for democracy. Honk if you want ICE off our streets now.”

A chorus of horns sounded as drivers signaled their support.

Organizer Andra Clarke held a banner in each hand that read “Neighbors Say ICE Out.” The sign around her neck carried the name and photo of Francisco Gaspar-Andrés, a 48-year-old who died in a Texas detention center in December.

Clarke, 61, said the group has been gathering at the intersection of Colorado Boulevard and Fair Oaks Avenue every Saturday since March. Last weekend, they celebrated civil rights activist John Lewis.

This Saturday, though, their focus was aimed at ICE.

“Now 75 people have died at the hands of ICE,” Clarke said. “We were originally told, ‘Oh they’re going to go after the criminals, the people who are the worst of the worst.’ That’s a lie; that is not what’s happening.

“They’re targeting communities, they’re targeting people of color. It’s fascism. … Anybody who cares about humanity should care about what’s happening.”

Clarke said it hit her hard when she learned of the two recent deaths at the hands of ICE.

The event was also a vigil honoring 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was killed by an ICE agent in Houston on July 7 while driving his construction crew to a job site, and Johan Sebastian Guerrero, 25, who was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Maine during a traffic stop earlier this month.

“It’s like, again? It just doesn’t end. It feels like it never ends — the evil.”

Shortly before noon, Clarke used a megaphone to read aloud the names of the dozens who have died. After each name read, Hanger struck a singing bowl, the vibrations sounding out in the corner where they stood. At times, she read “unidentified man” or “four unidentified women.”

Next to them was a poster board with a photo of Daphy Michel, a 31-year-old woman found unresponsive at a bus shelter in Pittsburgh after ICE released her “into cold winter conditions and no care for mental health episodes or notice to relatives.”

“Let’s take a moment of silence for all those who were taken,” Clarke said, bowing her head.

Among those gathered to listen was Leticia Lopez, a 65-year-old South Pasadena resident whose voice trembled as she talked about the impact of hearing about another arrest or death tied to enforcement operations.

“It gets me to the core,” she said, striking her chest. “It’s not getting any better, it’s getting worse. I just feel like I need to do something.”

Lopez, who wore a shirt that read “Immigrants are not criminals but the president is,” said her mother and grandmother were forcefully repatriated from Arizona to Mexico.

Her mother, who was raised in Mexico, later met her father there. He moved to the U.S. in the 1950s as a bracero. Hearing the stories of today, she said, “triggers everything that they went through.”

“When I see it happening, it’s a generational trauma that I feel,” she said. Lopez said people around her are carrying passports and documents in public to prove they’re citizens.

“Because they’re afraid they might be profiled, picked up, kidnapped by ICE. When my son goes out, I worry,” she said of her 28-year-old.

Later that afternoon, about four miles away outside of Home Depot in Pasadena, organizers staked in the ground dozens of white crosses that bore photos of the dead — the majority of them men. Attendees of the vigil laid flowers at the crosses in a makeshift cemetery.

“Shot dead by ICE,” read one with a photo of Keith Porter Jr., who was killed by an off duty ICE officer in California.

Several of them contained details of how the deaths unfolded. A man killed after a tractor trailer struck him as he fled an ICE raid in Florida. A Cuban immigrant who died in a detention center (his death was later ruled a homicide). A Mexican national who fell 30 feet to his death during a raid in California.

Among the photos on crosses were Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

“Are we going to wait until 70 more die to do something?” asked Marlom Portillo, an educator with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, as he staked more crosses into the ground.

“What they want us to do is forget them,” Portillo added. “We will never get tired of denouncing this atrocity.”

“There are more people who died than there are people here protesting,” Kathleen Vallee, a Monrovia resident, observed to her friend. “And that says a lot about us.”

Vallee said when she attended the “No Kings” protest, it was “jam-packed.” Only a dozen people had gathered around 20 minutes into the vigil.

“It turns my stomach,” Vallee said, hands clasped. “This just seems to be seeping up from the sewer into our democracy and that motivates me.”

As the small crowd assembled, demonstrators carried signs that read “Every person is sacred,” “we keep us safe” and “neighbors say ICE out.” One woman carried a handmade sign that read: “Who will they come for next?”

Sheri Lochner, a 64-year-old Monrovia resident, is part of East Pasadena Community Defense Corner, a small group that “provides support and a sense of community” for day laborers.

Lochner said she watched as immigrant agents took six or seven men at an Oct. 1 ICE raid at the Monrovia Home Depot.

“So un-American,” Lochner said, as she scanned the rows of crosses. “This isn’t right.”

She added that her mom, who voted for Trump the first time, agreed with her.

“I speak up, I will not be silent,” she added.