Los Angeles City Council member Traci Park has raised more than $1.2 million for her reelection campaign in the city’s June 2 primary, more than double the amount collected by challenger Faizah Malik, according to finance reports filed this week.

Malik, a civil rights attorney, reported raising roughly $454,000 in her bid for the District 11 seat that skirts along the Westside, including Mar Vista, Pacific Palisades, Venice and Westchester, the reports show.

At nearly $1.7 million, the money raised in the race is the highest for the eight council seats, out of 15 total, on the ballot in the June 2 primary. Any candidate who wins a majority in the election will win the seat outright, otherwise the top two vote-getters will compete in the Nov. 3 general election.

Two of the eight races are open seats to replace termed-out incumbents, and in five other races, incumbents Eunisses Hernandez, Park, Hugo Soto-Martínez, Tim McOsker and Katy Yaroslavsky posted large fundraising leads against their challengers. One incumbent, Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, is running unopposed.

In the west San Fernando Valley’s 3rd District, three candidates are seeking to replace termed-out Councilmember Bob Blumenfield.

Insurance company founder Tim Gaspar was leading the pack in fundraising, reporting nearly $430,000. Barri Worth Girvan, an aide to Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsay Horvath, has raised about $235,000. Tech entrepreneur Christopher Robert “CR” Celona was far behind with about $12,300.

In Council District 1, which includes Highland Park and Pico-Union, incumbent Hernandez topped the field with about $319,000 in contributions. Challenger Maria Lou Calanche, a former Los Angeles police commissioner, reported raising about $182,000.

Among other challengers in the race, Sylvia Robledo, a small-business owner and longtime City Council aide, reported about $75,000 in contributions. Raul Claros, founder of a nonprofit called California Rising, listed $70,500 in contributions and entrepreneur Nelson Grande reported raising about $55,000.

There are six candidates vying to replace incumbent Curren Price in the 9th District, which includes USC and communities along the Harbor Freeway corridor.

Jose Ugarte, a former deputy chief of staff for Price, led the field in reported financial contributions, amassing $477,000.

Estuardo Mazariegos, head of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Los Angeles, reported roughly $200,000 in contributions and Elmer Roldan, director of a nonprofit, has raised about $114,000.

Entrepreneur Jorge Nuño and therapist Martha Sanchez trailed with about $25,000 and $13,000, respectively. Educator Jorge Hernandez Rosas did not report any contributions.

In the other races:

• Yaroslavsky reported raising about $431,000 for her 5th District seat, which includes Westwood, Palms and Hancock Park. None of her opponents, Henry Mantel and Morgan Oyler, reported raising more than $35,000.
• McOsker reported raising 242,000 for his 15th District seat in San Pedro. Challenger Jordan Rivers, a community organizer, told The Times he did not raise any funds.
• Soto-Martínez reported raising more than $170,000. The three challengers in the race — Colter Carlisle, Dylan Kendall and Rich Sarian — reported a combined $152,000.

The outcome of the Park-Malik contest in District 11 will be determined in the June 2 primary because there are only two candidates in the race.

In a statement, Councilmember Park credited her fundraising lead to her efforts to clear homeless encampments.

“I raised an historic number of donations from local Westside residents because I’ve been on the ground since Day One solving our number one priority: getting people off the streets into housing and treatment and removing dangerous encampments from our neighborhoods,” Park said. “Residents, workers and visitors all see the difference.”

Kendall Mayhew, communications director for Malik’s campaign, said in a statement that Park and her supporters are spending unprecedented money because “we are winning and they simply don’t know what else to do.”

“What our campaign has demonstrated so far, and what we will demonstrate at the ballot box in just a few weeks, is that corporate money cannot defeat an honest, people-powered campaign,” Mayhew said.

The fundraising totals reported this week represent money given by individual donors, who are limited to contributions of no more than $1,000 in this election cycle. While the reports offer a glance at fundraising, money is also coming in through independent expenditures, which have no limit on how much can be given.

For example, in District 1, the L.A. County Federation of Labor has reportedly spent more than $226,000 in support of Hernandez. Calanche is also receiving supporting funds: the Fix Los Angeles PAC Supporting Calanche, Ugarte and Park for City Council 2026 has spent about $46,000 on her campaign to unseat Hernandez.

On July 1st, 2025, 3I/ATLAS became the third known interstellar object (ISO) to pass through our Solar System. By October 30th, it made its closest pass to the Sun, disappearing behind it from Earth’s point of view, and began making its way out of the Solar System. As of April, it passed beyond the orbit of Jupiter and is well on its way back to interstellar space. Over the many months during which it was observed by multiple missions and ground-based telescopes, scientists collected extensive data on this ISO, which has proven quite revealing.

One such mission was the NASA/ESA/CSA’s James Webb Space Telescope* (JWST), which observed 3I/ATLAS on August 6th, 2025, observing a coma largely composed of carbon dioxide. And now, a team led by Caltech researchers has examined the mid-infrared signatures emitted by 3I/ATLAS as it approached the Sun to learn more about the environment in which it formed. Their results, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters*, show that the interstellar comet is rich in methane (CH₄).

Since comets and asteroids are essentially material left over from the formation of a planetary system, their composition can reveal details about the conditions at the time. Ergo, studying ISOs like 3I/ATLAS is the best way to learn about other star systems in our galaxy, short of sending interstellar missions to study them directly. Specifically, scientists are interested in determining the ratios and compositions of these chemical compounds, which differ from those of objects in the Solar System.

With its sensitive infrared instruments and spectrometers, the JWST can detect and map many of these compounds as ISOs experience outgassing. “It’s a very interesting object. It has been traveling through the galaxy for at least a billion years,” said Caltech graduate student Matthew Belyakov, lead author on the new paper. “The high speed at which it flew past us gave just a narrow window to study it. JWST is going to look at 3I/ATLAS one more time this spring. It’s already getting tough to observe; it’s now out by Jupiter.”

The two previous ISOs detected in our Solar System, 1I/’Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019, did not exhibit the same behavior as 3I/ATLAS. When ‘Oumuamua was first detected, it was already on its way out of our Solar System, and scientists were only able to observe it for 80 days, and the data was inconclusive, indicating that it behaved as both an asteroid and a comet, leading to speculation that it might be something else entirely (including an alien spacecraft!)

In contrast, 2I/Borisov was detected by an amateur astronomer when it was more than 3 AUs from the Sun (three times the distance between the Earth and Sun). While it showed activity consistent with that of a comet early on, it was relatively faint compared to 3I/ATLAS. In addition to being very bright, 3I/ATLAS was larger than expected and experienced intense periods of outgassing before and after making its closest approach to the Sun. This makes it an ideal target for study using the JWST’s instruments.

Since the comet had been irradiated by cosmic rays during its journey through interstellar space, most of its surface ices were only weakly outgassing on approach. However, Belyakov and his team’s analysis of data obtained as it left the Solar System in December 2025 showed that the comet began emitting more methane after its close flyby of the Sun. The change indicated that it had shed its ancient outer layers and was now outgassing from its underlying layers, revealing its interior composition.

*Images of 3I/ATLAS acquired by the Moons and Jupiter Imaging Spectrometer (MAJIS) instrument aboard the ESA’s Juice mission. Credit: ESA/Juice/MAJIS*

This information is already revealing vital details about other star systems in our galaxy and what kinds of objects formed in them long ago. Combined with recent data obtained by the Atacama Large Millimeter-submillimeter Array (ALMA), it could also help scientists constraint where it formed in the Milky Way.

The paper, titled “The Volatile Inventory of 3I/ATLAS as Seen with JWST/MIRI,” was co-authored by Ian Wong of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and Professor Mike Brown of Caltech’s Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS). Other co-authors included researchers from Caltech’s Center for Comparative Planetary Evolution (CCPE), the JHUAPL’s Planetary Exploration Group, Auburn University’s Leach Science Center, Eureka Scientific, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Further Reading: Caltech