As questions continue to swirl around Los Angeles’ mayoral election, newly surfaced videos show homeless individuals on Skid Row claiming they were paid cash to vote for Mayor Karen Bass. The allegations emerged just days after Republican Spencer Pratt lost a runoff spot as thousands of late-counted mail-in ballots shifted the race. In an interview on Skid Row posted to X on June 9, one homeless woman claimed she was paid $2 to vote for Bass. “They come out here all the time [to get votes],” she said. WOAH Homeless women living on Skid Row in Los Angeles says someone came and had her fill out a ballot for Karen BassThey told her who to vote for and then paid her $2 for the voteShe says “they come out here all the time” to get votes for Democrats“They told you to vote… pic.twitter.com/BEuPbM1RKg— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) June 9, 2026 In a separate interview posted this week, another woman on Skid Row claimed she was paid $5 and instructed to vote for Bass. Skid Row homeless claim they’ve been paid to vote for Karen Bass and Nithya Raman https://t.co/bElx1nmQM2 pic.twitter.com/cQ7dvgR59r— California Post (@californiapost) June 10, 2026 A third interview featured a man who claimed individuals regularly visit Skid Row to collect personal information from homeless residents in exchange for cash, then use that information to cast ballots. “They come down here to get your information, then they vote for you—some people will give you three bucks, some five,” said one man living on Skid Row.  Following the final vote count, LA City Councilwoman Nithya Raman finished ahead of Pratt by 29,368 votes, placing second, knocking him out of the race. Pratt has publicly questioned the results. In a post on X, he noted that Raman’s vote total increased by roughly 43,000 votes as mail-in ballots continued to be counted after election day, a figure he compared to widely cited estimates of Los Angeles’ homeless population. "A net swing of more than 43,000 votes since Tuesday.."43,000, huh? Where have I seen that number before…?Probably nothing. https://t.co/W2E3k6PHyR pic.twitter.com/ZfzHCy9enb— Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt) June 8, 2026 This isn’t the first time allegations involving payments to homeless individuals for political activity have surfaced in Los Angeles. Earlier this month, 64-year-old Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong pleaded guilty in federal court to paying people on Skid Row to sign election-related petitions. According to O’Keefe Media Group, its undercover investigation helped expose Armstrong’s activities. The organization recorded Armstrong allegedly offering cash payments in exchange for petition signatures and later provided evidence to law enforcement authorities. Los Angeles Election Fraud Caught on Hidden CameraLA election petitioners were caught on tape giving homeless individuals other voters' information, instructing them to forge voter names and signatures, and offering cash and drugs as incentives to register to vote. https://t.co/lCmAAPktyR pic.twitter.com/mf4dsxv4Md— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) June 8, 2026 According to court records cited by The Epoch Times, Armstrong worked for years as a paid petition circulator, collecting signatures for ballot initiatives, referendums, and recall efforts. The publication reported that Armstrong specifically targeted Skid Row because of its “high concentration of people in a relatively small area who were willing to sign petitions in exchange for cash.” In a statement to the Daily Signal, O’Keefe Media Group said the latest allegations should be taken seriously. “Where there’s smoke there’s fire, and we found that fire with Brenda Lee Armstrong on Skid Row. She is not the only person doing these election crimes,” the group said. O’Keefe Media Group also encouraged concerned voters to visit Skid Row themselves. “Go to Fifth or Sixth Street—you’d be amazed what you can find on Skid Row in general. What we did was we went down to Skid Row and filmed Brenda and some of her masked colleagues trying to pay people to register to vote, sign petitions fraudulently, and using other real voters’ names.” Longtime pollster Stefani Buhajla told the Daily Signal that the allegations warrant further scrutiny. “The allegations against Karen Bass’ campaign are serious and should be investigated thoroughly,” she said. “One thing we do know is that homeless encampments are hotbeds for crime, gang activity, and corruption, and politicians exploiting the vulnerable populations … for gain, while repugnant, is not new. Elected leaders should be focused on compassionate solutions to this crisis, not taking advantage of it.” The allegations have added to ongoing debate surrounding the mayoral election, particularly among voters already skeptical of California’s lengthy ballot-counting process. One data analysis widely shared on social media, including by Elon Musk, questioned how Raman overtook Pratt after election day despite underperforming in certain precincts. The level of fraud here is mind-blowing https://t.co/FkgZp26a7w— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 8, 2026 Neither Bass nor Raman has publicly addressed the allegations made in the videos. Neither of the candidates’ campaigns returned the Daily Signal’s request for comment.

A House Democrat faces a potential ethics investigation and loud criticism from her Republican colleague after she used her time during a committee hearing into alleged lawbreaking by the Democrat fundraising platform ActBlue to raise money for Democrat campaigns. “It was just such a blatant violation,” Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., told the Daily Signal in a phone interview Thursday. “You would think anybody would know that you can’t campaign fundraise for Democrats generally, or anybody in particular, in the middle of an official hearing,” he added. “It is a violation of ethics rules and, apparently, some federal statute.” Americans for Public Trust, a nonprofit ethics watchdog, filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Conduct Wednesday after the hearing. ‘Contribute Through ActBlue’ ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones on Thursday repeatedly pleaded her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself at the Committee on House Administration’s hearing, “Preventing Fraudulent Donations: Transparency, Verification, and Accountability.” ActBlue faces scrutiny for allegedly misleading Congress about its safeguards regarding foreign funding. ActBlue previously told the Daily Signal that it has “continually worked to comply” with all laws regarding foreign contributions. Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Texas, did not question Wallace-Jones with her time, but rather attacked the premise of the hearing, suggesting it was untoward for the committee’s Republican majority to investigate ActBlue but not the Republican counterpart, WinRed. Johnson concluded her remarks by saying, “So my comment to the American people is, vote, contribute through ActBlue, send money to your Democratic candidates. Make sure that Democrats win in November so that we can stop this nonsense once and for all.” APT will be filing an ethics complaint over Rep. Julie Johnson's (D-TX) apparent use of an official congressional hearing to solicit political donations.After going on a fact-free diatribe during a @HouseAdmin hearing, Johnson appeared to illegally solicit campaign… pic.twitter.com/bdUfQ3CYvB— Americans for Public Trust (@apublictrust) June 10, 2026 The Complaint Americans for Public Trust cited the House Ethics Manual, which states that “House buildings, and House rooms and offices—including district offices—are supported with official funds and hence are considered official resources. Accordingly, as a general rule, they may not be used for the conduct of campaign or political activities.” The watchdog group also cited 18 U.S.C. § 607(a)(1), which prohibits members of Congress from soliciting or receiving campaign contributions in federal offices in connection with federal, state, or local elections. “The American people deserve representatives that take seriously the threat of foreign influence in our politics,” Caitlin Southerland, executive director at Americans for Public Trust, told the Daily Signal in a statement Thursday. “The fact that Rep. Johnson used the hearing to grandstand and mislead the public about that threat, then break the law herself by illegally soliciting donations during the hearing, demonstrates how important it is that we hold politicians accountable,” Southerland added. “The Office of Congressional Conduct has our complaint regarding this cut-and-dried violation of the law and we urge them to take swift action.” 20260610 APT Johnson ComplaintDownload Johnson’s office did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time. Former Rep. Collin Allred edged out Johnson in the primary for her congressional seat in May. “It’s a clear violation of ethics rules and a misuse of a government official work as we’re working on the committee to be fundraising from the committee dais,” Griffith argued. “Just, it’s an outrageous abuse.” Griffith also countered Johnson’s suggestion of a double standard between ActBlue and WinRed. “When you look at ActBlue, it appears there was a systematic—at the very least—disregard for the law,” he said. “I have not seen that, as a general rule, with WinRed.” “If WinRed has done something, we’ll get to it,” he added.

The Justice Department defended its authority to ensure “fair” elections in California after it launched multiple election fraud investigations coupled with litigation over voter registration. California has long been known for liberal practices such as ballot harvesting, with a universal mail-in voting system that allows ballots to arrive a week after Election Day, and no voter ID requirements. “The Department of Justice has statutory authority to enforce our nation’s election laws, including through requesting state voter rolls and monitoring returns when candidates for federal office are on the ballot,” Justice Department spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre told the Daily Signal. “The department’s investigations into voter fraud in California are in line with this authority and will continue despite the state’s unwillingness to comply and reassure voters that their elections are, in fact, free, fair, and transparent,” Baldassarre continued. “Protecting election integrity is a top priority for the Trump administration.” Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, posted on X just days after the recent contentious primary elections that his office launched fraud investigations and would “follow the evidence.” “Without commenting on any specific investigation, my office has multiple election fraud investigations underway in coordination with @FBILosAngeles,” Essayli posted June 5 on X. “We will follow the evidence wherever it leads and prosecute any violations of federal election law to the fullest extent.” California, which takes a long time to count ballots in most years, garnered significant attention this year over the Los Angeles mayor’s race. On election night, it appeared Republican Spencer Pratt would be among the top two finishers to advance to the November general election before he was overtaken days later, with two Democrats—incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and City Council member Nithya Raman—advancing. “California may not be cheating because cheating is legal in the state,” Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, told the Daily Signal. “Mass harvesting of votes, and stuffing mailboxes full of votes are all legal in California.” Well before the California primary season, the Justice Department Civil Rights Division sought access to the state’s voter registration information to ensure compliance with the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act. In January, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter of the Central District of California ruled the state did not have to provide the data to the Justice Department. The federal government appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel heard arguments in May. In late May, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to create legal barriers to prevent the federal government from accessing voter rolls, voter lists, or certified voting technology without a specific court order. “California will not allow our elections to be commandeered by political intimidation, abuse of power, or chaotic interference from extremists chasing conspiracy theories,” Newsom said in a public statement. “This law protects voters, election workers, and the integrity of the democratic process from election-deniers who want to undermine democracy.” California has automatic voter registration for residents completing driver license, identification card, or change of address transactions. It allows universal mail-in voting where ballots are automatically mailed to every registered voter. Other states require voters to request a ballot for mail-in voting. A ballot postmarked by Election Day may arrive for counting up to seven days after Election Day. Further, the state has a 22-day grace period after Election Day for people to “cure” defective mail ballots. Further, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a watchdog group that reviews voter registration data nationally, found more than 23,000 deceased registrants on the voter rolls as of 2018. It also found 7,244 registered voters with non-residential addresses. “The California legislature enacted laws to protect their power,” Don Palmer, a former chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, now a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Signal. “It is damning that officials mail ballots out to addresses and they don’t even know if the voter is there.” Although the primary contests for the California governor and Los Angeles mayor drew national attention, federal candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives are also on the ballot this year in California. The Justice Department would have oversight of federal elections. The Daily Signal contacted the offices of both California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who oversees legal matters for the state, and Secretary of State Shirley Weber, the state’s chief election official. Neither responded. Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in the Los Angeles area, posted in a separate message on X, “We also have serious concerns about how California maintains its voter rolls. There are open questions about whether the state is promptly removing deceased voters, people who have moved, and individuals convicted of disqualifying felonies.” “On top of that, California allows third parties to collect and turn in ballots on voters’ behalf (a practice known as ballot harvesting) with few restrictions,” he continued in the post. “This makes it difficult to track who actually received, completed, and submitted each ballot.”

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.  The Democratic Party has a lot of problems that have been widely discussed.   One of the most notorious is, since the 2009 to 2017 presidencies of Barack Obama, and especially under Joe Biden, they have completely lost the so-called white working class.   People have estimated that in 2024, Kamala Harris only gained about 30% of that demographic. They had put so much emphasis on each particular community.   Every time a Democratic politician would address a crowd, he’d say, I’m for the LGBTQ plus something community, or, I’m for the Hispanic community. I’m for the Asian community.   And with the onset of DEI in the post-George Floyd, the white working class felt that they were unwanted or not liked or actually despised. We heard again and again—white privilege, white supremacy, and there was a whole vocabulary of disparagement. It started with Barack Obama when he wrote off his loss to Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania because people he basically called clingers, mindless automatons who cling to their Bibles and guns, didn’t understand the sophistication of Barack Obama.   Hillary Clinton went to West Virginia and said she wanted to shut down the coal industry as if all of those white middle-class and working-class coal miners didn’t matter.   Joe Biden said they should learn coding, get rid of them, ban mining.  Hillary, remember, called them deplorables and irredeemables. Joe Biden expanded that vocabulary with chumps, dregs, and most infamously, garbage.   And of course, when any time a Democrat or liberal’s communications were leaked or found their way to the public, they were always anti-white working class.   The CNN reporter who said he went to a Trump rally and had more teeth than everybody in the crowd, or Peter Strzok, the infamous FBI rogue agent, who said to his paramour, Lisa Page, texted her that he went to Walmart and he could smell them.   So they had a problem with them, and they can’t win without that rubric. It might be as—if you count women and men—it could be as much as, of the voting age, 30% to 50% of the electorate.  So now they think they’ve gotten smart, and they have a new approach. And the new approach is the old approach. They’re going to back off publicly from DEI in all of these primaries, publicly a little bit from open borders.   But you know what will happen? Kamala Harris was for banning deportation. She was going to ban fracking, but she didn’t say that when she was running.   Many of the candidates in the last election cycle—the governor of Virginia, the governor of New Jersey—had run as moderates, and then they showed their real selves once they were elected.   But now the emphasis is on, we’ve got to find white working-class, authentically genuine people. And it’s very hard for them because they are not genuine people themselves, the Democratic Socialist Islamist New Party.  So now all of a sudden, Pete Buttigieg is wearing a Caterpillar hat, grown a beard, Levi’s, as if he is going to represent the white working class. He’s the most sanctimonious, self-righteous, off-putting Democratic candidate who has zero chance to appeal to the white working class.   They thought that maybe they could have the evangelical angle, and so they dug up James Talarico, and he is a Christian evangelical minister of sorts.   And they thought, well, this will get a red state. He’s out of red state Texas. We’ll run him for Senate. He might be the next presidential or vice presidential candidate. Who knows? And of course, they didn’t check his background because the Democratic Party of today, as I said earlier, has a long record of despising traditional values and middle-class America.  And lo and behold, James Talarico has disparaged, in social media and in speeches, the white working class. He’s called Texans illiberal, gun-toting. He said that Jesus was nonbinary. He said there were six or seven genders. He said all of these things. And he comes across as a Pete Buttigieg at a pulpit.  They tried it again in Maine. They think they can knock off Susan Collins. Remember what their agenda is. They want to win the House, even if by one vote, because unlike the Republicans, they have mass solidarity.   And as soon as they get the House in January of 2027, they will impeach Donald Trump. But they can’t do anything to Donald Trump unless they get 60 votes to convict him.   And so they really, in their delusional mindset, think they can do that, and one of the people they’ve targeted is moderate Susan Collins.   There couldn’t be a more anti-MAGA Republican official. She’s as moderate as you can be in the Republican Party. She’s in a moderate purple state, and she’s a winning personality.   Even Donald Trump, who gets very exasperated when she votes against him on key pieces of legislation, has a working relationship, and why not? She’s about as conservative as you can get in Maine, and she is a loyal Republican.  So they ran an ex-oyster farmer. That’s what we were told. But there are no really oyster farmers in Maine. That term is not even used in Maine. It’s really a nepo-baby, a man who grew up very affluent and went to one of the most, I don’t know, prestigious but extremely expensive prep schools in the nation at Hotchkiss until he was kicked out.   He admirably served his country in Iraq when he had four tours. But in those tours, he was a disruptive figure. He put a Totenkopf Nazi symbol as a tattoo on his chest.   He disparaged women on social media. He went on disreputable, predator-like social media communications posts. He rough-handled women.  And when he was asked about all of this, Graham Platner said that he assured the Democrats on three areas that they could relax and he would be a viable candidate and beat Susan Collins.   Number one, he said he had no idea that 18 years ago when he put that Totenkopf tattoo on that it had any connection with the 3rd Panzer Division or SS Einsatzgruppen that ran the death camps.   Two, he said he was never physical—he was kind of a bore with his many girlfriends—but he never physically assaulted them or manhandled them.   And three, there would be no more revelations.  Within hours, some of his girlfriends came forward, even though they were manipulated by The New York Times, who didn’t tell their full narratives, but they told enough that that was all a lie, that they knew that he bragged about his Totenkopf. He used the German word for death’s head, which is only used since World War II in the context of the SS.   Number two, he did manhandle. He grabbed a woman, pushed her in a room, locked her in all night, and he was very abusive.   And number three, after he had assured people there would be no new revelation, there were these revelations, as aired in The New York Times.  Graham Platner is no more middle class than Donald Trump is.   The difference is Donald Trump is authentic. Whatever you think of Donald Trump, he wears his blue suit, his red tie, his orange makeup, his comb-over, his black Florsheim shoes, whether it’s 110 degrees or whether it’s 40 degrees, whether he’s in Tulare, California, or whether he’s watching mixed martial arts matches, or whether he’s talking with [Vladimir] Putin or [Jinjing] Xi.   He is what he is. He doesn’t fake himself and act as if he’s a working-class man who had to get a veteran loan to buy his home when he actually was given a loan by his rich father.  Everything about Graham Platner is artificial, but it displays this desire to appeal to a class that they despise.   And I’ll just finish with good old Joe Biden from Scranton. Remember him? In the 2020 primary, Elizabeth Warren was radical, so was Bernie Sanders, so was Cory Booker, so was Pete Buttigieg. They were all going to lose against Donald Trump. They panicked.   They got them all out by various backdoor mechanisms, the politicos, and then they refashioned Joe Biden into, “He’s good old Joe Biden. You remember him from the 1970s, the working guy from Scranton.”  That was kind of hard to do because he was out in the public saying that he would ban fracking. He would stop the wall. He was going to open the border. He was 100% behind DEI.   In fact, he was a waxen effigy that play acted as if he was middle class so that the Obama cadre could come back into power and push through, through the agency of Joe Biden, the most radical progressive agenda we’ve seen since the New Deal.  Add it all up, there is no way in the world that this elite party of Antifa, BLM, bicoastal elites, billionaires, fake socialists, wealthy people like [Zohran] Mamdani or Hasan Piker can appeal to the working class, especially the white working class.   So expect more fake middle class people like Graham Platner, James Talarico, and more Joe Bidens. And guess what? They’re all going to crash and burn just as these have because they’re not authentic.  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

The Department of Justice under President Donald Trump just took a pivotal step toward removing government-endorsed discrimination from America’s legal system and undermining the institutional apparatus of critical race theory. Critical race theory teaches that America is systemically racist and that even racially neutral policies are truly racist if they result in better outcomes for members of one race than for members of another. That’s the exact same logic as the legal theory known as “disparate impact.” Cornell Law School defines disparate impact as a policy or rule “that seems neutral but has a negative impact on a specific protected class of persons.” Government should strive to adopt policies that allow all Americans to flourish, regardless of race, but Democrat administrations have applied disparate impact theory to encourage “reverse” discrimination. For instance, the Justice Department and Department of Education under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden issued guidance warning that if a school disciplines students of one race more than students of another race, that is evidence of racial discrimination, even if the school’s policy is race-neutral. It doesn’t matter if particular students cause more trouble than other students—what matters is the racial breakdown of who gets punished. In one particularly revealing case, a woman sued the Alabama Department of Motor Vehicles, claiming disparate impact from the department’s requirement that people take the driver’s license exam in English. She said the English-only requirement had a disparate impact on people who don’t speak English, even though the road signs in Alabama are in English. While lower courts found in her favor, the Supreme Court struck down her claim in Alexander v. Sandoval (2001). Just as critical race theory teaches that American society is inherently racist against blacks and for whites, so the leftist reading of disparate impact theory finds fault with colorblind policies for their unintended consequences. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy released a memo Tuesday that restores sanity, however. The DOJ Disparate Impact Memo The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency tasked with preventing racial discrimination in employment, requested legal advice on disparate impact theory, and the DOJ responded with a far better approach to the law. EEOC’s current disparate impact guidelines “are unconstitutional because they contemplate liability based on disparate effects alone, without regard to an employer’s likely intent, and pressure employers to engage in race-based decisionmaking,” wrote T. Elliot Gaiser, assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel. Gaiser explained that if employers can demonstrate that the challenged policy “rationally serves a valid business practice,” that will constitute a valid response to a discrimination claim. “Workplace requirements and selection procedures—such as background checks, aptitude tests, and SAT scores—are presumptively job-related,” he added. “Only irrational or arbitrary practices with no plausible job-relatedness can create disparate-impact liability.” Finally, employees suing for disparate impact “must establish both that the challenged employment practice specifically caused the alleged disparate impact and provide evidence that an equally effective alternative practice causes less disparate impact.” These guidelines represent a return to common sense. No longer can potential employees of certain races sue for discrimination if a firm refuses to hire them for failing aptitude tests. This undermines the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” movement that has pressured companies to hire and promote racial minorities, arguably at the expense of more qualified candidates. 2026-06-09-eeoc-disparate-impactDownload Trump’s War on DEI This important memo represents one more step in the Trump administration’s efforts to reject the DEI movement and restore sanity. President Trump signed an executive order “restoring equality of opportunity and meritocracy” in April 2025, rejecting disparate impact liability. The EEOC moved to close most disparate impact cases by Sept. 30, according to an internal memo. The Office of Legal Counsel memo is not a court filing, but it does represent the legal stance of the Justice Department on the issue. Election Integrity and Disparate Impact The memo also comes after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, where the court found that legislatures violate the law when they draw congressional redistricting maps on the basis of race. Justice Samuel Alito rejected a disparate impact argument in favor of racial redistricting. This may bode ill for leftist arguments against voter ID requirements. In 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit struck down Texas’ voter ID law, finding that the law had a disparate impact on minorities. Democrats have baselessly condemned the mere requirement of a legal ID to vote as an imposition of “Jim Crow 2.0,” claiming that it is more difficult for racial minorities to obtain photo ID. According to the approach of the new DOJ guidance, a commonsense requirement that a person prove he is who he says he is in order to vote would not be presumptively unconstitutional due to some ridiculous claim of discrimination. This guidance represents one more step toward restoring sanity after Democrat-led administrations imposed critical race theory via misreadings of the law.