Could Trump’s Hilton Endorsement Sabotage GOP Chances?

From CalMatters Capitol reporter Jeanne Kuang:

President Donald Trump has endorsed Republican Steve Hilton in California’s race for governor, a move that could consolidate the conservative vote and, ironically, reduce the GOP’s best chance of winning the seat.

With California’s top-two primary system, the eight Democratic candidates could split the vote so that the two GOP challengers, Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, would be the only ones on the general election ballot.

Like CalMatters reported last weekpollsters and strategists of both parties agree that this extreme result would be the GOP’s only realistic chance to win the seat in November.

But that can only happen if both Republican candidates continue to tie, splitting the Republican vote roughly equally. If a Republican pulls ahead significantly — say, with the approval of the president and the de facto leader of the party — that makes it more likely that one of the Democrats will get enough support to make it to the November ballot. Then each of the Republicans will face great odds.

Hilton has insisted he is the GOP’s best chance to win and has spent months attacking Bianco to consolidate the Republican vote, and the endorsement is likely to help him. Democrats will also use it to attack Hilton, given how unpopular Trump is with California voters; several candidates issued statements Monday condemning their relationship.

Hilton is a British-American political strategist and former adviser to Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. He has praised Trump for years on his former Fox News show and once called for an audit of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost.

Bianco is also a fan of Trump and has in the past joined far-right movements such as the Oath Keepers militia. He supported Trump’s 2024 re-election bid, calling on America to “put a criminal in the White House.” He recently confiscated ballots cast by Riverside County voters in the 2025 congressional special election, in a move that mirrors Trump’s FBI seizure of 2020 ballots in Georgia.

California college students in need of medical abortion services could access care directly on campus if the Legislature passes a proposal by a member of the Assembly Katherine Stephanie.

The San Francisco Democrat introduced the bill Monday, which would require community colleges to provide such services through campus health centers by Jan. 1, 2028. The measure follows similar legislation passed in 2019 that allowed students at the University of California and California State University to access medical abortions.

At a news conference outside the state Capitol in Sacramento, Stephany said her bill closes a “critical loophole” that allows some of the roughly 2 million students attending the state’s community colleges the same reproductive health services as “their peers at four-year institutions.”

Claire Densmore, a student at Sacramento City College and one of the legislative affairs directors for the Student Senate for California Community Colleges, said the bill would help make reproductive health care “not only legally available, but practically available.”

• Densmore: “At its heart, this work is about … making sure that wherever you go to school doesn’t undermine your right to health care for the whole person.”

From CalMatters higher education reporter Mikhail Zinstein:

Seven campuses in the Cal State system are in dire fiscal straits due to chronic enrollment declines.

Last month, the schools – Channel Islands, Chico, Dominguez Hills, East Bay, Humboldt, San Francisco and Sonoma – submitted reports to the Legislature on their turnaround plans.

Some of their stated goals include:

• Adding more internship opportunities by specialty.
• Building stronger relationships with local high schools and community colleges that simplify the application process.
• Increasing the number of students returning from one year to the next.

All of these efforts could mean retaining more students and the tuition dollars they bring.

San Francisco State, the only campus of the seven that draft student waiversprojects a drop from 18,500 Californians last year to under 15,000 by 2030. In 2022, about 21,500 Californians are enrolled on campus.

Before the official report is released, CalMatters went deep about how Cal State Dominguez Hills plans to add 800 more students — which should generate $25 million in additional annual revenue.