Spencer Pratt made a pointed comment about theLA mayoral raceresults as he has yet to concede or contest the outcome.
“Are they done counting yet?” Pratt wrote in a comment on X.
The former reality TV star has not yet directly addressed his loss to left-wing Councilwoman Nithya Raman, who defeated Pratt and will now face incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in the November runoff.
Pratt, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump, overperformed on election night, leading the Democratic Socialists of America-backed candidate by at least eight points.
Spencer Pratt made a pointed comment about the mayoral race results as he has yet to concede or contest the outcome.BACKGRID
However, he soon began to lose his lead as more mail-in ballots, which tend to favor Democrats, were counted.
Raman has since built a sizable lead of more than 40,000 votes over Pratt, one week after the election. Since the race was called, Pratt has made only two other public comments.
In one post, he shared an image of a duck shortly after his hopes of becoming Los Angeles mayor came crashing down.
The cryptic message was of a lone duck floating on calm water at sunset as outrage over the election result erupted around him.
Raman has since built a sizable lead of more than 40,000 votes over Pratt, one week after the election. Since the race was called, Pratt has made only two other public comments.REUTERS
Pratt entered the race after his Southern California home burned down last year. “Sitting duck,” one person commented.
“Like water off a duck’s back,” another wrote, adding a folded-hands emoji.
Pratt has not publicly explained the meaning behind the sunset duck post, but it arrived as supporters continued to debate the result and the future of his unlikely political campaign.
His other post came after he fired back at Jimmy Kimmel, who roasted him for being defeated in the Los Angeles mayoral race.
During his monologue Tuesday night, the late-night host mocked claims that the election was “rigged” and referenced Pratt’s previous comments that he would leave the city if he lost.
“I know things might be tight right now, especially with the out-of-state donation money running out,” Kimmel said.
Pratt has not publicly explained the meaning behind the sunset duck post, but it arrived as supporters continued to debate the result and the future of his unlikely political campaign.AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
“Moving is expensive, so to help you out we rented you a U-Haul. Our staff spent the whole day decorating for you, and everybody will notice you and wave goodbye as you leave.”
Pratt responded Wednesday morning in what was only the second time he had spoken publicly since the election results were called, posting a video of his destroyed Pacific Palisades home.
“Jimmy Kimmel, I guess you missed the part of the story. I don’t need a U-Haul … I have nothing left to pack,” he wrote.
Since Pratt lost his bid for Los Angeles mayor, numerous theories alleging election fraud and voter fraud have circulated online, including claims amplified by President Donald Trump.
However, election officials, including the county Registrar’s Office and the California Secretary of State’s Office, have repeatedly rejected those allegations.
SpaceX is reducing its blockbusterinitial public offering(IPO) retail allotment to 20%, which is less than the initial estimates of 30%, CNBC reported on Thursday, citing a person familiar with the matter.
The move, according to the outlet, comes amid very high institutional demand for the eagerly awaited listing, which is projected to be worth over $1.8 trillion after its trading debut. According to the source, the allocation decisions are nearly finalized and could still change.
SpaceX is set to begin trading on Friday, in what is poised to become the largest public offering in history. Retail allocation is the percentage of shares reserved for individual, non-professional investors. Historically, US IPOs allocate 5% to 15% of shares to retail investors. However, for certain highly anticipated companies, this can be raised to 20% to 35%.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has unveiled a proposed framework for prediction markets that would prohibit contracts tied to violent or harmful events, including terrorism, war, and political assassinations, while largely preserving sports-based markets, according toBloomberg.
Under the proposal, "gaming" would be interpreted more narrowly, focusing on activities driven primarily by chance. As a result, most existing sports event contracts would remain permissible.
According to CFTC Chairman Michael Selig, the agency's goal is to "protect the integrity of our regulated markets without standing in the way of responsible innovation."
The proposal is intended to modernize and clarify how event contracts are evaluated, replacing broad restrictions with a more targeted approach. Dorothy DeWitt, a former CFTC market oversight official, said the framework "provides clarity as to what types of contracts are unlikely to be readily susceptible to manipulation."
Bloomberg writes that the regulator also signaled concern about contracts whose outcomes can be influenced by a single individual or specific in-game actions, suggesting those markets may face heightened scrutiny.
The initiative follows the rapid expansion of prediction markets after legal victories opened the door to election and sports-related contracts. As trading activity and investor interest continue to grow, the industry has sought clearer guidance on which markets are acceptable under federal oversight.
Supporters view the proposal as a step toward a more predictable regulatory environment that could encourage further investment and participation. Critics argue it risks legitimizing gambling-like activity within financial markets and could divert the agency from its traditional mission.
The proposal marks another milestone in the ongoing debate over how prediction markets should be regulated and where the line between investing and wagering should be drawn.
LOS ANGELES - More than a year after one of the most destructive fires in U.S. history, attorneys on Wednesday offered opening salvos in a federal jury trial accusing a 29-year-old man of sparking the initial flame that would lead, a week later, to the catastrophic inferno that claimed the lives of 12 people and reduced thousands of homes to ash in the wealthy coastal enclave of the Pacific Palisades.
"He wanted revenge - revenge against society because he blamed society for all his troubles," U.S. Attorney Mark Williams told the court.
Dejected and alone on New Year's Eve, driven by resentment, Jonathan Rinderknecht set fire to the hills surrounding an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood where he had once lived a better life, prosecutors charged.
Prosecutors alleged that Rinderknecht intentionally lit a small brush fire just after midnight on Jan. 1, 2025, near a clearing atop a popular hiking trail in the Santa Monica Mountains, then attempted to cover his tracks by constructing a digital record of a less sinister alibi.
Firefighters quickly suppressed that blaze, dubbed the Lachman Fire - but it smoldered among underground roots for a week before erupting to the surface via a single tree, where powerful Santa Ana winds whipped it into the Pacific Palisades Fire, investigators claim.
The two fires may have different names, Williams said of the so-called holdover fire, "but they were actually the same continuous fire."
Investigators identified Rinderknecht as a person of interest by matching geolocation cellular data, local security cameras and Flock police camera networks identifying his vehicle and license plate, as well as the defendant's own 911 call records.
"There was one phone that provided more geolocation data for the exact time we were looking for than the other ones," Michael Montevidoni, a special agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), told the court.
Steve Haney, an attorney for Rinderknecht, offered an alternate narrative for his client's proximity to the incident.
"The government says that's the voice and actions of a man who started a fire," Haney said of a recording, one of more than a dozen calls Rinderknecht placed to 911 in the minutes after the Lachman Fire erupted, played in court by the plaintiff. "It's the voice and actions of a man who was trying to stop a fire."
Haney said the fact that his client was in the area at the time - he was an Uber driver who had just dropped a ride off in the adjacent neighborhood - is not in dispute.
But the government has offered no "reliable evidence" showing Rinderknecht started the Lachman Fire, Haney said, much less that he is responsible for the Palisades Fire that followed it a week later.
"It's up to the government to prove to you how somehow these two fires with two different names, two different dates, and two different ignitions, somehow are not two fires, but one continuous fire that Jonathan should be responsible for," Haney said.
"The government has never charged or accused Jonathan of willfully starting a fire on Jan. 7," Haney said of the day the Palisades Fire ignited. "And they can't because he wasn't anywhere near the Pacific Palisades on Jan. 7, 2025."
Haney said the evidence will show the government investigated the two fires as separate events with two separate sets of suspects - and that the likely cause of the Lachman blaze was fireworks, not arson.
"After eight months, the government abandoned the two-fire theory. They replaced it with a single combined one-fire theory. ... It took over eight months to charge Jonathan with arson," he said, noting Rinderknecht was charged in October 2025, 10 months after the Lachman Fire.
The high-profile trial opened just as a contentious Los Angeles mayoral primary drew to a close, in which incumbent Karen Bass narrowly advanced to a November runoff after fending off attacks from both left and right over her handling of the fire response and aftermath.
Dressed in a dark suit, Rinderknecht wore a neutral expression but watched his attorney and witnesses intently throughout the day.
Driven by a fascination with fire and a resentment toward the wealthy, prosecutors claim, Rinderknecht started the fire intentionally with a lighter, then attempted to preserve evidence of "a more innocent explanation" when he recorded himself calling 911 and queried ChatGPT, "Are you at fault if a fire is lift [sic] because of your cigarettes?"
According to the state's case, arson investigators ruled out other potential causes of the Lachman fire, including fireworks, lightning, power lines, refracted sunlight - and cigarettes, in the last case performing more than 500 experiments at a specialized lab.
Prosecutors say evidence including eyewitnesses, a cache of GPS data from Rinderknecht's phone carrier geolocating his movements, video footage, his own 911 calls - as well as ChatGPT queries and even a song he repeatedly listened to - illustrate his alleged motive and attempted cover-up.
U.S. District Judge for the Central District of California Anne Hwang has excluded some of that evidence, including AI images Rinderknecht allegedly prompted of a class-war inferno months before the fire.
In a ChatGPT prompt cited in the complaint, Rinderknecht asked the chatbot to create a "dystopian painting" featuring people running from a burning forest, with "hundreds of thousands of people in poverty" separated by a giant gate from a "conglomerate of the richest people" who watch as the world burns. "They are laughing, enjoying themselves and dancing."
Prosecutors said the defendant, an Uber driver, was angry after failing to secure an invitation to a New Year's Eve party, and acted on long-simmering fantasies and resentments he'd harbored in a place he knew intimately.
"He definitely knew the area well. He had lived there a few years earlier with his boyfriend, who was renting a large house with a pool," Williams said. "You'll hear the defendant enjoyed living there - he was happy, in good shape, and people treated him well."
All of that changed, the prosecutor claimed, when the defendant's relationship ended, and he moved to a small apartment in Hollywood.
"His life started to deteriorate. ... In 2024, the defendant was lonely with no real friends. He lived by himself and was withdrawn," Williams said, adding "his own words will show how angry this made him."
Montevidoni, the ATF special agent, told the court he conducted close to 100 interviews during the course of the investigation, including those of the defendant's family, romantic partners, and acquaintances.
Investigators also conducted a fine-grained digital dragnet, extracting evidence from the defendant's iCloud, Gmail, OpenAI accounts, his Uber records, and multiple phone and phone carriers.
Rinderknecht's social views, personal life, and interior thoughts are irrelevant, Haney argued.
"This case is not about whether you like Jonathan or not, whether you approve of the way he uses his computer or activates his ChatGPT," Haney said. "The question is whether the government can prove beyond a reasonable doubt whether Jonathan set the fire on Jan. 1, 2025."
Despite extensive searches of his home, vehicle, and all of his digital records, Haney said, the state failed to produce evidence that his client intended to start a fire.
"The evidence will show ... that just after midnight, a fire began on a hillside. It will show panic, it will show confusion, it will show a frightened young man reporting it and desperately calling for help," Haney said.
The jury will consider whether evidence shows, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Rinderknecht committed three counts of arson, related to three different types of property that burned during the fire.
California’s rigged elections are difficult to defend...
California Democrats have rigged another election, and outsider Spencer Pratt has been bumped from the Los Angeles mayoral race. On Election Day, Pratt’s lead over third-place Nithya Raman was so large that she publicly cried over her loss. After a week of mail-in-ballot shenanigans, Raman has surged to secure a coveted spot on the November ballot — a statistical improbability in any jurisdiction familiar with arithmetic and basic ethics.
This “come from behind victory” has made it difficult for the usual election-fraud-deniers to pretend that California’s elections are free, fair, legal, or remotely based in reality. I noticed that National Review writer Dan McLaughlin — who spent a lot of time after 2020’s stolen election defending Joe Biden’s “victory” — felt compelled to make this small concession: “I’m suspicious of the voting in LA. For now, in the absence of evidence, that’s just vague suspicion unsupported by proof, but the vote-counting process reeks.”
I wrote a number of essays describing the historic irregularities of the 2020 election after Joe Biden supposedly “won” more than fifteen million extra votes than Barack Obama had secured in his re-election victory. In the 2020 election, President Trump won almost every traditional bellwether county across the country by double-digits. He expanded his voter support in almost every demographic and did better with black voters than any Republican since Eisenhower. He exceeded expectations in swing states. Economic variables and historic precedent strongly forecast a Trump victory. It was entirely reasonable to look at the statistical improbabilities of the 2020 election outcome (another race that was “decided” more than four days after Election “Day”) and conclude that the numbers did not make sense. It was entirely appropriate for Americans to gather outside the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and demand that Congress refrain from certifying an election irreparably tainted by mail-in-ballot fraud. Nevertheless, McLaughlin took time to mock me (and many others) and suggest that I had never heard of “split-ticket” voting. McLaughlin-type pundits have a difficult time understanding anybody who doesn’t blithely repeat back talking points mass-distributed by the corporate “news” machine.
It strikes me as ridiculous that McLaughlin finds it necessary to couch his “suspicions” about California’s elections behind verbal acknowledgments that, absent “evidence” and “proof” of fraud, no clear conclusions can be drawn. If you arrive home to find your front door smashed open, your house ransacked, and all your valuables missing, it is not a “vague suspicion” to conclude that your home has been burgled. I get the sense that McLaughlin would tell police, “In the absence of evidence, any conclusion that I’m the victim of burglary is just vague suspicion unsupported by proof.” I think this is why common-sense Americans have no interest in listening to pundits these days; doing so requires a level of pretending that makes most people feel dirty.
I don’t know Dan. Maybe he’s a nice guy. Maybe he believes what he writes. But he seems like somebody who would defend a future Democrat president who rounds all of us up into “MAGA Camps,” so long as CNN quoted Eric Holder as saying that the whole thing was legal and right. At some point, a person has to put his “thinking cap” on and start asking questions. Government bureaucrats and politicians are not truth-tellers; they’re propagandists. If you don’t have the sand to question authority, you’re just a parrot begging for a cracker. And if California’s most recent rigged election is the first time you’ve had “vague suspicions” about the legitimacy of America’s elections, then your punditry has the same whiff of freshness as a carriage horse’s bun bag.
Across the board, Americans do not trust the election process.
Every presidential election since the 2000 contest between Bush and Gore (which took thirty-five days to settle) has been sullied by allegations of fraud, disenfranchisement, illegal voting, ballot spoilage, electoral violations, and all manner of ethical misconduct. Members of the New Black Panther Party intimidated voters in Philadelphia in order to secure a Pennsylvania election victory for Barack Obama in 2008. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama deceived Democrat voters by perpetuating the lie that Russia “stole” the election for Donald Trump in 2016. While the corporate news media and Silicon Valley’s social media tsars censored reporting on Hunter Biden’s “laptop from Hell” in the lead-up to the 2020 election, Democrat-controlled cities reported more mail-in-ballots for Sleepy Joe than lawful registered voters. Since Trump’s 2024 landslide victory over Kamala Harris, Democrats have claimed that Elon Musk stole all the swing states for the president.
Nobody believes that our elections are on the up-and-up.
The fifty states do not uniformly require official photo ID. Election statutes are not uniformly enforced. Judges routinely step in to alter the rules for some areas but not others. Election “Day” has become Election Months because most states permit early voting that lasts for weeks, as well as the late tabulation of mail-in-ballots that arrive well after the election.
In many Democrat-controlled jurisdictions, multiple ballots arrive at every home, apartment, post office box, chicken coop, doghouse, street corner, vacant field, Walmart, convenience store, parking lot, and homeless encampment. American citizens don’t control election outcomes through their votes. Campaign operatives control election outcomes through ballot “harvesting” — whereby blank ballots are mailed out, filled out, and collected without ever involving the “voters” whose “votes” are cast in their names.
Once the vote counts are officially posted, most jurisdictions are incapable of verifying the legality of each vote cast or replicating the results with matched ballots and voter records. The local and state election commissions instead defer to the “Trust us, bro” standard of government accountability.
The whole electoral process is corrupt.
Everybody knows it. Democrats and Republicans have different reasons for distrusting the outcomes. But the point remains: Nobody trusts the outcomes. Pundits such as Dan McLaughlin exist to reassure the public that everything is hunky-dory. Don’t trust your eyes or the organ between your ears, they say.
Trust the process and the Establishment politicians who benefit from that process.
Why not?
These are the same professional “authorities,” after all, who “rationally” handled the arrival of the mostly-harmless COVID virus by closing schools, churches, and businesses; locking us up in our homes; creating arbitrary mask rules; forcing us to follow ludicrous “safety” protocols; and threatening to take our children away if we refused to submit to experimental injections redefined as “vaccines.” If you didn’t learn to “trust the experts” during COVID, I don’t know what to tell you. After we “flattened the curve in fifteen days,” we also proved that owning property causes “climate change” and that Dementia Joe Biden was the most popular president in American history! It was a banner few years!
Notwithstanding the proven track record of the Establishment Class, California’s recent “election” is forcing more people than ever to question whether this whole voting monstrosity in America is legitimate. When even “I will defend the integrity of the 2020 election to my dying breath” Dan McLaughlin admits that the radically shifting results for the Los Angeles mayoral race have made him “suspicious” of the voting process in California, the tide might be turning. Who knows. Maybe Dan will start to wonder whether it really makes sense that Joe Biden — a political candidate who struggled to receive more than single-digit support during prior attempts to reach the White House — won eighty-two million votes in 2020, eclipsing voter support for both President Obama and President Trump.
Common sense isn’t for everybody. Some people prefer to trust corrupt election officials. As Dan McLaughlin says, “The machine wins.” Well, the machine does tend to win when pundits refuse to recognize, confront, and condemn fraud.
Retail momentum on China expansion news drives GELS 73% surge
Gelteq's June 4 announcement of a Center of Excellence in Guangdong, China accelerates product development, formulation, testing, and commercialization in a key biotech hub.
This builds on Q1 2026 record revenue of $1.6M (up 73% YoY) reported in May, tied to Gummy USA merger, distribution gains, and partnerships like Healthy Extracts.
As a ~$6M market cap nano-cap with low float, $GELS attracted heavy retail attention on X/Twitter, with traders highlighting it as a 'China low float' runner targeting $1+.
Intraday momentum included new highs, references to short squeeze potential, and comparisons to similar volatile plays, amplifying volume and price action.
Prior preclinical successes and debt financing for commercialization provided additional positive context, though a recent shareholder meeting on dilutive notes added some risk.
No same-day press release identified; move reflects digestion of recent developments plus speculative retail buying in a thinly traded name.
Eloxx Pharmaceuticals is offering 2,975,000 shares of common stock and pre-funded warrants to purchase up to 3,025,000 shares. The public offering price is $11.00 per share and $10.99 per pre-funded warrant, producing total gross proceeds of $65,969,750 before underwriting discounts. The underwriters expect to deliver the securities on or about June 10, 2026. The prospectus states the offering proceeds to Eloxx, before expenses, are $61,349,750. The offering assumes 461,314 shares outstanding as of May 31, 2026 and concurrent exercises of up to 600,000 shares from existing pre-funded warrants. Pro forma cash and cash equivalents after the offering are presented as $65,713,000.
