00:00:36.740It's Monday, May 11th, 2026, and this is a special Mother's Day edition of AM Update, where we're giving our mom the day off.
00:00:43.780We're living their experience right now. Their experience has failed us.
00:00:49.060Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt is surging in the prediction markets and sparring with CBS News over claims of selective editing.
00:00:57.560What we don't need to be focused on is actually re-litigating 2024.
00:01:02.200Democrats ramping up pressure on their party chair to release a secret report on what went wrong in the 2024 election.
00:01:09.560The Pentagon dropping a trove of newly declassified UFO files.
00:01:14.960And 17 Americans in the middle of a deadly cruise ship hantavirus outbreak now off the vessel as health officials prepare to screen them in Nebraska.
00:01:23.880All that and more coming up in just a moment on your AM Update.
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00:02:33.560Fresh off his performance on the Los Angeles mayoral debate stage last week,
00:02:38.180former reality TV star Spencer Pratt dominating the political and cultural conversation.
00:02:43.600The Outsider now seeing the prospects of his unlikely victory rising, with prediction markets signaling his surge in the race.
00:02:50.100Pratt, best known for his role as the villain on MTV's reality series The Hills,
00:02:54.780entering the mayoral race after his home burned down in the 2025 Palisades fire,
00:02:59.680pointing to what he calls overwhelming failures by city officials to prepare for and respond to the disaster.
00:03:05.460Since then, Pratt's campaign has evolved into a broader referendum on politics as usual in Los Angeles,
00:03:11.180with the candidate hammering city leaders over homelessness, public safety, affordability, and basic city services.
00:03:18.300He has been especially critical of the millions spent on homeless outreach and non-profit contracts.
00:03:23.960Though he is a registered Republican, Pratt has tried to avoid becoming a national political proxy,
00:03:29.180keeping his message almost entirely local and casting his campaign as a revolt against the City Hall establishment.
00:03:35.200While no formal post-debate polls have been released, on Polymarket, Pratt has gone from
00:03:39.460just a 13% chance of winning the race to 30% as of last night. Current Mayor Karen Bass rising as
00:03:46.020well since the debate, up from 27% to 49%, largely thanks to the complete collapse of
00:03:51.980City Councilwoman Nithya Rahman, who has fallen from 55% to 22%. On Kalshi, Bass at 51% and Pratt
00:04:00.160at 30%. While not a substitute for polling, betting markets suggest traders now see Pratt
00:04:05.500as Bass's closest challenger heading into the final stretch. Mayor Bass may be coming to the
00:04:10.260same realization. On Saturday, the mayor pulling out of the next televised forum,
00:04:14.680set for this coming Wednesday. Pratt previously declining an invitation,
00:04:18.720citing scheduling conflicts. As Pratt has taken a higher profile, he's facing off with a national
00:04:24.080media organization over claims of biased edits. Pratt's sitting down with CBS News late last
00:04:29.480week for an interview on the burned out lot where his home once stood. The outlet condensing the
00:04:34.420interview into a short package featuring clips from Pratt's reality TV villain days and its own
00:04:39.400political analysis. Pratt first made a name for himself as the resident villain on MTV's hit show
00:04:44.940The Hills. I got a sister crying in my face doing drama. He yelled at me. But the 42-year-old former
00:04:51.720reality star who has no political experience is now a main character in the Los Angeles mayoral
00:04:57.620race. Why should voters believe that you who don't have any experience in that realm can actually be
00:05:03.780the solution? I may not have the experience, but I have the common sense to say this is not working.
00:05:08.560It's going to be a hard road to convince a very blue city like L.A. to take a chance on not only
00:05:14.320a novice politician, but somebody who has pretty much aligned himself with with Donald Trump and
00:05:19.600with Republicans. Pratt responding in a series of social media posts accusing CBS of cutting the
00:05:25.300interview into a quote hit piece quote cbs filmed with me on my burned out lot for over an hour
00:05:31.500and they turned it over to karen bass's pr team to edit it into a comical five minute hit piece
00:05:37.020with clips from the hills they can't beat my ideas they can't beat me in the debates so they
00:05:42.160got to try to turn my campaign into a sideshow on saturday cbs news posting the whole 28 minute
00:05:47.880interview to social media in the extended interview pratt elaborating on one of the
00:05:52.540central arguments of his campaign, that political experience in Los Angeles is not an asset if the
00:05:58.200people with experience are the ones who created the crisis. Why should voters believe that you
00:06:03.580who don't have any experience in that realm can actually be the solution? Yeah, because we're
00:06:08.340living their experience right now. Their experience has failed us. So what we need is somebody to come
00:06:14.460in with common sense. They're going to continue their experience is to tell you that all these
00:06:19.280people are just need a bed. We need more billions of dollars for these beds. The DEA has said 90%
00:06:27.180of the people living on the streets in Los Angeles are drug addicts. Drug addicts do not
00:06:32.100want beds. They want drugs. We need mandatory treatment. I don't mean jail. They don't all
00:06:36.880need to get jail, but we need to get mandatory medical treatment to get people off of super
00:06:41.460meth, get them off of fentanyl, and then we can work on getting them beds. In another moment,
00:06:47.280Pratt addresses comparisons between himself and New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani.
00:06:52.080The one thing I connect with is I know he promised his voters like the subway will be free.
00:06:57.500And I'm promising my voters, the metro buses, the metro trains, they will be free from urine, feces, stabbing, attacks.
00:07:08.220So that's kind of similar. We both had free things for public transportation.
00:07:13.040Early voting already underway ahead of the June 2nd primary.
00:07:16.140If no candidate reaches the 50% threshold, the top two finishers advance to a November 3rd runoff.
00:07:22.740An early April poll from UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs finding 40% of the electorate remains undecided,
00:07:29.500with Mayor Bass leading the field at 25%, followed by Pratt with 11%, and Rahman at 9%.
00:07:35.660But as we get new polls, we'll bring them to you.
00:07:39.700Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin taking fire from fellow Democrats
00:07:43.720over his refusal to release the DNC's full autopsy report on the 2024 election,
00:07:49.020with rumblings the report may be coming out after pushback from his own party.
00:07:53.400Martin ordering the review shortly after becoming DNC chair in February of last year.
00:07:58.260The effort reportedly included hundreds of interviews across all 50 states,
00:08:02.660looking at what went wrong in the presidential race,
00:08:05.140down-ballot races, organizing, communications, fundraising, and spending.
00:09:45.780That's why we've been focused in on actually putting those lessons into action.
00:09:50.520Former Vice President Kamala Harris also reportedly backing the report's release, according to NBC News.
00:09:56.780Yesterday on NBC, Democratic strategist Ashley Etienne suggesting the pressure campaign on the DNC may be working
00:10:03.720and that any release could expose some uncomfortable truths inside the party.
00:10:08.540I'm being told that the Democratic Party is going to release the autopsy in a matter of weeks.
00:10:12.780And it's going to include four things.
00:10:14.680It's going to include, one, an assessment of the organizing infrastructure of the party,
00:10:18.980an assessment of messaging and media strategy, as well as fundraising, and how and where the money was spent.
00:10:24.880And that's going to be the most explosive part because there's speculations that decisions were made by campaign leadership to line their pockets rather than actually advance a strategy to win the election.
00:10:36.660That is really the question that's on the table here that I think is causing a lot of people to want to discard and brush this under the rug.
00:10:46.000And I'm also hearing that Ken Martin is suffering a lot of pressure.
00:10:49.040He wants transparency, but there's pressure from within the party, the DNC and campaign leadership to bury this report.
00:10:56.920Coming up, a new trove of declassified UFO or UAP files released by the Pentagon and 17 Americans who were aboard a cruise ship hit by a deadly virus now off the vessel with health officials preparing for their return to the states.
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00:12:28.160In a long-anticipated disclosure, the Pentagon releasing a trove of declassified materials on Friday
00:12:35.220related to the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAPs, the updated government term for UFOs.
00:12:43.200The Department of War launching a new website, war.gov slash UFO, posting the first batch of materials, including over 160 files, most of them PDFs, along with 28 videos and 14 image files.
00:12:58.260Some of the records dating back to the 1940s, the Pentagon indicating more releases will come on a rolling basis over the next few weeks.
00:13:08.100The release coming after President Trump directed the Secretary of War
00:13:11.760and other federal agencies back in February
00:13:14.660to begin identifying the release of government files