America

John Mayer calls it “adult day care”: the historic recording studio behind the arched gates on La Brea Avenue where famous musicians have been keeping themselves — and one another — creatively occupied since the mid-1960s. Known for decades as Henson Studios — and as A&M Studios before that — the 3-acre complex in the heart of Hollywood has played host to the creation of some of music’s most celebrated records, among them Carole King’s “Tapestry,” Joni Mitchell’s “Blue,” Guns N’ Roses’ “Use Your Illusion” and D’Angelo’s “Black Messiah.” Charlie Chaplin, who was born in London, began building the lot in 1917 in a white-and-brown English Tudor style; he went on to direct some of his best-known films, including “Modern Times” and “The Great Dictator,” on the property. In 1966, Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss bought the place and made it the base for their A&M Records; they converted two of the lot’s soundstages into high-end recording studios that drew the likes of Sergio Mendes, the Carpenters, Stevie Nicks, U2 and John Lennon.

In 1985, A&M’s parquet-floored Studio A was where Quincy Jones gathered the all-star congregation that recorded “We Are the World” in a marathon overnight session; in 2014, Daft Punk evoked the studios’ wood-paneled splendor in a performance of “Get Lucky” with Stevie Wonder at the 56th Grammy Awards.

Now, with an eye on preserving the spot at a moment of widespread upheaval in the entertainment industry, Mayer and his business partner, the filmmaker McG, have finalized a purchase of the lot, which they bought for $44 million from the family of the late Muppets creator Jim Henson and which they’ve renamed Chaplin Studios in honor of the silent-film giant who broke ground on it more than a century ago.

President Trump told the New York Post that music artist Bad Bunny was a “terrible choice” to headline the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show and that the NFL’s selection of the Puerto Rican singer and rapper sows “hatred.”

Department of Homeland Security adviser Corey Lewandowski suggested that Bad Bunny loathes the U.S. “It’s so shameful that they’ve decided to pick somebody who just seems to hate America so much to represent them at the halftime game,” he told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said on Monday that Bad Bunny disseminates “anti-American propaganda.”

The upshot: Bad Bunny (aka Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) is an enemy of the state. An outsider who doesn’t possess American values. A Super Bowl wrecker.

Heated debate around who is worthy to perform the halftime show is an American tradition (Prince, yes. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, no). But now, unsurprisingly, politics are part of that debate, so the mere fact that Bad Bunny is brown and Latino and sings in Spanish is seen by some as an affront to the right. Clearly the “Woke Bowl” is disrespecting the tough-on-immigration president, and in Español, no less.

But Bad Bunny is an American citizen, as are most people born in Puerto Rico after 1898, thanks to the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917. Bad Bunny, born in 1994, made the deadline with 96 years to spare. If the fear is that foreigners are coming here to take our jobs and ruin beloved American traditions, there are plenty of nonnative artists to grouse about.

For decades, outsiders have foisted their foreign music upon us at the Super Bowl between commercials for Doritos and Budweiser.

The United Kingdom’s Phil Collins played the 2000 Super Bowl XXXIV Halftime Show, as did Enrique Iglesias, who is from Spain. The Irishmen of U2 stole jobs away from Americans when they played the 2002 Super Bowl. The following year it was sneaky Canadian Shania Twain and a sus character from England referred to only as Sting.

Then came bad hombre after bad hombre from the UK: Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Coldplay. And don’t even get me started on Shakira, gyrating her Colombian self into 2020’s Super Bowl LIV Halftime Show, or the following year, the Weeknd using his sweet voice to distract from the fact he’s Canadian.

Remember all the anti-immigrant furor around those aforementioned performances? Of course not — because there was none. And this year, if the delicately reunited U.K. duo Oasis was to pull things together for 2026 and play the Super Bowl, it most certainly wouldn’t inspire the same kind of vitriol.

The right remembers that Bad Bunny criticized the Trump administration for its handling of Puerto Rico’s hurricane recovery, and that that he has spoken out against ICE’s inhumane treatment of immigrants. But calling Bad Bunny a dissenter is too direct, too Stalinist. It’s better to cast doubt upon the singer’s loyalty to America via thinly veiled racist rhetoric.

Turning Point USA, the right-wing group founded by Charlie Kirk and helmed by his wife, Erika Kirk, following his assassination, has organized its own counter-concert called the “All-American Halftime Show”. It will star rap-rocker Kid Rock and country artists Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett. The show is counter-programmed to compete with the Super Bowl halftime show, airing on X and conservative networks such as TBN and OAN around the same time as Bad Bunny’s set.

When the “alternative” show’s lineup was announced this week, Kid Rock took a jab at Bad Bunny in a statement: “He’s said he’s having a dance party, wearing a dress, and singing in Spanish? Cool. We plan to play great songs for folks who love America.”

Kid Rock isn’t known to wear dresses on stage, as Bad Bunny has done, but it’s unclear which songs of his he’ll play in the name of “loving America.”

Turning Point spokesman Andrew Kolvet said the show will reflect conservative values such as “faith, family, and freedom,” so Kid Rock likely won’t perform his 2001 track “Cool, Daddy Cool,” where he sings “Young ladies, young ladies, I like ‘em underage see / Some say that’s statutory, but I say it’s mandatory.” It’s also unlikely he’ll bust out his 2007 song “Lowlife (Living the Highlife)”: “I make Black music for the white man / Keep cocaine upon my nightstand.”

One thing is certain: He’ll continue to sing Trump’s praises, in English.

MEXICO CITY — Historians and observers accused the Trump administration of trying to rewrite American history to justify its own foreign policy decisions toward Latin America by posting a “historically inaccurate” version of the Mexican-American war.

The Monday statement from the White House commemorating the anniversary of the war described the conflict as a “legendary victory that secured the American Southwest, reasserted American sovereignty, and expanded the promise of American independence across our majestic continent.” The statement drew parallels between the period in U.S. history and its own increasingly aggressive policies toward Latin America, which it said would “ensure the Hemisphere remains safe.”

“Guided by our victory on the fields of Mexico 178 years ago, I have spared no effort in defending our southern border against invasion, upholding the rule of law, and protecting our homeland from forces of evil, violence, and destruction,” the statement said, though it was unsigned.

In the post, the White House makes no mention of the key role slavery played in the war and glorifies the wider “Manifest Destiny” period, which resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Native Americans from their land.

Sparking criticism

Alexander Aviña, Latin American history professor at Arizona State University, said the White House statement “underplays the massive amounts of violence that it took to expand” the U.S. to the Pacific shore at a time when the Trump administration has stuck its hand in Latin American affairs in a way not seen in decades, deposing Venezuela’s president, meddling in elections and threatening military action in Mexico and other countries.

“U.S. political leaders since then have seen this as an ugly aspect of U.S. history, this is a pretty clear instance of U.S. imperialism against its southern neighbor,” Aviña said. “The Trump administration is actually embracing this as a positive in U.S. history and framing it – inaccurately historically – as some sort of defensive measure to prevent the Mexico from invading them.”

On Tuesday, criticisms of the White House statement quickly rippled across social media.

Asked about the statement in her morning news briefing, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum guffawed, quipping and noting “we have to defend sovereignty.” Sheinbaum, who has walked a tight rope with the Trump administration, has responded to Trump with a balanced tone and occasionally with sarcasm, like when Trump changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

Historical sticking point

The Mexican-American war (1846–1848) was triggered by long-running border disputes between the U.S. and Mexico and the United States’ annexation of Texas in 1845. For years leading up to the war, Americans had gradually moved into the then-Mexican territory. Mexico had banned slavery and U.S. abolitionists feared the U.S. land grab was in part an attempt to add slave states.

After fighting broke out and successive U.S. victories, Mexico ceded more than 525,000 square miles of territory — including what now comprises Arizona, California, western Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Utah — to the U.S.

The moment turned Texas into a key chess piece during the U.S. Civil War and led former President Ulysses S. Grant to write later that the conflict with Mexico was “one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.”

The Associated Press was formed when five New York City newspapers funded a pony express route through Alabama to bring news of the Mexican War — as it is sometimes known in the U.S. — north faster than the U.S. Post Office could deliver it.

The war continues to be a historical sticking point between the two countries, particularly as Sheinbaum repeatedly reminds Trump that her country is a sovereign nation whenever Trump openly weighs taking military action against Mexican cartels and pressures Mexico to bend to its will.

Rewriting history

The White House statement falls in line with wider actions taken by the Trump administration to mold the federal government’s language around its own creed, said Albert Camarillo, history professor at Stanford University, who described the statement as a “distorted, ahistorical, imperialist version” of the war.

Aviña said the statement serves “to assert rhetorically that the U.S. is justified in establishing its so-called ‘America First’ policy throughout the Americas,” regardless of the historical accuracy.

The Trump administration has ordered the rewriting of history on display at the Smithsonian Institution, saying it was “restoring truth and sanity to American history.”

The administration has scrubbed government websites of history, legal records and data it finds disagreeable. Trump also ordered the government to remove any signs that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living,” including those making reference to slavery, destruction of Native American cultures and climate change.

“This statement is consistent with so many others that attempt to whitewash and reframe U.S. history and erase generations of historical scholarship,” Camarillo said.

Janetsky writes for the Associated Press.

Tulsi Gabbard’s political journey has been anything but straightforward.

As a teenager, she worked for her father, a prominent anti-gay activist, and his political organization, which opposed same-sex marriage. In 2002, she was elected to Hawaii’s House of Representatives, becoming — at age 21 — the youngest person to serve in the Legislature.

Gabbard was a Democrat and remained so for two decades, as she cycled from the statehouse to Honolulu’s City Council to the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 2020, she ran for president, renouncing her anti-LGBTQ views and apologizing for her earlier stance. She was a Bernie Sanders acolyte and a fierce critic of Donald Trump and, especially, his foreign policy. She denounced him at one point for “being Saudi Arabia’s bitch.”

Now, Gabbard is MAGA down to her stocking feet.

Despite no obvious qualifications — save for her fawning appearances on Fox News — Trump selected her to be the director of national intelligence, the nation’s spymaster-in-chief. Despite no earthly reason, Gabbard was present last week when the FBI conducted a heavy-handed raid at the Fulton County elections office in Georgia, pursuing a harebrained theory the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

Instead of, say, poring over the latest intelligence gleanings from Ukraine or Gaza, Gabbard stood watch as a team of flak-jacketed agents carted off hundreds of boxes of ballots and other election materials.

That’ll keep the homeland safe.

But as bizarre and unaccountable as it was, Gabbard’s presence outside Atlanta did make a certain amount of sense. She’s a longtime dabbler in crackpot conspiracies. And she’ll bend, like a swaying palm, whichever way the prevailing winds blow.

Some refer to her as the “Manchurian candidate,” said John Hart, a communication professor at Hawaii Pacific University, referring to the malleable cipher in the famous political thriller. In a different world, he suggested, Gabbard might have been Sanders’ running mate.

“It does take a certain amount of flexibility to think that someone who could have been the Democratic VP is now in Trump’s cabinet,” Hart observed.

The job of the nation’s director of national intelligence — a position created to address some of the failings that led to the 9/11 attacks — is to act as the president’s top intelligence adviser, synthesizing voluminous amounts of foreign, military and domestic information to help defend the country and protect its interests abroad.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with re-litigating U.S. elections, or tending to the bruised feelings of an onion-skinned president.

The job is supposed to be nonpartisan and apolitical, which should go without saying. Except it needs to be said in this time when all roads (and the actions of each cabinet member) lead to Trump, his ego, his whims and his insecurities.

There were ample signs Gabbard was a spectacularly bad pick for intelligence chief.

She blamed NATO and the Biden administration for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She claimed the U.S. was funding dangerous biological laboratories in the country — “parroting fake Russian propaganda,” in the words of then-Utah Sen. Mitt Romney.

She opposed U.S. aid to the rebels fighting Bashar Assad, met with Syria’s then-dictator and defended him against allegations he used chemical weapons against his own people.

She defended Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, who were indicted for masterminding two of the biggest leaks of intelligence secrets in U.S. history.

Still, Gabbard was narrowly confirmed by the Senate, 52 to 48. The vote, almost entirely along party lines, was an inauspicious start and nothing since had dispelled lawmakers’ well-placed lack of confidence.

Trump brushed aside Gabbard’s congressional testimony on Iran’s nuclear capabilities — “I don’t care what she said” — and bombed the country’s nuclear facilities. The putative intelligence chief was apparently irrelevant in the administration’s ouster of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Her bizarre presence in Georgia — where Gabbard reportedly arranged for FBI agents to make a post-raid call to the president — looks like nothing more than a way to worm her way back into his good graces.

(Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported this week that a U.S. intelligence official has filed a whistleblower complaint against Gabbard, which is caught up in wrangling over sharing details with Congress.)

California Sen. Adam Schiff said it’s “patently obvious to everyone Gabbard lacks the capability and credibility” to lead the country’s intelligence community.

“She has been sidelined by the White House, ignored by the agencies, and has zero credibility with Congress,” the Democrat wrote in an email. She’s responded by parroting Trump’s Big Lie “complete with cosplaying [a] secret agent in Fulton County and violating all norms and rules by connecting the President of the United States with line law enforcement officers executing a warrant. The only contribution that Tulsi Gabbard can make now would be to resign.”

Back in Hawaii, the former congresswoman has been in bad odor for years.

“It started with the criticism of President Obama” — a revered Hawaii native — over foreign policy “and a sense in Hawaii that she was more interested in appearing on the national media than working for the state,” said Colin Moore, a University of Hawaii political science professor and another longtime Gabbard watcher.

“Hawaii politicians have, with a few exceptions, tended to be kind of low-drama dealmakers, not the sort who attract national attention,” Moore said. “The goal is to rise in seniority and bring benefits back to the state. And that was never the model Tulsi followed.”

In recent years, as she sidled into Trump’s orbit, Hawaiian sightings of Gabbard have been few and far between, according to Honolulu Civil Beat, a statewide nonprofit news organization. Not that she’s been terribly missed in the deeply Democratic state.

“I’ve heard some less-charitable people say, ‘Don’t let the door hit your [rear end] on the way out,” said Hart.

But it’s not as though Gabbard’s ascension to director of intelligence was Hawaii’s loss and America’s gain. It’s been America’s loss, too.

You may have read recently how minions of the Trump administration removed an exhibit about slavery from the President’s House in Philadelphia (where George Washington lived, with slaves) as part of its ongoing sop to MAGA sensitivities and campaign to erase history in favor of a fairy tale in which the worst thing Washington ever did was chop down a cherry tree.

The study of history is by nature messy, replete with conflicting interpretations and incomplete puzzles, but it’s what you need to know in order not to repeat it. PBS, lately defunded by conservatives but not disassembled, is among the institutions working to bring it to the people — indeed, the only television outlet seriously devoted to it. (History Channel is just a name.) Premiering Tuesday and continuing weekly is the four-part series “Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History,” presented by Henry Louis Gates Jr., at the start of what happens to be Black History Month.

Gates, who also hosts the PBS genealogy series “Finding Your Roots,” has presented such documentaries as “Africa’s Great Civilizations” and “Great Migrations: A People on the Move,” has made cameo appearances in HBO’s “Watchmen” series and “The Simpsons.” He teaches at Harvard and is a well-known public figure — a history communicator, scholar and storyteller and a minor TV star the world also knows as “Skip.” Even-tempered and even-handed, he’s a good guide through the minefields of racial history — he keeps you from blowing up. You might find yourself angry at the material, but not with Gates.

“Under the floorboards of Western culture run two streams, continuously,” he says. “One is antisemitism, one is anti-Black racism,” whose purpose here is to explore “the areas of overlap.” They aren’t the only victims of bigotry in American history and modern America; Italians and Irish immigrants had their turn, too. White supremacy, which is very much alive in the land — turn on the news — disdains every people of color. But as people who shared the experience of being “mocked and feared, blamed and banished, envied and imitated,” often allied, sometimes antagonists, theirs is a special case.

Gates has assembled a stimulating, illuminating, maddening, saddening, but often inspiring, story of their relations with the world and one another. (Here and there he reaches a little outside his theme.) At 75, he’s lived through a good slice of the history illuminated here, including “our brief golden age” of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and though he structures his series as a pendulum swinging between worse and better news, he scrupulously bookends it in a hopeful mood, with a Seder to start and a discussion with students to end. His insistence that no one is safe until everyone is safe, can seem to portend a future in which no one will ever be safe, though as a teacher I assume he’s more sanguine. His manner, at least, is encouraging.

The Seder, which begins with a singing of “Go Down Moses (Let My People Go),” gathers a tableful of Black, white and biracial Jews — each distinguished enough to have their own Wikipedia pages — in a roundtable discussion. Participants include New Yorker editor David Remnick, author Jamaica Kincaid, journalist Esther Fein, rabbi Shais Rishon, Angela Buchdahl (the first East Asian American to be ordained as a rabbi); and culinary historian Michael Twitty, who provides the doubly meal — kosher salt collard greens, West African brisket and potato kugel with sweet and white potatoes and Creole spice.

Though both Jews and Black people faced (and face) discrimination, their American journeys were launched, says Gates, “on different trajectories,” one group chased from nominally Christian countries, the subject of durable medieval superstitions, the other dragged from their homes. Though the mass of Jewish migration, escaping Russian pogroms and Nazi Germany in succeeding waves, occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some arrived before the revolution; but the Constitution, which enshrined religious freedom, granted them legal rights. (This presumably did not help the Jews of African descent Gates says were present here early on.) Black people, kidnapped and enslaved, had none, and as freedom was gained, new laws were written to hold them in place.

Gates posits a sympathy between immigrant and first- and second-generation Jewish Americans in the 20th century and disadvantaged Black people, based on a common experience of oppression; Jewish newspapers used the word “pogrom” to describe violence against Black people in the South. And Jews, many raised with a sense of social justice, were disproportionately represented among white activists in the Civil Rights Movement. This would change: Where Martin Luther King declared “I’m more convinced than ever before that our destiny is tied up with the destiny of our Jewish brothers and vice versa, and we must work together,” later Black activists, like Stokely Carmichael preferred to go it alone, promoting self-determination and even separation.

Still, many of the stories here are based on Black and Jewish friendships. We learn of W. E. B. Du Bois and Joel Spingarn, who sat together on the board of the NAACP and to whom Du Bois dedicated his 1940 autobiography “Dusk of Dawn.” Of Tuskegee Institute founder Booker T. Washington and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, a president of Sears, Roebuck and Co., who built schools — more than 5,000 nationally, eventually — for systemically disadvantaged Black students. (Graduates included Maya Angelou and John Lewis.) Of Chicago rabbi Abraham Heschel, bringing 15 other white rabbis down to Selma, Ala., in 1964 at the request of King, where their arrest made headlines — which translated to political pressure.

In music, we meet Louis Armstrong, who as a boy worked and stayed with a Jewish family, and wore a Star of David, and his manager Joe Glaser. We’re told the story of Billie Holiday‘s lynching ballad “Strange Fruit,” written by Abel Meeropol (under his pseudonym Lewis Allan), recorded by Milt Gabler for his Commodore label and performed regularly by Holiday at Barney Josephson’s Cafe Society, New York’s first truly integrated nightclub. And we hear Paul Robeson, daring to sing in Yiddish in a concert in Moscow, in support of Itzik Feffer, a Jewish poet imprisoned (and later murdered) by the Soviets.

As a social and political history covering two intersecting storylines for more than the length of the nation, it’s packed with incident and facts — the Klan resurgent after World War I (six million members, it says here); the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where Jesse Owens triumphed and the U.S. committee pulled two Jewish sprinters from competition; racist Nazi policies, borrowed from American Jim Crow, and the Holocaust. Also the domestic destabilizing effects of wars in the Middle East. Jews and Black people will find themselves on the opposite sides of some questions.

Even at four hours, it’s a survey course, streamlined but not simplistic, and as such it will fly through some points and elide others; there are whole volumes dedicated elsewhere to what constitutes a single sentence here, and libraries dedicated to some of these figures. (Why not read some?) The view is not singular, and as such, there’ll be something for everyone to question, especially as Jews and Black people are often described as a community, when neither is heterogeneous. (Jews don’t even agree on what makes a Jew.)

But whatever goes back and forth between then, the world has its own ideas. “People who hate Jews,” says Gates, “uncannily hate Black people too. Because when the stuff hits the fan, they’re coming after both of us.”

The official Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday will feature Bad Bunny, the Grammy winner for album of the year, at the height of his powers and influence. Those upset by his onstage comments about the dignity of Latinos and immigrants, however, can turn to a competing bill featuring Kid Rock and Gabby Barrett.

Rock, the perennial MAGA raconteur and country-rock singer, will perform for the far-right activist group Turning Point USA’s counterprogramming event streaming across the conservative mediasphere. Turning Point USA is the activist group founded by the late Charlie Kirk, who was killed last year at a speaking event in Utah.

“We plan to play great songs for folks who love America,” Rock said in a statement announcing the bill. “We’re approaching this show like David and Goliath. Competing with the pro football machine and a global pop superstar is almost impossible … or is it?”

“He’s said he’s having a dance party, wearing a dress and singing in Spanish? Cool. We plan to play great songs for folks who love America,” Rock said, in an overt jab at the actual Super Bowl halftime show headliner.

Veteran country acts Lee Brice and Brantley Gilbert and Barrett, an “American Idol” alum with a 2019 Hot 100 hit in “I Hope,” will also perform.

While Rock’s right-wing politics have largely eclipsed his musical relevance in 2026, he’s recently tried to position himself as a power broker for MAGA-friendly concerts with just enough plausible appeal for more neutral country and rock fans. His planned 2026 touring festival, Rock the Country, is set to feature Blake Shelton, recent Grammy winner Jelly Roll, Creed and Miranda Lambert, but lost Ludacris and Morgan Wade following blowback from fans.

When Bad Bunny was booked for the Super Bowl in October, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said, “I didn’t even know who Bad Bunny was. But it sounds like a terrible decision, in my view, from what I’m hearing. It sounds like he’s not someone who appeals to a broader audience.”

“There are so many eyes on the Super Bowl — a lot of young, impressionable children. And, in my view, you would have Lee Greenwood, or role models, doing that. Not somebody like this, ” he added.

President Trump said a bill featuring the Grammy-winning Puerto Rican superstar — and the famously anti-Trump punk band Green Day — was part of the reason he would not attend the game this year. “I’m anti-them. I think it’s a terrible choice,” he said. “All it does is sow hatred. Terrible.”

As the Writers Guild of America West prepares to negotiate a new contract with major studios, its staff union has authorized a strike of its own.

The labor group’s staff union (WGSU), which includes attorneys, research analysts and other positions, claims that “management has dismissed [its] staff’s needs and engaged in bad faith surface bargaining with no intent to reach a fair contract.” According to the union’s social media post, 82% of its members voted to authorize a strike.

The union wrote that 100 members participated in the vote, “demonstrating our unity and commitment to winning a fair contract. If management won’t bargain in good faith with us at the table, we will see them on the picket line.”

With a strike authorization vote, a strike is not guaranteed, but it gives union leaders the power to call one if needed.

WGSU claims it has been negotiating with the union since last September. The pending contract, according to a flier from the union, deals with issues such as AI protections, pay raises and “basic protections” like grievance procedures.

WGA has denied these claims, arguing that the union has offered “comprehensive proposals with numerous union protections and improvements to compensation and benefits.”

“Public claims suggesting otherwise are inaccurate, and allegations of unfair labor practices are without merit. WGAW respects the staff’s right to engage in collective activity, and hopes to reach a first contract agreement with the staff union soon,” wrote a union spokesperson in a statement.

In response to the strike authorization, WGA West also released a four-page comparison of the proposals and counterproposals on Thursday. The document shows management has offered a minimum annual salary of $55,000 and the staff union is asking for a minimum of $59,737.

The Writers Guild made headlines in 2023 for the second-longest strike in the union’s history. At the time, film and TV writers were boycotting major studios and fighting for fair compensation. WGA West staffers also played a key role in the strike, as they too joined the picketing lines.

A contract was settled after a 148-day work stoppage, but it’s set to expire on May 1. The strike authorization vote comes as the WGA’s east and west coast groups get ready to once again sit down with major movie studios and streaming companies. Negotiations between the guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers are expected to begin March 16.

Following United States forces’ abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a new set of questions is emerging as to how far Donald Trump is prepared to go in pushing US power abroad through direct intervention.

But is this a real break with past policy – or the latest iteration of the US’s longstanding interventionist power play in Latin America?

And with Cuba back in the administration’s sights, will Trump push for further action in the region?

This week on UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill speaks with Senior Analyst at the National Security Archive, Peter Kornbluh.