Black

Kamala Harris was distraught as she stood before an audience one morning in July 2016. In the previous three days, violence involving police had rattled the nation.

Officers had shot and killed one black man in Baton Rouge, La., and another in his car outside Minneapolis as his horrified girlfriend and her toddler watched. At a protest against those shootings, a sniper had killed five Dallas police officers.

“I have to tell you, my heart is breaking,” Harris said at a meeting on racial bias in policing. Her voice wavered.

“As a prosecutor, my heart is breaking. As the top law enforcement officer in this state. And as a black woman.”

Harris, then California attorney general, paid tribute to officers whose families pray they stay out of danger. She also said she’d never known a black man who wasn’t racially profiled or unfairly stopped.

It was an unusually frank acknowledgment of the forces pulling her in opposite directions in the two years since police killings of black men had set off demonstrations across the country and fueled the Black Lives Matter movement.

Seeking to reconcile the competing demands of police and civil rights groups, Harris tried to avoid inflaming either side. That relatively safe approach has left her open to criticism that she could have done more to lead California’s efforts to limit police use of lethal force.

Harris did make tangible advances in police accountability. She focused on programs inside the attorney general’s office, drawing praise from civil rights advocates and scant resistance from law enforcement.

At the same time, Harris, the state’s first black attorney general, steered clear of the legislative brawls over bills on policing, including what became a groundbreaking law to curb racial profiling. Harris also rejected pleas by civil rights activists to investigate deadly police shootings of young black men in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“She is maybe a modest reformer, and that’s fine,” said Anne Weills, an Oakland civil rights attorney. “But I don’t think that means she is particularly progressive. She doesn’t look at the big picture about how to make structural change.”

On July 8, 2016, the Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board met to begin its work under Assembly Bill 953, focusing on eliminating racial and identity profiling in law enforcement.

For months, Harris has been fending off accusations, most recently in a debate Wednesday, that she did too little to fight racial bias in the criminal justice system.

Harris told The Times she was frustrated by the slow pace of change, but pointed to progress made during her tenure.

“You’d be hard pressed to find any other attorney general in America who at that time was doing the kind of transformative work that we did,” Harris said.

Harris had been attorney general for nearly four years when a white police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man in Ferguson, Mo. The shooting on Aug. 9, 2014, reshaped the politics of race and law enforcement in America.

Video of Brown’s body, left face down in the street in a pool of blood for four hours, went viral on social media. Over the next several days, images of white cops in military vehicles firing tear gas and rubber bullets at mainly black protesters came to symbolize police violence against African Americans.

Police shootings became major news in the months that followed as they were captured in smartphone videos that spread nationwide.

“The death rate from police use of lethal force has been stable for a long time,” said Franklin Zimring, a criminologist and law professor at UC Berkeley. “What happened with Ferguson … was people started to notice that these things kept happening.”

Civil rights groups pressed for new limits on police power. Law enforcement, feeling besieged, fought many of the proposals.

For Harris, the timing was difficult. Police unions had overwhelmingly opposed her when she first ran for the job in 2010, in part because she declined to pursue the death penalty against the killer of a San Francisco police officer, Isaac Espinoza, when she was the San Francisco district attorney. She labored hard to secure their overwhelming support in her run for reelection.

“She had to walk a fine tightrope,” said Brian Marvel, a San Diego police officer and president of the Peace Officers Research Assn. of California, the state’s top police advocacy group.

But civil rights advocates also set high expectations.

“We always hope that because you look like us, you talk like us, you walk like us, you come from where we come from — that you’re not just reading about this in the news. You know there is a war being waged against black bodies,” said Cat Brooks, an Oakland activist who thought Harris fell short.

Police advance through tear gas toward demonstrators protesting the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014.

(Scott Olson / Getty Images)

California lawmakers put police accountability high on their agenda after Ferguson. Among the most contentious bills was one pushed by civil rights organizations to collect data on the race of everyone stopped by police statewide to shed light on racial profiling.

Police groups — still a powerful political force in a state that has only recently tempered its strict law-and-order culture — resisted the bill, arguing it would be too burdensome.

Harris declined to take a position. After Jerry Brown, then governor, signed the bill into law, Harris won credit from civil rights groups for drafting strong rules putting it into effect.

Bill Lockyer, a former state attorney general, said Harris avoided battles in the Capitol, just a few blocks from her Sacramento office, and concentrated instead on running her own agency.

“I saw it as a general reluctance to have an active legislative role,” said Lockyer, a onetime state Senate leader who remained closely engaged in lawmaking as attorney general.

Daniel Suvor, Harris’ chief policy advisor at the time, said her preference was “to work directly with law enforcement and the civil rights community to get things done as opposed to engaging in superfluous dialogue.”

Harris’ authority over police practices was limited. In a state with nearly 80,000 police officers, the attorney general employed only about 300 — special agents who investigate healthcare fraud, gun violations and drug crimes. By November 2015, all agents in the field were equipped, on Harris’ order, with body-worn cameras.

Some advocates were seeking mandatory body cameras for nearly every officer in California. They tried unsuccessfully to pass a bill to create a statewide standard for their use. Harris spurned the proposal, saying she opposed a “one-size-fits-all approach.”

Another Harris project was anti-bias training for law enforcement agencies statewide, which proved popular. More than two dozen agencies participated in the first course. It remains part of the state’s formal officer training.

Harris’ signature achievement from this period was Open Justice, an online portal that, for the first time, made a wide array of criminal justice data available to the public, including tallies of deaths and injuries in police custody.

“She saw there was so much emotion and anecdote around the criminal justice reform conversation, and she wanted to inject data, facts and evidence into the conversation,” Suvor said.

It was the rare initiative embraced by both police and reform advocates.

“That was really, really helpful to the movement, because there was no place that we could look at in-custody deaths at the hands of law enforcement prior to that,” said Melina Abdullah, a Black Lives Matter organizer who chairs Cal State L.A.’s Pan-African studies department.

Harris was less successful in dodging political fallout when it came to calls for state investigations of high-profile shootings. Civil rights advocates viewed local prosecutors as inherently compromised in cases against police they worked closely with every day.

State intervention in local cases was a fraught issue for Harris. In 2004, Lockyer, then attorney general, had second-guessed her refusal to seek the death penalty for the killer of Espinoza, opening his own investigation into her decision. (He ultimately sided with Harris.)

“There’s no question that has influenced and did influence my perspective on this,” Harris said, adding she believed local officials are best held accountable by voters.

Community activists urged Harris to investigate two high-profile police shootings in California — Ezell Ford’s death in Los Angeles in 2014 and the 2015 killing of Mario Woods in San Francisco — but she demurred, saying she lacked legal grounds to overrule local prosecutors.

“I wouldn’t even say disappointed is a strong enough word for how we felt about how she did as attorney general,” said Kim McGill, an organizer with the Youth Justice Coalition.

Tritobia Ford, at left, mother of Ezell Ford, speaks in January 2017; protesters demonstrate against the shooting of Mario Woods in December 2015

(Los Angeles Times / Associated Press)

Critics suspected a political motive behind Harris’ stand against state probes of the L.A. and San Francisco police shootings.

“When she was running for attorney general, she was already running for president,” Weills said. “It’s a very calculated process. For her to start to alienate the whole law enforcement establishment by taking on these investigations … it might have destroyed her career.”

A 2015 bill, which failed to pass, would have required the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to take on cases involving police use of deadly force. Harris decline to support it.

Yet Harris did not always take a hard line against state probes of local police misconduct. She privately asked the governor for money to create teams of prosecutors to conduct such investigations in jurisdictions that consented to them. Brown refused, she told The Times.

After she won election to the U.S. Senate, and in her final days as attorney general, Harris opened civil rights investigations into the Kern County Sheriff’s Office and the Bakersfield Police Department, which remain ongoing under her successor, Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra.

Now, as she runs for president, Harris has more forcefully backed independent investigations of police wrongdoing. She has promised the U.S. Justice Department would pursue more robust oversight of racial bias in police departments nationwide. She has also vowed to push legislation to end racial profiling.

WASHINGTON — The American Dream may not be dead for many Black Americans, but it is further away than at any point since the Civil Rights Movement, warns a report by the National Urban League.

Released on Thursday, the annual “State of Black America” report grimly describes Black Americans ‘ economic and political prospects as having worsened due to policy changes from President Trump’s administration, according to a copy obtained by the Associated Press.

The report contends that the challenges it highlights for Black communities are warning signs for the prosperity of all Americans.

“It may be the focus is us, but the impact is not just us,” said Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League. “While they have targeted and focused on Black Americans, these attacks are going to impact broadly working Americans, poor Americans, aspirational middle-class Americans, and this is what this report points to.”

Tracing the arc of American history, the Urban League describes Black Americans’ struggle for emancipation from slavery and equal economic and political rights as a gruesome but optimistic part of the American story.

Now, the report says, the Trump administration is at odds with the goals and achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, citing the overhaul of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as the president’s focus on overhauling voting laws through the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, as examples of rollbacks of long-sought civil rights policies.

The report’s authors offer policy and strategy recommendations for civil rights groups aiming to combat the Trump administration.

“The civil rights community must consolidate its legal resistance and turn courtroom wins into durable policy,” the report says. “The movement must build economic infrastructure that doesn’t depend on the goodwill of any one administration.”

The AP reached out to the White House for comment on the report.

Report contributors include a potential Democratic presidential contender

This year’s report includes contributions from members of Congress, and policy and legal experts, as well as some media personalities.

U.S. Senators Angela Alsobrooks, Lisa Blunt Rochester and Raphael Warnock all contributed to the report, as well as Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey contributed a video message to the report.

Moore, who is widely viewed as a potential 2028 presidential contender, submitted an essay focused on closing the racial wealth gap and Black Americans’ history of economic advancement in the face of adversity.

“With wisdom and grit, my mom was able to lift me and my family to a higher rung on the economic ladder. But too often wisdom and grit aren’t enough,” Moore wrote.

He later called closing the racial wealth gap “a matter of moral clarity” but cautioned that “government alone cannot close the racial wealth gap. It’s going to take all of us,” referencing the private sector and civil society.

Report blasts ‘economic assault’ on Black Americans

Whether corporate America and major nonprofits are still willing to participate is an open question. The report condemns the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back diversity initiatives and economic advancement projects in the private sector, and expresses frustration with companies that cooperated with an “economic assault” on Americans, especially Black Americans.

“This has been a campaign of coercion and oppression directed at these institutions who have been out here working hard to, if you will, change America,” Morial said. “The important thing about companies is that every company has not bent the knee. Some may have done some cosmetic changes. Some have been in full and complete retreat.”

The DEI rollbacks are a jarring reversal for the Urban League, which held sway in the Biden White House on economic and social policies. The report lauds President Biden’s administration for signing a sweeping COVID-19 stimulus package, as well as laws supporting minority small businesses and a bipartisan infrastructure bill.

“Not every promise was kept, and the current administration is pushing to roll our wins back, but these wins serve as a blueprint for what is possible through sustained advocacy and a clear vision,” the authors write. The agenda, the Urban League declares, was “the most consequential federal investments in Black America since the Great Society.”

The organization and its civil rights allies now find themselves in a strikingly different political environment under the Trump administration.

“Looking at our current political landscape, the calls for racial healing and righting of this nation’s wrongs in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd feel like a fever dream,” the report reads.

But the study also acknowledges that Black Americans have overcome more dire and discriminatory moments.

Latest Black America report is the Urban League’s 50th edition

The Urban League’s inaugural 1976 report on the state of Black America was described by the New York Times at the time as “a profoundly depressing document” that laid out the persistent disparities between the economic outlooks of Black and white Americans, a decade after the Civil Rights Movement’s crowning achievements were signed into law.

The report was established as a response to that year’s State of the Union address by President Ford and the Democratic response, neither of which mentioned the economic outlooks for Black Americans. The report offered policy recommendations on crime, education, housing, social services and general economic policy.

“It is a document that does not attempt to cover up the seriousness of the situation black people find themselves in,” the authors wrote at the time. Several of its recommendations were later taken up by President Carter, who was elected to the White House months after the report’s release.

This year’s 50th anniversary document echoes the frustration found in the inaugural report. While Morial acknowledged that the Urban League’s assessments may lead to pessimism, he urged Americans concerned about civil rights and economic progress to respond at the ballot box and with their pocketbooks.

“We cannot be dejected. We cannot be cynical. We must act,” Morial said. “We have to fight to make sure that those that are really trying to kill the essence of the American dream don’t win.”

Brown writes for the Associated Press.

BLACK Sabbath’s Tony Iommi last released a solo album more than two decades ago.

And now, as he finally announces a new record, From The Dark, he reckons it might take just as long to get presented with his MBE.

The legendary axeman was in the Actress & Bishop boozer in his native Birmingham to celebrate the album’s release when asked when he’d be going to Buckingham Palace.

Tony was made an MBE in the King’s birthday honours last month, for his services to music and charity. But he joked: “I’d forgotten about that. They have probably changed their minds now.”

From The Dark, out on October 23, is Tony’s first album since 2005’s Fused, when he teamed with former Deep Purple, Sabbath and Trapeze singer and bassist Glenn Hughes.

Queen’s Brian May plays a guest solo on Death Wake, and the blistering lead single, the upbeat but punchy World Alone, confirms why he earned the nickname The Master Of The Riffs.

‘ALARMS GOING OFF’

Jared Leto forced me to touch him after luring me to motel when I was 17

SHEER DELIGHT

Bianca Censori stuns in almost invisible sheer bodysuit to party in Ibiza

That moniker’s all the more impressive when Tony reminds us that he lost the tips of the middle and ring fingers of his fret hand as a teen, while working in a sheet metal factory in the city.

He recalled: “I went to different doctors and they said, ‘You might as well give up and find another profession’.”

So he made replacement fingertips. He said: “I got a Fairy Liquid bottle, melted it down into a ball and then got a soldering iron and made a hole in it, so it fit on my finger.

“I tried to play and it slipped off. I had to find a material that would grip the strings like skin, so I cut one of my old rocker leather jackets up, and it worked.”

Iommi fans are in for a treat with From The Dark — which has eight tracks, with two additional songs, Scent Of Dark and Deified on the deluxe version.

It was two years in the making, with Tony enlisting Jorn Lande on vocals, bassist Becky Baldwin and Robbie Williams’ longtime drummer Karl Brazil.

The process was slowed by the loss of Tony’s Black Sabbath bandmate Ozzy Osbourne last July, with Tony stepping back from recording for a while.

The pair exchanged text messages the night before Ozzy died. He said: “I didn’t expect him to go overnight. It was a hell of a shock.”

On returning to work on the record, Tony added: “We’ve done it casually really, because there was no pressure.

The album is steeped in his home city’s history. He said: “The whole record is designed around Birmingham. The T-shirts have been made in Birmingham, the merchandise has been made in Birmingham.”

In front of a small group of guests, with Frank Skinner taking on the interviewing duties, Tony unveiled the dystopian video for World Alone, which was filmed in Cornwall.

“I hate doing videos, I’ve never liked them,” he said.

“This one is more like a film and I am in it but not wanting to be.”

Despite his reticence at getting in front of the cameras, it sounds likely Tony will return to the stage.

Asked whether fans will hear him play the record live, he smiled and said: “You may do.

“Anything’s a possibility.”

Tate shapes up for comeback

TATE McRAE gets fighting fit for her comeback as she prepares to release new music.

The Canadian pulled on her skintight workout clobber and pumped iron for an Adidas Originals Sport campaign.

It comes ahead of a return to the stage this weekend, almost nine months after her last concert.

Tate will headline the Osheaga Festival in Montreal on Saturday, and Lollapalooza in Chicago the following night, as teasers on social media suggest she might debut new songs.

Previous album So Close To What became her most successful yet when it peaked at No2 in the charts last year.

But with her star power continuing to rise, I’m sure she’s got her sights set on turning the next record into a chart-topper.

It’s Olivia RodLego

OLIVIA RODRIGO has recreated her latest album cover in Lego form – and will hide versions of the record around the world.

She posed in this plaid mini-dress at a pop-up event in Los Angeles, where it was revealed 333 toy-brick vinyl versions of You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love will be available.

The album is in the UK Top Three for a sixth week.

Olivia and Lego will drop clues on social media, hinting at record shops where fans might be able to get the special versions.

I expect to see them popping up on eBay for astronomical sums any day now.

Ruben’s hol alone

RUBEN Dias has made sure everyone knows he’s one of football’s most eligible bachelors, following his split from Maya Jama.

The Manchester City defender broke up with the Love Island host at the end of April.

Three months on, and following his appearance at this summer’s World Cup with Portugal, he has jetted off on a lads’ holiday to Ibiza.

Judging by the photos of his rippling six-pack he shared on Instagram, Ruben got his mates to take thirst trap pictures for him while they were there.

But hinting that he’s still not totally over the split with Maya, he captioned the post: “Feelings on silent.”

With pictures like this, there will be plenty of people offering him a shoulder to cry on.

lMILEY CYRUS’ rocker fiancé Maxx Morando popped the question on holiday in Japan last autumn.

He told Wonderland mag it happened in “this little outer garden”.

Maxx added: “She was taking videos, and was turned away. I got on one knee and tapped her on the shoulder.”

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Dusty Baker could sense a portion of his life as he entered the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Plaque Gallery on Saturday night. He couldn’t help but notice that some of his contemporaries from when he played with the Braves and Dodgers were walking slower, in some cases with the help of a cane or an assistant.

“I’m glad to see everybody,” said Baker, 77. “But you know, we’re getting old. I see guys in walkers who used to run fast, (and) their kids that are grown. You kind of see your life flash before your eyes.”

A record 60 Baseball Hall of Famers were in Cooperstown as Jeff Kent, Carlos Beltran and Andruw Jones were inducted Sunday. Baker traveled with the San Francisco Giants’ contingent to celebrate Kent, who credits Baker with helping transform him into the National League MVP, All-Star and eventually a Hall of Famer.

As much as Baker tried to keep his focus on Kent, however, many kept telling him that this visit was a prelude to his induction next summer. They reminded him that he’s expected to be on the Hall’s Era Committee ballot in December.

If Baker receives at least 12 votes from the 16-member committee, he’ll become the first Black manager elected into the Hall.

“I know the history,” Baker said. “I was fortunate enough to be around Hank (Aaron) in the beginning.”

Baker grew up idolizing Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s color barrier on April 15, 1947, 26 months before Johnnie B. “Dusty” Baker was born in Riverside.

Through 1953 National League Rookie of the Year Jim Gilliam, who spent three seasons with the Baltimore Elite Giants of the Negro Leagues before joining the Brooklyn Dodgers, Baker met several Negro League greats.

Gilliam once took Baker to eat lunch at Negro League legend Cool Papa Bell’s home in St. Louis. He also spent time with Satchel Paige and Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe. Because of his friendship with Aaron, his Braves mentor, and his time with the Dodgers, he met Hall of Famer Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe, who spent time in the Negro Leagues before joining the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Bell, Paige and Campanella were all inducted into the Hall. Paige was the first Negro Leaguer inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1971, five years after Ted Williams used his induction speech to advocate for Negro Leaguers.

“Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel, not just to be as good as someone else, but to be better than someone else,” Williams said on July 25, 1966. “This is the nature of man and the name of the game, and I’ve always been a very lucky guy to have worn a baseball uniform, to have struck out or hit a tape-measure home run.

“And I hope that someday the names of Satchell Page and Josh Gibson in some way can be added as a symbol of the great Negro players that are not here, only because they were not given a chance.”

Robinson became the first Black player elected into the Hall by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America in 1962. Negro Leaguers weren’t considered for the Hall until Paige was elected into the 1971 class. A year later, Gibson was inducted.

Baker first visited the Hall of Fame to play an exhibition in 1974. He made his third trip to Cooperstown this weekend, which marked his first visit for an induction weekend.

Exactly 60 years after Williams induction speech on the steps of the Hall of Fame, Baker walked into the Hall and was greeted by the loud roars of another Boston Red Sox legend, David Ortiz. Baker smiled widely, nodded his head, greeted Ortiz in Spanish, chuckled and walked over to Ortiz and Vladimir Guerrero, giving each of them hugs and pats on the back.

A few seconds later, Dave Winfield joined the trio for a picture before Baker and his wife began to mingle with other Hall of Famers and guests.

Later that night at a party the Giants held in Kent’s honor, Kent paid tribute to his family, Baker and a few teammates during a short speech.

Then Kent predicted that Baker will return next year to take his place among baseball’s immortals. Baker won a World Series title and three pennants as a manager while leading a record five teams to the playoffs over 26 seasons as a manager.

He’s eighth on baseball’s all-time managerial wins list with 2,183 as the only Black manager in baseball history with 2,000 victories.

While sipping on his coffee and munching on extra crispy bacon and blueberry pancakes Sunday morning, Baker sat at the Otesaga Resort where the Hall of Famers stay during induction weekend. He looked out at Otsego Lake while several Hall of Famer stopped to say hello.

Chipper Jones stopped by and said, “You dusting off that chair for next year, Dusty?”

Baker laughed and shook his head before calling Chipper by his first name, Larry.

“There ain’t no guarantees, so why am I going to look forward if there ain’t no guarantees?” Baker said. “I’m serious. People think I’m kidding when I’m saying that. When Bill Belichick did not get in the (Pro Football) Hall of Fame anybody has a chance to not get in the Hall of Fame.

“Am I right? That’s how I look at it. I was shocked. They can talk about Deflategate, they can talk about the media. What about the other six (Super Bowls) he won?”

Nonetheless, Baker appreciates what it would mean for a Black manager to finally be elected to the Hall.

“But most of my life had been full of ‘First Black Guy stories, Black man stories’ from the time I was in high school,” he said. “The two blacks at my high school were me and my brother in my last year of high school.

“That’s some of the reasons I went into the wine business. There’s not many Blacks in the wine business. One reason why I started but stopped in the energy business was because there’s not many Blacks in the energy business.”

There have been 354 inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame, 23 of them as managers.

Baker will likely be the first Black manager next summer.

“I was taught pride from my mom and dad in culture about being Black,” he said. “My mom was really big (on Black history) because she was a Black Studies teacher, so we had books that I read. …

“I’m hoping I can motivate other young brothers and sisters to achieve some things that don’t seem achievable. It’s a little bit disheartening when I see regression of Black coaches, Black players, Blacks in baseball.”

Chadwick Boseman’s brothers are taking the late US actor’s widow to court over her handling of his multimillion-dollar estate.

Derrick Boseman and Kevin Boseman have filed a petition with a Los Angeles court to force the Black Panther star’s widow, Taylor Simone Ledward, to distribute money to family members, and to have her removed as controller of his estate.

They claim she has mishandled distribution of the funds and “cannot be trusted with the continued administration of the estate”.

Boseman died at the age of 43 in 2020, four years after being diagnosed with colon cancer. He is best remembered for playing the lead role of T’Challa, king of Wakanda, in Oscar-winning 2018 Marvel blockbuster Black Panther.

According to court documents seen by BBC News, Boseman had assets worth $3.8m (£2.9m) but died without a will.

A court decided that 50% should go to Boseman’s widow, who was also appointed the estate’s administrator, with 25% to each of his parents.

The actor’s brothers filed the court petition last week on behalf of their parents, Leroy and Carolyn Boseman.

The petition said Ledward “has still not distributed the estate” and “continues to exert unilateral control” over it.

Ledward is also accused of creating a “lack of transparency” around his assets, and of keeping the actor’s parents “in the dark” about the deals and operations of a company that was set up to manage his image and rights.

The brothers claim Ledward’s “misconduct is causing ongoing harm” to Boseman’s elderly parents and depriving them “of financial assets at a vulnerable age when such support is most critical”.

“Moreover, the needless continuation of these proceedings denies Decedent’s [Boseman’s] family closure and causes emotional distress,” the court filing said.

“Imagine flipping through the channels and stumbling on a film starring your deceased son or brother, knowing that someone you do not know or trust is profiting from his image without your input or consent.”

Ledward – an R&B artist who uses the name Sahn – started dating Boseman in 2015 and they got married just six days before the actor’s death in August 2020.

The BBC has asked her lawyer for a comment.

In a statement to US media, the late actor’s brothers said: “On behalf of our parents, we are committed to ensuring that transparency, accountability, and respect guide the resolution of these matters.

“Our hope is that this process brings clarity, honors the court’s orders, and ensures the responsible stewardship of Chadwick’s legacy.

“We love our brother, and we remain committed to preserving his legacy with dignity, integrity, and respect.”

Is the Trump administration actually stealing from Venezuelans?

The Financial Times estimated the “likely value” of Venezuela’s oil revenues since January, when those income streams (not only from oil and gas, but also from gold and other minerals) came under the direct control and supervision of the US government. Using data from Kpler and Argus Media, the newspaper put the figure at $13 billion. 

Let’s assume that one figure is accurate or at least comes close to the real number. The key question here, which neither the United States nor Venezuelan authorities have bothered to answer, is how much of that has been trickling back to the Venezuelan economy.

American officials, in press conferences and hearings, have given remarks about how the revenue repatriation framework is supposed to work under the current arrangement. There was a temporary framework immediately after the gringo takeover (the famous Qatar fund we reported in January). Now, it allegedly works like this:

1) Oil revenues flow into accounts managed by the US Treasury. Crude buyers, such as India and Spain, route payments into US-controlled “Foreign Government Deposit Funds.” 

2) Secretary of State Marco Rubio (empowered by Executive Order 14373) provides instructions to the Treasury for disbursements to Venezuelan entities, particularly the Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV).

3) The funds land in BCV accounts.

4) One chunk of that pays pensions, public workers’ salaries, the military and the police apparatus, i.e. the basic components of the State.

5) Another part of those dollars is channelled to the domestic banking system through a select group of private banks—here’s where things start to get tricky. Rather than holding competitive auctions or floating currency rates on a free market, the BCV distributes capped quotas of dollars to these banks at the strictly controlled official exchange rate.

6) At the final stage, from commercial banks to the private sectors, the transaction is a direct cash sale: to purchase dollars, Venezuelan companies must have the full equivalent in bolivars ready in their accounts. Banks immediately debit the buyer’s bolivar account at the day’s official rate and credit the equivalent dollars into the company’s local foreign-currency account. It works as a rationing mechanism, since major corporations (e.g. those in key sectors like food and medicine) are prioritized, and smaller companies acquire USD on a first-come, first-served basis through online banking platforms until daily dollar quotas run out.

Good. So now we know how the repatriation framework is supposed to work.

Let’s go back to the $13 billion figure, and the stage of the sequence connecting the US Treasury and the BCV. The US calls itself de facto custodian of Venezuelan money (remember EO14373 speaks of the “Custodial Nature of United States Possession”), so it should showcase full transparency over those transactions and demand accountability from the Delcy Rodríguez government. How much money has the US disbursed? Has it published anything about those disbursements? What about the Delcy government?

The fundamental question is not only how much revenue the US and the Rodríguez administration are processing, but who ultimately benefits from these flows and whether they contribute to genuine economic recovery.

Here’s where the news is worse. Washington has not disclosed anything concrete. What we know is limited to what US officials tell journalists (mainly foreign correspondents) off the record, which is very vague, and very little. Most recently, a “senior US official” told reporter Stephania Taladrid (who wrote this 11-pager about Maria Corina Machado) that the Trump administration “authorized the disbursement of more than six billion dollars to Rodríguez’s government.” Officials had given some accounts of the amounts disbursed in the first days of the arrangement. For instance, Rubio mentioned that $300m were disbursed through the Qatari fund during a Senate hearing in late January. In early February, an anonymous US official confirmed that Venezuela received its first $500 million post-Maduro. That was the first full disbursement, the last one that the US addressed, though without offering any form of paper trail.

You could say things are equally opaque on Delcy’s front, with the caveat that we are used to this defining feature of the chavista regime. I should add something else about the US-Venezuela framework explained above: according to public statements from American officials, Caracas should submit monthly budget requests to the US, so Rubio can keep authorizing cash transfers with peace of mind. The State Department (through Western Hemisphere chief diplomat Michael Kozak, who is playing an important role in Venezuelan politics) said in April that the accounting firm KPMG was hired to produce quarterly audits of how Venezuelan oil revenues are being spent. He also claimed that, by then, $3 billion had been “moved through” to Venezuela.

Three months later, those reports do not exist. Or are not public at least. It seems that our friend El Kenedi was right when he warned Venezuela will never show you the money, but that’s the Viceroy’s fault, not just Delcy’s.

The Financial Times, which ran the story that ignited the controversy, is playing an interesting role in shaping the conversation about the value of Venezuelan assets and liabilities. Right before the devastating earthquakes, an FT scoop said the Delcy government would reveal a $240 billion debt pile (“much higher than expected”). The latest article might not paint the full picture (as a New York Times reporter suggests) but it’s perhaps the first major broadsheet to lambast Trump for his irresponsible (and misleading) remarks, and his team for the lack of transparency over the handling of Venezuelan money. This issue is nothing new, although the recent catastrophe makes full disclosure much more urgent. Other prominent figures and organizations had raised their voice before the quakes.

On June 2, Harvard economist Ricardo Hausmann wrote a column in Project Syndicate titled “The Rape of Venezuela” where he addresses this issue and others, including the politics of the looming debt restructuring and the lack of a democratic recovery. In it, he accuses the Trump White House of viewing Venezuela not as a democratic reconstruction project, but as a strategic hydrocarbon asset in the service of American power. A day later, the Council on Foreign Relations (a leading liberal-leaning US think tank) broke down how US control of Venezuelan oil remains murky. That has served as a valuable source for much of the stuff we mention here.

Going back to yesterday’s story, it quotes Venezuelan economist Alejandro Grisanti noting clear indications of large dollar inflows over the past few months. While Grisanti had initially expected economic growth to accelerate in the fourth quarter of this year, he noted that the recent earthquake is now likely to push that recovery back into the middle of next year.

These “indications of large dollar inflows” provide a clear clue as to how the Delcy Rodríguez administration is spending the oil revenues disbursed by the US Treasury. The BCV continues to deploy significant foreign currency reserves to artificially stabilize the official exchange rate. As Juan Comella observed in May, Rodríguez’s monetary policy differs little from that of the Maduro regime. Grisanti and Ecoanalítica remain sharp critics of this interventionist model, the very mechanism that wrecked Venezuela’s economy in the first place by turning privileged access to official-rate dollars into a primary driver of systemic corruption and economic inefficiency.

In an April report, Ecoanalítica criticized the rigid framework governing the domestic private sector’s acquisition of foreign exchange. Only entities with foreign bank accounts (which can be cleared through the SWIFT network) can buy dollars from the select group of major Venezuelan banks, effectively excluding emerging firms and SMEs. Consequently, local businesses receiving US dollars often cannot execute international transactions (such as paying overseas vendors) because they lack the proper banking infrastructure or because their local financial institutions lack correspondent banks abroad. Furthermore, the report highlights that retail accounts held by natural persons capture 20-30% of total FX allocations. This reflects the classic playbook of rewarding cronies while perpetuating market distortions: privileged individuals purchase dollars cheaply at the official BCV rate and immediately offload them on the parallel market at a premium.

We may not know the exact figures, but funds are trickling through the system. The fundamental question is not only how much revenue the US and the Rodríguez administration are processing, but who ultimately benefits from these flows and whether they contribute to genuine economic recovery.

CHARLI XCX is never one to shy away from being filmed or photographed.

But this time, the Brat hitmaker was mostly behind the lens as she played a director in her music video for new track Camera.

It is from her upcoming seventh album Music, Fashion, Film, which is set for release on Friday.

Dressed in a plunging blue shirt, Charli sat in the director’s chair as she instructed French actor Vincent Cassel in what appeared to be a desert.

The action-packed scene, filmed in a Kent quarry, showed ­Vincent’s character with a gunshot wound to his chest.

In scenes that could rival a Hollywood blockbuster, Charli stood in front of an overturned grey car that had ploughed into a sand dune, and was also seen crawling on all fours.

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The singer took over London’s Scala nightclub on Tuesday for an intimate performance of tracks from her forthcoming album, including Camera.

In the lyrics, she sings: “It makes me question what I’m doing.

“Do I wanna make music? Am I being f*****g stupid. If I try to be a girl on the screen when I’m turning thirty-four?”

She also appears to reference the gunshot in the line: “’Cause that look, it’s a bullet.”

The film set then transformed into a photoshoot for Charli as she put one a white shirt and black knickers while proudly holding up the new album.

Charli also turned up the heat as she posed, lying on her back in the sand — though notably missing one of her black shoes.

Her 11-track album cover features three legends from the music, fashion and film industry as a nod to the themes in the record.

American filmmaker Martin Scorsese, fashion designer Marc Jacobs and Welsh musician John Cale grace the black-and-white sleeve.

The artwork was set in a kitchen and shot by Scottish photographer Aidan Zamiri.

It comes after Charli worked with John on the track House, which formed the soundtrack of Emerald Fennell’s film Wuthering Heights starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.

Of Charli, John previously told British Vogue: “I think we both have an unfaltering commitment to being true to oneself, no matter the cost, no matter who’s buzzing in your ear.

“Charli is fearless, stands her ground, takes no prisoners and is a real sweetheart.

“Her mind is made up, her tenacity ferocious.”

She declared the end of Brat Summer “forever” in September following the global phenomenon, named after her sixth album, which promoted a messy and party-loving aesthetic.

Now Charli is back in the driving seat and I am here for this new, chaotic ride.

ACTRESS Scarlett Thomas has revealed she is a December 10 fan.

The teenage daughter of former Corrie actors Ryan Thomas and Tina O’Brien, was spotted at the band’s sold-out O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire show in west London on Friday night.

It came as their debut EP On Your Side entered the UK Official Albums Chart at number five.

The band, comprising Cruz, Hendrik, Sean, Danny, Josh, John and Nicolas, was put together last year by music mogul Simon Cowell.

Netflix reality series The Next Act charted their emergence.

Sharing their top 10 award on Instagram, they wrote: “We’re just seven young lads with a dream and seven months ago we couldn’t have imagined this.”

BOSS AXED IN SAM REVAMP

SAM SMITH has split from their management as the Too Good At Goodbyes ­hitmaker undergoes a huge rebrand.

Sam has parted ways from Jack Street, who founded Method Music.

A source said: “Sam is looking to overhaul their brand and is hoping new management will bring a new direction.”

The singer has also trademarked Sam Served following the success of their foodie Instagram page, which has garnered 309,000 followers.

It comes as Sam has announced ten UK headline shows this autumn in ­Manchester and London.

The gigs will support the release of the singer’s fifth studio album, Hazel Eyes, which is set to drop on August 21.

Sounds like Sam has quite a busy few months ahead.

MODEL Jodie Kidd has hinted she could get behind the wheel again for the new Top Gear series.

She set a lap time of 1 minute, 48 seconds in the “Star in a Reasonably Priced Car” segment in 2003.

The BBC show is set to return, four years after Freddie Flintoff’s horror crash halted filming.

Asked if Top Gear bosses had approached her, Jodie told Biz on Sunday’s Emily at a fashion event at Silverstone: “I am not saying a word. That was big news.”

She said of former hosts Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond: “Their chemistry was extraordinary.”

Jodie is an ambassador for M&S which has partnered with Silverstone Circuit for the Formula 1 Pirelli British Grand Prix.

WASHINGTON — Kathryn Ruemmler, the former top lawyer at Goldman Sachs who was White House counsel to President Obama, said Wednesday in testimony to Congress that it “was a mistake to deal with” Jeffrey Epstein but insisted she never witnessed criminal activities.

“I can see now that he used me and other respectable people to legitimize his standing,” Ruemmler told members of the House Oversight Committee, according to a copy of her opening remarks.

Ruemmler is the latest prominent figure called before the House Oversight Committee as lawmakers investigate the network of powerful people connected with Epstein. The bipartisan inquiry has already included testimony from more than a dozen high-profile witnesses, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and former President Bill Clinton, as lawmakers examine how Epstein’s wealth and influence may have helped shield him from scrutiny.

Ruemmler served as White House counsel under Obama from 2011 to 2014 and was briefly considered for attorney general. She served as Goldman Sachs’ general counsel for the past six years before announcing in February that she would step down amid backlash over her correspondence with Epstein.

Although she said she would step down on June 30, she remains employed by Goldman Sachs.

Entering Wednesday’s hearing, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the committee, told reporters that Ruemmler will provide unique insight as one of the few people who was “very close in the last phase of Jeffrey Epstein’s life.”

“I think some of the emails that are in the files are very concerning about how she communicated with Jeffrey Epstein,” he added.

The two were close years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction on sex crimes

While Ruemmler has tried to downplay their relationship in more recent statements, thousands of documents released by the Justice Department showed that Ruemmler and Epstein had an extensive relationship. The files included personal emails, social plans and gifts that extended beyond formal legal work. Documents showed she had called Epstein “Uncle Jeffrey” in emails and said she adored him.

Ruemmler said in her opening remarks that she first met Epstein in 2014 regarding potentially working with him and Gates “to set up a large donor advised fund.” Soon after, according to Ruemmler, she learned about Epstein’s 2008 conviction on sex crimes, when he became a registered sex offender.

She said Epstein expressed remorse about it, and that he did not know the women were underaged. She said she “relied on the resolution reached by federal and state prosecutors and validated by a judge as being a proportionate and final resolution of his criminal conduct.”

House Oversight Chair James Comer told reporters Wednesday that the “most concerning” part of Ruemmler’s communications with Epstein is how she “tried to rehabilitate his image after he was convicted of solicitation of a minor.”

Ruemmler’s interview is part of a broader investigation

Comer said Wednesday that Ruemmler is the 18th person to testify as part of their broader investigation.

Billionaire investor Leon Black was subpoenaed last month after lawmakers said he refused to answer some questions about his yearslong relationship with Epstein.

Comer said Wednesday that Black will appear for a formal deposition on Sept. 3 but that he expects to have Black’s nondisclosure agreements by “the end of the week.”

The committee has also expressed interest in questioning acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, whose nomination to permanently lead the Justice Department is pending before the Senate. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi identified Blanche as the department’s point person on the release of the Epstein documents, a process that has drawn bipartisan scrutiny.

“Hopefully Blanche will come in as soon as his confirmation is over,” Comer said.

Cappelletti writes for the Associated Press.

At least three people have been killed and three others wounded in Russian strikes on Odesa, the city’s military administrator says.

Several people have been killed in Russian attacks on port infrastructure in Odesa and Mykolaiv, and Ukraine said it launched drone strikes on 20 Russian vessels as the warring sides escalated their battle over the Black Sea and key trade routes.

Odesa region Governor Oleh Kiper said on Wednesday that a “massive” Russian drone and missile attack on the southern region continued for a fifth day, with civilian, industrial and port infrastructure coming under attack.

At least three people were killed and three others wounded in the Russian strikes on Odesa, the city’s military administrator Serhiy Lysak said on Wednesday.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence confirmed the strikes on the Odesa and Chernomorsk ports, saying Russian forces targeted infrastructure facilities that it claims are used to store fuel and assemble drones.

Russia in recent days has stepped up attacks on Ukraine’s Black Sea ports in the Greater Odesa area, which handle much of the country’s grain and other cargo and are vital to its wartime economy.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has escalated its campaign to disrupt logistics for Russia’s forces in areas Moscow occupies in southern Ukraine and to isolate Crimea, which Russia has occupied since 2014.

Kyiv’s drone force commander Robert Brovdi said Ukraine hit 17 Russian oil tankers, two gas tankers and one tugboat in the Black Sea.

He claimed earlier this week that 116 Russian vessels had been “hunted down” over a nine-day period.

Moscow said on Tuesday that it was preparing to redirect exports following waves of attacks on Russian shipping in the Sea of Azov, while Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the Ukrainian attacks on shipping “terrorism”.

The attacks come as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrived in Kyiv and said she would announce steps to deepen Ukraine-European Union defence integration.

“I will announce new initiatives to integrate our defence industries. So we can produce more, and faster,” she wrote on X, posting footage of her arrival in the Ukrainian capital.

BIANCA Censori was spotted out and about in the streets of LA wearing a sheer catsuit.

The stunner was on her way to a lazer hair removal appointment and rocked up to the session in a skin-tight black outfit.

Getting out of a car and turning around, Bianca’s amazing physique was snatched in by the flattering fabric of the catsuit.

The star’s butt was also very much on show through the translucent fabric.

Bianca finished the outfit off with a pair of shades to fend off the sun and by throwing her hair up out of the way into a ponytail.

This is far from the first time that Bianca has walked out wearing a daring outfit.

CHERRY ON TOP

Bianca Censori busts out of VERY tiny bra as Kanye West feeds her a cherry

She’s previously stripped naked on the carpet at the Grammys and went out in NYC wearing nothing but a bra and thong made from candy.

Kanye West wanted wife Bianca to wear the skimpy candy number and asked if she would multiple times.

She said no but eventually agreed to do it after Kanye offered her $100k .

An insider has told The U.S. Sun that the controversial rapper’s “obsession” with outfit ideas for his wife has forced him to fork out up to $400,000 to make it all happen. 

Ye, added the insider, is dressing her up in the most extravagant outfits to not only keep his “edgy persona” firmly in the public eye, but to make sure everyone thinks “she’s the sexiest woman alive.”

Bianca and Kanye tied the knot in 2022 in a private, non-legally binding ceremony weeks after his divorce from Kim Kardashian was finalized.

MODEL Lila Moss is helping others to feel much boulder.  

The 23-year-old daughter of fashion icon Kate Moss posed on rocks in Athens in a black Burberry swimsuit. 

Lila, whose father is creative director Jefferson Hack, has been praised for having her Type 1 diabetes monitors on show, raising awareness. 

Lila Grace Moss was born on September 29, 2002, in London, UK.

Her parents split two years after Lila was born, but they’ve still both managed to spend time with their daughter.

Despite her parents’ A-list status, Hack told Sunday Times Magazine that Lila finds them “deeply uncool.”

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Like Kate, however, Lila has a passion for fashion and began her career at the early age of 14.

In October 2018, Lila Grace Moss became the new face of Marc Jacobs Beauty.

Marc first met Lila on a trip to Formentera in 2008 when she was just six years old.

He broke the news on Instagram writing: “At just 6 years old, Lila’s strong character, demeanour and great beauty was already very apparent.

“The next time I saw Lila was in August of 2011 at Kate’s wedding (to now ex-husband Jamie Hince), her character was even more dynamic and her beauty even greater.”

In 2023, California regulators levied more than $100,000 in fines against the private operator of a federal immigration facility, kicking off a three-year battle over whether detainees who do work at the facilities should be considered employees.

The question went beyond semantics: If considered employees, the detainees would be subject to state worker protection laws.

A legal settlement announced this week now affirms that private immigrant detention facilities are subject to California’s workplace safety and health requirements.

“Every worker deserves a safe and healthy workplace and should be able to report workplace hazards without fear of retaliation,” said Denisse Gómez, spokesperson for the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health or Cal/OSHA.

“Individuals who perform work in these facilities are entitled to workplace safety protections, and this settlement reinforces Cal/OSHA’s commitment to enforcing those protections and safeguarding vulnerable workers,” she added.

Under the settlement between California and the GEO Group, a Florida-based private prison company, the company recently withdrew its legal challenges and agreed to pay more than $100,000 in the fines.

The GEO Group did not respond to requests for comment.

Back in 2023, Cal/OSHA issued $104,510 in fines against the GEO Group. The agency had found six violations of state code by the company after detainees complained about a lack of protective equipment and proper training while cleaning the facility for $1 per day.

Detainees alleged they routinely wiped black mold off shower walls at the facility, saw black dust spew from air vents and used cleaning solutions that lacked instructions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The biggest fine levied against the GEO Group was for failure to establish and maintain “effective written procedures to reduce employee risk of exposure to aerosol transmissible disease.”

Advocates viewed Cal/OSHA’S recognition of the detainees as workers as a victory that could pave the way for future labor rights fights at other detention centers in the state.

But the GEO Group appealed, arguing that detainees participating in ICE’s voluntary work program make their own schedules and aren’t employees, so hazard exposure couldn’t be “as a result of assigned duties,” as California law states. Plus, the company argued, there wasn’t enough evidence that detainees were exposed to any hazard.

Early last year, the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Appeals Board rejected the GEO Group’s argument and found that detainees should be considered “affected employees.”

The GEO Group sued, but three days before a California Superior Court hearing in May, the company and Cal/OSHA reached the settlement.

Along with paying the fines, the GEO Group agreed to draft plans for avoiding aerosol transmissions at 12 secure and reentry facilities in California, including five detention centers that hold immigrants.

“GEO ensures detainees are afforded the necessary tools, equipment, and personal protective equipment … to safely and effectively perform any necessary tasks,” the settlement states.

Gómez said the settlement also leaves intact the appeals board’s ruling that civil immigration detainees who participate in work programs can participate in proceedings anonymously, “acknowledging the potential for retaliation when individuals raise workplace safety concerns.”

But the question of whether detainees are employees and deserve certain protections isn’t entirely resolved — at least not for the federal government.

Last month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released new standards for detention facilities across the country. The revised guidelines “emphasize that detainee volunteers participating in the voluntary work program are not considered facility and/or government employees” and thus not entitled to labor regulations.

Attorney Mariel Villarreal said the timing of the new detention standards made her question whether the GEO Group had asked ICE to specify in its standards that detainees are not workers in response to its battle with Cal/OSHA.

“To me, it’s a reaction to this very settlement,” she said. Villarreal works for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, which filed the original complaint on behalf of detainees who said they worked in unsafe conditions.

Villarreal pointed to a Washington Post report that GEO Group executives privately asked ICE to specify that detainees are not employees of the facilities where they work. Two top Trump administration officials, border czar Tom Homan and acting ICE director David Venturella, previously worked for the GEO Group.

New versions of ICE detention standards take effect as contracts are established or modified, so this year’s rules won’t immediately apply to every facility.

An ICE spokesperson did not comment about the settlement. The spokesperson, who did not provide their name in an emailed statement Wednesday, said the agency has begun transitioning detention facilities to meet the 2026 standards, “building on its longstanding commitment to safe, secure, and professional detention operations.”

“ICE has consistently implemented many of these best practices independently, reinforcing its role as the leader in detention operations,” the spokesperson added.

The GEO Group and other immigrant detention center operators have faced other legal battles over workers’ rights, including lawsuits in Washington, Colorado and California over the $1-per-day payment.

Villarreal said she’s confident that the Cal/OSHA settlement would continue to hold even if California facilities incorporated the new standards. But she said she believes the statements are an attempt by the GEO Group to “sidestep responsibility” and avoid the possibility of being fined under similar circumstances in other states.

“These statements in the new standards are a way for them to try and preserve profits as much as possible,” she said. “GEO and ICE are so intertwined at this point that they have the same motives.”

Donny Hathaway had already been expounding on the splendors and indignities of American life by the time he got to the Troubadour in West Hollywood in the last week of August 1971.

A classically trained pianist with a declamatory voice shaped by his years in the church, Hathaway closed Side 1 of his 1970 debut with an original called “Tryin’ Times” — “Maybe folks wouldn’t have to suffer,” he sang, “if there was more love for your brother” — and finished the LP with a stately rendition of Nina Simone’s “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.” Months after the album was released, he dropped a joy bomb of a holiday single, “This Christmas,” that unapologetically made space for a Black experience in the yuletide-industrial complex.

Donny Hathaway performs at Mister Kelly’s in Chicago in 1971.

(Val Mazzenga / Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Yet Hathaway captured something indelibly American during his week of shows at the Troubadour, which were recorded (along with a later gig at New York’s Bitter End) for the singer’s classic “Live” album that came out in February 1972. On an LP full of spine-tingling performances, the undeniable high point is Hathaway’s take on Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend” — a clear-eyed if optimistic portrait of resilience and cultural exchange.

King — who’d made her name in the 1960s as half of a prolific Brill Building songwriting duo with her husband, Gerry Goffin — wrote “You’ve Got a Friend” after leaving Goffin and moving to Los Angeles with her two young daughters. Here she remade herself as a low-key singer-songwriter dispensing wise yet unflashy tunes about love, home and family — part of a gentle resetting of pop’s mood after the turmoil of the previous decade.

Cut like the rest of the album at A&M Studios on La Brea Avenue, “You’ve Got a Friend” helped drive King’s 1971 “Tapestry” LP to sales of more than 10 million copies and to a boatload of trophies (including album, record and song of the year) at the Grammy Awards; the singer’s pal James Taylor, whom she’d performed with for the first time in late 1970 at the Troubadour, topped Billboard’s Hot 100 with his own cover of “Friend” featuring background vocals by Joni Mitchell.

On the advice of Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler, Hathaway also recorded “Friend” as a studio duet with Roberta Flack, a fellow Howard University alum; their take sat in the Top 20 of Billboard’s R&B chart as Hathaway began his run at the Troubadour — popular enough that the audience on “Live” erupts at the sound of Hathaway’s opening organ lick.

Carole King at A&M Studios in Los Angeles in 1970.

(Jim McCrary / Redferns via Getty Images)

Indeed, the crowd is really the thing in this live version of “You’ve Got a Friend.” Hathaway and his band — including guitarist Phil Upchurch, bassist Willie Weeks and 16-year-old Fred White (soon to be of Earth, Wind & Fire) on drums — are cooking, to be clear; the groove is funky and viscous, and Hathaway’s vocal is gorgeous, not least in his nimble ad-libs.

But it’s his interplay with the few hundred folks in the room that elevates the recording to a deeply moving piece of art.

For King (and Taylor), the song’s promise of unflagging support is an intimate one-to-one matter; their renditions use homey acoustic arrangements to create a picture of two people exchanging confidences. In Hathaway’s hands, “Friend” is about community: Before he even asks them to, the audience takes over for him on lead vocals in the song’s chorus, a congregation in all but name.

Given the proximity to the civil rights movement, it’s impossible to hear Hathaway’s “You’ve Got a Friend” as disconnected from the struggles of Black people. At the Troubadour (as in his and Flack’s duet), he nixes the song’s second verse to arrive more quickly at the bridge, in which he describes a cold world filled with those who’d “hurt you and try to desert you” — even “take your soul if you let them.”

As Emily J. Lordi notes in her 2016 book about “Donny Hathaway Live,” the crowd lays back during the bridge before rejoining Hathaway for the song’s second chorus; the decision, somehow spontaneous and collective at once, is an expert bit of record-making on the part of an audience that, according to legend, hadn’t been told the concert was being taped.

“From this perspective,” Lordi writes of Hathaway’s fans — some number of whom had surely availed themselves of the Troubadour’s bar, as she points out — “they are not stealing the show so much as they are holding him up, ensuring he won’t sing the duet alone.” Together, performer and audience are turning back (not that they necessarily had a choice) to the ugly truths that singer-songwriter music sometimes sought to move past.

In this way, Hathaway’s “Friend” becomes a reinvention of a reinvention — an act of moral imagination about as American as it gets.

This wasn’t the only instance of a Black soul singer interpreting a tune King had written as a single mom newly arrived in L.A.: In May 1972, the Isley Brothers released a sultry cover of “It’s Too Late”; a month after that, Aretha Franklin’s live “Amazing Grace” album mashed up “You’ve Got a Friend” with “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” completing the gospel-ification that Hathaway had begun in a bastion of white rock culture temporarily remade as an African American church.

Yet in Hathaway’s “Friend” you can hear the whole story American music tells about identity and belonging (and about commercial ambition).

“This might be a record here,” Hathaway tells the crowd near the end of the song, and so it was — a document of adaptation, a testament to borrowing, a bulwark against pretty fictions.

HOLIDAYMAKERS heading to Spain this summer have been warned to avoid 14 popular beaches.

Environmental organisation Ecologistas en Acción has published its annual report highlighting the areas of Spain‘s coast with the biggest issues.

The report awards ‘Black Flags’ for either pollution or for poor management.

Of the 48 flags awarded, 14 were awarded to beaches – mostly due to pollution problems.

One beach that was awarded a Black Flag is Playa de Maro for pollution, in Malaga.

The popular 500-metre-long beach is known for its dramatic cliffs and underwater caves and was previously said to be of the best beaches on the Costa del Sol.

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In Granada, Playa de la Charca, Salobreña was awarded a Black Flag for pollution and Playa de Los Berengueles, Almuñécar was awarded a Black Flag for poor management.

Over in Alicante, the coastal neighbourhoods of Albufereta and Cap de l’Horta both gained Black Flags for pollution and La Almadrava beach gained one for poor management.

Valencia also has a number of coastal spots that were called out including its coastline for pollution and the surroundings of the Port of València and Sagunto for poor management.

In the popular city of Barcelona, the Beach of the Sant Adrià del Besòs was awarded a Black Flag for pollution.

The stretch of coastline features golden sand and is often less crowded than the main beaches by Barcelona city.

Over in the Canary Islands, the town of El Puertito de Adeje was awarded a Black Flag for poor management, as was Las Teresitas Beach.

On Gran Canaria, the coastline of Telde was also given a Black Flag, as was the coast of Lanzarote due to cruise tourism.

If you are heading to the Balearics, then avoid the town of Port of Pollenca in Majorca and in Menorca, avoid Torrente de Cala Galdana – which is a ravine with a beach.

Other beach destinations that gained a Black Flag include:

• Playa Central de Isla Cristina in Huelva
• Playa de Quitapellejos, Almeria
• Levante beaches of Punta Entinas-Sabinar, Almeria
• Playa de As Catedrais, Lugo
• La Ribera de Cabanes beach, Castellón
• Surrach beach, Benicarló, Castellón
• Playa de la Paella, Torredembarra, Tarragona
• Basorda Cove, Basque Country

DETROIT — Jerry Esters proudly displays the American flag each day on his Detroit home. A few miles away, Yvonne Pistochini says there is no scenario under which she would allow the Stars and Stripes to cast its shadow where she lives.

Both are Black.

For Esters, the flag represents the opportunities that allowed the great-great-grandson of slaves to find success and flourish. Pistochini, 79, simply says the America identified by the flag is not the same country she saw growing up.

Americans’ views of “Old Glory” are divided by politics, age and race, according to a new survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday celebration.

Republicans and older, white adults are especially likely to say they fly the American flag, while younger Democrats and Black adults are more likely to say they don’t fly it. Views of the flag — and whether it’s a unifying or divisive symbol — track with other deep divisions among Americans, who see their country’s history and accomplishments very differently.

“A lot of Black Americans see the flag as a symbol of both inclusion and exclusion,” said Matthew Delmont, professor of American history at Dartmouth College. “Black Americans, more so than white Americans, also understand the flag can be used to justify a version of patriotism that is rooted in exclusion, with the flag being used to say ‘you don’t belong here.’”

The survey of 2,596 adults was conducted April 16-20. It suggests that older white Americans, especially Republicans, are more likely to see the flag as unifying.

About half of U.S. adults said they display the flag at home throughout most of the year, or during holidays. About 7 in 10 Republicans and about 6 in 10 Americans ages 60 and older fly the flag at least during holidays.

About 6 in 10 Democrats and independents, on the other hand, say they “never” fly the U.S. flag. That includes the vast majority, 75%, of Democrats under 45.

Opportunities worth fighting for

Esters, a 64-year-old retired clay sculptor for a Detroit automaker, flies three American flags at his Sherwood Forest home on the city’s west side.

“When these homes were built, Black men like me, my mother and my family … we couldn’t even buy these homes,” he said. “To me, that’s one reason I fly the flag. We went through a lot to be able to own nice homes, and this is what we fought for.”

The other reason is Moriah Martin, Esters’ great-great-grandmother, who was born into slavery.

“I’m kind of living out her dreams — what I did for a living, having a business, having a nice home,” he said. “I think that’s the American way, but we got to fight for it and we, as Blacks, fought for it.”

He’s in the minority among Black adults, according to the survey, which found that only about 3 in 10 Black adults say they ever display the American flag, compared with about half of white and Hispanic adults.

Pistochini says current divisions over political leanings and perspectives, and inequality of opportunities for the poor and people of color are not what she believes the flag should stand for. People confuse flying it with being patriotic, she added.

“Just because you fly a flag doesn’t make you a patriot,” Pistochini said. “If there was patriotism, we would not have all this. We can’t look at (what’s going on) and say this is America.”

For country and freedom

Ben Gaskins, chair of political science at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, says the flag is an important symbol of patriotism for many Americans.

“It is those who are older people, who are white and people who are more conservative,” Gaskins said. “They take it as more central to their identity.”

Nancy Hansen, a 73-year-old retired Customs and Border Protection clerk in Culvertson, Montana, believes “you have to be for the country, no matter what” and that the flag means “freedom.”

“Freedom to live where we want to live, travel where we want to travel, raise our kids where we want to raise our kids,” said Hansen, who is white and identifies as Republican.

Each year around July 4, the American Legion posts flags outside businesses and homes in Culvertson, including Hansen’s home.

Linda and Greg Cunningham also equate the flag with freedom.

The white, conservative Pontiac, Michigan, couple are going all out this summer. The exterior of their home northwest of Detroit is awash in red, white and blue. The flag sits atop a flagpole just feet from their door.

“It’s no political thing, at all,” said Linda Cunningham, 63. “It’s our freedom. I love the American flag. I love the whole concept of it. I love America. I know there’s so much going on in the world, right now, and I know everyone has their own views, and I’m just sad that politics have to be brought into the flag.”

Flag as a ‘painful reminder’

Of those who took the survey, 47% see the flag as a “more unifying” symbol. About 16% call it a “more divisive” icon, while 36% say it’s neither divisive nor unifying.

Only 22% of Black adults see the flag as a unifying symbol, compared with 55% of white adults and 42% of Hispanic adults.

“It’s a painful symbol. It’s a reminder of what we could be and how it’s failed to live up to that for Black people, for Indigenous people and people of color,” said Allison Wiltz, a Black author and founder of Writers and Editors of Color.

Paul Walthour, 71, occasionally flies the flag outside his Minneapolis-area home on special occasions and some holidays. Walthour says that when he’s away from home and at his cabin, the flag goes up each morning and is taken down at the end of the day.

“This is antiquated, perhaps,” said Walthour, who is white and a retired advertising agency creative director. “I feel it’s a symbol that you’re proud to be an American.”

“Unfortunately, I kind of think it’s kind of a symbol of dividing more than uniting,” added Walthour, who identifies as a Democrat. “The people who fly it on the far right have one kind of feeling about it, and the people who fly it on the left have a different kind of feeling about it.”

The AP-NORC poll of 2,596 adults was conducted April 16-20 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

Williams, Sanders and Parwani write for the Associated Press. Sanders and Parwani reported from Washington.

To understand the gravitational pull toward golf, consider the sport as a sequence of problems. Aaron Singleton, a skilled player in the Dads Link Golf Club, is playing particularly well today at Palos Verdes Golf Course, having just hit two back-to-back birdies. But even on the shots that fly into a grassy oblivion, he smiles.

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“Golf is 18 different holes. 18 different chances to solve a problem,” he says. “Each hole presents a different problem. Each shot is a different problem.” According to Singleton, this wisdom that players inherit on the golf course — especially resilience and patience — translates to fatherhood.

Singleton, who has a 3-year-old son, is part of a growing group of fathers who participate in the Dads Link Golf Club. The club is part of the region’s golf boom; Southern California Golf Assn. is estimated to have one of the largest memberships in the country, with over 200,000 golfers.

Ian Davis, the founder of Dads Link and Golf Club, watches his drive.

Ian Davis is the founder of Los Angeles’ Dads Link Golf Club. Each month, he invites fathers to enjoy golf together to focus on fellowship, fatherhood and their well-being.

“This has grown in a way that I couldn’t have imagined,” says Davis, who works as a wellness coach with an emphasis in mindfulness and meditation. He started the club in 2023 on the East Coast before relocating it to Los Angeles in January 2024, where the club hosts an annual Father’s Day tournament and various golf clinics.

At the driving range, Davis leads the group through “a grounding practice” that involves stretching and deep breathing. Member Ose Akhile, a personal trainer, follows up with stretching and other warm-up exercises. For many of the men, golf has become a rediscovered hobby. Singleton returned to the sport after playing it as a teenager. “I’m looking forward to getting better,” he says.

Club member Darius Ingram, father of 3-year-old daughter, says that reconnecting with the game has allowed him to prioritize his own well-being.

“I used to play golf recreationally. Now, I do it for mental stability,” he says.

Ian Davis greets Ose Akhile as Darius Ingram stands nearby.

Ian Monteilh, who is new to the group and has two daughters ages 11 and 15, says the outing provides camaraderie that was missing from his life.

“It’s a community that I didn’t have. I’m blessed to be around like-minded men with no pressure,” he says. “Even if we’re having a rough day on a golf course, there’s camaraderie.”

Once considered a predominantly white sport, golf is now being reshaped by a new generation of Black players and other players of color, including many of the fathers in Dads Link Golf Club. In 2024, 25% of golfers across courses nationally were Black, Asian and Latino, marking the most diverse era in the sport’s history, according to the National Golf Foundation.

“It’s a lot less pretentious — more diverse, more access for all different types of people,” says Ingram, who noticed a shift in golfing culture in recent years. Despite Tiger Woods’ storied career as one of the sport’s most impactful athletes, Black men remain underrepresented in top tournaments.

Darius Ingram reacts to barely missing a putt on the 18th green as Ian Davis watches.

Ingram partly attributes Black men’s interest in golf to renewed interest from other professional athletes. Star athletes like Michael Jordan and Steph Curry — who also happen to be dads — are skilled golfers.

“There are a lot of people who play their main sport, and they play golf when they retire,” says Ingram.

Ose Akhile smiles before teeing off.

Rappers like Schoolboy Q and DJ Khalid have also become interested in the sport, adding to its cachet.

The benefits of the groups are apparent, explains Akhile, who has three daughters, ages 6, 7 and 9.

“I’m outside — fresh air, sunshine, a break for my family. I get to decompress,” he says. Describing himself as a “Caribbean baby,” he explains that the ocean waves have a hypnotic effect on him. As the golfers move along the Palos Verdes course, the ocean stretches beyond them.

“Nature helps a lot with stress relief. There’s a lot of green grass and quiet out here. I love my child, but it’s hard to hear her yell, ‘Dad!’ every three seconds,” says Singleton. During the game, he stays calm while a squirrel approaches him. “Me and nature are one with each other,” he says. Behind him, a baby coyote prances into the fog.

Singleton adds that in the chaos of fatherhood, friendships occasionally fall to the wayside.

“There’s so much to do. Everyone separated. It’s beneficial to have a group text, a fellowship like this, where you can hear someone going through the same thing as you,” Singleton says.

Akhile agrees. “These are probably the only guys that understand the day-to-day stressors and pressures of my life,” he says.

Ose Akhile, Darius Ingram, Ian Monteilh, Ian Davis, Aaron Singleton and other Dads Link and Golf members have breakfast together.

After finishing nine holes, the men enjoy breakfast burritos. They joke that they will begin ranking the golf courses in the L.A. area by the quality of their breakfast burritos. Meanwhile, Davis leads the group through a conversation about fatherhood. Each month he chooses one dad to be the focus. This morning that’s Ingram. He speaks on being a father and how it relates to golf.

“I’m not as good as I want to be, so there’s frustration there,” Ingram says, referring to the challenges of parenting. He adds that to “right things” he doesn’t like about himself, he focuses on how his efforts could result in his daughter becoming a better version of him. The men offer encouragement as birds circle above. The sun pierces through the fog.

Monteilh looks up and jokes: “The only birdies I saw today were in the sky.”

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday night that Alabama Republican leaders may redraw their congressional voting districts to oust a Black Democrat and elect a white Republican.

The court’s conservatives, who ruled for Louisiana Republicans in a redistricting dispute, extended that decision to Alabama. The three liberals dissented.

The decision clears the way for the governor and state lawmakers to redraw their congressional voting map with six districts that favor Republicans and one that favors a Democrat.

“Weeks ago, I warned that vacating the District Court’s injunction in these cases would ‘unleash chaos and … confuse voters,’ ” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent. “Yet just as Alabama doubled down on racial discrimination, the Court today doubles down on chaos. Because I choose to defend the rule of law and the right of all Alabamians to participate equally in democracy, I respectfully dissent.”

The justices granted an emergency appeal that was backed by the Trump administration and set aside the decision of a three-judge panel in Alabama.

The court in a brief opinion said the three judges should not have blocked Alabama’s new map.

“While federal courts should not impose changes close to an election, states are free to decide for themselves whether last-minute changes to an election are in their best interests,” the court said.

Alabama’s emergency appeal went to Justice Clarence Thomas, who referred it to the full court.

Those three judges, two of them Trump appointees, ruled that Alabama’s state lawmakers discriminated against Black voters, who made up a near majority in the center of the state.

Three years ago, the Supreme Court agreed.

In a 5-4 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the justices upheld the creation of a second district in the center of the state where Black voters had a near majority.

The result then was an Alabama state voting map that favored five Republicans and two Democrats for the House of Representatives.

But last month, in the wake of the Louisiana decision, Alabama’s lawmakers went back to court, arguing that the state may return to the voting map with only a single Black majority district.

In his appeal to the Supreme Court, Alabama’s Atty. Gen. Steven Marshall argued that the high court’s decision in favor of Louisiana “vindicates Alabama position on the lawfulness” of its earlier voting map. He said the state should not be penalized for “refusing to intentionally discriminate” to favor Black voters.

The court’s decision has cleared the way for Republican-led states in the South to flip congressional districts in Louisiana, Tennessee, Florida and now Alabama.

Twenty pages into “There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood” by bestselling Pasadena author Rasheed Newson, I had to stop reading. Not because the story and characters were anything less than gripping —I was utterly transfixed. Not because I was unmoved by the setting, the 1950s version of the iconic landmarks where today’s Angelenos, myself included, work, play, eat and drink: Griffith Park, the L.A. Central Library, the Paramount Pictures lot, the Roosevelt Hotel, the Tam O’Shanter in Atwater Village and the Black Cat in Silver Lake, site of America’s first queer riot, also depicted in the book.

No, it was writerly admiration — OK, envy — that stopped me. As I turned the pages, I kept scribbling the same question in the margins. “How did Newson do this?”

How did Newson, author of the 2022 bestseller “My Government Means to Kill Me” and a producer/writer on such popular TV series as “The Chi” and “Bel-Air,” craft a novel populated with a seamless mix of real and invented characters, each with their own true or fictional backstory, personality, career vicissitudes, sartorial style and sexual proclivities, adhering simultaneously to both his novelistic timeline and historically accurate events?

How did Newson seat his fictional protagonist — Aaron Touissant, a Black, closeted gay Hollywood “fixer” employed by Skyline Studios to keep queer actors’ secrets secret — at the same Beverly Hilton ballroom table with Sidney Poitier, Diahann Carroll, Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis Jr., Lena Horne, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, James Edwards, Eartha Kitt and Xavier Barlow, Newson’s invented Black gay movie star who is Skyline’s greatest hope and Touissant’s principal client?

I couldn’t read another page without knowing, and those unread pages were calling to me. So I called Rasheed Newson, whom I’d seen around the L.A. lit scene but had never met, and asked how he’d made the magic of his novel happen.

“I wanted to do a deep dive into Black queer history during the Golden Age of cinema,” Newson said. “The first thing that came to me was Xavier’s character. I decided to make him the 10-years-younger, queer rival of Sidney Poitier, to highlight the acceptable versus unacceptable — meaning, straight versus gay — 1950s Black movie star.

“I read a lot of books on Hollywood’s golden era,” Newson said. “But I was trying to get closer to what people were thinking at the moment, rather than what they reflected back on later. Only newspapers give you that. So I spent hours and hours in the downtown L.A. public library, poring over microfiche, reading the newspapers of the time.”

Author Rasheed Newsom.

(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

I asked Newson about the titular “one sin in Hollywood.”

“That sin is disobedience,” he said. “Particularly when your disobedience threatens to upend how the business makes money. In Hollywood you can be an addict, be a philanderer, be outspoken. But don’t disrupt the cash flow.”

Newson’s plot and characters serve the novel’s thesis well. We meet Aaron Touissaint as a brutally bullied “sissy” in a small, small-minded Ohio town. Aaron escapes his torturers, first by rooting himself in the town’s only movie theater open to Black people, and then by lying about his age and enlisting in the Navy at 16. On the Korean battle front, Aaron becomes the aide and the lover of superstar fighter pilot and “model Negro” Horace Dixon. When the war ends and Skyline Studios buys the screen rights to Horace’s life story, Aaron follows Horace to Hollywood.

The movie is canceled. Horace leaves Hollywood and a heartbroken but determined Aaron behind. Hired as a Skyline security guard, Aaron is promoted to fixer, keeping himself and Skyline’s A-listers closeted by any means necessary. To that end, Aaron marries Kimberly, who becomes his poised, self-contained “beard.”

At the top of Aaron’s client roster is Xavier Barlow, Skyline’s new, hot rising star and Aaron’s new, hot crush. “The bond between us was never conventional,” narrator Aaron tells us. “Off and on for nearly a decade, it was my duty to keep [Xavier’s] nose clean. … He challenged me to admit who and what I am. And I fell in love with him.”

As secret same-sex love stories all too often do, Aaron’s love for Xavier, and Xavier’s one-man campaign to mitigate Hollywood’s homophobia, come to a tragic and suspicious end. Soon after Xavier publicly protests the studio’s homophobic rewrite of a movie script he intended to serve as his coming-out announcement, a truck crashes into his car on Wilshire.

“This was no accident,” Aaron realizes. “Xavier was hunted down.” With his best friend, Diahann Carroll, and a sizable contribution from Sidney Poitier, Aaron organizes the funeral, attempting to redeem the reputation he was hired to protect. “The news reports following Xavier’s death impeached his character,” Aaron says. “The implication was that gay men naturally had messy lives and untimely deaths. … Confidential magazine went as far as to print that “the driver of the truck [that killed Xavier] could well have been one of Xavier’s spurned male lovers.”

“Furious at the coverage,” Aaron narrates the story, “Diahann asked me, ‘Why don’t they print the lovely things I have to say about Xavier?’ ”

“I said, “They never will. Xavier fought the studio, and everything you’re reading is part of his punishment.”

The erasure of gay Black Hollywood is really the point of this imaginatively crafted, stunningly tense, historically significant sophomore novel. Newson’s impressive gifts for story, for writing the erotic and the noir, and for rooting himself in his adopted city are on magnificent display here. By smoothly merging the true and the invented stories and characters of 1950s Hollywood, Newson alerts us to the increase in racism and homophobia evident in the entertainment business, and in the U.S., today.

Rasheed Newson will talk with novelist Laura Warrell at Octavia’s Bookshelf at 6 p.m. Monday, and with writer Manuel Betancourt at Skylight Books. at 7 p.m. June 24.

Maran, a Silver Lake-based author, has written “The New Old Me” and other books.

In 1973, Tom Bradley became L.A.’s. first Black mayor by assembling Black, Jewish, white and Latino liberals into a coalition that ended decades of conservative white rule at City Hall.

Bradley’s election transformed Los Angeles politics and began what has been, for the most part, a 50-year reign of moderate Democrats. Year after year, the election map has changed, but liberal centrists have usually remained on top.

But as Mayor Karen Bass seeks reelection, she is struggling to unite her traditional base as she faces attacks from Democratic Socialists of America Councilwoman Nithya Raman on the left and Republican reality TV star Spencer Pratt on the right.

Some political experts in L.A. say mainstream Democrats are floundering as they try to patch together their coalitions in an era when poll after poll shows the city’s residents frustrated with the status quo.

“Overwhelmingly, Angelenos feel Los Angeles doesn’t work,” said Fernando Guerra, founding director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. “You have this liberal regime that has dominated from ‘73 to ‘26 and it’s stagnant.”

Traditional voting patterns, political experts agree, are unraveling as L.A.’s mounting housing costs create new political fault lines in this city of 3.9 million. The devastating 2025 wildfires, along with enduring problems of homelessness, declining city infrastructure and traffic, have exacerbated discontent.

It’s still possible Bass can pull off reelection in the nonpartisan mayoral race and some coalition of centrist Democrats can survive. But the fact that she is unlikely to avoid a runoff when U.S. incumbents typically win at a 90% rate, Guerra said, shows that L.A.’s mainstream Democratic institutions are hollowing out.

“The problem is not Bass,” Guerra said, adding: “Any regime that lasts for that long begins to fall upon itself. … It stagnates and stops being innovative, and just becomes protective of the ingrained interests that have nurtured that coalition.”

Former L.A. Mayors Antonio Villaraigosa, Eric Garcetti and Richard Riordan.

(Los Angeles Times)

Republicans hope that Pratt’s social-media-fueled critique of L.A. leaders’ failures in emergency preparation and response after the fires and high spending on homeless programs can lead a new generation of conservative Angelenos to the polls.

Most political observers in L.A., however, are confident that the city’s future is not conservative.

The DSA, a decentralized anti-capitalist group, has made inroads in L.A. as it advocates for rental protections, defunding the police and a Green New Deal. Over the last six years, Angelenos have elected four DSA-backed City Council members and a DSA-recommended city controller.

“L.A. is clearly a city that is steadily moving to the left,” said Jim Newton, executive director of UCLA Blueprint magazine and a veteran political journalist who worked for the L.A. Times for 25 years.

“People are unhappy, but they’re not unhappy enough to vote for a Republican,” Guerra agreed. “They have been looking at the other alternatives: the Democratic Socialist party that is the challenge to the establishment.”

Some caution, however, that it is too early to map out Los Angeles’ political future.

Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Haynes Foundation and author of “Politics in Black and White: Race and Power in Los Angeles,” said sweeping generational changes are happening in L.A. politics.

“I think everything is up for grabs,” Sonenshein said, noting that he expected more competition for Latino and Asian voters, young voters and even older Democrats. “Certainly, younger voters are completely up for grabs. It’s just hard to know where they’re going to end up. … Small shifts in the primary can make a very big difference.”

L.A. rose as the Republican stronghold of California.

As a massive influx of white Midwesterners descended on L.A. after the 1885 opening of the Santa Fe railroad, conservative white civic leaders — including the owners of the L.A. Times — touted the city as the GOP counterpart to progressive, union-friendly San Francisco. Liberal Black and white Angelenos were shut out of citywide power.

The purpose of the Bradley coalition, Sonenshein said, was to “break open the stranglehold of a city establishment that was … unresponsive to the diversity of the community.”

Bradley, an even-keeled attorney and former police officer, was well positioned to bridge L.A.’s racial divides. As a police community relations officer, he had cultivated relationships with Jewish business owners. He was an early supporter of L.A.’s first Latino City Council member, Edward Roybal, and had already united Black and Jewish Angelenos in the 10th District as the city’s first Black City Council member.

L.A. City Councilman Tom Bradley and Mayor Sam Yorty in a TV studio just before the start of a debate during their 1973 campaign for mayor.

(Los Angeles Times)

After his 1973 win, as waves of new immigrants moved to L.A., Bradley brought more Latinos and Asian Americans into the fold. A conscious alliance of minority communities reelected Bradley, helping him become the longest-serving mayor in L.A. history.

But by the 1990s, frustration had swelled over L.A.’s crime, pollution and poverty. Bradley’s popularity plummeted after Black motorist Rodney King was brutally beaten by LAPD officers in 1991 and riots erupted across the city the next year when a largely white jury acquitted the officers. More than 60 people were killed.

As Bradley prepared to step down, Democrats struggled to find a successor who could unite liberal Black, white, Latino and Asian Angelenos.

Still, some were skeptical that Richard Riordan, a Republican venture capitalist, would win. Riordan was a moderate, easygoing philanthropist, Newton said, and Republicans at the time made up 30% of L.A.’s registered voters, double their number now. Even so, he noted, “there were people who thought this is just not what this city is, the city doesn’t need a multimillionaire white guy Republican.”

Voters thought differently. After securing the support of San Fernando Valley Republicans and Democratic centrists and making small inroads among Latinos, Riordan became the first Republican L.A. mayor elected in 36 years.

The Bradley coalition was “a spent force,” Sonenshein said. “But new players were emerging in prominent roles, working to forge new types of alliances and, at times, temporary coalitions.”

When California voters in 1994 passed the anti-immigrant Proposition 187, which barred undocumented immigrants from receiving many public services, Latino participation in L.A. politics surged. Asian Americans also began to rise.

But after Bradley, there was no single Democratic coalition in the city.

When Antonio Villaraigosa challenged James Hahn in 2001 and 2005, Sonenshein said, Hahn drew support from the Black community and the Valley, Villaraigosa from Latinos and liberals. When Eric Garcetti defeated Wendy Greuel in 2013, Greuel had strong support in Black South L.A., but Garcetti managed to win with the white and Latino vote.

“People have to piece it together, because the Democrats have such a larger edge in L.A. than they did in Bradley’s age,” he said. “It’s almost a kind of entrepreneurial thing: You’ve got to go out and build a majority each time, and those alliances shift.”

There were still challenges from the right. But in 2022, when billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso ran against Bass on a centrist law-and-order platform, he switched his party affiliation from Republican to Democratic. Some saw that as a recognition that a Republican could not win in L.A.

Bass defeated Caruso by nearly 10 percentage points.

Like Bradley, Bass is a pragmatic politician with a long record of forging relationships behind the scenes.

In the 1990s, she founded the grassroots Community Coalition to combat the public health crises that plagued South L.A. amid the crack-cocaine epidemic.

But as Bass presides over a City Hall that is almost entirely dominated by Democrats, discontent is spreading. Polls show a substantial portion of the electorate views her unfavorably because of her handling of the Palisades fire.

Guerra said the lack of affordable housing had created a unique moment: Even after the King riots, the Northridge earthquake and the O.J. Simpson trial, he said, Angelenos were still invested in living in the city.

“You could still buy a home. You could still see yourself nurturing L.A., but also L.A. nurturing you,” Guerra said.

For Guerra, centrist Democrats have been so successful at inclusion they have struggled to identify priorities.

“There are too many members of the coalition and there are too many of the members who have veto power, which then leads to paralysis,” Guerra said. “The paralysis is what’s led to the lack of innovation, the failure to pursue policies that make sense for the greater good.”

The dysfunction, he said, is particularly clear on housing.

“Every NIMBY in every neighborhood, in every council district, is like, ‘We want housing, but not here,’” Guerra said. “That, replicated everywhere, leads to paralysis and no housing.”

It has also led to renters becoming a rising political constituency — a big shift from the Bradley era, when homeowners were the city’s dominant voters.

But that doesn’t mean working-class Angelenos have a bigger voice now in L.A. politics. Instead, the middle class is splintering along generational lines.

“Middle-class young folks graduating from college, who have extraordinary amounts of debt, cannot buy homes,” said Sara Sadhwani, a politics professor at Pomona College. “The city still has issues with food insecurity and low-wage worker protections, but those are not the issues dominating anymore.”

While L.A. Democrats have long focused on assembling coalitions of Black, Latino, Asian American and other minority activists, Sadhwani said, what was often not spoken about was the role of the city’s “nonprofit industrial complex.”

“Nonprofits have a huge role,” she said, noting that Bass came of that world. “Their politics are shifting.” Before 2020, she said, progressives focused on racial justice, immigration reform, and creating an economy that respects the work of immigrants; now, the focus is largely on homelessness and policing.

“What it means to be a progressive today,” Sadhwani said, “is actually quite different from what it was to be a progressive even just five years ago.”

Even as L.A. is clearly still a Democratic stronghold, Republicans say there are signs that some Angelenos are not in lockstep with liberal activists.

Donald Trump’s share of the vote in L.A. in the last three presidential elections, they note, climbed from 16% in 2016 to 21% in 2020 and 27% in 2024. And there is evidence that voters, at least at the county level, are questioning some criminal justice reforms.

In 2024, L.A. County voters ousted progressive incumbent Dist. Atty. George Gascón, who eliminated cash bail for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies and championed rehabilitation over punitive sentencing. A majority of county voters also backed Proposition 36, allowing stiffer penalties for crimes of repeat theft and possession of hard drugs.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, pictured here on the cover of Newsweek, helped reshape the city’s Democratic coalition

(David McNew / Getty Images)

With Republicans making up about 15% of L.A.’s registered voters, Rob Stutzman, a GOP strategist, said Pratt might win enough independent voters and disaffected Democrats to make it past the primary. But he would then struggle to get more than 50% in the runoff.

“The math just isn’t there, but in addition to that it’s the stink of Trump,” Stutzman said. “The tribal politics of today make a Republican victory in L.A. very difficult.”

Raman stunned L.A.’s political establishment in 2020 when she was elected L.A.’s first DSA-backed City Council member.

As she runs for mayor, the Los Angeles chapter of the DSA hopes to expand its power as it endorses a new slate of 2026 candidates for City Council, city attorney and L.A. school board.

Richard Riordan, the last elected Republican mayor of Los Angeles.

(Los Angeles Times)

Raman is clearly betting that a big, viable part of the electorate is to Bass’ left, Newton said.

The DSA, Newton said, had done a good job in recent years of identifying renters’ interests and advancing them to usher in a “newer, younger, probably more progressive edge to the city’s politics.”

But so far, Raman, who has aligned herself with the DSA on issues such as renter protections but deviated on police spending, is struggling to unite the organization.

The Harvard and MIT graduate caught the DSA and her fellow City Council members off guard when she entered the mayoral race just before the filing deadline.

In March, the L.A. chapter of the DSA announced it would recommend Raman for mayor, but not formally endorse her. This month, a trio of her fellow DSA-backed City Council members endorsed Bass.

After building momentum, the DSA’s failure to rally around a 2026 mayoral candidate could hurt the movement for several election cycles, Guerra said.

“This dissension is setting them back,“ Guerra said. “They really do have an opportunity to elect a DSA mayor.”

Bass has seized on Raman’s lack of support in City Hall to critique her coalition-building skills.

“If you want to be the mayor and you can’t get along with people who are your colleagues on council,” Bass said recently, “I don’t know how you’re supposed to govern at all.”

In the end, the outcome of L.A.’s mayoral race may not depend so much on Bass’ ability to inspire her traditional Democratic coalition. The question is whether a new generation can find a way to represent a mass of Angelenos with bold new visions and coalitions of their own.

Just one of the nine Supreme Court justices thought it was appropriate for Roger Goodell — whose primary job as NFL commissioner is to protect the league — to decide whether the NFL’s hiring practices are still racist.

And it happens to be the same justice whose close friend is an NFL owner.

In fact, the friendship between Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Arizona Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill dates back decades, to high school. So when President Trump nominated Kavanaugh for the highest court in the land, Bidwill used the team’s official website to advocate for his confirmation. Not sure how the “stick to sports” crowd feels about it, considering how they react when players express opinions, but it felt like an overreach to me.

Obviously when a decision related to NFL owners came before the court, Kavanaugh should have recused himself. But by now we’re used to justices ignoring their own ethics rules. What I find most disturbing in this instance is Kavanaugh’s dissent.

Here’s how the hiring discrimination case came to be: Former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick texted the wrong Brian with congratulations for getting the New York Giants’ head coaching job, according to a lawsuit filed by former Dolphins head coach and former Patriots assistant coach Brian Flores, who is Black. In the 2022 suit, Flores said the Giants interviewed him for their vacant head coaching job under disingenuous circumstances. How can we tell? Because Belichick’s congratulations came three days before Flores’ interview with the Giants. The team had apparently already decided to hire Brian Daboll, who is white.

The NFL has spent the last three-plus years attempting to settle the dispute through NFL-controlled arbitration and fought to keep it out of court. The league lifted its appeal to the Supreme Court after failing to get Goodell in position to handle it via the lower courts.

In addition to the damning text exchange, Flores also has history on his side.

During one 60-season stretch, the NFL had no Black head coaches. To address the glaring discrepancy, the league established the “Rooney rule” in 2003, requiring teams to interview at least two minority candidates for head coach and other senior management vacancies.

Prior to that, most teams interviewed only white men.

The results have been mixed.

Yes, more minority candidates get interviewed now — perhaps after a white man has quietly been chosen for the job, but still … they get interviewed.

And yes, Tony Dungy and Mike Tomlin, both of whom are Black, not only got hired but also led their franchises to Super Bowl victories after the rule was put into place.

Still, two decades into the Rooney-rule era, roughly a third of the league’s owners had never hired a minority to lead their team. This includes the century-old New York Giants, who after firing Daboll at the end of the season, hired another white man to take his place. This is the backdrop of the discrimination lawsuit filed by Flores.

And still Kavanaugh felt this case could be handled internally by the organization that allowed it to happen.

Even Clarence Thomas, a judge known for ruling against anything that helps Black people, thought the NFL should have to defend itself in court.

Consider this: The year before Flores filed his suit, the NFL settled a different discrimination lawsuit for $1 billion. That case arose because for decades, to help determine the payout from a concussion settlement between retired players and the league, the NFL used “race norming” — a methodology that assumes Black players are less intelligent than white players, making it more difficult for Black men to prove brain damage than white men. In a league that is roughly 70% nonwhite, the racist practice saved the billionaire owners millions.

Or how about this: After the Supreme Court ruled that Duke Power Co. used a controversial cognitive test to prevent Black employees from getting higher-paying jobs back in the 1970s, the NFL began using it. The league kept it in place until 2022.

And still Kavanaugh felt the league should handle Flores’ case.

I’m not sure what factors the justice was considering before his dissent, but it could not have been league history.

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Still a town at the time – it wasn’t granted city status until 1992 – Sunderland was a different world to the one in which Gregoire had grown up. Born in 1958 in the Toxteth area of Liverpool to Windrush Generation parents from the Caribbean island of Dominica, he was raised in Bradford, another multi-cultural city.

By contrast, according to the Census figures, barely 1% of a Sunderland population approaching 300,000 in 1981 was of African-Caribbean origin.

A fifth of the League’s 92 clubs had yet to sign a black player by 1978, the year Nottingham Forest’s Viv Anderson became the first to claim a senior England cap.

“I knew only one other black fellow in Sunderland, he was at the polytechnic,” remembers Gregoire. “Wayne Entwistle [a white striker, who signed the same day in a £30,000 deal from Bury] shared digs with me for a while and was a good guy, but it was quite a lonely time.”

Gregoire cites the club’s 1973 FA Cup-winning captain Bobby Kerr and experienced midfielder Mick Docherty as two colleagues who made him feel welcome, in a debut season where he made eight first-team appearances.

But he felt the dressing room attitude towards him change in the summer of 1978, with a couple of notable incidents on a pre-season tour of Kenya.

“After one game, all these children ran on to the pitch and went up to one of our players and gathered round him,” he says. “But when they’d gone he came to me and wiped his hands on my shirt. I thought that was disgusting.

“It was like he thought those children had disease, and wanted to wipe it on me! Why me? Because I’m black, is that why?”

Later, at a post-match reception at the home of a wealthy local white family, the team lined up to meet the hostess.

“She shook the hand of the players on my right, bypassed me, then shook the hand of everyone else,” he says.

“I didn’t waste a second. I just calmly and coolly walked out of the house and on to the team bus. I would rather be out there, with lions and hyenas, than be inside, being insulted like that.

“Not one person came to see how I was, or to offer some comfort. It was only when they’d finished eating and drinking, laughing and joking, that they came filing back on to the coach.

“I thought that was a disgrace. That woman insulted me, and by insulting me she insulted the club. There was no loyalty, no integrity – I felt abandoned.”