Bully

COMEDIAN Steve Coogan will pay substantial damages to a university boss for portraying him as a film’s sexist bully. 

The actor, 60, co-wrote and starred in 2022’s The Lost King, about the quest to uncover the remains of Richard III. 

Richard Taylor was part of the Leicester University team which located the grave of the king — often portrayed as having a hunched back — beneath a car park in the city. 

But Mr Taylor sued for libel after being characterised as “smug, unduly dismissive and patronising”. 

Alan Partridge star Coogan is a vocal campaigner for media fairness. 

Last year, a judge found Coogan and two production companies “knowingly misrepresented facts” in the film, starring Sally Hawkins and Harry Lloyd. 

FULL FRONTAL

Katy Perry & Justin hold hands at strip bar during 1st public appearance

BUSTED!

Anne Hathaway ‘arrested’ by Sabrina Carpenter with fuzzy pink handcuffs in NYC

Yesterday, lawyers for Mr Taylor told London’s High Court the parties had settled out of court and that he was being paid “substantial damages”. 

Producers will also make changes to the film. 

Mr Taylor called it vindication after “a long and gruelling battle”. 

Mrs Justice Collins Rice said: “These were momentous historical events and finding yourself represented in a feature film about them must be an unsettling experience, even in the best of circumstances.  

“I hope that this very clear statement and the settlement… will help Mr Taylor put this particular experience behind him. ” 

Coogan, his production company Baby Cow, and Pathe Productions were not represented in court and did not attend. 

However, the star said he was consulting lawyers over remarks made by Mr Taylor — and insisted of his film: “It is the story I wanted to tell, and I am happy I did.” 

SACRAMENTO — There are “Wizard of Oz” echoes in the retaliatory redistricting fight being waged by California Democrats against President Trump and Texas Republicans.

That’s mainly because of the script being followed by Republican opponents. But Democrats seem to be parroting some Oz lines, too.

That was evident last week during several tense debates by California lawmakers on legislation setting a special state election for Nov. 4 to counteract Texas’ attempts to flip five congressional seats from Democrats to Republicans.

The California measures would temporarily suspend the state Constitution to allow legislators — rather than an independent citizens commission — to redraw U.S. House districts. The Democrats’ aim is to flip five Republican seats in California and neutralize the Texas GOP’s action. Democrats already have drawn the new lines, but voters must approve them.

At stake is control of the U.S. House of Representatives after next year’s midterm elections.

California’s Legislature, after much emotional rhetoric, easily passed the Democrats’ proposed constitutional amendment and supporting legislation on party-line, supermajority votes. The bills were immediately signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, their instigator and chief promoter. They’ll be Proposition 50 on the November ballot.

All the while, script lines from “The Wizard of Oz” movie classic kept ringing in my ears.

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” the Wizard implores Dorothy and her pals after her little dog, Toto, pulls back the curtain to reveal him as a fraud.

In Sacramento, it’s as if Republicans — and progressive do-gooders — are being admonished to pay no attention to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has committed the same sins of partisan redistricting that they’re attacking Newsom for. The Texan isn’t even mentioned by California assailants of Newsom’s gerrymandering. It smacks of hypocrisy.

What Abbott’s doing is even worse by good government standards. Unlike Newsom, he isn’t seeking voter approval.

Abbott doesn’t have to, of course. In Texas, it’s perfectly legal for the legislature to rig congressional districts for partisan advantage. In California, voters banned gerrymandering of congressional districts in 2010 and turned over their drawing to the bipartisan citizens commission. Newsom needs voter permission to suspend that law.

Nationally, Democrats need to gain only a handful of seats to capture control of the House and end the GOP’s one-party rule of Washington. Trump fears that likelihood. So he pressured Abbott into engineering a legislative gerrymandering of Texas’ House districts in mid-decade, rather than wait for the normal redrawing after the 2030 census. And he’s browbeating other red state governors to likewise rig their congressional lines.

“California will not be a bystander to Trump’s power grab,” Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Salinas) said as Newsom signed the legislation. “We will not stand by while the House is hijacked by authoritarianism.”

But back to the Emerald City.

The Wizard introduces himself to Dorothy by bellowing behind the curtain: “I am Oz, the great and powerful.” Later, he breaks his word to the girl, she sees through his bullying and stands up to him, scolding: “If you were really great and powerful, you’d keep your promises.”

Trump is a great big bully whose word can’t be taken at face value because he consistently changes his mind to fit the moment. He’s clearly anti-California, holding back federal funds, assessing fines and reducing environmental protections. Newsom and Democratic leaders will repeatedly remind voters of that as the election approaches.

Unlike Dorothy, it’s a rare Republican elected official who has the courage to stand up to this power-obsessed bully. But one surprisingly surfaced during the Assembly redistricting debate.

Referring to Trump’s urging Abbott and other GOP governors to gerrymander districts, Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher of Yuba City asserted: “He is wrong to do so.” And he added for emphasis: “Let me repeat. He is wrong…. Where does it end?”

Later, Gallagher reiterated, “My president is wrong on this point. What I don’t hear from the other side is, ‘My governor is wrong.’ ”

Gallagher and several Republicans insist — as Newsom and Democrats do — that gerrymandering should be outlawed in every state and district lines drawn by citizens’ commissions rather than self-interested legislators. But that won’t happen in the foreseeable future.

Gallagher also contended that Democrats are hyping Trump’s threat to democracy. He said they’re arguing that “in order to save democracy, we must undermine it” by committing sleazy gerrymandering.

He has a point about the Democrats’ excessive warning of democracy’s peril under Trump.

“Californians won’t stand by while Donald Trump destroys democracy,” Sen. Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside) declared during an oft-uncivil hearing of the Assembly Elections Committee. “If we let Trump get away with this rigging of elections, then we may not have free and fair elections in the future.”

That seems a stretch.

This and other hyperbole by several legislators of both parties reminded me of frightened Dorothy, Tin Man and Scarecrow chanting in the dark forest: “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”

I suspect the best pitch for Proposition 50 in this heavily Democratic state is a straight-forward anti-Trump message focused on his inhuman policies and the urgent need to restore checks and balances in Washington.

“We are going to punch this bully in the mouth,” Newsom vowed during a press conference hosted by the Democratic National Committee.

OK, but the governor should cool the Trump-like rhetoric. It probably wouldn’t impress Dorothy or — more important — her Uncle Henry and Aunt Em.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Most California voters disapprove of Trump’s immigration enforcement policies, poll shows
The TK: The Supreme Court could give immigration agents broad power to stop and question Latinos
The L.A. Times Special: This red state fears Californians bringing ‘radical, leftist ideology.’ It’s targeting teachers

Until next week,
George Skelton

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The thing about bullies is they don’t have real friends.

They have lieutenants, followers and victims — sometimes all three rolled into one.

Most of us learn this by about third grade, when parents and hard knocks teach us how to figure out whom you can trust, and who will eat you for lunch.

Elon Musk, at age 54 with $400 billion in the bank, just learned it this week — when his feud with our bully-in-chief devolved into threats that the president will have the South African native deported.

Speaking about Musk losing government support for electric cars, Trump this week warned that Musk “could lose a lot more than that.”

“We might have had to put DOGE on Elon,” Trump said, referencing Musk’s cost-cutting effort called the Department of Government Efficiency. “DOGE is the monster that … might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible?”

Yes, I know. Schadenfreude is real. It’s hard not to sit back with a bit of “told ya” satisfaction as we watch Musk — who has nearly single-handedly demolished everything from hurricane tracking to international aid for starving children — realize that Trump doesn’t love him.

But because Musk is the richest man in the world, who also now understands he has the power to buy votes if not elections, and Trump is grabbing power at every opportunity, there’s too much at stake to ignore the pitiful interpersonal dynamics of these two tantrumming titans.

What does it have to do with you and me, you ask? Well, there’s a potential fallout that is worrisome: The use of denaturalization against political enemies.

In case you’ve been blessedly ignorant of the Trump-Musk meltdown, let me recap.

Once upon a time, nine months ago, Musk and Trump were so tight, it literally had Musk jumping for joy. During a surprise appearance at a Butler, Pa., political rally (the same place where Trump was nearly assassinated), Musk leaped into the air, arms raised, belly exposed, with the pure delight of simply being included as a follower, albeit one who funneled $290 million into election coffers. Back then, Musk had no concern that it wasn’t his own dazzling presence that got him invited places.

By January, Musk had transitioned to lieutenant, making up DOGE, complete with cringey swag, like a lonely preteen dreaming up a secret club in his tree house. Only this club had the power to dismantle the federal government as we know it and create a level of social destruction whose effects won’t be fully understood for generations. Serious villain energy.

But then he got too full of himself, the No. 1 sin for a lieutenant. Somewhere along the line, Trump noticed (or perhaps someone whispered in the president’s ear) that Musk was just as powerful as he is — maybe more.

Cue the fallout, the big “see ya” from the White House (complete with a shoving match with another Trump lieutenant) and Musk’s sad realization that, like everyone else in a bully’s orbit, he was being used like a Kleenex and was never going to wind up anyplace but the trash.

So Musk took to his social media platform to start bashing on Trump and the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which passed in the Senate on Tuesday, clearing the way for our national debt to skyrocket while the poor and middle class suffer.

“If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day. Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE,” Musk threatened, conjuring up a new political party the same way he ginned up DOGE.

Musk even promised to bankroll more elections to back candidates to oust Trumpians who voted for the bill.

“And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” Musk wrote. Presumably before he leaves for Mars.

It was those direct — and plausible — threats to Trump’s power that caused the president to turn his eye of Sauron on Musk, flexing that he might consider deportation for this transgression of defiance. It might seem entertaining if Musk, who the Washington Post reported may have violated immigration rules, were booted from our borders, but it would set a chilling precedent that standing up to this president was punishable by a loss of citizenship.

Because the threat of deporting political enemies didn’t start with Musk, and surely would not end with him.

For days, Trumpians have suggested that New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a U.S. citizen in 2018, should be deported as well, for the crime of backing policies that range in description from progressive to socialist to communist (pretty sure the ones labeling them communism don’t actually know what communism is).

On Tuesday, Trump weighed in on Mamdani.

“A lot of people are saying he’s here illegally,” Trump said, which of course, no one is except for Trump’s attack dogs. “We’re going to look at everything.”

Denaturalization for immigration fraud — basically lying or misrepresenting stuff on your official application — is nothing new. Obama did it, as did Trump in his first term, and it has a long history before that.

But combing the documents of political enemies looking for pretexts to call fraud is chilling.

“This culture of weaponizing the law to go after enemies, it’s something that is against our founding principles,” Ben Radd told me. He’s a professor of law and an expert in political science at UCLA.

“It is very much an abuse of executive power, but [Trump] gets away with it until there’s a legal challenge,” Radd said.

While Musk and Mamdani have the power to fight Trump in a court of law, if it comes to it, other naturalized citizens may not.

There are about 25 million such citizens in the United States — people who immigrated in the “right” way, whatever that means, jumped through the hoops, said their pledge of fealty to this country and now are Americans. Or so they thought.

In reality, under Trump, they are mostly Americans, as long as they don’t make him mad. The threat of having citizenship stripped for opposing the administration is powerful enough to silence many, in a moment when many immigrants feel a personal duty and impetus to speak out to protect family and friends.

Aiming that threat at Musk may be the opportunistic anger of a bully, and even seem amusing.

But it’s an intimidation meant to show that no one is too powerful to be punished by this bully, and therefore, no one is safe.