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An informal advisor to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass handled communications for her office for free while simultaneously working on a three-year contract with Los Angeles World Airports worth nearly $600,000.

Yusef Robb, who runs the firm tk/Communications, was an unpaid spokesperson and advisor for Bass from February through the beginning of June.

On June 19, Robb began working for Lineage Logistics, whose cold food storage facility in Boyle Heights burned for more than a week last month. He continued to serve as an unpaid, unofficial advisor to the mayor, though no longer as a spokesperson, until The Times and other outlets reported on his work for Lineage on Saturday.

Robb said the airport contract was unrelated to his work for the mayor. But a legal expert said the arrangement raises questions about whether his free labor was a gift to the mayor and whether working for the city and private clients creates conflicts of interest.

“This was done through a transparent and public competitive bidding process,” Robb said in an email to The Times. “I provide communications support and training.”

The Bass administration said Robb’s unpaid assistance was “for the benefit of the city. It’s not a gift.”

In 2024, Robb signed the contract with Los Angeles World Airports, or LAWA — the city department that operates Los Angeles International Airport and the Van Nuys Airport — for $450,000 over three years.

He won the contract, which involved “executive media training” as well as “crisis communications,” over 10 other firms. It was updated in April to include additional work for $137,500.

A report from LAWA in support of the contract update said that “executive management at LAWA have benefited from successful, professional media training as well as support for LAWA crisis communications and response.”

Because tk/Communications has subcontracted to at least two other companies, Robb said his firm has earned no more than $315,000 over the three-year contract.

“There is no connection between the work Mr. Robb performs for LAWA and the assistance he provides for Mayor Bass’ Office,” said a spokesperson for Bass’ office. Bass is running for reelection against City Councilmember Nithya Raman.

The LAWA contract was Robb’s second with the city during the Bass administration. The city paid a total of $75,000 in 2022 and 2023 to Robb’s firm to provide “various communications services related to the start-up of the administration,” according to a contract.

Tk/Communications has worked for government agencies as well as political campaigns and private businesses, including the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, the Los Angeles Unified School District and the music and entertainment company AEG, according to the company’s website.

“We develop powerful narratives and engagement to accelerate and amplify our clients’ messages, whether they’re grounded in an investment proposal or a political campaign,” the website states. “We author and tell stories that build deep connections and lasting relationships that deliver more than you asked for.”

Robb has worked in and around City Hall for decades. He was a press aide in Mayor Jim Hahn’s administration, then worked for Eric Garcetti when Garcetti was a city council member and then mayor. He left Garcetti’s office in 2015.

Robb said he has provided “unpaid help to all sorts of people and businesses, to advance criminal justice reform, organize community movements, or just to find the right words.”

“I feel it’s important to help the city if I can,” he said.

Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School and former president of the city’s Ethics Commission, said the airport contract shows how valuable Robb’s labor is, raising the question of whether he is providing a gift to Bass by working for her for free.

Another concern for the public, Levinson said, is that Robb is working for Bass at the same time that he has other clients and could potentially use his position at City Hall to advance those clients’ interests. His work for Bass could also make him more desirable for clients who believe he has the mayor’s ear, she said.

“What we’re worried about is undue influence, preferential access and backroom deals that benefit certain people, as opposed to the public,” said Levinson. “We don’t want public officials serving two masters.”

Still, Levinson said she does not believe that Bass has violated any laws by using Robb pro bono.

“This is an unusual setup,” she said. “That does not mean it’s illegal.”

When Brian Grazer has an idea for a movie, he now starts with a chatbot. The co-founder of Imagine Entertainment — the company behind “A Beautiful Mind,” “Apollo 13” and “Liar Liar” — said he sits down with Anthropic’s AI assistant, Claude, to rough out a story before handing it to a writer.

“You can build the whole thing into an outline. You still need a screenwriter. I always believe you need a screenwriter,” Grazer said during a keynote at UCLA’s Entertainment Symposium on Thursday. What once could have taken up to a year, he said, now takes him about a week — but the human writer stays.

That balance — AI as an accelerant rather than a replacement — captures where much of Hollywood has landed in practice. Amazon MGM, Lionsgate, Netflix and Disney have all made major investments in the technology. The sharper question at the symposium, which drew many of the industry’s top lawyers and dealmakers to the Westwood campus, was not whether to use AI but how: who authorizes it, how far it goes and who gets paid.

For the companies building the tools, the answer increasingly comes from the client. Studios, production companies and distributors regularly approach Promise, a generative AI company, to bring AI into their productions, and each arrives with its own usage guidelines, said the company’s president, Jamie Byrne. Those rules govern which AI models Promise may use and what protections apply — effectively letting each client decide how heavily AI figures into the work.

“It comes down to a risk appetite,” Byrne said during a panel on AI. “We know that there’s talent that are staunchly against it. We know that there are many who are okay with it.”

He framed adoption as a competitive necessity: “Every time there’s a technology change, certain studios or production companies rise. Others fall, and it’s usually the ones that are not leaning into the new tool.”

Ron Howard, also of Imagine Entertainment, argued the limits will ultimately be set elsewhere — by viewers. “Sure, it’s about efficiencies and budgets, but more than anything, audiences are going to tell us where those restrictions are,” he said. He expects AI-generated content to settle into its own subgenre over time, with audiences signaling what they will accept.

The most contested ground is labor, where consent has become the dividing line. The emergence of synthetic performers such as Tilly Norwood has made AI a central issue in SAG-AFTRA’s contract. The union’s most recent agreement draws a clear line between authorized digital replicas, which use a performer’s likeness with their consent, and fully synthetic creations.

Talent agencies are organizing around the same principle. In recent years, Creative Artists Agency began digitally scanning clients into what it calls the CAA Vault, building a replica of a client’s image, likeness and voice while leaving the talent in complete control of how it is used.

That control is beginning to carry real value, said Tammy Brandt, CAA’s deputy general counsel, who said she is seeing more deals that involve digital likeness. Hollywood has been slow to work out how to monetize these replicas, she said, but once it does, audiences will start to encounter them more often.

“You have to lean into the technology and understand what it can do, and honestly, how you can make money, work with talent and with creative assets in a way that the user is interested in,” Brandt said. “There’s a little bit of trial and error as you go with that.”

SAN FRANCISCO — There are no immigrants waiting for rulings anymore at San Francisco’s main immigration court, no lawyers making arguments.

The court, which had 21 judges when President Trump was sworn in last year, had only two left when it closed May 1. The rest had been fired, retired or resigned amid a White House purge of federal immigration judges.

The closing is one more reflection of the turmoil that has upended the immigration court system as the administration looks for ways to churn through its massive backlog of 3.8 million asylum cases and deport as many people as possible.

Asylum denial rates have soared as the administration has fired almost 100 judges deemed to be too liberal, and approved using hundreds of military lawyers to replace them. Immigrants have been arrested when they arrive at courthouses or government offices for scheduled appearances.

But amid the nationwide upheaval, San Francisco is the first major city to be left without a primary immigration court, leaving chaos and dysfunction in a region long known for its friendliness to asylum seekers. The two remaining judges will work from another federal building in the city but will be part of an immigration court across the bay.

That reputation, court insiders say, might have led to its downfall.

“It was a vibrant legal scene and so I think if you were looking to target a court you would have to look at what San Francisco stands for,” said Jeremiah Johnson, an immigration judge in the city until he was fired in November. He is now executive vice president of the National Assn. of Immigration Judges.

Most of the court’s 117,000 immigration cases have been moved to a courthouse in Concord, a city about 30 miles away that opened two years ago to help with San Francisco’s backlog of cases. But turmoil has also reached that city. A courthouse that had 11 judges at the start of 2025 is down to five after a series of firings. It had a caseload of 60,000 cases even before the San Francisco cases were shifted over.

San Francisco’s immigration court, which had the third-highest number of asylum cases in the nation, was long considered one of the most favorable to people seeking asylum. From 2019 to 2024, almost 75% of petitioners received some form of relief, compared with 43% nationwide, according to data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonprofit data research center based at Syracuse University.

That’s partly because San Francisco, with its vast network of pro-immigrant organizations and pro bono or low-cost legal services, had one of the country’s highest rates of legal representation for immigrants.

The Executive Office of Immigration Review, the Department of Justice branch that oversees immigration courts, announced in March that it would close the San Francisco courthouse in 2027 as a cost-saving measure and move its cases to Concord. But the end came early after nearly all the San Francisco judges left or were fired. The Executive Office provided no detailed explanation for the changes, saying in a statement only that it had decided not to renew its lease for the court, and doesn’t comment on personnel matters.

Tight security in Concord courts

Security is tight at the Concord courthouse, perhaps because of the new influx of cases. Armed security guards ask every person if they are carrying weapons or explosives, and they watch as each person turns off their cellphone. Even coffee is not allowed in. Only water is acceptable, and then only if it’s in a transparent bottle.

Judah Lakin, an immigration attorney based in Oakland who also teaches at UC Berkeley School of Law, said the closure of the San Francisco court has made cases more time-consuming since it’s harder for his clients, who often travel from hours away, to reach Concord on public transportation.

One recent 10-minute hearing in Concord took him more than two hours of travel, he said.

But beyond logistics, Lakin said the chaos in immigration courts under the Trump administration has created a fraught court atmosphere. Mass firings have led to last-minute hearing cancellations, cases have been reset with little notice, and clients are often left in prolonged legal limbo, leaving them vulnerable to deportation.

One of his clients, he said, was provisionally granted asylum by a judge, who was then fired before signing the decision. The case was transferred to a second judge, who was also fired. Now on their third judge, his client is still waiting.

“The ground is constantly shifting underneath your feet, whether it’s judges being fired and hearings getting canceled, whether it’s your clients getting arrested, whether it’s getting denials on things that used to be standard and routine,” Lakin said.

“I think that’s on purpose. That’s by design. It’s part of the strategy,” he added.

‘Heartbreaking’

San Francisco’s immigration court was one of the first in the nation to hire judges with non-prosecutorial backgrounds, with many having previous experience working with immigrants at nonprofits or defending them in court.

To see the court close is “heartbreaking,” said Dana Leigh Marks, a former San Francisco immigration judge who retired in 2021 after 35 years on the bench and who was among the first judges in the nation to be hired from private practice.

She sees the Trump administration’s decision to close the largest immigration court in Northern California as part of an effort to undermine due process and eventually dismantle the path to asylum.

“It’s all a part of big ways and little ways that the Trump administration is trying to get noncitizens out of the country,” she said.

Johnson, the fired San Francisco judge, was appointed during the first Trump administration. He believes he was targeted because he granted asylum in 89% of the cases he heard.

“You don’t fire judges if you disagree with the way they’re handling a case; that’s not how courts work. If you disagree, you appeal that decision,” he said.

Johnson, who is the executive vice president of the National Assn. of Immigration Judges, defended his judicial record, pointing out that over eight years, only about 10 of his cases were appealed by the Department of Homeland Security, and very few were sent back for further hearings by the Board of Immigration Appeals.

Unlike federal courts, where there are strict rules of procedure and judges have lifetime tenure, the Justice Department runs immigration courts, and the attorney general can fire the judges with fewer constraints.

There were 754 immigration judges across the country at the start of Trump’s second term. Now, there are about 600, including some temporary judges, according to data collected by the judges’ union. Widespread courthouse arrests of immigrants have caused hundreds of people not to even show up for hearings, leading to deportation orders in absentia.

Nidaa Pervaiz came to the Concord court on a recent day to represent a client from Nepal. She prefers the new courthouse in some ways, since it’s closer to her home.

But, she said, she and her clients are already feeling the impact of the changes. Fewer judges leads to fewer hearings. That means more delays for her clients, whose paperwork can expire even before they can appear before a judge.

“Their whole lives are at stake, and they are coming to make a plea for their future” she said.

Rodriguez writes for the Associated Press.

Over the last five years, there has been a significant shift in how fashion and sports intersect, both on and off the court, with athletes’ influence extending beyond the court and into culture at large. Why now? And how has athlete style evolved?

These were some of the questions that three prominent athlete stylists — Brittany Hampton, Courtney Mays and Dex Robinson — unpacked last week at the panel “Game Changers: Where Sport Meets Style.” Moderated by Image contributor Darian Symoné Harvin and co-organized with the Only Agency, the event took place at the private members club Gravitas, a hub for folks at the intersection of sports, business and luxury in Beverly Hills. Gathered in the swanky yet intimate upstairs bar and events room, guests sat in plush chairs and sipped pink vodka cocktails and flipped through Image’s May sports and arts issue ahead of it hitting the newsstands. An also-plush takeaway? Stress balls in the shape of footballs, courtesy of the Only Agency.

The evening could’ve kept going — Hampton, Mays and Robinson had so much to say about an industry that is still widely misunderstood and filled with gatekeeping. The below edited version of the conversation gives you a glimpse into the demanding yet deeply fulfilling world of styling athletes.

Darian Symoné Harvin: Athletes often are not sample size. How do you source clothes and work with brands? Are they supportive? Anything you would tell brands if you could?

Courtney Mays: Size inclusivity is a huge thing. Because, especially when you’re talking about the W[NBA], you’re talking about women who are sometimes a men’s size 13 shoe, who are sometimes a 36-inch inseam. And although we’re using this platform to talk about larger issues, sometimes the larger issue is: I’m here and I’m a plus-size woman. Sometimes you have to use your presence to talk about those things, if you’re not verbally saying that, [and] you have to get the brands to stand behind you.

“We’re making sure that that Old Navy looks like Bottega,” said Courtney Mays, “so that at the end of the day you feel like the superstar that you are. We’re really curating the moment.”

Brittany Hampton: It’s also important for everyone that’s in the room to know that stylists can’t always get the ask that you guys may be asking for. If I have a seven-foot athlete, which I do have on my roster, and he’s, you know, he’s massive — he wears a 16-and-a-half shoe. There may only be a few brands [with his size]. There are going to be certain things that I may even have to pull out of his own closet. And then it still means, “Well, why do we have to give you that budget for that?” And it’s like, well, because I had to have an assistant go get that piece from his closet, have it dry-cleaned, have it picked up, then have it delivered to set. It’s still a process, there’s value in the work that we put in. We’re trying our hardest.

DSH: From a tunnel walk to a press run to a campaign, how do you break down your budget and your fee?

Dex Robinson: Each stylist approaches fees and pricing a different way, right? Also depends on how you were groomed or how you came into the situation. I was an assistant for years before I ever said I was a stylist, and even then I kind of treaded lightly before I was like, “I am a lead stylist.” I was someone’s assistant, and that’s when I asked all the questions that I needed to ask about what my fees would be. I knew the structures, I knew the things, so I wasn’t asking my peers, “Oh, how do I charge for this?”

BH: I do want to jump in and state for the people in the room that may or may not know we’re speaking in terms of expenses. The current budgets that they are talking about are particular to clothing expenses. That does not allot to our fees. We have labor that is very imperative, labor that goes into us doing market research, that goes into us having assistance across cities most of the time. I live in Los Angeles. None of my clients live in Los Angeles. So let’s say my client is currently in the playoffs and lives in Cleveland, but I’m pulling from both New York and Los Angeles, then we’re meeting in Cleveland to have a fitting with him, and that all takes a tailor of this, of that, etc. Now, having tunnel looks is one thing, but then also having a campaign is something completely different. We also then have to be very strategic about brands that we’re pulling from. And we are using our own cards!

CM: A lot of times, we are giving our own money down to say, “I’m taking this half a million dollars’ worth of wardrobe out of your store, and I’m promising you that I’m going to bring it back in a certain amount of time.”

DR: It’s a more lengthy exercise to get people to let you borrow clothes versus [when] the [clients] just pay for this stuff and I don’t have to worry about it after. I would much rather let them have it in their wardrobe and I figure out what to do with it after. And I’m not like, “Oh, you wore this one time,” and just throw this out. No, we gonna cut the arms off of this. We gonna turn this into some shorts.

When asked for one piece of advice for aspiring stylists, Dax Robinson encouraged people to first do their research. “Being fashionable does not make you a stylist … it takes years of perfecting a craft to become a stylist.”

But then to pull from a [showroom], that’s a whole ‘nother situation. That’s not really a money exchange, that’s more of a publicity exchange. And again, it’s still based off your name or your client.

CM: That’s when it’s important to get the shot. We live in a social media world. When we work with brands and we work with designers, we work with PR firms — what they’re looking for is that image. Not only the tunnel walk, but maybe it’s the walk out of the hotel or that paparazzi shot.

So we’re also partnering with photographers, saying, “Hey, our clients are going to the opening of LACMA. We need to capture the moments before.” Just like all the celebrities, they go to the SAG Awards, whatever, and they have these beautiful editorial shots before they even hit the red carpet. Why? Because they invested in a photographer to come to their home, to their hotel room, and say, “Let’s use 15 minutes before you walk out the door, get this BTS, get this shot, and we’re going to make it look beautiful.” Because we want to build the relationships with the brands of the clothing that we’re wearing.

DSH: What I love about what you’re saying is that it’s not only the tunnel, it’s not only the press run, it’s not only the campaign. It’s like, how are you creating this world around who the athlete is? To me, that’s exciting. It’s when you get into the creativity.

Let’s say that you receive a cold email from someone who wants to work with you. What kinds of questions do they ask that lets you know that they’re informed or they mean business? What lets you know, “Oh, they’ve done their homework a little bit, and they’re not just going to toss me around as a possibility”?

BH: We are brand architects, and because you guys are reaching out to us about a particular client, our job is not to just create a character, right? We don’t just create characters. We work with athletes. We understand that we have to know that athlete before they even walk in the room, and we have to understand their identity, understand their brand, and then build that with you [the brands] before we can even do the job right. There’s nothing more that I love than being on a call with a full production team for a full hour for a commercial. Because we actually want to know: One, what’s going into that player. Two, what they look like. Three, what they’re going to be doing, if there’s a double or if they’re going to be active — our talent is very performative, they’re performance-based first, and so we have to remember that when we’re dressing them.

Brittany Hampton on the role stylists play beyond the tunnel walk: “We’re not just bringing them a rack of clothes. We’re truly there to help build their identity and then who they’re about to become.”

CM: I feel like those conversations need to happen at the onset of working with a new client, with the agent, with the manager, with the assistant so that you can understand what the broader goal is for that client. A lot of times when people hire stylists, whether it’s per project or for a longer stint, a season, I think it’s like, “Oh, they just need clothes.” Like, I just had a job. [Her team] was like, “It’s the opening of the WNBA season. She needs clothes tomorrow.” Like an idiot, I took it: I really want to work with this girl. I’m gonna just send her a box. And I knew that was the dumbest thing I could have ever done, because I’ve never met her in person. I didn’t have the right sizes, and I think it ruined the relationship, because I didn’t have any context. So the fact that I couldn’t execute in 24 hours is sticking with me. I should have said no, because that is not my job — to go shop for you at the mall. My job is to really have a conversation about what your goals are, what your fit is, what brands do you love, what do you want to do when this basketball thing is over? I think that part and those conversations are important.

BH: It’s also important to have emotional intelligence. As we are the people that work with athletes on a consistent basis, we have to understand their bodies, but we also have to understand that they win games, they lose games. And half the time we are picking up their energy. We’re not just bringing them a rack of clothes. We’re truly there to help build their identity and then who they’re about to become. Sometimes you don’t get that lucky and get to have someone for that long, but the relationship building and creating that trust is something that’s so important, which is why those factors matter, like hiring someone maybe a month in advance and setting up those calls between the client and the stylist. Even if we just get on the call and we just want to shoot the shit and we’re like, “What colors do you like? What size do you like? What are brands that you love? Who do you look up to in terms of fashion?” Because some of these kids like it, and some of them absolutely don’t know.

DR: Well, that [direct relationship] might not be the reality depending on how big your client is sometimes, too. I’ve worked with people where they had to have that middleman for a little bit until they felt comfortable. So it wasn’t a situation where you could do that direct situation until they were ready. It’s also a different situation for me as a male, because guys don’t like being around other guys, so that’s why [women] dominated [the styling landscape] for years. Think about it. Like, as a guy, your mom is your first stylist. And then when you get a shorty you may say, “Yo, babe, I look nice. I’m good.” Guys really feel confident with a woman saying, “You look nice.” Not, “Yo, bro.” And then, even for me, a lot of the bigger guys I worked with, it was really their wives that was like, “You know what? My man can’t dress. I need you to come in.”

CM: That’s still the case. It’s somebody’s girlfriend or wife or agent. Like, “Please help.”

DSH: I want to talk about the people who you all work with when you are on set. I’m thinking particularly about glam. I’m curious about the makeup, hairstyle and grooming conversation that you are having, and why it matters.

“What you’re saying is that there’s a level of love that you have to put into it, and it’s not just about the clothes, but about the person,” reflected moderator Darian Symoné Harvin. “What do you like off the court? Where do you want to be? Where do you want to show up, right?”

CM: I feel like the stylist always becomes the creative director. We’re the hype man. We’re the one that’s talking to the hairstylist to say, “OK, she’s wearing this dress, we got to do XYZ, LMNOP.” We’re talking to the hairstylist. We’re talking to the photographer. We’re saying, “OK, we need a green backdrop instead of a yellow.” And I feel like that’s why we’re asking for certain rates; it’s not just me going to Old Navy to get y’all some jeans. And even if I am, because sometimes [Old Navy is] cute, we’re tailoring it. We’re making sure that that Old Navy looks like Bottega, so that at the end of the day you feel like the superstar that you are. We’re really curating the moment.

DSH: What advice would you give if you were sitting across a coffee table with a stylist who says, “I want to get into styling athletes”? What’s the one honest piece of advice you would give them?

BH: We can’t do everything. There are hundreds and hundreds of athletes across the board, and although we all came from a world of gatekeeping, it’s just not that anymore. Like we all have to share relationships. We have to continue to boost one another up. There’s been jobs where I’m like, “I can’t take that. Can you take that? Would you want that? This could be a good girl for you.”

DR: I think that a lot of people think because they’re fashionable, that means they should be a stylist. And I think being fashionable is just that. Being fashionable does not make you a stylist. I think it takes a sharpened eye. I think it takes understanding skill and proportion. I think it takes years of perfecting a craft to become a stylist. I think that people should just do research. I think that people should assist people. I think that when you come into a space and you don’t assist people, [maybe] you can easily attain a client, but retaining them is going to be hard, and I think that’s a difference, right? I wish a lot of the younger people that came into the space were more open to being a student first and not trying to become a professor.

CM: I also think that what we do is such an intimate thing. We’re getting people dressed. We’re in their homes, we’re in their hotel rooms. We’re with their families. Come as your authentic self and know that you have to do your best professionally — but also there’s a level of love that you have to put into it, and it’s not just about the clothes, but about the person, and about their goals and their aspirations. Make sure that you become a part of those conversations in a real, authentic way.

BH: It’s not just transactional. This is truly our passion. And we want to continue to work and just push for every person that comes after us.