A veteran producer at “CBS Evening News With Tony Dokoupil” was fired this week after raising concerns over the editorial direction of the program.
Javier Guzman, who has been with CBS News since 2017, was dismissed Wednesday from his position as senior producer, according to people familiar with the action who were not authorized to comment. A CBS News representative said the company does not discuss personnel matters.
Guzman is said to have expressed disagreement over the editorial direction of the evening newscast, which has undergone a revamp under CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss. Guzman did not respond to a request for comment.
The sudden exit on the third day of Dokoupil’s tenure added to a growing perception that the program is off to an inauspicious start. Media industry newsletters and the tabloids have become repositories for unattributed comments from CBS News insiders who are unhappy with the changes.
The latest iteration of the storied newscast has generated negative feedback on social media for its content. On Tuesday, that included a breezy salute to Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a series of memes. It was a questionable choice coming days after a deadly U.S. military attack on Venezuela, where special forces captured the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife.
The same episode was also blasted for a brief item noting the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The view of the historic event from five years ago was presented as a difference of opinion between President Trump and Democratic leaders in Congress.
The segments advanced the narrative among many media critics that Weiss is chasing after MAGA-friendly viewers and looking to please the White House as parent company Paramount pursues the takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. She joined the network in October after Paramount acquired her digital news site the Free Press, which often decries the excesses of the political left.
On Wednesday, the day after Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman was shot in her vehicle by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, “CBS Evening News” went ahead with a planned trip to Dallas as part of a multicity tour to promote Dokoupil as the new anchor.
While Dokoupil has said he wants “CBS Evening News” to focus more on the viewpoints of regular citizens and less on “elites” based in New York and Washington, his Dallas visit included a helicopter ride with Jerry Jones, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys. There was also a brief segment on the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
Dokoupil did score a newsworthy interview that day with ICE chief Tom Homan, who notably held back on commenting on the fatal shooting of Good while Trump and other administration officials rushed to call her a domestic terrorist. The program also quickly pivoted by flying to Minneapolis, where it focused heavily on the reaction of shaken Minneapolis residents and anti-ICE protesters to the incident.
Ratings for Dokoupil’s broadcast are slightly above the season-to-date average, according to Nielsen, but remain well behind “ABC World News Tonight With David Muir” and “NBC Nightly News With Tom Llamas.”
Dokoupil was co-host of “CBS Mornings” before joining “CBS Evening News,” where he replaced the anchor duo of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois.
Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre said Wednesday that anyone who says he has thrown in the towel on his battle with Parkinson’s disease is spreading fake news.
“Thank you everyone for your prayers and concerns, but contrary to reports, I have not given up hope in my battle with Parkinson’s!” the 56-year-old Super Bowl champion wrote on X. “Not sure where this came from — but just like I never gave up on the gridiron — not going to start now. I pray there will be a cure one day and I appreciate you all.”
Favre also told TMZ on Wednesday: “I have absolutely not given up and I am fighting till the end. Yes I have progressed a little faster than I would have hoped at this point but I’m extremely thankful and blessed!!!”
On the podcast, Favre sounds like he’s trying to be realistic about his condition while also remaining hopeful.
“As you well know, there’s no cure,” Favre said. “I hear from time to time, ‘Well, they’re five years away from a cure.’ You know, I hope that that’s the case. I really do. But I’m not holding my breath.”
He mentioned Michael J. Fox and Muhammad Ali as people who “have really set the bar high on Parkinson’s and treatments and things of that nature.”
“And I’m sure that when they were diagnosed, they thought, ‘Well, they’ll have a cure in five years. I’ll be fine,’” Favre said. “Well, that’s not the case. So, I’m optimistic, but again, I’m not holding my breath.”
Favre’s comments on Wednesday may have been in response to a recent online article that seemed to interpret his podcast remarks in a different way than he intended.
Also on the podcast, Favre said he’s in the early stages of idiopathic Parkinson’s disease, which is the most common type of the disorder. He said his major symptoms are “rigidity and stiffness,” which is worst in the morning before he takes his medication and has particularly affected his right side.
Favre added that he occasionally experiences shaking but has not had any memory loss issues.
“All in all, I’m pretty good,” he said. “I would say I’ve progressed maybe a little. … If you dropped a dime on the floor in front of me and I reached down with my right hand, I may for five minutes try to pick up that dime and eventually just grab it with my left hand. Initially when I would take the medicine, my dexterity in my right hand was pretty smooth. But that’s not the case anymore.
“So that’s one of the reasons I think I may have progressed a little bit. Hopefully not. Maybe it’s I’m looking into something more than it really is, but all in all, again I’m very blessed and thankful.”
Russian officials indicated in 2019 that the Kremlin would be willing to back off from its support for Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela in exchange for a free hand in Ukraine, according to Fiona Hill, an advisor to President Trump at the time.
The Russians repeatedly floated the idea of a “very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and Ukraine,” Hill said during a congressional hearing in 2019. Her comments surfaced again this week and were shared on social media after the U.S. stealth operation to capture Maduro.
Hill said Russia pushed the idea through articles in Russian media that referenced the Monroe Doctrine — a 19th-century principle in which the U.S. opposed European meddling in the Western Hemisphere and, in return, agreed to stay out of European affairs. It was invoked by Trump to justify the U.S. intervention in Venezuela.
Even though Russian officials never made a formal offer, Moscow’s then-ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, hinted many times to her that Russia was willing to allow the United States to act as it wished in Venezuela if the U.S. did the same for Russia in Europe, Hill told the Associated Press this week.
“Before there was a ‘hint hint, nudge nudge, wink wink, how about doing a deal?’ But nobody [in the U.S.] was interested then,” Hill said.
Trump dispatched Hill — then his senior advisor on Russia and Europe — to Moscow in April 2019 to deliver that message. She said she told Russian officials “Ukraine and Venezuela are not related to each other.”
At that time, she said, the White House was aligned with allies in recognizing Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s interim president.
But fast forward seven years and the situation is different.
After ousting Maduro, the U.S. has said it will now “run” Venezuela policy. Trump also has renewed his threat to take over Greenland — a self-governing territory of Denmark and part of the NATO military alliance — and threatened to take military action against Colombia for facilitating the global sale of cocaine.
The Kremlin will be “thrilled” with the idea that large countries — such as Russia, the United States and China — get spheres of influence because it proves “might makes right,” Hill said.
Trump’s actions in Venezuela make it harder for Kyiv’s allies to condemn Russia’s designs on Ukraine as “illegitimate” because “we’ve just had a situation where the U.S. has taken over — or at least decapitated the government of another country — using fiction,” Hill told AP.
The Trump administration has described its raid in Venezuela as a law enforcement operation and has insisted that capturing Maduro was legal.
The Russian Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Hill’s account.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not commented on the military operation to oust Maduro but the Foreign Ministry issued statements condemning U.S. “aggression.”
Los Angeles Fire Chief Jaime Moore admitted Tuesday that his department’s after-action report on the Palisades fire was watered down to shield top brass from scrutiny.
“It is now clear that multiple drafts were edited to soften language and reduce explicit criticism of department leadership in that final report,” Moore said Tuesday during remarks before the city’s Board of Fire Commissioners. “This editing occurred prior to my appointment as fire chief. And I can assure you that nothing of this sort will ever again happen while I am fire chief.”
Moore, who was appointed fire chief in November, did not say who was responsible for the changes to the report.
The report’s author, LAFD Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, declined to endorse it because of substantial deletions that altered his findings. Cook said in an Oct. 8 email to then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva and other LAFD officials that the edited version was “highly unprofessional and inconsistent with our established standards.”
Mayor Karen Bass’ office has said that the LAFD wrote and edited the report, and that the mayor did not demand changes.
On Tuesday, Clara Karger, a spokesperson for Bass said: “Mayor Bass fully respects and supports what the Chief said today, and she looks forward to seeing his leadership make the change that is needed within the department. Chief Moore is a courageous leader with strong integrity who continues to show his deep commitment to the people of Los Angeles and to the brave firefighters who serve our city every day.”
Villanueva did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Moore’s remarks, on the eve of the first anniversary of the Palisades fire, were the strongest admission yet of missteps by LAFD leaders. They amounted to an about-face for a chief who in November critiqued the media following a Times report that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to roll up their hoses and leave the area of a New Year’s Day fire even though they had complained that the ground was still smoldering. That fire, the Lachman fire, later reignited into the Palisades fire.
“This is about learning and not assigning blame,” said Fire Commissioner Sharon Delugach, who praised the chief for his comments.
The most significant changes, The Times found in its analysis of seven drafts of the report, involved top LAFD officials’ decision not to fully staff up and pre-deploy available firefighters ahead of the ferocious winds.
An initial draft said the decision “did not align” with policy, while the final version said the number of companies pre-deployed “went above and beyond the standard LAFD pre-deployment matrix.”
A section on “failures” was renamed “primary challenges,” and an item saying that crews and leaders had violated national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter deaths and injuries was scratched.
Another passage that was deleted said that some crews waited more than an hour for an assignment on Jan. 7, 2025.
The department made other changes that seemed intended to make the report seem less negative. In one draft, there was a suggestion to change the cover image from a photo of palm trees on fire to a more “positive” image, such as “firefighters on the frontline.” The final report displays the LAFD seal on its cover.
A July email thread reviewed by The Times shows concern over how the after-action report would be received, with the LAFD forming a “crisis management workgroup.”
“The primary goal of this workgroup is to collaboratively manage communications for any critical public relations issue that may arise. The immediate and most pressing crisis is the Palisades After Action Report,” LAFD Assistant Chief Kairi Brown wrote in an email to eight other people.
“With significant interest from media, politicians, and the community, it is crucial that we present a unified response to anticipated questions and concerns,” Brown wrote. “By doing so, we can ensure our messaging is clear and consistent, allowing us to create our own narrative rather than reactive responses.”
Maryam Zar, a Palisades resident who runs the Palisades Recovery Coalition, said that “when news came out that this report had been doctored to save face, it didn’t take much for [Palisades residents] to believe that was true.”
It was easy for Moore to admit the faults of previous LAFD administrations, she said.
“He’s not going to take any heat. It wasn’t him,” she said. “He’s not the fire chief who really should have stood up and said, ‘I didn’t do what I should have.’”
The after-action report has been widely criticized for failing to examine the New Year’s Day fire that later reignited into the Palisades fire. Bass has ordered the LAFD to commission an independent investigation into its missteps in putting out the earlier fire.
On Tuesday, Moore said the city failed to adequately ensure that the New Year’s Day fire was fully snuffed out.
He said that LAFD officials “genuinely believed the fire was fully extinguished.”
“That was based on the information, conditions, and procedures in place at that moment. That belief guided the operational decision-making that was made,” he said. “However, the outcome has made it incredibly clear that our mop-up and verification process needed to be stronger.”
Actor Mickey Rourke faces eviction from his Los Angeles home after failing to pay rent.
Rourke, whose birth name is Philip Andre Rourke Jr., received a three-day notice to pay rent or vacate the premises on Dec. 18 and had failed to comply, according to court documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday.
At the time of the notice, he owed $59,100 in unpaid rent.
A representative for Rourke did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In March, Rourke signed a lease for the three-bedroom, 2.5-bath house for $5,200 a month; it was subsequently raised to $7,000 a month, states the court filings.
A Zillow listing describes the property as a “nicely upgraded Spanish bungalow” built in 1926. Raymond Chandler was said to have resided there for two years in the 1940s.
The property’s owner, Eric Goldie, is requesting compensation for attorney‘s fees and for damages. A lawyer for Goldie was unavailable for comment.
A former boxer, Rourke, 73, turned to acting with small roles in the 1980 film “Heaven’s Gate” and “Body Heat” a year later, before earning acclaim for his role in 1982’s “Diner.”
After a slate of leading roles in a number of movies including “The Pope of Greenwich Village,” “9 1/2 Weeks” and “Rumble Fish,” Rourke‘s film career took a nosedive, with his off-screen antics frequently overshadowing his acting.
“I lost everything. My house, my wife, my credibility, my career,” he told The Times in an interview in 2008. “I just all had all this anger from my childhood, which was really shame, not anger, and used it as armor and machismo to cover up my wounds. Unfortunately, the way I acted really frightened people, although it was really just me who was scared. But I was like this person who was short-circuited and I didn’t know how to fix myself.”
In 2005 he reemerged with the neo-noir action thriller “Sin City.”
Three years later, Rourke’s portrayal of aging, washed up wrestler Randy “The Ram” Robinson, in the Darren Aronofsky film “The Wrestler,” earned him a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for lead actor.
Rourke’s return to the big screen has not been an entirely smooth ride.
In April, he agreed to exit “Celebrity Big Brother UK” after producers warned him over the use of “inappropriate language and instances of unacceptable behavior,” according to a statement a spokesperson for the show released at the time.
Following his departure from the reality show, his manager announced that he was pursuing legal action over a pay dispute, claiming that the show had disrespected her client by “publicly embarrassing him” and declined to pay him, according to People.
WASHINGTON — President Trump has indicated that the U.S. has “hit” a facility in South America as he wages a pressure campaign on Venezuela, but the U.S. offered no other details.
Trump made the comments in what seemed to be an impromptu radio interview Friday.
The president, who called radio host John Catsimatidis during a program on WABC radio, was discussing U.S. strikes on alleged drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, which have killed at least 105 people in 29 known strikes since early September.
“I don’t know if you read or saw, they have a big plant or a big facility where they send the, you know, where the ships come from,” Trump said. “Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So, we hit them very hard.”
Trump did not offer any additional details in the interview, including what kind of attack may have occurred. The Pentagon on Monday referred questions to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or one of the U.S. military’s social media accounts has in the past typically announced every boat strike in a post on X, but they have not posted any notice of any strike on a facility.
The press office of Venezuela’s government did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment on Trump’s statement.
Trump for months has suggested he may conduct land strikes in South America, in Venezuela or possibly another country, and in recent weeks has been saying the U.S. would move beyond striking boats and would strike on land “soon.”
In October, Trump confirmed he had authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela. The agency did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Monday.
Along with the strikes, the U.S. has sent warships, built up military forces in the region, seized two oil tankers and pursued a third.
The Trump administration has said it is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels and seeking to stop the flow of narcotics into the United States.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from power.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said in an interview with Vanity Fair published this month that Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro ‘cries uncle.’”
Price writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Konstantin Toropin in Washington and Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.
A federal judge this week canceled the trial of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration, and scheduled a hearing on whether the prosecution is being vindictive in pursuing a human smuggling case against him.
Abrego Garcia has become a centerpiece of the debate over immigration after the Trump administration deported him in March to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Facing mounting public pressure and a court order, the Trump administration brought him back to the U.S. in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee.
Abrego Garcia has denied the allegations, and argued that prosecutors are vindictively and selectively targeting him. Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. wrote in Tuesday’s order that Abrego Garcia had provided enough evidence to hold a hearing on the topic, which Crenshaw scheduled for Jan. 28.
At that hearing, prosecutors will have to explain their reasoning for charging Abrego Garcia, Crenshaw wrote, and if they fail in that, the charges could be dismissed.
When Abrego Garcia was pulled over in 2022, there were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. But Abrego Garcia was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning.
A Department of Homeland Security agent previously testified that he did not begin investigating the traffic stop until after the U.S. Supreme Court said in April that the Trump administration had to work to bring Abrego Garcia from El Salvador, where he was deported.
Years earlier, Abrego Garcia had been granted protection from deportation to his home country after a judge found he faced danger there from a gang that targeted his family. That order allowed Abrego Garcia, who has an American wife and child, to live and work in the U.S. under Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervision.
The Trump administration has accused Abrego Garcia of being a member of the MS-13 gang. He has denied the accusations and has no criminal record.
Abrego Garcia’s defense attorney and the U.S. attorney’s office in Nashville did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Tennis legend Venus Williams wed Danish model and actor Andrea Preti over the weekend in Florida, the new bride announced in a shared post.
An Instagram post from Vogue Magazine’s Weddings section announced the nuptials, with the message garnering more than 30,000 likes as of Tuesday afternoon.
“We all love each other so much,” Williams, 45, said in the Vogue post. “It was just the happiest, most beautiful, sweetest day.”
The post was scant on details other than the event took place over five days in and around the couple’s home in Palm Beach Gardens.
An email for comment to representatives for Williams and Preti, 37, was not immediately returned.
The couple met at 2024 Milan Fashion Week and began texting shortly after, according to Vogue.
The couple eventually became engaged on Jan. 31 in Tuscany, according to Vogue. That detail was confirmed in July during what was a historic month for Williams.
The Compton native defeated 23-year-old Peyton Sterns 6-3, 6-4 in the first round action of the D.C. Open after a 16-month hiatus from singles matches.
In victory, Williams became the second-oldest woman to win a tour-level singles match, trailing only fellow legend Martina Navratilova, who was 47 when she won in 2004.
“Yes, my fiance is here, and he really encouraged me to keep playing,” Williams told the Tennis Channel’s Rennae Stubbs in a post-match interview. “There were so many times where I just wanted to coast and kind of chill. … He encouraged me to get through this, and it’s wonderful [for him] to be here. He’s never seen me play.”
Fans are convinced that The Pussycat Dolls have “confirmed” they are reunitin (Jessica Sutta, Kimberly Wyatt, Nicole Scherzinger, Melody Thornton and Ashley Roberts pictured in 2008)Credit: GettyIt wouldn’t be the first time the band got back together, with an attempted reunion in 2019Credit: PA:Press AssociationNicole has had her fair share of trouble since leaving the band, including a highly-public feud and legal battleCredit: Getty
CAA music division head Rob Light and Paul Franklin – a specialist in reunion tours – are now set to manage the band in a telling move.
While Nicole teased the reunion this week by talking about “what’s to come” for the band.
Sharing a clip from their hit song Buttons, Nicole wrote: “From then to now… seeing this video hit 1 billion views on YouTube fills my heart with so much gratitude.
“For the PCD fans. For the memories. For what’s to come.”
At the time, a source said: “Kimberly has been open about the fact the girls have sorted out their issues.
“She also told pals they’ve been discussing a tour.
“The Pussycat Dolls certainly had their differences over the years, but a comeback would send fans wild.”
The Dolls started off as a burlesque troupe but in 2003 Nicole , Melody and Kaya joined Carmit, Ashley , Jessica and Kimberly to form the group.
They split in 2010.
This is not the first time a reunion has been on the cards, with multiple members of the band reuniting in 2019 before planning a 2020 tour, which was halted due to Covid-19.
It was later cancelled due to the pandemic and legal issues.
Robin claimed that Nicole was refusing to take part in the tour unless she received a larger share of the group’s joint firm.
She allegedly demanded her 49 per cent holding in the firm is increased to 75 per cent, giving her creative control of the group and “final decision-making authority”.
According to the lawsuit filed by Robin, Nicole said the “growth of her personal brand” and the “opportunities she would have to forego to engage in the partnership” was why she deserved an increased share.
However, in a fiery retaliation, former X Factor judge Nicole issued a statement through her lawyer, Howard King, in which she branded Robin’s claims as “ludicrous and false”.
Melody wasn’t involved in the last planned reunion after clashing with Nicole over singing the band’s lead vocals.
Robin Antin sued Nicole following the band’s 2019 reunion in what became a bitter legal battleCredit: GettyThe band originally rose to fame in 2003Credit: Getty
The year was already a debacle for the Los Angeles Fire Department and Mayor Karen Bass, with multiple stumbles before and after the epic January blaze that obliterated Pacific Palisades, so it was hard to imagine that things could get worse in the closing days of 2025.
But they have.
A blistering Times investigation found that the Fire Department cleaned up its after-action report, downplaying missteps.
In other words, there was a blatant attempt to mislead the public.
And Bass representatives said they requested that her comments in the final minutes of a video interview — in which she admitted that “both sides botched it” in the Eaton and Palisades fires — be edited out because she thought the interview had ended.
Please.
Together, these developments will echo through the coming mayoral election, in which Bass will be called out repeatedly over one of the greatest disasters in L.A. history. We’re a long way from knowing whether she can survive and win a second term, but Austin Beutner and any other legitimate contenders are being handed gifts that will keep on giving.
In the case of the altered report, kudos to Times reporters Alene Tchekmedyian and Paul Pringle, who have been trying all year to keep the LAFD honest, which is no easy task.
In the latest bombshell dropped by the two reporters, they dug up seven drafts of the department’s self-analysis, or after-action report, and found that it had been altered multiple times to soften damning conclusions.
Language saying LAFD did not fully pre-deploy all crews and engines, despite the forecast of extreme conditions, was removed.
Language saying some crews waited more than an hour for their assignments during the fire was removed.
A section on “failures” became a section on “primary challenges.”
A reference to a violation of national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter injury and death was removed.
The central role of the earlier Lachman fire, allegedly started by an arsonist, was also sanitized. A reference to that unchecked brushfire, which later sparked the inferno, was deleted from one draft, then restored in the final version. But only in a brief reference.
Even before the smoke cleared on Jan. 7, I had one former LAFD official telling me he was certain the earlier fire had not been properly extinguished. Crews should have been sitting on it, but as The Times has reported, that didn’t happen.
What we now know with absolute clarity is that the LAFD cannot be trusted to honestly and thoroughly investigate itself. And yet after having fired one chief, Bass asked the current chief to do an investigation.
Sue Pascoe, who lost her home in the fire and is among the thousands who don’t yet know whether they can afford to rebuild because their insurance — if they had any — doesn’t cover the cost of new construction. Pascoe, editor of the local publication Circling the News, had this reaction to the latest expose:
“To kill 12 people, let almost 7,000 homes/businesses burn, and to destroy belongings, memorabilia and memories stored in the homes — someone needs to be held accountable.”
But who will that be?
Although the altered after-action report seems designed to have minimized blame for the LAFD, if not the mayor, the Bass administration said it wasn’t involved.
“We did not red-line, review every page or review every draft of the report,” a spokesperson told the Times. “We did not discuss the Lachman Fire because it was not part of the report.”
Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, told The Times she noticed only small differences between the final report and an earlier report she had seen.
“I was completely OK with it,” she said, adding that the final report “did not in any way obfuscate anything.”
Well I’m not OK with it, and I suspect a lot of people who lost everything in the fire feel the same way. As I’ve said before, the conditions were horrific, and there’s little doubt that firefighters did their best. But the evidence is mounting that the department’s brass blew it, or, to borrow a phrase from Bass, “botched it.”
As The Times’ David Zahniser reported, Bass said her “botched” comment came in a casual context after the podcast had ended. She also said she has made similar comments about the emergency response on numerous occasions.
She has made some critical comments, and as I mentioned, she replaced the fire chief. But the preparation and response were indeed botched. So why did her office want that portion of the interview deleted?
Let’s not forget, while we’re on the subject of botching things, that Bass left the country in the days before the fire despite warnings of catastrophic conditions. And while there’s been some progress in the recovery, her claim that things are moving at “lightning speed” overlooks the fact that thousands of burned out properties haven’t seen a hammer or a hardhat.
On her watch, we’ve seen multiple misses.
On the blunderous hiring and quick departure of a rebuilding czar. On the bungled hiring of a management team whose role was not entirely clear. On a failed tax relief plan for fire victims. On the still-undelievered promise of some building fee waivers.
In one of the latest twists on the after-action report, Tchekmedyian and Pringle report that the LAFD author was upset about revisions made without his involvement.
What a mess, and the story is likely to smolder into the new year.
If only the Lachman fire had been as watered down as the after-action report.
Opener Zak Crawley suggested he was not aware of comments made by Ben Stokes when the England captain said his dressing room is “not a place for weak men”.
Stokes made the statement in multiple interviews following England’s defeat in the second Ashes Test against Australia earlier this month.
In the run-up to the third Test, in which England are set to be beaten to lose the series at the earliest opportunity, Stokes said he had let his message “drift around” his players.
“I’ve done all the talking over the past two days that I needed to have done,” said the all-rounder.
But after Crawley made 85 on the fourth day of the third Test in Adelaide, he said: “I didn’t see that.
“I didn’t see and wasn’t really looking out for it. We take everything that is said in the media with a pinch of salt.”
Stokes made the “weak men” comment after England were beaten in Brisbane to go 2-0 down.
The England squad subsequently went on holiday to Noosa between the second and third Tests.
Before this match in Adelaide, Stokes said his team had held “raw” conversations. The captain also asked his players to “show a bit of dog” in their battle to remain in the series.
But Kent’s Crawley stated the messaging from Stokes and head coach Brendon McCullum had remained consistent with their previous three years in charge.
“It’s been very positive, the same as always,” said Crawley. “[It’s] just trying to be optimistic, play our way, with lots of freedom. It felt like we could do something special going into this game.”
A different type of British invasion had EDM fans in a trance at the Queen Mary in Long Beach.
Armed with turntables, social media-star-turned-professional-party-starter Fish56Octagon made his U.S. festival debut Nov. 21 and 22 at Insomniac’s Dreamstate SoCal, where he performed alongside some of the world’s most preeminent electronic artists, including Tiësto, Paul Oakenfold, Gareth Emery, Ferry Corsten and Chicane.
Fish, as he’s called, is a 46-year-old from the London suburbs who joined TikTok on a drunken whim after being introduced to the app by friends in 2021. Now boasting over a million followers across platforms, he’s seen his life flip because of that choice — quitting a full-time marketing career to become a DJ, produce music and play sets at some of the world’s biggest music festivals in the four years since he uploaded his first video.
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Though his initial post was about his watch collection, the self-described “petrol head” quickly went deep into creating content about cars and made a successful side hustle within a couple years. Crossover between auto enthusiasts and the music lovers in his audience meant the dance songs he used to soundtrack his car videos and sporadic vinyl-haul unboxings spawned passionate discussion in the comments about the classic rave songs Fish was sharing with the world.
He also benefited from an accidental, scroll-stopping visual hook repeated across videos born from his employer asking him to ensure it didn’t look like he was posting during business hours: middle-aged, thin and bald, dropping dad moves in front of his sprawling Technics decks and pumping his fists to the beat between bites of Weetabix biscuits, all while wearing a red and black dressing gown (what Americans would call a robe), gifted to Fish’s wife by his mother.
Screen shot of Fish DJing on TikTok in his bathrobe
(TikTok)
“That gown is elegant,” wrote a fan in the comments.
“It was legit my mum’s but she found it too hot,” Fish responded.
“You the same build as your mum” another person wrote back, punctuating the comment with a sweating smiley face emoji.
Fish also began to livestream on TikTok late into the night, playing his own mixes for the first time in 20 years.
“I remember seeing people commenting on the Live going, ‘Mate, we were watching you before we went out. We’ve just gone on a whole night out in our city, come back and you’re still here playing,’” Fish said. “I just love it. Sharing and being able to get out those obscure records. Sometimes it’s the big anthems everyone knows and sometimes it’s a tune that was an anthem to me.”
He’s had a decades-long education in electronic music. Fish was introduced to the genre on the cusp of his teen years through an episode of the British detective show “Inspector Morse.” One episode took place in the illegal rave scene and he thought it looked like fun to party in an old warehouse.
Fish’s taste quickly developed by listening to pirate radio and vinyl. He pieced together his first setup with two hi-fi record players his dad had in the attic. Only one had pitch control. He learned to beatmatch by plugging a player into each side of his amplifier and using the balance knob to fade between them. He was given Soundlab DLP-1 belt-driven turntables for his birthday and his obsession accelerated over the next several years.
Fish56Octagon performing at the Dreamstate music festival in Long Beach.
(Niyaz Pirani)
“By then I was just spending every penny that I had on vinyl building my record collection up. It was all rave music, early old school, hardcore jungle, and then happy hardcore, drum and bass around that sort of time, early to mid-’90s,” he said. “I played quite a few house parties.”
He became a de-facto resident DJ in college, spinning vinyl in the student union, and dabbled in music production at the same time. He eventually sold his analog kit and synthesizers when he switched to Ableton. He downsized his record collection as he converted them to MP3s.
The demands of his post-college marketing career meant the DJ dream disappeared for many years. That was until his TikTok Live sets gave him a second chance as club promoters reached out in the hope of booking him. Fish admits a lack of confidence caused him to stay on the sidelines. It was an offer in February 2024 to play a solo show at Hidden in Manchester — about the same time he switched his channel over entirely to music — that got him out of his house and onto a stage.
“Even if I wasn’t sure that people would come, I knew that anyone that did come would be coming to see me,” he said. “ … I ended up putting a night on where I played for five hours straight, just me from the start to the end. When the tickets went on sale, it sold out a good couple of months before the event.”
Fish wondered if it was a one-off event or the beginning of a life-changing run. Then the offers came in from other big U.K. cities — FishTales in Newcastle; acid techno at Beaverworks in Leeds; raves in Liverpool and Birmingham. He hired an agent. Dropped some merch.
“Not sure how this happened! But I’m here for it and hope you are too,” he wrote online.
A 20-date summer tour featured three different sets at the famed Glastonbury Festival, and appearances at Reading and Creamfields. He also traveled to Ireland, Scotland and Malta, marking his first time playing professionally outside of England.
He quit his day job in August 2024 to DJ and focus on music production full time with the support of his wife, children and parents.
“They support me even though it comes at a cost that I can’t always spend as much time with them, but they understand that I’m following my dream, following my passion, and doing something positive,” he said.
He’s gained an appreciation as a historian of the genre. Fish’s followers have grown to include Skrillex, David Guetta, Disclosure, Bicep and more of the artists he has admired and now counts among his peers.
“For about the first year, I often would wake up in the morning — I’m gonna get a little bit emotional just talking about this — but I’d wake up in the morning and just think, ‘Wow, that was all a dream, wasn’t it?” he said. “Then I look at my phone. I can see that actually it was real.”
Fish attributes his success to social media, though he said it’s a mistake to think just having social media followers guarantees bookings and the upward trajectory of one’s career.
“They’re actually a function of each other. It’s because I was making content that proved to be popular about music that I managed to build up a following and have those opportunities come my way,” he said. “I’ve now played, getting on for, 200 professional gigs at various clubs, festivals, events, raves, all around the world.”
Fish waited until November 2025 to make his first trek to North America with an 11-date run featuring his first U.S. festival booking. He chose Dreamstate because he’s always had a special place in his heart for trance and the emotional connection people have with the music.
“I love all dance music, but trance is the one that can kind of tug at your heartstrings a bit with those melodies, and the chord progression, and the way that the beats can be so crisp when they come in, and the way the bass hits,” he said.
Fish performed Friday night on “The Vision.” It’s the same stage played by legends Chicane and Paul Oakenfold this year and Darude last. He also co-headlined an hour-long B2B with Night 1 Dreamstate headliner Gareth Emery early Sunday morning, as the top-billed act for the festival’s afterparty in the Grand Salon of the iconic Queen Mary.
He made his way to LAX after stepping off stage at 3 a.m. to fly to New York and play the last three hours of a 24-hour rave.
Chicane and Fish56Octagon run into each other in the lobby of the Long Beach Hilton after playing the same stage Night 1 of Dreamstate.
(Niyaz Pirani)
Fish has tour dates in New Zealand and Australia toward the end of the year, plus the largest show of his career March 28 at London’s O2 Academy Brixton. He’s also releasing music for himself and others under his record label Octagon Discs.
As his audience multiplies, Fish’s earliest followers remain enthralled by his seemingly infinite rise.
“How did the dude who recommends second-hand cars get to this. So happy for you dude,” one fan wrote in the comments of his Dreamstate recap video post.
“Music was my number 1 passion but i thought I was too old. Thanks for the support bro,” Fish replied.
“Amazing,” another chimed in. “But I would not recognize u in the wild without the bathrobe.”
U.S. senators peppered Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr with questions during a wide-ranging hearing exploring media censorship, the FCC’s oversight and Carr’s alleged intimidation tactics during the firestorm over ABC comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s comments earlier this fall.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called Wednesday’s hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee following the furor over ABC’s brief suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” amid social media backlash over Kimmel’s remarks in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing.
Walt Disney Co. leaders yanked Kimmel off the air Sept. 17, hours after Carr suggested that Disney-owned ABC should punish the late-night comedian for his remarks — or face FCC scrutiny. Soon, two major TV station groups announced that they were pulling Kimmel’s show, although both reinstated the program several days after ABC resumed production.
Progressives were riled by the President Trump-appointed chairman’s seeming willingness to go after broadcasters in an alleged violation of their First Amendment rights. At the time, a few fellow Republicans, including Cruz, blasted Carr for suggesting to ABC: “We can do this the easy way or hard way.”
Cruz, in September, said that Carr’s comments belonged in the mob movie “Goodfellas.”
On Wednesday, Carr said his comments about Kimmel were not intended as threats against Disney or the two ABC-affiliated station groups that preempted Kimmel’s show.
The chairman argued the FCC had statutory authority to make sure that TV stations acted in the public interest, although Carr did not clarify how one jumbled sentence in Kimmel’s Sept. 15 monologue violated the broadcasters’ obligation to serve its communities.
Cruz was conciliatory Wednesday, praising Carr’s work in his first year as FCC chairman. However, Democrats on the panel attempted to pivot much of the three-hour session into a public airing of the Trump administration’s desire to punish broadcasters whom the president doesn’t like — and Carr’s seeming willingness to go along.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called Wednesday’s Senate committee hearing.
(Associated Press)
Carr was challenged by numerous Democrats who suggested he was demonstrating fealty to the president rather than running the FCC as an independent licensing body.
Despite the landmark Communications Act of 1934, which created the FCC, the agency isn’t exactly independent, Carr and fellow Republican Commissioner Olivia Trusty testified.
The two Republicans said because Trump has the power to hire and fire commissioners, the FCC was more akin to other agencies within the federal government.
“Then is President Trump your boss?” asked Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.). The senator then asked Carr whether he remembered his oath of office. Federal officials, including Carr, have sworn to protect the Constitution.
“The American people are your boss,” Kim said. “Have you ever had a conversation with the president or senior administration officials about using the FCC to go after critics?”
Carr declined to answer.
Protesters flocked to Hollywood to protest the preemption of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after ABC briefly pulled the late-night host off air indefinitely over comments he made about the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
The lone Democrat on the FCC, Anna M. Gomez, was frequently at odds with her fellow commissioners, including during an exploration of whether she felt the FCC was doing Trump’s bidding in its approach to merger approvals.
Trump separately continued his rant on media organizations he doesn’t like, writing in a Truth Social post that NBC News “should be ashamed of themselves in allowing garbage ‘interviews’” of his political rivals, in this case Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.).
Trump wrote that NBC and other broadcasters should pay “significant amounts of money for using the very valuable” public airwaves.
“Without a doubt, the FCC is leveraging its authority over mergers and enforcement proceedings in order to influence content,” Gomez said.
Parts of the hearing devolved into partisan bickering over whether Democrats or Republicans had a worse track record of trampling on the 1st Amendment. Cruz and other Republicans referenced a 2018 letter, signed by three Democrats on the committee, which asked the FCC to investigate conservative TV station owner Sinclair Broadcast Group.
“Suddenly Democrats have discovered the 1st Amendment,” Cruz said. “Maybe remember it when Democrats are in power. The 1st Amendment is not a one-way license for one team to abuse the power.
“We should respect the free speech of all Americans, regardless of party,” Cruz said.
‘CBS Evening News’ producer fired amid turbulent relaunch
A veteran producer at “CBS Evening News With Tony Dokoupil” was fired this week after raising concerns over the editorial direction of the program.
Javier Guzman, who has been with CBS News since 2017, was dismissed Wednesday from his position as senior producer, according to people familiar with the action who were not authorized to comment. A CBS News representative said the company does not discuss personnel matters.
Guzman is said to have expressed disagreement over the editorial direction of the evening newscast, which has undergone a revamp under CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss. Guzman did not respond to a request for comment.
The sudden exit on the third day of Dokoupil’s tenure added to a growing perception that the program is off to an inauspicious start. Media industry newsletters and the tabloids have become repositories for unattributed comments from CBS News insiders who are unhappy with the changes.
The latest iteration of the storied newscast has generated negative feedback on social media for its content. On Tuesday, that included a breezy salute to Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a series of memes. It was a questionable choice coming days after a deadly U.S. military attack on Venezuela, where special forces captured the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife.
The same episode was also blasted for a brief item noting the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The view of the historic event from five years ago was presented as a difference of opinion between President Trump and Democratic leaders in Congress.
The segments advanced the narrative among many media critics that Weiss is chasing after MAGA-friendly viewers and looking to please the White House as parent company Paramount pursues the takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. She joined the network in October after Paramount acquired her digital news site the Free Press, which often decries the excesses of the political left.
On Wednesday, the day after Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman was shot in her vehicle by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, “CBS Evening News” went ahead with a planned trip to Dallas as part of a multicity tour to promote Dokoupil as the new anchor.
While Dokoupil has said he wants “CBS Evening News” to focus more on the viewpoints of regular citizens and less on “elites” based in New York and Washington, his Dallas visit included a helicopter ride with Jerry Jones, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys. There was also a brief segment on the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
Dokoupil did score a newsworthy interview that day with ICE chief Tom Homan, who notably held back on commenting on the fatal shooting of Good while Trump and other administration officials rushed to call her a domestic terrorist. The program also quickly pivoted by flying to Minneapolis, where it focused heavily on the reaction of shaken Minneapolis residents and anti-ICE protesters to the incident.
Ratings for Dokoupil’s broadcast are slightly above the season-to-date average, according to Nielsen, but remain well behind “ABC World News Tonight With David Muir” and “NBC Nightly News With Tom Llamas.”
Dokoupil was co-host of “CBS Mornings” before joining “CBS Evening News,” where he replaced the anchor duo of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois.
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Brett Favre denies report he has ‘given up hope’ in Parkinson’s battle
Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre said Wednesday that anyone who says he has thrown in the towel on his battle with Parkinson’s disease is spreading fake news.
“Thank you everyone for your prayers and concerns, but contrary to reports, I have not given up hope in my battle with Parkinson’s!” the 56-year-old Super Bowl champion wrote on X. “Not sure where this came from — but just like I never gave up on the gridiron — not going to start now. I pray there will be a cure one day and I appreciate you all.”
Favre also told TMZ on Wednesday: “I have absolutely not given up and I am fighting till the end. Yes I have progressed a little faster than I would have hoped at this point but I’m extremely thankful and blessed!!!”
The former Packers/Jets/Vikings quarterback revealed his Parkinson’s diagnosis last year but hadn’t gone into much detail about it until last week’s episode of his “4th and Favre” podcast.
On the podcast, Favre sounds like he’s trying to be realistic about his condition while also remaining hopeful.
“As you well know, there’s no cure,” Favre said. “I hear from time to time, ‘Well, they’re five years away from a cure.’ You know, I hope that that’s the case. I really do. But I’m not holding my breath.”
He mentioned Michael J. Fox and Muhammad Ali as people who “have really set the bar high on Parkinson’s and treatments and things of that nature.”
“And I’m sure that when they were diagnosed, they thought, ‘Well, they’ll have a cure in five years. I’ll be fine,’” Favre said. “Well, that’s not the case. So, I’m optimistic, but again, I’m not holding my breath.”
Favre’s comments on Wednesday may have been in response to a recent online article that seemed to interpret his podcast remarks in a different way than he intended.
Also on the podcast, Favre said he’s in the early stages of idiopathic Parkinson’s disease, which is the most common type of the disorder. He said his major symptoms are “rigidity and stiffness,” which is worst in the morning before he takes his medication and has particularly affected his right side.
Favre added that he occasionally experiences shaking but has not had any memory loss issues.
“All in all, I’m pretty good,” he said. “I would say I’ve progressed maybe a little. … If you dropped a dime on the floor in front of me and I reached down with my right hand, I may for five minutes try to pick up that dime and eventually just grab it with my left hand. Initially when I would take the medicine, my dexterity in my right hand was pretty smooth. But that’s not the case anymore.
“So that’s one of the reasons I think I may have progressed a little bit. Hopefully not. Maybe it’s I’m looking into something more than it really is, but all in all, again I’m very blessed and thankful.”
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Trump’s former advisor said Russia offered U.S. free rein in Venezuela in exchange for Ukraine
Russian officials indicated in 2019 that the Kremlin would be willing to back off from its support for Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela in exchange for a free hand in Ukraine, according to Fiona Hill, an advisor to President Trump at the time.
The Russians repeatedly floated the idea of a “very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and Ukraine,” Hill said during a congressional hearing in 2019. Her comments surfaced again this week and were shared on social media after the U.S. stealth operation to capture Maduro.
Hill said Russia pushed the idea through articles in Russian media that referenced the Monroe Doctrine — a 19th-century principle in which the U.S. opposed European meddling in the Western Hemisphere and, in return, agreed to stay out of European affairs. It was invoked by Trump to justify the U.S. intervention in Venezuela.
Even though Russian officials never made a formal offer, Moscow’s then-ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, hinted many times to her that Russia was willing to allow the United States to act as it wished in Venezuela if the U.S. did the same for Russia in Europe, Hill told the Associated Press this week.
“Before there was a ‘hint hint, nudge nudge, wink wink, how about doing a deal?’ But nobody [in the U.S.] was interested then,” Hill said.
Trump dispatched Hill — then his senior advisor on Russia and Europe — to Moscow in April 2019 to deliver that message. She said she told Russian officials “Ukraine and Venezuela are not related to each other.”
At that time, she said, the White House was aligned with allies in recognizing Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s interim president.
But fast forward seven years and the situation is different.
After ousting Maduro, the U.S. has said it will now “run” Venezuela policy. Trump also has renewed his threat to take over Greenland — a self-governing territory of Denmark and part of the NATO military alliance — and threatened to take military action against Colombia for facilitating the global sale of cocaine.
The Kremlin will be “thrilled” with the idea that large countries — such as Russia, the United States and China — get spheres of influence because it proves “might makes right,” Hill said.
Trump’s actions in Venezuela make it harder for Kyiv’s allies to condemn Russia’s designs on Ukraine as “illegitimate” because “we’ve just had a situation where the U.S. has taken over — or at least decapitated the government of another country — using fiction,” Hill told AP.
The Trump administration has described its raid in Venezuela as a law enforcement operation and has insisted that capturing Maduro was legal.
The Russian Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Hill’s account.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not commented on the military operation to oust Maduro but the Foreign Ministry issued statements condemning U.S. “aggression.”
Burrows writes for the Associated Press.
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LAFD chief admits Palisades fire report was watered down, says it won’t happen again
Los Angeles Fire Chief Jaime Moore admitted Tuesday that his department’s after-action report on the Palisades fire was watered down to shield top brass from scrutiny.
Moore’s admission comes more than two weeks after The Times found that the report was edited to downplay the failures of city and Los Angeles Fire Department leaders in preparing for and fighting the Jan. 7, 2025, fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes.
“It is now clear that multiple drafts were edited to soften language and reduce explicit criticism of department leadership in that final report,” Moore said Tuesday during remarks before the city’s Board of Fire Commissioners. “This editing occurred prior to my appointment as fire chief. And I can assure you that nothing of this sort will ever again happen while I am fire chief.”
Moore, who was appointed fire chief in November, did not say who was responsible for the changes to the report.
The report’s author, LAFD Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, declined to endorse it because of substantial deletions that altered his findings. Cook said in an Oct. 8 email to then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva and other LAFD officials that the edited version was “highly unprofessional and inconsistent with our established standards.”
Mayor Karen Bass’ office has said that the LAFD wrote and edited the report, and that the mayor did not demand changes.
On Tuesday, Clara Karger, a spokesperson for Bass said: “Mayor Bass fully respects and supports what the Chief said today, and she looks forward to seeing his leadership make the change that is needed within the department. Chief Moore is a courageous leader with strong integrity who continues to show his deep commitment to the people of Los Angeles and to the brave firefighters who serve our city every day.”
Villanueva did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Moore’s remarks, on the eve of the first anniversary of the Palisades fire, were the strongest admission yet of missteps by LAFD leaders. They amounted to an about-face for a chief who in November critiqued the media following a Times report that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to roll up their hoses and leave the area of a New Year’s Day fire even though they had complained that the ground was still smoldering. That fire, the Lachman fire, later reignited into the Palisades fire.
“This is about learning and not assigning blame,” said Fire Commissioner Sharon Delugach, who praised the chief for his comments.
The most significant changes, The Times found in its analysis of seven drafts of the report, involved top LAFD officials’ decision not to fully staff up and pre-deploy available firefighters ahead of the ferocious winds.
An initial draft said the decision “did not align” with policy, while the final version said the number of companies pre-deployed “went above and beyond the standard LAFD pre-deployment matrix.”
A section on “failures” was renamed “primary challenges,” and an item saying that crews and leaders had violated national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter deaths and injuries was scratched.
Another passage that was deleted said that some crews waited more than an hour for an assignment on Jan. 7, 2025.
The department made other changes that seemed intended to make the report seem less negative. In one draft, there was a suggestion to change the cover image from a photo of palm trees on fire to a more “positive” image, such as “firefighters on the frontline.” The final report displays the LAFD seal on its cover.
A July email thread reviewed by The Times shows concern over how the after-action report would be received, with the LAFD forming a “crisis management workgroup.”
“The primary goal of this workgroup is to collaboratively manage communications for any critical public relations issue that may arise. The immediate and most pressing crisis is the Palisades After Action Report,” LAFD Assistant Chief Kairi Brown wrote in an email to eight other people.
“With significant interest from media, politicians, and the community, it is crucial that we present a unified response to anticipated questions and concerns,” Brown wrote. “By doing so, we can ensure our messaging is clear and consistent, allowing us to create our own narrative rather than reactive responses.”
Maryam Zar, a Palisades resident who runs the Palisades Recovery Coalition, said that “when news came out that this report had been doctored to save face, it didn’t take much for [Palisades residents] to believe that was true.”
It was easy for Moore to admit the faults of previous LAFD administrations, she said.
“He’s not going to take any heat. It wasn’t him,” she said. “He’s not the fire chief who really should have stood up and said, ‘I didn’t do what I should have.’”
The after-action report has been widely criticized for failing to examine the New Year’s Day fire that later reignited into the Palisades fire. Bass has ordered the LAFD to commission an independent investigation into its missteps in putting out the earlier fire.
On Tuesday, Moore said the city failed to adequately ensure that the New Year’s Day fire was fully snuffed out.
He said that LAFD officials “genuinely believed the fire was fully extinguished.”
“That was based on the information, conditions, and procedures in place at that moment. That belief guided the operational decision-making that was made,” he said. “However, the outcome has made it incredibly clear that our mop-up and verification process needed to be stronger.”
“We have to own that, and I do,” he added.
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Mickey Rourke faces eviction from L.A. home over $60K in unpaid rent
Actor Mickey Rourke faces eviction from his Los Angeles home after failing to pay rent.
Rourke, whose birth name is Philip Andre Rourke Jr., received a three-day notice to pay rent or vacate the premises on Dec. 18 and had failed to comply, according to court documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday.
At the time of the notice, he owed $59,100 in unpaid rent.
A representative for Rourke did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In March, Rourke signed a lease for the three-bedroom, 2.5-bath house for $5,200 a month; it was subsequently raised to $7,000 a month, states the court filings.
A Zillow listing describes the property as a “nicely upgraded Spanish bungalow” built in 1926. Raymond Chandler was said to have resided there for two years in the 1940s.
The property’s owner, Eric Goldie, is requesting compensation for attorney‘s fees and for damages. A lawyer for Goldie was unavailable for comment.
A former boxer, Rourke, 73, turned to acting with small roles in the 1980 film “Heaven’s Gate” and “Body Heat” a year later, before earning acclaim for his role in 1982’s “Diner.”
After a slate of leading roles in a number of movies including “The Pope of Greenwich Village,” “9 1/2 Weeks” and “Rumble Fish,” Rourke‘s film career took a nosedive, with his off-screen antics frequently overshadowing his acting.
“I lost everything. My house, my wife, my credibility, my career,” he told The Times in an interview in 2008. “I just all had all this anger from my childhood, which was really shame, not anger, and used it as armor and machismo to cover up my wounds. Unfortunately, the way I acted really frightened people, although it was really just me who was scared. But I was like this person who was short-circuited and I didn’t know how to fix myself.”
In 2005 he reemerged with the neo-noir action thriller “Sin City.”
Three years later, Rourke’s portrayal of aging, washed up wrestler Randy “The Ram” Robinson, in the Darren Aronofsky film “The Wrestler,” earned him a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for lead actor.
Rourke’s return to the big screen has not been an entirely smooth ride.
In April, he agreed to exit “Celebrity Big Brother UK” after producers warned him over the use of “inappropriate language and instances of unacceptable behavior,” according to a statement a spokesperson for the show released at the time.
His remarks allegedly included comments about JoJo Siwa’s sexuality
Following his departure from the reality show, his manager announced that he was pursuing legal action over a pay dispute, claiming that the show had disrespected her client by “publicly embarrassing him” and declined to pay him, according to People.
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Trump indicates the U.S. ‘hit’ a facility in South America that he tied to alleged drug boats
WASHINGTON — President Trump has indicated that the U.S. has “hit” a facility in South America as he wages a pressure campaign on Venezuela, but the U.S. offered no other details.
Trump made the comments in what seemed to be an impromptu radio interview Friday.
The president, who called radio host John Catsimatidis during a program on WABC radio, was discussing U.S. strikes on alleged drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, which have killed at least 105 people in 29 known strikes since early September.
“I don’t know if you read or saw, they have a big plant or a big facility where they send the, you know, where the ships come from,” Trump said. “Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So, we hit them very hard.”
Trump did not offer any additional details in the interview, including what kind of attack may have occurred. The Pentagon on Monday referred questions to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or one of the U.S. military’s social media accounts has in the past typically announced every boat strike in a post on X, but they have not posted any notice of any strike on a facility.
The press office of Venezuela’s government did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment on Trump’s statement.
Trump for months has suggested he may conduct land strikes in South America, in Venezuela or possibly another country, and in recent weeks has been saying the U.S. would move beyond striking boats and would strike on land “soon.”
In October, Trump confirmed he had authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela. The agency did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Monday.
Along with the strikes, the U.S. has sent warships, built up military forces in the region, seized two oil tankers and pursued a third.
The Trump administration has said it is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels and seeking to stop the flow of narcotics into the United States.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from power.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said in an interview with Vanity Fair published this month that Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro ‘cries uncle.’”
Price writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Konstantin Toropin in Washington and Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.
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Judge to hold hearing on whether Abrego Garcia is being vindictively prosecuted
A federal judge this week canceled the trial of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration, and scheduled a hearing on whether the prosecution is being vindictive in pursuing a human smuggling case against him.
Abrego Garcia has become a centerpiece of the debate over immigration after the Trump administration deported him in March to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Facing mounting public pressure and a court order, the Trump administration brought him back to the U.S. in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee.
Abrego Garcia has denied the allegations, and argued that prosecutors are vindictively and selectively targeting him. Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. wrote in Tuesday’s order that Abrego Garcia had provided enough evidence to hold a hearing on the topic, which Crenshaw scheduled for Jan. 28.
At that hearing, prosecutors will have to explain their reasoning for charging Abrego Garcia, Crenshaw wrote, and if they fail in that, the charges could be dismissed.
When Abrego Garcia was pulled over in 2022, there were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. But Abrego Garcia was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning.
A Department of Homeland Security agent previously testified that he did not begin investigating the traffic stop until after the U.S. Supreme Court said in April that the Trump administration had to work to bring Abrego Garcia from El Salvador, where he was deported.
Years earlier, Abrego Garcia had been granted protection from deportation to his home country after a judge found he faced danger there from a gang that targeted his family. That order allowed Abrego Garcia, who has an American wife and child, to live and work in the U.S. under Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervision.
The Trump administration has accused Abrego Garcia of being a member of the MS-13 gang. He has denied the accusations and has no criminal record.
Abrego Garcia’s defense attorney and the U.S. attorney’s office in Nashville did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Bedayn writes for the Associated Press.
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Tennis icon Venus Williams weds actor, model partner in Florida
Tennis legend Venus Williams wed Danish model and actor Andrea Preti over the weekend in Florida, the new bride announced in a shared post.
An Instagram post from Vogue Magazine’s Weddings section announced the nuptials, with the message garnering more than 30,000 likes as of Tuesday afternoon.
“We all love each other so much,” Williams, 45, said in the Vogue post. “It was just the happiest, most beautiful, sweetest day.”
The post was scant on details other than the event took place over five days in and around the couple’s home in Palm Beach Gardens.
An email for comment to representatives for Williams and Preti, 37, was not immediately returned.
The couple met at 2024 Milan Fashion Week and began texting shortly after, according to Vogue.
The couple eventually became engaged on Jan. 31 in Tuscany, according to Vogue. That detail was confirmed in July during what was a historic month for Williams.
The Compton native defeated 23-year-old Peyton Sterns 6-3, 6-4 in the first round action of the D.C. Open after a 16-month hiatus from singles matches.
In victory, Williams became the second-oldest woman to win a tour-level singles match, trailing only fellow legend Martina Navratilova, who was 47 when she won in 2004.
“Yes, my fiance is here, and he really encouraged me to keep playing,” Williams told the Tennis Channel’s Rennae Stubbs in a post-match interview. “There were so many times where I just wanted to coast and kind of chill. … He encouraged me to get through this, and it’s wonderful [for him] to be here. He’s never seen me play.”
Preti has written, acted and directed in a handful of films, primarily in Italy.
The wedding was the second for the couple, who also held a ceremony in Italy in September.
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Major girl group reunion ‘confirmed’ after member’s cryptic comeback comment
THE Pussycat Dolls have seemingly “confirmed” their reunion by signing with a new talent agent.
The news comes despite feuds and legal battles in the band, formed of Nicole Scherzinger, Kimberly Wyatt, Ashley Roberts, Jessica Sutta, Carmit Bachar and Melody Thornton.
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CAA music division head Rob Light and Paul Franklin – a specialist in reunion tours – are now set to manage the band in a telling move.
While Nicole teased the reunion this week by talking about “what’s to come” for the band.
Sharing a clip from their hit song Buttons, Nicole wrote: “From then to now… seeing this video hit 1 billion views on YouTube fills my heart with so much gratitude.
“For the PCD fans. For the memories. For what’s to come.”
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Last month, The Sun revealed that the band were “in talks” for a reunion, with the idea spearheaded by Kimberly.
At the time, a source said: “Kimberly has been open about the fact the girls have sorted out their issues.
“She also told pals they’ve been discussing a tour.
“The Pussycat Dolls certainly had their differences over the years, but a comeback would send fans wild.”
The Dolls started off as a burlesque troupe but in 2003 Nicole , Melody and Kaya joined Carmit, Ashley , Jessica and Kimberly to form the group.
They split in 2010.
This is not the first time a reunion has been on the cards, with multiple members of the band reuniting in 2019 before planning a 2020 tour, which was halted due to Covid-19.
It was later cancelled due to the pandemic and legal issues.
Nicole had a bitter row with the band’s founder, Robin Antin, 60, who sued singer for “extortion”.
Robin claimed that Nicole was refusing to take part in the tour unless she received a larger share of the group’s joint firm.
She allegedly demanded her 49 per cent holding in the firm is increased to 75 per cent, giving her creative control of the group and “final decision-making authority”.
According to the lawsuit filed by Robin, Nicole said the “growth of her personal brand” and the “opportunities she would have to forego to engage in the partnership” was why she deserved an increased share.
However, in a fiery retaliation, former X Factor judge Nicole issued a statement through her lawyer, Howard King, in which she branded Robin’s claims as “ludicrous and false”.
Melody wasn’t involved in the last planned reunion after clashing with Nicole over singing the band’s lead vocals.
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For Bass and LAFD, there’s no watering down how bad 2025 has been
The year was already a debacle for the Los Angeles Fire Department and Mayor Karen Bass, with multiple stumbles before and after the epic January blaze that obliterated Pacific Palisades, so it was hard to imagine that things could get worse in the closing days of 2025.
But they have.
A blistering Times investigation found that the Fire Department cleaned up its after-action report, downplaying missteps.
In other words, there was a blatant attempt to mislead the public.
And Bass representatives said they requested that her comments in the final minutes of a video interview — in which she admitted that “both sides botched it” in the Eaton and Palisades fires — be edited out because she thought the interview had ended.
Please.
Together, these developments will echo through the coming mayoral election, in which Bass will be called out repeatedly over one of the greatest disasters in L.A. history. We’re a long way from knowing whether she can survive and win a second term, but Austin Beutner and any other legitimate contenders are being handed gifts that will keep on giving.
In the case of the altered report, kudos to Times reporters Alene Tchekmedyian and Paul Pringle, who have been trying all year to keep the LAFD honest, which is no easy task.
In the latest bombshell dropped by the two reporters, they dug up seven drafts of the department’s self-analysis, or after-action report, and found that it had been altered multiple times to soften damning conclusions.
Language saying LAFD did not fully pre-deploy all crews and engines, despite the forecast of extreme conditions, was removed.
Language saying some crews waited more than an hour for their assignments during the fire was removed.
A section on “failures” became a section on “primary challenges.”
A reference to a violation of national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter injury and death was removed.
The central role of the earlier Lachman fire, allegedly started by an arsonist, was also sanitized. A reference to that unchecked brushfire, which later sparked the inferno, was deleted from one draft, then restored in the final version. But only in a brief reference.
Even before the smoke cleared on Jan. 7, I had one former LAFD official telling me he was certain the earlier fire had not been properly extinguished. Crews should have been sitting on it, but as The Times has reported, that didn’t happen.
What we now know with absolute clarity is that the LAFD cannot be trusted to honestly and thoroughly investigate itself. And yet after having fired one chief, Bass asked the current chief to do an investigation.
Sue Pascoe, who lost her home in the fire and is among the thousands who don’t yet know whether they can afford to rebuild because their insurance — if they had any — doesn’t cover the cost of new construction. Pascoe, editor of the local publication Circling the News, had this reaction to the latest expose:
“To kill 12 people, let almost 7,000 homes/businesses burn, and to destroy belongings, memorabilia and memories stored in the homes — someone needs to be held accountable.”
But who will that be?
Although the altered after-action report seems designed to have minimized blame for the LAFD, if not the mayor, the Bass administration said it wasn’t involved.
“We did not red-line, review every page or review every draft of the report,” a spokesperson told the Times. “We did not discuss the Lachman Fire because it was not part of the report.”
Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, told The Times she noticed only small differences between the final report and an earlier report she had seen.
“I was completely OK with it,” she said, adding that the final report “did not in any way obfuscate anything.”
Well I’m not OK with it, and I suspect a lot of people who lost everything in the fire feel the same way. As I’ve said before, the conditions were horrific, and there’s little doubt that firefighters did their best. But the evidence is mounting that the department’s brass blew it, or, to borrow a phrase from Bass, “botched it.”
As The Times’ David Zahniser reported, Bass said her “botched” comment came in a casual context after the podcast had ended. She also said she has made similar comments about the emergency response on numerous occasions.
She has made some critical comments, and as I mentioned, she replaced the fire chief. But the preparation and response were indeed botched. So why did her office want that portion of the interview deleted?
Let’s not forget, while we’re on the subject of botching things, that Bass left the country in the days before the fire despite warnings of catastrophic conditions. And while there’s been some progress in the recovery, her claim that things are moving at “lightning speed” overlooks the fact that thousands of burned out properties haven’t seen a hammer or a hardhat.
On her watch, we’ve seen multiple misses.
On the blunderous hiring and quick departure of a rebuilding czar. On the bungled hiring of a management team whose role was not entirely clear. On a failed tax relief plan for fire victims. On the still-undelievered promise of some building fee waivers.
In one of the latest twists on the after-action report, Tchekmedyian and Pringle report that the LAFD author was upset about revisions made without his involvement.
What a mess, and the story is likely to smolder into the new year.
If only the Lachman fire had been as watered down as the after-action report.
steve.lopez@latimes.com
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The Ashes: Zak Crawley unaware of Ben Stokes’ ‘weak men’ comment
Opener Zak Crawley suggested he was not aware of comments made by Ben Stokes when the England captain said his dressing room is “not a place for weak men”.
Stokes made the statement in multiple interviews following England’s defeat in the second Ashes Test against Australia earlier this month.
In the run-up to the third Test, in which England are set to be beaten to lose the series at the earliest opportunity, Stokes said he had let his message “drift around” his players.
“I’ve done all the talking over the past two days that I needed to have done,” said the all-rounder.
But after Crawley made 85 on the fourth day of the third Test in Adelaide, he said: “I didn’t see that.
“I didn’t see and wasn’t really looking out for it. We take everything that is said in the media with a pinch of salt.”
Stokes made the “weak men” comment after England were beaten in Brisbane to go 2-0 down.
The England squad subsequently went on holiday to Noosa between the second and third Tests.
Before this match in Adelaide, Stokes said his team had held “raw” conversations. The captain also asked his players to “show a bit of dog” in their battle to remain in the series.
But Kent’s Crawley stated the messaging from Stokes and head coach Brendon McCullum had remained consistent with their previous three years in charge.
“It’s been very positive, the same as always,” said Crawley. “[It’s] just trying to be optimistic, play our way, with lots of freedom. It felt like we could do something special going into this game.”
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How did a middle-aged British man in a bathrobe become a global DJ sensation?
A different type of British invasion had EDM fans in a trance at the Queen Mary in Long Beach.
Armed with turntables, social media-star-turned-professional-party-starter Fish56Octagon made his U.S. festival debut Nov. 21 and 22 at Insomniac’s Dreamstate SoCal, where he performed alongside some of the world’s most preeminent electronic artists, including Tiësto, Paul Oakenfold, Gareth Emery, Ferry Corsten and Chicane.
Fish, as he’s called, is a 46-year-old from the London suburbs who joined TikTok on a drunken whim after being introduced to the app by friends in 2021. Now boasting over a million followers across platforms, he’s seen his life flip because of that choice — quitting a full-time marketing career to become a DJ, produce music and play sets at some of the world’s biggest music festivals in the four years since he uploaded his first video.
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Though his initial post was about his watch collection, the self-described “petrol head” quickly went deep into creating content about cars and made a successful side hustle within a couple years. Crossover between auto enthusiasts and the music lovers in his audience meant the dance songs he used to soundtrack his car videos and sporadic vinyl-haul unboxings spawned passionate discussion in the comments about the classic rave songs Fish was sharing with the world.
He also benefited from an accidental, scroll-stopping visual hook repeated across videos born from his employer asking him to ensure it didn’t look like he was posting during business hours: middle-aged, thin and bald, dropping dad moves in front of his sprawling Technics decks and pumping his fists to the beat between bites of Weetabix biscuits, all while wearing a red and black dressing gown (what Americans would call a robe), gifted to Fish’s wife by his mother.
Screen shot of Fish DJing on TikTok in his bathrobe
(TikTok)
“That gown is elegant,” wrote a fan in the comments.
“It was legit my mum’s but she found it too hot,” Fish responded.
“You the same build as your mum” another person wrote back, punctuating the comment with a sweating smiley face emoji.
Fish also began to livestream on TikTok late into the night, playing his own mixes for the first time in 20 years.
“I remember seeing people commenting on the Live going, ‘Mate, we were watching you before we went out. We’ve just gone on a whole night out in our city, come back and you’re still here playing,’” Fish said. “I just love it. Sharing and being able to get out those obscure records. Sometimes it’s the big anthems everyone knows and sometimes it’s a tune that was an anthem to me.”
He’s had a decades-long education in electronic music. Fish was introduced to the genre on the cusp of his teen years through an episode of the British detective show “Inspector Morse.” One episode took place in the illegal rave scene and he thought it looked like fun to party in an old warehouse.
Fish’s taste quickly developed by listening to pirate radio and vinyl. He pieced together his first setup with two hi-fi record players his dad had in the attic. Only one had pitch control. He learned to beatmatch by plugging a player into each side of his amplifier and using the balance knob to fade between them. He was given Soundlab DLP-1 belt-driven turntables for his birthday and his obsession accelerated over the next several years.
Fish56Octagon performing at the Dreamstate music festival in Long Beach.
(Niyaz Pirani)
“By then I was just spending every penny that I had on vinyl building my record collection up. It was all rave music, early old school, hardcore jungle, and then happy hardcore, drum and bass around that sort of time, early to mid-’90s,” he said. “I played quite a few house parties.”
He became a de-facto resident DJ in college, spinning vinyl in the student union, and dabbled in music production at the same time. He eventually sold his analog kit and synthesizers when he switched to Ableton. He downsized his record collection as he converted them to MP3s.
The demands of his post-college marketing career meant the DJ dream disappeared for many years. That was until his TikTok Live sets gave him a second chance as club promoters reached out in the hope of booking him. Fish admits a lack of confidence caused him to stay on the sidelines. It was an offer in February 2024 to play a solo show at Hidden in Manchester — about the same time he switched his channel over entirely to music — that got him out of his house and onto a stage.
“Even if I wasn’t sure that people would come, I knew that anyone that did come would be coming to see me,” he said. “ … I ended up putting a night on where I played for five hours straight, just me from the start to the end. When the tickets went on sale, it sold out a good couple of months before the event.”
Fish wondered if it was a one-off event or the beginning of a life-changing run. Then the offers came in from other big U.K. cities — FishTales in Newcastle; acid techno at Beaverworks in Leeds; raves in Liverpool and Birmingham. He hired an agent. Dropped some merch.
“Not sure how this happened! But I’m here for it and hope you are too,” he wrote online.
A 20-date summer tour featured three different sets at the famed Glastonbury Festival, and appearances at Reading and Creamfields. He also traveled to Ireland, Scotland and Malta, marking his first time playing professionally outside of England.
He quit his day job in August 2024 to DJ and focus on music production full time with the support of his wife, children and parents.
“They support me even though it comes at a cost that I can’t always spend as much time with them, but they understand that I’m following my dream, following my passion, and doing something positive,” he said.
He’s gained an appreciation as a historian of the genre. Fish’s followers have grown to include Skrillex, David Guetta, Disclosure, Bicep and more of the artists he has admired and now counts among his peers.
“For about the first year, I often would wake up in the morning — I’m gonna get a little bit emotional just talking about this — but I’d wake up in the morning and just think, ‘Wow, that was all a dream, wasn’t it?” he said. “Then I look at my phone. I can see that actually it was real.”
Fish attributes his success to social media, though he said it’s a mistake to think just having social media followers guarantees bookings and the upward trajectory of one’s career.
“They’re actually a function of each other. It’s because I was making content that proved to be popular about music that I managed to build up a following and have those opportunities come my way,” he said. “I’ve now played, getting on for, 200 professional gigs at various clubs, festivals, events, raves, all around the world.”
Fish waited until November 2025 to make his first trek to North America with an 11-date run featuring his first U.S. festival booking. He chose Dreamstate because he’s always had a special place in his heart for trance and the emotional connection people have with the music.
“I love all dance music, but trance is the one that can kind of tug at your heartstrings a bit with those melodies, and the chord progression, and the way that the beats can be so crisp when they come in, and the way the bass hits,” he said.
Fish performed Friday night on “The Vision.” It’s the same stage played by legends Chicane and Paul Oakenfold this year and Darude last. He also co-headlined an hour-long B2B with Night 1 Dreamstate headliner Gareth Emery early Sunday morning, as the top-billed act for the festival’s afterparty in the Grand Salon of the iconic Queen Mary.
He made his way to LAX after stepping off stage at 3 a.m. to fly to New York and play the last three hours of a 24-hour rave.
Chicane and Fish56Octagon run into each other in the lobby of the Long Beach Hilton after playing the same stage Night 1 of Dreamstate.
(Niyaz Pirani)
Fish has tour dates in New Zealand and Australia toward the end of the year, plus the largest show of his career March 28 at London’s O2 Academy Brixton. He’s also releasing music for himself and others under his record label Octagon Discs.
As his audience multiplies, Fish’s earliest followers remain enthralled by his seemingly infinite rise.
“How did the dude who recommends second-hand cars get to this. So happy for you dude,” one fan wrote in the comments of his Dreamstate recap video post.
“Music was my number 1 passion but i thought I was too old. Thanks for the support bro,” Fish replied.
“Amazing,” another chimed in. “But I would not recognize u in the wild without the bathrobe.”
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Senators dig into FCC chairman’s role in Jimmy Kimmel controversy
U.S. senators peppered Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr with questions during a wide-ranging hearing exploring media censorship, the FCC’s oversight and Carr’s alleged intimidation tactics during the firestorm over ABC comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s comments earlier this fall.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called Wednesday’s hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee following the furor over ABC’s brief suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” amid social media backlash over Kimmel’s remarks in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing.
Walt Disney Co. leaders yanked Kimmel off the air Sept. 17, hours after Carr suggested that Disney-owned ABC should punish the late-night comedian for his remarks — or face FCC scrutiny. Soon, two major TV station groups announced that they were pulling Kimmel’s show, although both reinstated the program several days after ABC resumed production.
Progressives were riled by the President Trump-appointed chairman’s seeming willingness to go after broadcasters in an alleged violation of their First Amendment rights. At the time, a few fellow Republicans, including Cruz, blasted Carr for suggesting to ABC: “We can do this the easy way or hard way.”
Cruz, in September, said that Carr’s comments belonged in the mob movie “Goodfellas.”
On Wednesday, Carr said his comments about Kimmel were not intended as threats against Disney or the two ABC-affiliated station groups that preempted Kimmel’s show.
The chairman argued the FCC had statutory authority to make sure that TV stations acted in the public interest, although Carr did not clarify how one jumbled sentence in Kimmel’s Sept. 15 monologue violated the broadcasters’ obligation to serve its communities.
Cruz was conciliatory Wednesday, praising Carr’s work in his first year as FCC chairman. However, Democrats on the panel attempted to pivot much of the three-hour session into a public airing of the Trump administration’s desire to punish broadcasters whom the president doesn’t like — and Carr’s seeming willingness to go along.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called Wednesday’s Senate committee hearing.
(Associated Press)
Carr was challenged by numerous Democrats who suggested he was demonstrating fealty to the president rather than running the FCC as an independent licensing body.
Despite the landmark Communications Act of 1934, which created the FCC, the agency isn’t exactly independent, Carr and fellow Republican Commissioner Olivia Trusty testified.
The two Republicans said because Trump has the power to hire and fire commissioners, the FCC was more akin to other agencies within the federal government.
“Then is President Trump your boss?” asked Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.). The senator then asked Carr whether he remembered his oath of office. Federal officials, including Carr, have sworn to protect the Constitution.
“The American people are your boss,” Kim said. “Have you ever had a conversation with the president or senior administration officials about using the FCC to go after critics?”
Carr declined to answer.
Protesters flocked to Hollywood to protest the preemption of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after ABC briefly pulled the late-night host off air indefinitely over comments he made about the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
The lone Democrat on the FCC, Anna M. Gomez, was frequently at odds with her fellow commissioners, including during an exploration of whether she felt the FCC was doing Trump’s bidding in its approach to merger approvals.
Trump separately continued his rant on media organizations he doesn’t like, writing in a Truth Social post that NBC News “should be ashamed of themselves in allowing garbage ‘interviews’” of his political rivals, in this case Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.).
Trump wrote that NBC and other broadcasters should pay “significant amounts of money for using the very valuable” public airwaves.
Earlier this year, FCC approval of the Larry Ellison family’s takeover of Paramount stalled for months until Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over his grievances with edits of a CBS “60 Minutes” pre-election interview with Kamala Harris.
“Without a doubt, the FCC is leveraging its authority over mergers and enforcement proceedings in order to influence content,” Gomez said.
Parts of the hearing devolved into partisan bickering over whether Democrats or Republicans had a worse track record of trampling on the 1st Amendment. Cruz and other Republicans referenced a 2018 letter, signed by three Democrats on the committee, which asked the FCC to investigate conservative TV station owner Sinclair Broadcast Group.
“Suddenly Democrats have discovered the 1st Amendment,” Cruz said. “Maybe remember it when Democrats are in power. The 1st Amendment is not a one-way license for one team to abuse the power.
“We should respect the free speech of all Americans, regardless of party,” Cruz said.
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