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The multimillion-dollar jousting over redrawing California’s congressional districts to boost Democrats and counter President Trump was on full display in recent days, as both sides courted voters less than a month before ballots begin arriving in mailboxes.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, national Democratic leaders including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and a slew of political influencers held an hours-long virtual rally Tuesday afternoon, urging Californians to support Proposition 50 in the Nov. 4 special election. Speakers framed the stakes of the ballot measure as nothing short of existential — not just for Democratic interests, but also for democracy.

“It’s all at stake. This is a profound and consequential moment in American history. We can lose this republic if we do not assert ourselves and stand tall at this moment and stand guard to this republic and our democracy. I feel that in my bones,” Newsom said Tuesday afternoon.

If passed, Proposition 50 would gerrymander the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats, bolstering the fates of several Democrats in vulnerable swing districts and potentially cost Republicans up to five House seats.

California’s congressional districts are drawn by a voter-approved independent commission once a decade after the U.S. census. But Newsom and other state Democrats proposed a rare mid-decade redrawing of the districts to increase the number of Democrats in Congress in response to similar efforts in GOP-led states, notably Texas.

Tuesday’s virtual rally, which was emceed by progressive influencer Brian Tyler Cohen, was a cross between an old-school money-raising telethon and new media streaming session. Popular podcasters and YouTubers such as Crooked Media’s Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor (alumni of former President Obama’s administration), Ben Meiselas of MeidasTouch and David Pakman shared the screen with political leaders, with an on-screen fundraising thermometer inching higher throughout.

Cohen argued that people like him had been “begging” Democrats to fight Trump. And now elected officials had done their part by getting Proposition 50 on the ballot, he said, urging viewers to donate to support the effort.

Warren argued that Trump was a “would-be king” — but if Democrats could retake control of either house of Congress, that would be stopped, she posited.

“And if we have both houses under Democratic control,” Warren continued, “now we are truly back in the game in terms of making our Constitution work again.”

The exhaustive list of speakers represented the spectrum of the modern left, with standard-bearers such as Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, alongside rising stars including Reps. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) and Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.). A number of California delegates, including Sen. Alex Padilla and Reps. Ted. Lieu, Robert Garcia, Pete Aguilar, Jimmy Gomez and Sydney Kamlager-Dove, also spoke.

The event had been scheduled to take place Sept. 10 but was postponed after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk earlier that day.

Jessica Millan Patterson, the former leader of the California Republican Party and chair of an anti-Proposition 50 committee, accused Newsom of “scrambling for out-of-touch messengers to sell his scheme.”

“For Gavin Newsom, it’s all distraction and deflection. Instead of addressing the $283 million price tag taxpayers are stuck with for his partisan power grab, he’s hosting a cringeworthy webinar packed with DC politicians, out-of-state influencers, and irrelevant podcasters, all lining up to applaud his gerrymandered maps,” Millan Patterson said in a statement Tuesday.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who championed the creation of the independent redistricting commission while in office and has campaigned to stop gerrymandering across the nation after his term ended, forcefully denounced Proposition 50 on Monday.

“They are trying to fight for democracy by getting rid of the democratic principles of California,” Schwarzenegger told hundreds of students at an event celebrating democracy at the University of Southern California. “It is insane to let that happen.”

The former governor, a Trump foe who has prioritized good governance at his institute at USC, said the effort to dismantle the independent commission’s congressional districts to counter Trump are anti-democratic.

“They want to get rid of it under the auspices of we have to fight Trump,” Schwarzenegger said. “It doesn’t make any sense to me because we have to fight Trump, [yet] we become Trump.”

And on the morning of Sept. 10, opponents of the ballot measure rallied in Orange County, speaking about how redrawing congressional districts would dilute the voice of communities around the state.

“We’re here because Prop. 50 poses a serious threat to Orange County’s voice, to our communities and to our taxpayers. This measure is not about fairness. It’s about power grab,” said Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen during a rally at the Asian Garden Mall in Little Saigon, a Vietnamese hub in Westminster. “And it comes at the expense of our taxpayers, our small businesses and our minority communities.”

She noted that Little Saigon would be grouped with Norwalk in Los Angeles County if the ballot measure passes.

“Ask anybody in this area if they even know where Norwalk is,” Nguyen said.

LA28 announced Starbucks as the official coffee partner for the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics and Team USA on Tuesday, adding a fourth founding-level partner to the growing sponsorship list with less than three years to go before the Games.

Starbucks will enter the Olympic arena for the first time by providing specially designed coffeehouses in the Olympic and Paralympic village, competition venues and volunteer hubs for athletes, fans and spectators.

“Starbucks is proud to bring connection, culture, community and incredible coffee to the world stage,” said Tressie Lieberman, executive vice president and global chief brand officer of Starbucks Coffee Company.

The Seattle-based coffee giant represents LA28’s second major founding partner of the year, joining Honda, which announced its Olympic deal in April. Longtime partners Delta and Comcast are the cornerstones of the corporate sponsorship program that will be the backbone of what LA28 has promised will be a privately funded Games.

Domestic sponsorships are intended to cover $2.5 billion of the Games’ estimated $7.1 billion budget. As of August, the private organizing committee had contracts for more than 70% of its total sponsorship goal, LA28 chairman Casey Wasserman told The Times. Financial terms for the latest deal were not disclosed.

“This is our chance to co-create a Games that will resonate for generations to come, and welcoming Starbucks to the LA28 and Team USA family marks the coming together of a world-class brand and a globally embraced event, with a shared commitment to shaping culture and community,” Wasserman said in a statement.

LA28 has also announced two other partnerships in September, bringing in equipment rental company Sunbelt Rentals and T-Mobile for Business.

Costa Coffee supplied coffee for the Tokyo and the Paris Games after the British chain was acquired by Coca-Cola — one of the International Olympic Committee’s longest-standing and most prominent partners — in 2019. But Coca-Cola has been exploring a sale of Costa Coffee, according to Reuters. As a worldwide partner, the Atlanta-based soda company has exclusive Olympic and Paralympic rights to non-alcoholic beverages.

On the fringes of Okpanam in Delta State, South South Nigeria, there was once a place known simply as “Fulani Camp.” For decades, it was a quiet settlement where nomadic herders grazed cattle, built homes from bamboo and mud, and lived peacefully in proximity with indigenous neighbours. Tensions were not uncommon, but life carried on. People traded, children played, and Saturdays meant weddings, football, and farming.

Today, the same community is unrecognisable. In its place stands a fortified enclave, now dominated by the Eastern Security Network (ESN)—the militant wing of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). Residents call it “liberated territory.” But liberation from what? According to several residents of Okpanam, homegrown terrorism replaced a relatively peaceful herding community whose only documented ‘crime’ in the community was being subjected to ethnic profiling. 

“This is not the camp we knew,” said Chinedu Okonkwo, a 42-year-old teacher and lifelong resident of Okpanam. “It used to be tense, yes, but now it’s terrifying. The former occupants are gone. In their place are fighters with guns and stringent rules.”

Warnings of separatist presence have grown into a daily reality. In July 2025, the Nigerian Army’s 63 Brigade and Joint Task Force, South South, conducted a series of intelligence-led raids on the area. Thirteen individuals were arrested between July 26 and Aug. 1, including four identified as IPOB/ESN operatives. Yet, residents say the group remains entrenched in the area.

“They vanish during operations,” Chinedu added. “And reappear just days later. Stronger, even.”

In many towns across the South East, Monday has become synonymous with fear due to the infamous sit-at-home orders enforced by IPOB. In Okpanam, however, it is Saturday that has become the day of dread.

The streets empty predictably every Saturday at 6 a.m.. Markets stay shuttered. Churches hold no vigils. The local variant of the sit-at-home rule—originally a protest strategy—has morphed here into a mandatory ritual, enforced by the threat of violence.

“This is our day for the cause,” said a young man who introduced himself only as Emeka, acting as a spokesperson for the group. “We honour our fallen. We show our loyalty. Without obedience, there is no freedom.”

Despite the IPOB leadership’s 2023 announcement to cancel sit-at-home orders, the ground reality presents a different perspective. Enforcement of this blatant abuse of freedom of movement has become the job of local cells.

For traders like Mama Nkechi, a provisions seller, the toll is unbearable. “I lose two days every week—Monday and Saturday,” she said. “That’s over 100 days in a year. How do I feed my children?”

A 2025 economic report estimated losses from the sit-at-home policy at over ₦7.6 trillion in two years across the South East. In micro-economies like Okpanam, those figures translate to hunger, school dropouts, and displaced families.

Every Friday at dusk, a different ritual begins, one not found in any scripture or traditional custom.

“We bring them food—yams, garri, sometimes cash,” said an elderly woman, her voice barely above a whisper. “We don’t hand it over directly. We leave it at the edge of the forest and walk away. They’ll collect it later.”

This system of enforced offerings has become a strange mix of coerced tax and reluctant gratitude. The militants are called “Umu Oma”—the good ones—though often with irony thick enough to taste. Many residents, caught between fear and a sliver of protection, comply to maintain peace.

“They say they protect us from outsiders,” she added. “But who protects us from them?”

The donations buy relative calm from the very people that terrorise the community, a twisted sense of insurance in a place where traditional state security is either absent or arrives only with boots and bullets. For many, it is a deeply psychological surrender.

Lessons behind curtains

Education has also fallen victim to this new order. Schools that once rang with the chatter of children now sit silent on weekends, their gates chained shut. But learning continues—quietly, covertly.

Chinedu, the local teacher, hosts lessons for a handful of students in his sitting room on Saturdays. “We close the curtains and whisper,” he said. “The children want to learn. Their parents want them to learn. But we can’t be too visible.”

SBM Intelligence has reported severe disruptions in the region, including national exam cancellations and repeated school closures.

Occupation, ethnicity, and the echoes of Sambisa

The irony of the camp in Okpanam is not lost on residents. The ethnic landscape of the camp, once home to nomadic herders, has undergone a radical transformation. Following rising tensions over grazing rights, farmer-herder clashes, and growing anti-outsider sentiment, the herding community fled. In their absence, the ESN found fertile ground, thick bush, sparse oversight, and lingering resentment made the forest there an ideal base. 

Military attempts to reclaim the area have so far proved temporary. After every operation, the group returns, sometimes with recruits, often with renewed confidence. The community, meanwhile, has grown more cautious, quieter, and more afraid.

A conflicted hope

Despite the suffocating grip of the new order, some residents still express conflicted sympathy.

“Before they came, herders destroyed our crops. Our daughters were afraid to walk alone,” said Sunday, a local mechanic. “Now, that threat is gone. But look at what we have instead.”

This sentiment, however controversial, highlights the complexity of life under militant control across southeast Nigeria. For many, the choice isn’t between peace and violence but between two different brands of violence—one masked as protection, the other dressed in a state uniform.

As security operations resume in fits and starts, and as IPOB continues its fragmented messaging from abroad, one question echoes louder than any generator or gunshot: Where is peace and security?

Saturdays, once reserved for weddings, church gatherings, farming, and rest, the seventh day now brings only silence. And in that silence lies a warning that, for many communities across South East and South-South Nigeria, the line between protest and predation has all but vanished.

Across the South East, no one speaks too loudly. Children no longer run freely. Traders count not profits, but losses. And as each week ends with offerings. “Someday, Saturdays will come back to us,” said Chinedu. “I just hope we’ll still be here to see it.”

The sun had just begun its descent when the Mane Street Band took the stage for their weekly Honky Tonk Sunday set at Pioneertown’s Red Dog Saloon. Young adults in hiking gear sipped beers beneath chandeliers shaped like wagon wheels as old timers with gray ponytails and cowboy hats chatted with a tattooed bartender. Outside, a group of parents sat around long picnic tables, ignoring their kids who were messing around in the dirt.

It wasn’t easy to tell who was local and who was just visiting the high desert town founded nearly 80 years ago as a permanent movie set for western films. The warm, neighborly scene felt like further proof of what locals had been telling me all weekend: The fake western town that Hollywood built has finally morphed into an actual western town with an identity of its own.

The Red Dog Saloon in Pioneertown serves breakfast, lunch and dinner and is a gathering place for locals and visitors alike.

(Simone Lueck / For Time Times)

“This is not Knott’s Berry Farm,” said JoAnne Gosen, a local shopkeeper and goat farmer who moved to the area 21 years ago. “This is a real town and it’s our town.”

After years of upheaval that included skyrocketing home prices, a pandemic-fueled Airbnb boom, a failed proposal for a multi-use event space and a false claim by a reality TV star that she singlehandedly owned the town, residents of this small unincorporated community say Pioneertown is settling into a new equilibrium. The tumultuous era at the town’s landmark roadhouse and concert venue Pappy and Harriet’s appears to have ended as new management repairs relations with the surrounding community. Established businesses like the Red Dog Saloon and the Pioneertown Motel are offering stable employment to locals and transplants alike and more buildings on Pioneertown’s western-themed “Mane St.” are being converted to small, locally run shops.

Locals dance at the Red Dog Saloon in Pioneertown.

(Simone Lueck / For The Times)

Pioneer Bowl in Pioneertown, California. (Simone Lueck / For The Times)

Visitors will also find there’s much more to do than wait two hours for a table at Pappy and Harriet’s. Weekend tourists can grab a taco at the Red Dog Saloon, browse locally made natural bath products at Xeba Botanica, bowl in a historic bowling alley or explore the Berber-meets-cowboy store Soukie Modern. If you’re there on a Sunday morning, you can even pick up a dozen hand-boiled New York-style bagels if you order ahead.

“It can be difficult for us old-timers to see all the changes,” said Gosen, who spins goat fiber into yarn outside her soap shop on Mane Street most weekends. “I don’t love all the Airbnbs and the residents who can’t afford housing. But at the same time, we’re here on the farm by ourselves most of the week and on the weekend we’re fortunate enough to go into town and meet the most amazing people from all over the world.”

Hey bales are scattered on the main street in Pioneertown, cheekily known as “Mane Street.”

(Simone Lueck / For The Times)

Developers, beware of the ‘Curtis Curse’

Pioneertown has always been a strange, hybrid place: half fake, half real.

The community was founded in the mid-1940s by a consortium of entertainers that included Roy Rogers, Dale Evans and the Sons of the Pioneers, a popular singing group at the time that lent the town their name. It was conceived and led in its early years by Dick Curtis, a 6-foot-3 actor who appeared in more than 230 movies and television shows in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Curtis dreamed of creating a permanent western movie set against the rugged backdrop of the Sawtooth Mountains that would also function as a working town with businesses that catered to film crews and residents. The Pioneertown Corp. broke ground in 1946. Among its first buildings were a land office, a beauty parlor, a motel, two restaurants and a feed store — all with Old West facades.

Filming in town mostly stopped in the 1950s, but the area continues to offer visitors and residents a unique mix of fantasy and function decades later. Some buildings like the General Store, the Saddlery and the Post Office house businesses. Others, like the jail, the livery and a barber shop are just facades — great for selfies but little else.

Over the years, people with big dreams and limited understanding of the challenges of building in this particular stretch of desert have tried and failed to bring major developments to the town, which today has about 600 residents. In the ‘60s, a car salesman from Ohio bought the Pioneertown Corp. and proposed plans to create a massive desert resort with townhomes, apartments, lakes and golf courses. He predicted it would eventually draw a population of 35,000. (The business went bankrupt instead.) During the pandemic, a mountain guide and supervising producer for Red Bull Media scared locals with a plan to convert 350 acres into an event space with residences, a recording studio, and an amphitheater that would hold up to 3,000 people. The project was eventually downgraded to a pricey Airbnb and by the time it was completed, he was no longer part of it.

The Film Museum in Pioneertown offers a curated look at the movies and films shot on the Hollywood set turned Western town.

(Simone Lueck / For The Times)

Curt Sautter, who helps curate Pioneertown’s small film history museum, believes the town has been protected from major development by what he calls the Curtis Curse. “You can be successful in Pioneertown, but if you get greedy or you try to do something that messes with the environment or the community itself you will fail,” he said.

Locals know that growth in Pioneertown is inevitable, but they also point to its limitations: the meager local water supply, the lack of a fire department and that there is only one road into and out of town.

“The community wants slow growth that preserves the western character of the town and is compatible with the desert environment,” said Ben Loescher, an architect and president of Friends of Pioneertown, a nonprofit that supports the community.

Richard Lee of 29 Loaves sells freshly baked bagels outside the Pioneertown Motel on Sunday mornings.

(Simone Lueck / For The Times)

What to do in Pioneertown: Bowling, bagels, bingo and more

Today you’ll find signs of measured growth everywhere you look in Pioneertown, making now a great time to visit. Pioneer Bowl, a perfectly preserved 1946 vintage bowling alley with the original murals by a Hollywood set designer on its walls, has just resurfaced its lanes and extended its hours. It’s now open from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. A game will cost you $25 and is first come, first served. It used to be impossible to find breakfast in town, but now you’ll find breakfast burritos, tacos and quesadillas at the Red Dog Saloon, which opens everyday at 10 a.m. On Sundays from 8:30 am to 9:30 a.m., Richard Lee of 29 Loaves delivers his fresh baked bagels to those who ordered them in advance outside the Pioneertown Motel. (The cinnamon-date bagels are especially recommended).

Locals at the Red Dog Saloon in Pioneertown, California. (Simone Lueck / For The Times)

Kids and selfie seekers will enjoy the Pioneertown Petting Zoo where $10 will buy you 20 minutes with chickens, turkeys and a small horse. There is also a little history museum to explore and two old western reenactment groups — Mane Street Stampede and Gunfighters for Hire — who seem to be entertaining themselves as much as they are the audience. (Check their websites for up to date show times.) If you plan ahead, you can also book a hike with goats with Yogi Goats Farm for $95 a person.

Visitors might also consider subscribing to the Pioneertown Gazette, a free weekly newsletter that Pioneertown Motel co-owner Matt French began publishing online in 2023. In it he compiles listings for dozens of concerts, performances, yoga classes and other events happening across the high desert. A personal favorite is Desert Bingo at the Red Dog Saloon 6:30 p.m. on Monday nights, where locals, visitors and transplants gather for a good-natured, foul-mouthed bingo game with a live DJ. One bingo board will cost you $10 and the proceeds benefit a local charity.

Pioneer Bowl in Pioneertown was built in 1946 to entertain film crews. It has recently expanded its hours.

(Simone Lueck / For The Times)

Whether you’re planning to visit for an afternoon or considering moving to the area, you’ll find that this Hollywood movie set, turned ghost town, turned tourist curiosity, turned actual western town offers more to entertain locals and visitors than it has in decades, without sacrificing the western vibe that drew its founders to the area nearly 80 years ago.

“It’s the landscape, and that weird western mythology,” said Loescher. “It’s always been full of individuals who are a little iconoclastic and don’t do things the normal way.”

And no matter how many people come along who dream of changing Pioneertown, the challenging desert environment — and the Curtis Curse — will likely keep it that way.

A sign on Mane St. in Pioneertown.

(Simone Lueck / For The Times)

“We just haven’t had the Muslim players coming through,” Lunat adds. “Muslims haven’t had enough opportunities or enough role models for young, aspiring players to follow on from.

“There have been some issues with scouts not being in the right places in the country to spot talented young Muslim players, so they’re not picked up. Some scouts just go to the same regional clubs that have historically generated players.

“It’s not particularly good that it’s taken until 2025 for a Muslim to play for England.”

Yorkshireman Nathan Ellington converted to Islam later in life, during a career in which he scored more than 100 goals.

“When you first become Muslim, you try to navigate some of the things that are new,” Ellington explains. “You stop doing certain things and slowly change. What happens is sometimes people in football clubs don’t know much about the religion and they just look at it negatively.

“But then maybe they start to learn and realise ‘oh, it’s not that different, he just needs this adjustment, this food, time to pray’.

Those adjustments require coaching staff and team-mates to engage in good faith, and for resources to be on hand to help as much as possible.

Spence has thrived in the early days of Thomas Frank’s Tottenham reign.

“We spent time with Thomas Frank, the sports scientists, nutritionists and doctors at [his previous club] Brentford to talk about Islam, and go through how the club could best support their Muslim players,” says Riz Rehman, Zesh’s brother, who works as a player inclusion executive for the Professional Footballers’ Association.

“It’s not easy when players are fasting during Ramadan and playing at the same time, but with proper support it can be done.

“We also speak to clubs about ensuring players have a space to pray, how to include their families and understand their faith as much as possible.

“It’s all about education.”

Nearly two months after being resettled to rebuild their lives following several years of displacement, residents of Darajamal have suffered a devastating Boko Haram attack that left at least 63 people dead, including five soldiers, according to data from local authorities and sources who spoke to HumAngle.

The assault began on Friday night, Sept. 5, when the terrorists stormed the rural community in Bama Local Government Area, Borno State, in Nigeria’s North East. Modu Gujja, the area council chairman, said the terrorists arrived around 9 p.m., opened fire, and set homes ablaze. At least 24 houses were destroyed.

In the wake of the Boko Haram insurgency over a decade ago, Darajamal became a stronghold for the terrorists and remained deserted for years, even after the military recaptured it in ruins. On July 13, the Borno State government resettled more than 3000 displaced persons from an IDP camp in Bama town into 300 newly constructed housing units in the community.

The recent attack has shattered fragile hopes of stability; it has led to a fresh displacement of about 108 households, according to Gujja. 

Borno State Governor Babagana Umara Zulum, who visited the community on Saturday, Sept. 6, confirmed the death toll and the displacement figures. Standing before the remaining residents, he described the incident as “very sad” and a “major setback” for resettlement efforts.

“We are here to commiserate with the people of Darajamal […] This community was settled a few months ago, and they go about their normal activities, but unfortunately, they experienced a Boko Haram attack last night,” Zulum said. 

For residents, the tragedy is a cruel repetition. Kaana Ali, a resident of the village, told journalists that he had resolved to leave for good after losing close family friends, though the governor appealed for him and others to stay. “The governor is still begging us to stay back as more protection would be provided to secure our community,” he said.

Zulum acknowledged the limits of the military’s capacity to secure all vulnerable communities: “We have to take note that the numerical strength of the military is not enough to cover everywhere, so far so good, two sets of Forest Guards have been trained, therefore one of the solutions that we need to implement immediately is to deploy the trained Forest Guards to most of the locations that are vulnerable, they will protect the forest and communities.”

The attack also drew condemnation from Kaka Shehu, who represents the Borno Central senatorial district, which includes Darajamal. He described the killings as a crime against humanity and pledged legislative support for restoring peace in the state.

The massacre in Darajamal comes only a month after Boko Haram struck Kirawa, another resettled border town in neighbouring Gwoza Local Government Area. That attack killed at least four people, displaced hundreds, led to the abduction of a schoolgirl, and left homes, vehicles, and food supplies destroyed. 

In the aftermath, locals in Kirawa told HumAngle that no Nigerian military or Multinational Joint Task Force reinforcements had returned to the community, leaving it without security. Many residents fled across the border into Cameroon, surviving nights in makeshift shelters or the open air before cautiously returning during the day.

The back-to-back attacks underscore the continuing presence of Boko Haram across Borno’s rural communities and highlight the persistent risks undermining the state’s resettlement programmes. Since the start of 2025, multiple repatriated communities have faced renewed violence, leaving many families once again displaced, grieving, and uncertain of the future.

After Los Angeles police officers shot at people on three consecutive days late last month, the LAPD’s civilian bosses turned to Chief Jim McDonnell for an explanation.

The Police Commission wanted to know: What more could the department be doing to keep officers from opening fire?

But in his response at the panel’s meeting last week, McDonnell seemed to bristle at the notion his officers were too trigger-happy.

“I think what we’re seeing is an uptick in the willingness of criminals within the community to assault officers head-on,” he said at the Aug. 26 meeting. “And then officers respond with what they have to do in order to control it.”

The commission has heaped praise on McDonnell for his performance since taking over the department in November. But the exchange over the recent cluster of police shootings — part of an overall increase that has seen officers open fire in 31 incidents this year, up from 20 at the same point in 2024 — marked a rare point of contention.

Commission Vice President Rasha Gerges Shields told the chief that she and her colleagues remained “troubled by the dealings of people both with edged weapons — knives, other things like that — and also those who are in the midst of a mental health crisis.”

During a radio appearance earlier this year, the chief brushed aside questions about shootings, saying officers are often put into dangerous situations where they have no choice but to open fire in order to protect themselves or the public.

“That is something that’s part of the job unfortunately,” he said. “It’s largely out of the control of the officer and the department as far as exposure to those types of threats.”

Such remarks have left some longtime observers worried that the department is backsliding to the days when department leaders tolerated pervasive and excessive use of force. McDonnell’s defense of aggressive tactics during this summer’s pro-immigration protests, critics argue, sends a dangerous message to the rank-and-file.

The LAPD sits at a “pivotal” crossroads, according to Jorja Leap, a professor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

The federal consent decree that followed the Rampart gang scandal of the late 1990s pushed the LAPD into becoming a more transparent and accountable agency, whose leaders accepted community buy-in as essential to their mission, said Leap.

Out of the reforms that followed came its signature outreach program, the Community Safety Partnership, which eschews arrests in favor of bringing officers together with residents to solve problems at some of the city’s most troubled housing projects.

Leap said support for the program has in recent years started to wane, despite research showing the approach has helped drive down crime. “The LAPD has now evolved into an inward-facing organization,” she said.

McDonnell was not available for an interview this week, an LAPD spokeswoman said.

Others faulted the chief for his response to the Trump administration’s immigration raids in Southern California, taking issue with the local police presence at federal operations and the aggressive actions of LAPD officers toward protesters and journalists during demonstrations in June.

Fernando Guerra, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University, said McDonnell seems unwilling to acknowledge how the sight of riot-gear-clad officers holding off protesters created the impression that police were “protecting the feds and the buildings more than the residents of L.A. who pay for LAPD.”

McDonnell has repeatedly defended his department’s response, telling reporters earlier this year that officers were forced to step in to quell “direct response to immediate, credible threats.”

He also issued an internal memo voicing his support to officers in the Latino-majority department and acknowledging the mixed feelings that some may have about the immigration raids.

After his public swearing-in in November, McDonnell acknowledged how much had changed with the department since he left in 2010, while saying that “my perspective is much broader and wider, realizing that we are not going to be successful unless we work very closely with the community.”

At the time, his appointment was viewed with surprise in local political circles, where some questioned why a progressive mayor with a community organizing background like Karen Bass would hitch her fortunes to a law-and-order chief. Others argued that McDonnell was an appealing choice: A respected LAPD veteran who also served as the chief in Long Beach and later as Los Angeles County sheriff.

After numerous scandals in recent years, McDonnell’s selection for the job was widely seen as offering stability while the city prepared for the massive security challenges of the upcoming World Cup and Olympic Games.

With an earnest, restrained manner, McDonnell has won over some inside the department who were put off by his predecessor Michel Moore’s micromanaging leadership style. After his much-publicized union battles during his tenure as sheriff, McDonnell has courted the powerful Los Angeles Police Protective League by putting new focus on police hiring and promising to overhaul the department’s controversial disciplinary system.

By some measures, McDonnell has also delivered results for Bass. Violent crime numbers continue to drop, with homicides on pace for 50-year lows.

But the two leaders have taken starkly different positions on the White House’s indiscriminate raids and deployment of National Guard troops.

McDonnell took heat during a City Council hearing in June when he described federal law enforcement officers participating in immigration operations as “our partners.”

Andrés Dae Keun Kwon, policy counsel and senior organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said that McDonnell’s record on immigration was one of the reasons the ACLU opposed his selection as chief. Since then, Kwon said, the chief seems out of touch with the message of Bass and other local leaders rallying around the city’s immigrants.

“Given that we’re three months into this Trump regime siege of Los Angeles you’d think that the leader of this police department” would be more responsive to the community’s needs, Kwon said.

In a statement, Clara Karger, a spokeswoman for Bass, said that “each leader has a different role to play in protecting Angelenos and all agree that these indiscriminate raids are having devastating consequences for our city,” she said.

McDonnell’s relationship with the Police Commission has been cordial, but several department insiders — who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose private discussions — said that behind the scenes some commissioners have started to second-guess the chief’s handling of disciplinary cases.

The tensions were evident at the recent meeting when the issue of officer shootings led to a public dressing-down of the chief.

Echoing the frustrations of LAPD critics who flood the commission’s meetings on a weekly basis, board members questioned how it was possible that officers needed to fire their weapons on back-to-back-to-back days last month.

Commissioner Fabian Garcia called the three shootings “a lot.”

He and his colleagues told McDonnell they expected the LAPD to present a report on the shootings at a future meeting.

McDonnell responded, “Great, thank you,” before launching into his regular crime and staffing updates.

Donald Trump’s recent floated proposal to deploy the National Guard to crime-overrun blue cities like Chicago and Baltimore has been met with howls of outrage from the usual suspects. For many liberal talking heads and Democratic officials, this is simply the latest evidence of Trump’s “authoritarianism.” But such specious analysis distracts from what all parties ought to properly focus on: the well-being of the people who actually live in such crime-addled jurisdictions.

What’s remarkable is not just the specific policy suggestion itself — after all, federal force has been called in, or sent in, to assist state-level law enforcement plenty of times — but rather how Trump is once again baiting his political opponents into defending the indefensible. He has a singular talent for making the left clutch onto wildly unpopular positions and take the wrong side of clear 80-20 issues. It’s political jiu-jitsu at its finest.

Crime in cities like Chicago and Baltimore isn’t a right-wing fever dream. It’s a persistent, documented crisis that continues to destroy communities and ruin lives. Chicago saw nearly 600 homicides in 2024 alone. In Baltimore, despite a recent downtick, violent crime remains exponentially higher than national averages. Sustained, decades-long Democratic leadership in both cities has failed, time and again, to secure even a minimum baseline level of safety for residents — many of whom are Black and working-class, two communities Democrats purport to champion.

Trump sees that leadership and quality-of-life vacuum. And he’s filling it with a popular message of law and order.

Trump’s proposal to deploy the National Guard isn’t the flight of fancy of a would-be strongman. It’s federalism functioning as the founders intended: The federal government must step in, per Article IV of the Constitution, when local governance breaks down so catastrophically that the feds are needed to “guarantee … a republican form of government.” Even more specifically, the Insurrection Act of 1807 has long been available as a congressionally authorized tool for presidents to restore order when state unrest reaches truly intolerable levels. Presidents from Jefferson to Eisenhower to Bush 41 have invoked it.

Trump’s critics would rather not have a conversation about bloody cities like Chicago — or the long history of presidents deploying the National Guard when local circumstances require it. They’d rather scream “fascism” than explain why a grandmother on the South Side of Chicago should have to dodge gang bullets on her way to church. They’d rather chant slogans about “abolishing the police” than face the hard fact that the communities most devastated by crime consistently clamor for more law enforcement — not less.

This is where Trump’s political instincts shine. He doesn’t try to “win” the crime debate by splitting the difference with progressives. He doesn’t offer a milquetoast promise to fund “violence interrupters” or expand toothless social programs. He goes right at the issue, knowing full well that the American people are with him.

Because they are. The public has consistently ranked crime and safety among their top concerns; last November, it was usually a top-five issue in general election exit polling. And polling consistently shows that overwhelming majorities — often in the 70-80% range — support more police funding and oppose the left’s radical decarceration agenda. Democrats, ever in thrall to their activist far-left flank, are stuck defending policies with rhetoric that most voters correctly identify as both dangerous and absurd.

Trump knows that when he floats these proposals, Democrats and their corporate media allies won’t respond with nuance. They’ll respond with knee-jerk outrage — just as they did in 2020, when Trump sent federal agents to Portland to stop violent anarchists from torching courthouses. The media framed it as martial law; sane Oregonians saw it as basic governance.

This dynamic plays out again and again. When Trump highlights the border crisis and the need to deport unsavory figures like Mahmoud Khalil and Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Democrats defend open borders. When Trump attacks gender ideology indoctrination in schools, Democrats double down on letting teachers hide children’s gender transitions from parents. When Trump condemns pro-Hamas rioters in American cities, Democrats can’t bring themselves to say a word of support for Israel’s war against a State Department-recognized foreign terrorist organization. When Trump signs an executive order seeking to prosecute flag burning, Democrats defend flag burning.

On and on it goes. By now, it’s a well-established pattern. And it’s politically devastating for the left. Moreover, the relevant history is on Trump’s side. This sort of federal corrective goes back all the way to the republic’s origins; those now freaking out might want to read up on George Washington’s efforts to quash the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794.

Call it the art of the 80-20 issue. Along with his sheer sense of humor, Trump’s instinctual knack for picking such winning battles is one of his greatest political assets. And this time, the winner won’t just be Trump himself — it will be Chicagoans and Baltimoreans as well.

Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer

The city of Norwalk will repeal a local law passed last year that banned homeless shelters as part of a settlement that will end a state lawsuit, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Friday.

Last fall, the state sued the southeastern Los Angeles County community alleging that Norwalk’s policy violated anti-discrimination, fair housing and numerous other state laws. Norwalk leaders had argued its shelter ban, which also blocked homeless housing developments, laundromats, payday lenders and other businesses that predominantly served the poor, was a necessary response to broken promises from other agencies to assist with the city’s homeless population.

“The Norwalk City Council’s failure to reverse this ban without a lawsuit, despite knowing it is unlawful, is inexcusable,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “No community should turn its back on its residents in need — especially while there are people in your community sleeping on the streets.”

The settlement, which needs judicial approval before taking effect, calls for Norwalk to repeal its ban at an upcoming City Council meeting, Bonta said in a release. In addition, the city will dedicate $250,000 toward the development of new affordable housing, formally acknowledge that the ban harmed fair housing efforts and accept increased state monitoring of its housing policies.

Bonta said that the legal action shows the state will not back down when local leaders attempt to block homeless housing.

“We are more than willing to work with any city or county that wants to do its part to solve our housing crisis,” Bonta said. “By that same token, if any city or county wants to test our resolve, today’s settlement is your answer.”

Norwalk officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Norwalk stood out compared to other communities that have found themselves in the state’s crosshairs in recent years. Many cities that have fought state housing policies, such as Beverly Hills and Coronado, are predominantly wealthy and white. By contrast, Norwalk is a Latino-majority, working- and middle-class city. Elected leaders in the city of 100,000 have said they’ve borne a disproportionate burden of addressing homelessness in the region.

Though the ban led to the cancellation of a planned shelter in Norwalk, city leaders contended that the policy largely was a negotiating tactic to ensure that the state and other agencies heard their concerns. Last year, the city said that even though the shelter ban remained on its books, it would not be enforced.

“This is not an act of defiance but rather an effort to pause, listen, and find common ground with the state,” city spokesperson Levy Sun said in a statement following a February court ruling that allowed the lawsuit to proceed.

Early into my tenure as a new line-dancing enthusiast, I found myself in Chatsworth, alone on a Friday night. I was looking for action — the country dance kind. It was not yet dusk when I entered the Cowboy Palace Saloon, which hosts line dancing on most nights. Suddenly, L.A. felt very far away. In the parking lot, men were flicking cigarettes into the hot summer air. The space was almost dreamlike, with leather boots hanging above the bar table. American flags strung up. A cue ball clattered on a pool table.

In the bar area, I stumbled upon a crowd in denim vests and leather-soled boots dancing in unison. They were line dancing, warming up the dance floor before the live band started their set. A man told me that on any given Friday night, this is the wildest bar in America. I believed him.

The appeal of line dancing is simple: It’s a partnerless dance. And still, it naturally fosters community. Scared? Saddle up anyway. If you fumble, the line will keep moving — feet brushing, stomping, rocking it back — and soon enough, you’ll find your rhythm again.

In Los Angeles, line dancing has a storied legacy. “In the early ‘90s, there used to be country dance bars all over L.A.,” says Sean Monaghan, one of the founders of queer line dancing night Stud Country. While the popularity of line dancing has seen dips since then, the scene is once again experiencing a revival, partly due to the 2021 closure of country western institution Oil Can Harry’s in Studio City. Deeply feeling its absence, the community filled the void with pop-up line dancing nights scattered across L.A.

”People want to share their joy,” Monaghan says of these gathering spaces.

No one is born a cowboy; they become one. You can see that in the zeitgeist. Pop stars like Chappell Roan, Post Malone and Beyoncé are making country albums and singles. Sabrina Carpenter released a line-dancing tutorial to accompany her hit song “Man Child.” Cowboy boots and camouflage have become fashionable in the L.A. nightlife scene too, littered across wine bars and nightclubs. Queer-themed line-dancing nights are popping up at queer bars across the city, from Dude Ranch at Micky’s WeHo to Hogtied at Precinct. Line-dancing has experienced a Gen-Z makeover in L.A. with TikToks showing line dancers accessorized with Labubus.

Today you can try line dancing at several country western bars around town, each one as eclectic and unique as the dances themselves. Each of these events on the dance floor will have you feeling like you’ve been teleported to a rollicking barn party — and may just make you want to abandon your life for the Old West.

When tourism genuinely involves local communities it’s a win for all parties – guests enjoy more authentic experiences while the livelihoods of those they are visiting are boosted. We’d love to hear about initiatives you’ve sampled that support grassroots projects and communities – perhaps it was through a homestay programme, a community-run pub or cafe, or an indigenous tour guide keen to provide an insight into local culture. Tell us about where you went and those involved.

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Andrew Rodriguez first picked up a golf club when he was 3. Now that he’s an 18-year-old senior at La Serna High, golf has become his passion.

He’s heading to New York to compete in the championship event of Steph Curry’s UNDERRATED Golf Tour in the Curry Cup on Sept. 10-12.

UNDERRATED Golf was created to provide equity, access and opportunities to athletes from every community. Rodriguez earned his spot in the final with a second-place finish at the Pete Dye Course at French Lick, Ind.

He helped La Serna win the Southern Section Division 1 title last spring and has committed to Long Beach State.

He said the UNDERRATED Tour has been especially helpful for his family in saving money for travel and course expenses.

“It’s definitely been a big sacrifice for them,” he said. “It’s a huge help to myself and my family. I’m grateful for the opportunity.”

He’s excited about his senior year at La Serna.

“I have a bunch of buddies I’ve been playing with since I was little,” he said. “We’re making memorable moments with each other. I love competing as a team with my friends.”

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].

Just how unsafe are American streets?

To hear President Trump tell it, killers lurk in every shadow not already filled by rapists and thieves.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom isn’t nearly as dire, pointing out that crime numbers are down.

But “numbers mean little to people,” Newsom lamented during a press gaggle in his office Thursday, where he ruthlessly trolled Trump with a flags-and-all setup that appeared to mock the president’s marathon Cabinet meeting earlier in the week.

Yes, folks, midterm elections are coming and crime is high — in our consciousness if not in reality. Although violent crime and some property crimes have declined in most California cities (and in many major cities across the country), the perils of city living remain stubbornly stuck in our collective psyches.

This angst has augured in another get-tough era of crime suppression, culminating with the fulfillment of Trump’s authoritarian fantasy of National Guard troops patrolling in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and potentially more cities to come.

Newsom is now offering up what many have framed as a counterpunch to Trump’s military intervention: A surge of California Highway Patrol officers in strategic locations across the state, basically Newsom-controlled cop boots on the ground to mirror Trump’s troops.

But looking at Newsom’s deployment of more CHP officers as no more than a reaction to Trump misses a larger debate on what really makes our communities safer. Understanding what makes cops different from soldiers — and Newsom’s move different from Trump’s — is ultimately understanding the difference between repression and public safety, force and finesse.

Newsom has been using the CHP to supplement local police departments for years. In 2023, when the Tenderloin area of San Francisco was plagued by open drug use, making it the favorite right-wing example of a failed Democratic-run city, Newsom sent this state force in to help clean it up (though that work continues). The next year, he sent it into Oakland and Bakersfield, both places where auto theft, retail crime and side shows were rampant.

Now, he’s expanding the CHP’s role in local policing to include Los Angeles, San Diego, the Inland Empire and some Central Valley cities including Fresno and Sacramento.

In each of those places, mobile teams of around a dozen officers, all of whom will volunteer for the job, will target specific crimes, criminals or problem areas. These officers won’t just be patrolling or responding to calls like the local force, but hitting targets identified by data or intelligence, or making their presence known in high-crime neighborhoods.

Here’s where Trump’s military approach has an overlap with Newsom’s — and where the two men might agree: It is true that a visible show of armed authority deters crime. Whether it’s the National Guard or the Highway Patrol, criminals, both petty and violent, tend to avoid them.

“We go in and saturate an area with high visibility and view patrol,” said Sean Duryee, commissioner of the California Highway Patrol, standing at Newsom’s side. “The people that have a problem with that are the criminal community.”

The approach seems to be working. I can throw the numbers at you — 400 firearms seized in San Bernardino, Bakersfield, Oakland; 4,000 stolen vehicles recovered in Oakland; more than 9,000 arrests statewide.

But numbers really don’t matter. It genuinely is how a community feels about its safety. Across California, many if not the majority of small and mid-sized law enforcement departments are understaffed. Even big departments such as Los Angeles struggle to hire and retain officers. There are simply not enough cops — or resources such as helicopters or K9 teams — to do the work in too many places, and citizens feel it.

Using these small strike teams of CHP officers fills the gap of both manpower and expertise. And by aiming that usage precisely at troubled spots, it can make underserved communities feel safer, and crime-ridden communities actually be safer.

Tinisch Hollins is the head of Californians for Safety and Justice, an advocacy group that works to end over-incarceration and promote public safety beyond just making arrests. She is “obviously not a huge proponent of sending law enforcement into communities like that,” she said.

But she lived in San Francisco when homicides topped 100 per year, and now lives in the Bay Area city of Vallejo, where the local police have been so understaffed and plagued by scandal that local leaders declared a state of emergency.

She has seen how the CHP has “made an impact” in the Bay Area.

“There are some very effective things happening,” Hollins said.

That buy-in from community, especially skeptical community, is a massive departure from the militarization of Trump, and also hints at the deeper difference between troops and cops.

California has been on the cutting-edge of law enforcement reform for years, though it is a conversation that has fallen from favor and headlines in the Trump era.

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, California outlawed controversial carotid restraints that can cut off breathing. The state put in place a method for decertifying officers found guilty of serious misconduct. It increased age and education standards for becoming a peace officer, increased transparency requirements and put more oversight on the use of military equipment by civilian forces, just to name a few reforms.

Most significantly, Newsom is championing a new vision of incarceration and rehabilitation modeled after successful efforts in Norway and other places that centers on the simple truth that arresting people does not end crime.

Most people who are convicted and incarcerated will return to our streets after a few years at most, and if the state does not change their outlook and opportunities, they will also likely return to crime — making us no safer than the day they were first put into cuffs.

But for a time, it seemed to some as if these reforms with their focus away from enforcement and toward alternatives to incarceration had gone too far. Images of marauding groups of retail thieves invading stores filled the news, and reasonably caused anxiety — leading to Californians passing the still-unfunded, tough-on-crime Proposition 36 that sought to create stiffer penalties for some drug and property crimes, along with mandated treatment for addiction, but which could also take money from rehabilitation programs.

As much as Trump, Newsom’s use of the CHP is the response to that pushback on reform, an acknowledgment that enforcement remains a key piece of the crime-stopping dilemma.

But Hollins points out that the rehabilitation aspect, the most innovative and arguably important aspect of California’s approach to crime, is getting lost in the current political climate.

“It’s not just arresting people that brings crime down,” she said. “The [penal] system isn’t going to deal with the drivers of the crime.”

This is where Newsom needs to do better, both on the ground and in his explanations. It may not be popular to talk about rehabilitation, and certainly Trump will seize on it as weak, but it is what works, and what makes the California method different from the MAGA view of crime.

For Trump, the be-all and end-all is the arrest, and the subsequent cruel glee of punishment. He has called for harsher and longer penalties for even minor crimes, and recently demanded the blanket use of the death penalty in all murder cases charged in Washington, D.C. His is the authoritarian view that fear and repression will make us safer.

“We lost grip with reality, the idea that the military can be out there in every street corner the United States of America,” Newsom said Thursday.

Or should be.

Soldiers on our streets just make even law-abiding citizens less free, and ultimately does little to fix the problems of poverty and opportunity that often start the cycles of crime.

This is the showdown happening right now on American streets, and ultimately the showdown between the Democratic view of crime prevention and Trump’s — soldiers or cops, the easy spectacle of compliance induced by the barrel of a gun or a complicated and imperfect system of community and law enforcement working together.

Sterlin Harjo perfected the “art of the hang” with the co-creation of his first television series, “Reservation Dogs.” The FX drama followed a group of Indigenous teens living on a fictional Oklahoma reservation, turning their everyday routine into high art — and is one of the best television shows of the 2020s.

Now, Harjo, 45, is tackling another type of genre: crime. His forthcoming series “The Lowdown,” premiering Sept. 23 with two episodes on FX, follows self-proclaimed “truthstorian” Lee Raybon (Ethan Hawke) on a mission to unearth buried truths about Tulsa’s problematic history while exposing present-day corruption. He’s a disheveled figure who drives around town in a tattered van and lives above the rare bookstore that he also happens to own. But when his latest exposé for a local publication calls into question a prominent Tulsa family, his investigation takes him on a dangerous road from the city’s seedy underbelly to its highest corridors of power.

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“‘Rez Dogs’ was my love letter to rural Oklahoma and where I grew up. ‘The Lowdown’ is my love letter to Tulsa, where I currently live,” says Harjo, who produces, writes and directs on the new series. “You see the beauty and the darkness. You see everything.”

The eight-episode drama, best described as Tulsa noir, also stars Oklahoma expats Tim Blake Nelson, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Tracy Letts as well as Keith David. Appearances by “Rez Dog” alumni include Kaniehtiio Horn (a.k.a. the Deer Lady).

Harjo, who is a citizen of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and is of Muscogee descent, spoke with The Times about his love for Oklahoma, the challenges of following a celebrated show like “Reservation Dogs” and how “The Lowdown” is loosely based on his own experience working with a guerrilla journalist.

“Rez Dogs” was such an exceptional series that garnered critical acclaim across all four seasons. With “The Lowdown,” was it hard to not compete with that previous success?

I didn’t think about it. My experience in this industry has been people telling me that whatever the thing is that I want to make can’t be made, and me thinking, I’m going to make it anyway, then forging ahead. Then it finds an audience, and people enjoy it. I had pitched “Rez Dogs” a few different times, and it was always soft pitches because I was nervous of being laughed out of the room. No one was interested. But having the confidence of my friend [“Rez Dogs” co-creator and writer] Taika Waititi and FX … they were open to the way that we told the story. I think they were kind of blown away. So they made it. They never said no. But I’ve had many ‘no’s and many eye rolls.

Ethan Hawke stars in “The Lowdown” as Lee Raybon, a self-proclaimed “truthstorian” and owner of a rare bookshop. He’s based on Tulsa journalist Lee Roy Chapman.

(Shane Brown / FX)

Hawke plays Lee Raybon in “The Lowdown,” a figure who is obsessed with getting to the bottom of things, to the point where he neglects many other aspects of his life. What inspired the creation of that character?

The story is fictional, but the character was inspired by someone I worked with named Lee Roy Chapman at This Land Press magazine. He was very much a soldier for truth and I would ride shotgun and make these videos about the underground, unknown histories of Tulsa. The series was called “Tulsa Public Secrets.” We were this startup, full of piss and vinegar, trying to tell the truth and write about our community and make documentaries about our community. It was about a pent-up need for truth in this city. That push to tell the truth and find truth and tell our story and create a narrative around us. It gave us and the city an identity, something to hold on to.

“The Lowdown” unfolds at a really brisk pace, yet it also has the kick-back vibe of “Rez Dogs.”

There’s the art of the hang, where the genre is people hanging out. Look at “Rez Dogs” or “Dazed and Confused.” There’s an art to hanging and being with characters, and it feels OK to just sit there with them. I think “The Lowdown” has a good balance of that, where you could just hang with [Raybon] on his block. But there’s also this unfolding story so things never get boring.

Did the making of “The Lowdown” and “Rez Dogs” overlap?

No, but it was toward the end of “Rez Dogs” that I dusted a script off that was like 10 years old. It was a feature [film], but I thought I would love to do a crime show, so I just made it into an hourlong pilot, and it became “The Lowdown.”

Sterlin Harjo says his new series was originally a script for a feature film: “I thought I would love to do a crime show, so I just made it into an hour-long pilot, and it became ‘The Lowdown.’”

(Guerin Blask / For The Times)

Ethan Hawke starred in the last season of “Rez Dogs.” Is that how you two connected?

I had a mutual friend who introduced us because Ethan had written a graphic novel about the Apache Wars and Geronimo. It was originally a script that he couldn’t get made in Hollywood because it was told from the Native side of things. Out of frustration, he made it into a graphic novel. I read it and was interested in adapting it for a show. I met up with Ethan, and I pitched my idea of the adaptation and he loved it. We spoke the same language. So we started writing together and our friendship came out of that. And then “Rez Dogs” came out, and he wrote me to say that he really loved it. He said, “If you ever have anything for me …” Of course I’ll write something [for him]! So he became Elora’s dad.

“The Lowdown” was shot on location in Tulsa and you used much of the same crew from “Rez Dogs.” But I also hear your own family was involved, as well as some “Rez Dogs” alums.

The crew and I know how to work together at this point. It’s like a big family. And my [actual] family was there. My brother was doing locations. My kids came on set. We’re shooting on some of my land. My dad was hired to brush-hog it. My mom’s an extra. There’s a couple of “Rez Dogs” cameos. You’ll see Willie Jack [Paulina Alexis] in the opening. Graham Greene’s in it. But I don’t know how much I’m supposed to say yet. I better not say …

You started out as an indie filmmaker. Can you talk a little about that journey to series TV?

I’ve always felt like an outsider. I’m a small-town Native kid from rural Oklahoma. I never felt like I had a foot in this industry. I was an independent filmmaker forever. I sometimes felt like everything was against me, like there’s no money, and I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, so it felt like the industry at large didn’t care about the work I was doing.

Before “Rez Dogs,” I never worked in TV and I never worked for anyone else doing films. I only had the education I got with the Sundance Directors Lab, which is the most freedom any filmmaker is ever going to have. Then I was lucky enough to make films that were so low-budget. It meant the stakes weren’t high because no one saw them. So if they hated them, I wasn’t destroyed.

Your films and previous series were rooted in Indigenous viewpoints and experiences. Those cultures have been so misrepresented across all aspects of American entertainment. What gave you the confidence to keep pitching those stories?

I attribute that to not having anything to lose. “Rez Dogs” came at this time when I thought I was going to have to move on. I was at the end of my career road, where I was about to start a nonprofit or find the next chapter of what to do. I had been the freelance filmmaker for a long time and it just got hard to pay bills. With “Rez Dogs,” it was like, I could try to play it safe right now or I could swing for the fences. I had seen opportunities come and go, but I have this shot and this one at-bat. I need to just go for it. Luckily, FX is a place that allowed me to do that. And I did it. Luckily, I’d been making independent films for years and figured out my voice, so it wasn’t hard to ground “Rez Dogs” in my voice.

“With ‘Rez Dogs,’ it was like, I could try to play it safe right now or I could swing for the fences,” Sterlin Harjo says. “I had seen opportunities come and go, but I have this shot and this one at-bat.”

(Guerin Blask / For The Times)

Were there outside influences that also helped you get there?

“Atlanta” and “Louie.” Those cracked my mind open to what TV could be and allowed me in. Because to tell an Indigenous story about a community, I had to go to different places. If I was just focused on the kids [in “Rez Dogs”], it would be one thing and that’s it. I needed to expand. And so [it was] taking some of what “Atlanta” did but having this relay, like passing the baton off to different segments of the [Indigenous] community. I was also inspired by “The Wire.”

And “Rez Dogs” was a story that I always wanted to tell. Taika [who is of Maori descent] and I would end up talking about how similar they were from both of our homes, and if you could just kind of capture what it felt like to hear your aunts and uncles telling stories and lying and exaggerating and talking about mythology and superstitions. If you could capture all that, as Indigenous people, that’s what we wanted and craved.

The key to that was making it about this community, but it was a bit of a Trojan horse. It’s about these teenagers that are dealing with life and that’s a subject that everyone knows. So you start with that, and then expand out once you have people on your side.

The motto you mentioned — “Nothing to lose” — can you still use it now that you’ve had some success, and if so, why does it still work for you?

I think it has to do with people close to me dying when I was young. It’s a big community, a big family, and I was always at a funeral. I’ve been a pallbearer like 15 times or something. It gave me the sense that you can’t be afraid to put stuff out there. I’ve always had a way of diving off a cliff. It’s like, if everything fails after this, I’m OK with it. If everything dries up, that’s cool. At least I gave it a shot. This is going to sound hippie-dippie, but I think the energy that it takes to dive off a cliff and just go for it is an act in itself that creates energy. Something good will come out of it. So as long as you’re moving forward, something comes out of it.

If a major hurricane approaches Central Florida this season, Maria knows it’s dangerous to stay inside her wooden, trailer-like home. In past storms, she evacuated to her sister’s sturdier house. If she couldn’t get there, a shelter set up at the local high school served as a refuge if needed.

But with accelerating detentions and deportations of immigrants across her community of Apopka, 20 miles northwest of Orlando, Maria, an agricultural worker from Mexico without permanent U.S. legal status, doesn’t know if those options are safe. All risk encountering immigration enforcement agents.

“They can go where they want,” said Maria, 50, who insisted the Associated Press not use her last name for fear of detention. “There is no limit.”

Natural disasters have long posed singular risks for people in the United States without permanent legal status. But with the arrival of peak Atlantic hurricane season, immigrants and their advocates say President Donald Trump’s robust immigration enforcement agenda has increased the danger.

Places considered neutral spaces by immigrants such as schools, hospitals and emergency management agencies are now suspect, and advocates say agreements by local law enforcement to collaborate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement make them more vulnerable and compel a choice between being physically safe and avoiding detention.

“Am I going to risk the storm or risk endangering my family at the shelter?” said Dominique O’Connor, an organizer at the Farmworker Association of Florida. “You’re going to meet enforcement either way.”

For O’Connor and for many immigrants, it’s about storms. But people without permanent legal status could face these decisions anywhere that extreme heat, wildfires or other severe weather could necessitate evacuating, getting supplies or even seeking medical care.

Federal and state agencies have said little on whether immigration enforcement would be suspended in a disaster. It wouldn’t make much difference to Maria: “With all we’ve lived, we’ve lost trust.”

New policies deepen concerns

Efforts by Trump’s Republican administration to exponentially expand immigration enforcement capacity mean many of the agencies active in disaster response are increasingly entangled in immigration enforcement.

Since January, hundreds of law enforcement agencies have signed 287(g) agreements, allowing them to perform certain immigration enforcement actions. Most of the agreements are in hurricane-prone Florida and Texas.

Florida’s Division of Emergency Management oversees building the state’s new detention facilities, like the one called “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Everglades. Federal Emergency Management Agency funds are being used to build additional detention centers around the country, and the Department of Homeland Security temporarily reassigned some FEMA staff to assist ICE.

The National Guard, often seen passing out food and water after disasters, has been activated to support U.S. Customs and Border Protection operations and help at detention centers.

These dual roles can make for an intimidating scene during a disaster. After floods in July, more than 2,100 personnel from 20 state agencies aided the far-reaching response effort in Central Texas, along with CBP officers. Police controlled entry into hard-hit areas. Texas Department of Public Safety and private security officers staffed entrances to disaster recovery centers set up by FEMA.

That unsettled even families with permanent legal status, said Rae Cardenas, executive director of Doyle Community Center in Kerrville, Texas. Cardenas helped coordinate with the Mexican Consulate in San Antonio to replace documents for people who lived behind police checkpoints.

“Some families are afraid to go get their mail because their legal documents were washed away,” Cardenas said.

In Florida, these policies could make people unwilling to drive evacuation roads. Traffic stops are a frequent tool of detention, and Florida passed a law in February criminalizing entry into the state by those without legal status, though a judge temporarily blocked it.

There may be fewer places to evacuate now that public shelters, often guarded by police or requiring ID to enter, are no longer considered “protected areas” by DHS. The agency in January rescinded a policy of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, to avoid enforcement in places like schools, medical facilities and emergency response sites.

The fears extend even into disaster recovery. On top of meeting law enforcement at FEMA recovery centers, mixed-status households that qualify for help from the agency might hesitate to apply for fear of their information being accessed by other agencies, said Esmeralda Ledezma, communications associate with the Houston-based nonprofit Woori Juntos. “Even if you have the right to federal aid, you’re afraid to be punished for it,” Ledezma said.

In past emergencies, DHS has put out messaging stating it would suspend immigration enforcement. The agency’s policy now is unclear.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an email that CBP had not issued any guidance “because there have been no natural disasters affecting border enforcement.” She did not address what directions were given during CBP’s activation in the Texas floods or whether ICE would be active during a disaster.

Florida’s Division of Emergency Management did not respond to questions related to its policies toward people without legal status. Texas’ Division of Emergency Management referred The Associated Press to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s office, which did not respond.

Building local resilience is a priority

In spite of the crackdown, local officials in some hurricane-prone areas are expanding outreach to immigrant populations. “We are trying to move forward with business as usual,” said Gracia Fernandez, language access coordinator for Alachua County in Central Florida.

The county launched a program last year to translate and distribute emergency communications in Spanish, Haitian Creole and other languages. Now staffers want to spread the word that county shelters won’t require IDs, but since they’re public spaces, Fernandez acknowledged there’s not much they can do if ICE comes.

“There is still a risk,” she said. “But we will try our best to help people feel safe.”

As immigrant communities are pushed deeper into the shadows, more responsibility falls on nonprofits, and communities themselves, to keep each other safe.

Hope Community Center in Apopka has pushed local officials to commit to not requiring IDs at shelters and sandbag distribution points. During an evacuation, the facility becomes an alternative shelter and a command center, from which staffers translate and send out emergency communications in multiple languages. For those who won’t leave their homes, staffers do door-to-door wellness checks, delivering food and water.

“It’s a very grassroots, underground operation,” said Felipe Sousa Lazaballet, the center’s executive director.

Preparing the community is challenging when it’s consumed by the daily crises wrought by detentions and deportations, Sousa Lazaballet said.

“All of us are in triage mode,” he said. “Every day there is an emergency, so the community is not necessarily thinking about hurricane season yet. That’s why we have to have a plan.”

Angueira writes for the Associated Press.

Seoul/Mokpo, South Korea – In 2018 when Kim Ji-ung lived in the South Korean capital, Seoul, he felt alone all the time. Single and in his early 30s, the salesman spent most of his day at work or holed up in his apartment.

“I pondered about dying during my morning commute,” Kim told Al Jazeera.

“The most difficult thing was that I had no one to talk to. After work, I would be at home scrolling through TV channels or playing video games,” he said.

Finding it difficult to make connections at work, Kim was feeling increasingly desperate and isolated. Then a close friend of his collapsed at their workplace and died.

“That’s when I really started to ask myself, ‘Will I be next?’” he said.

It was then that Kim made one of the toughest decisions of his life – to pack his bags and move away from Seoul, a city of 9.6 million people that offered him the best chance of a career and a stable salary.

The capital’s population, which peaked at 10.97 million in 1992, has been decreasing steadily in recent decades, sparking alarm among officials. The city’s population of those aged 19 to 39 has been on the decline as well, falling from 3.18 million in 2016 to 2.86 million in 2023.

While Seoul continues to draw people with its promise of high-paying corporate jobs, census figures show the city is failing to retain its young population with nearly as many leaving it as moving to it over the past decade.

‘Hell Joseon’

This trend comes despite South Korea’s capital becoming a technological and cultural powerhouse that is consistently ranked among the world’s most exciting cities by international travellers.

Fortune 500 companies such as LG, Hyundai Motors and SK Group employ thousands of young professionals in their headquarters in the bustling downtown. The ultra-fashionable Gangnam district hosts one of the premier art fairs in the world, Frieze Seoul, and the country’s cosmetics and beauty industry, pop culture and cuisine are popular worldwide.

Seoul’s international allure is also evident in the hip bars, eateries and clubs in the Hongdae and Seongsu neighbourhoods, where foreign tourists flood the streets seven days a week.

But Seoul’s young adults – disillusioned by a housing bubble that has made homes unaffordable and a competitive work culture marked by long hours and low pay – have branded the capital’s work-to-survive lifestyle “Hell Joseon”. The term references the ancient kingdom that was once based where Seoul is today.

“Our society is known for its infamous jobs that force employees to work long hours, cut off the careers of women who give birth and make it hard for men to apply for paternity leave,” said Yoo Hye-jeong of the think tank Korean Peninsula Population Institute for Future.

“Seoul’s abnormally high costs for housing and child education translate to difficulty in creating a stable economic foundation for families,” Yoo said, describing an incompatibility between work and having a family life in the capital.

‘Don’t Worry Village’

For Kim, his chance to move away from Seoul came by coincidence when he spotted an online ad for a getaway programme at Don’t Worry Village.

Located in Mokpo, a city tucked away in the southwestern corner of the country with a population of 210,000 and an abundance of abandoned buildings, the village got its start from another deserter from Seoul, Hong Dong-joo.

After receiving his high school education in Seoul’s upmarket Daechi-dong neighbourhood, Hong was destined to enter a top university in the capital and work for a major corporation – a direct route to the upper echelons of South Korean society.

But when he turned 20, he knew that “life in Seoul, working at a high-paying job was not the life I wanted,” the 38-year-old told Al Jazeera. “I didn’t want to spend long hours at the office every day.” And so, when Hong became a mechanical engineering major at a Seoul university, he did the improbable: He moved away from the city.

He came up with the plan to create Don’t Worry Village after setting up a travel agency and meeting hundreds of young adults who shared stories of isolation and struggling with corporate and social life in Seoul and elsewhere.

“The blueprint for our village was to make a hometown that would act as a community – something that so many people in our country lack in their lives,” he said.

“In some ways, I was in the business of providing protection for people in our society who needed it.”

‘National emergency’

Analysts describe the situation for many young people in the country as a “national emergency” that is being largely overlooked.

“In the process of becoming a developed nation really fast, our society forgot to establish a support net for our young population,” said Kim Seong-a, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA),

“The side effects of a society going through extreme industrialisation in a very short amount of time was the gradual disappearing roles of families” in the modern lifestyle and work becoming its primary focus, she said.

Findings from a 2021 Pew Research Center survey support her assessment. Participants from 17 advanced economies were asked: “What makes life meaningful?” The most common answer for people from 14 of the 17 nations – which included Japan, the United States and New Zealand – was family. South Korean respondents, however, chose material wellbeing as their top answer. For them, family came in third place.

Kim, the KIHASA researcher, said South Korean society now prioritises “money over people”.

“We’ve seen significant improvements in the country’s GDP, life expectancy and other areas that can be improved through policy changes,” she said. “But social factors like faith in others, trust in society and generosity towards others have relatively been less developed in our country.”

In surveys of satisfaction with life, South Korea ranked 33 among 38 member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), scoring 6.4 on a 10-point scale in 2023. It also has the highest number of suicides among OECD countries with a suicide rate of 24.3 per 100,000 people. Compare that with Lithuania, which came in at a distant second place with 18.5 per 100,000 people.

In the ensuing years, the South Korean suicide rate has only increased, reaching 28.3 per 100,000 people in 2024, a 13-year high.

Young people account for a significant number of the suicides. Of the 14,439 cases of suicide reported last year, 13.4 percent of the cases were people in their 30s.

“In our country, there are many young people who bear all the social risks that they accumulate from failing to get a job, struggling in school and going through family troubles,” Kim Seong-a said.

“They’re by themselves, so there’s a great chance that they can become isolated. They need someone around to talk to or ask for help when they’re going through a setback. This way, they can deal with it or overcome it,” she said.

Official figures, however, show the number of young people living alone in Seoul is on the rise. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government, more than a third of the city’s population lives alone with young people accounting for 64 percent of single-person households, up from 51.3 percent a decade ago.

A recent survey of 3,000 single-person households in the city by The Seoul Institute, a leading think tank, found that 62.1 percent of respondents experienced persistent loneliness. Another 13.6 percent were identified as socially isolated, a term that refers to individuals with no support network during times of emotional distress, physical illness or sudden financial problems.

‘Seoul Without Loneliness’

South Korea’s government is well aware of the issues of social isolation and a punishing work culture in Seoul and has moved to address the issue in recent years.

Last year, it launched its “Seoul Without Loneliness” plan, which is investing 451.3 billion won ($322m) over five years in initiatives such as a 24-hour emotional support hotline and community centres called Seoul Maeum Convenience Stores, where people can seek counselling and drop in for free bowls of ramen noodles.

Authorities in Seoul have also promoted special date nights for singles in the city, and the government has introduced numerous stimulus packages for newlyweds and new parents to address South Korea’s declining birthrate, which is currently ranked the lowest in the world.

The government is also looking for solutions outside Seoul’s gates.

In fact, Don’t Worry Village was one of the first prototypes for inclusive communities outside Seoul that could potentially develop into youth-centred regions that create homes and jobs for young adults while populating rural regions.

With sponsorship from the Ministry of Interior and Safety, applicants to Don’t Worry Village receive financial assistance to relocate to Mokpo and attend workshops organised by Hong on useful skills required in the local community and networking with fellow residents.

Kim Ji-ung, the former salesman from Seoul, attended one such workshop in 2018 and then eventually moved there. After he did so, he said he was surprised by how easy it was to form social connections.

“Because the city is quite small, it’s likely that you’ll meet other young people through one way or another,” Kim said. “People ask favours to each other, and you make friends here by just saying ‘hi’ to them.”

That was such a stark contrast to Seoul, where people do not have time to greet each other and do not want to become involved in other people’s businesses, he said.

Kim worked various jobs in Mokpo until 2022 when he put his university degree to use and started a one-person interior design company. Hong is his neighbour, and the pair frequently grab lunch together. In addition to doing what he loves, Kim said the biggest change he has experienced is starting to enjoy leisure time.

“On random nights, I’ll just go down to the ferry terminal and get on a midnight boat to Jeju Island,” he said. “I’ll just stay there for the morning, but it’s the small things like this that tell me that I’m having a good time here.”

Looking outside Seoul

Hong’s life, too, has changed dramatically.

Back in his days in Seoul, he did not think too much about getting married. But he soon met the woman who became his wife in Mokpo and is now a father as well.

“In Seoul, the individual has to sacrifice so much of their own lives for their companies, to make a living and for the good of society as a whole,” Hong said. “But in Mokpo, I have control over my time. I’m able to do what I want for work, and money is not that intimidating to me any more.”

Two other residents in Don’t Worry Village, husband and wife Park Myung-ho and Kim Min-jee, also gave up lucrative careers in Seoul for what they described as a more “relaxed life” in Mokpo.

Park, 38, worked for one of South Korea’s biggest arms manufacturers while Kim was an employee at the country’s largest advertising company.

The couple married after meeting in Don’t Worry Village.

“There’s just too much competition in Seoul. It seemed like only people who possessed a lot of capital succeeded in starting a business,” Park said. “As someone who wanted to start my own business, it was more reasonable to look outside of Seoul.”

Park is now the CEO of a local property development company while Kim runs a guesthouse in downtown Mokpo that was developed by her husband’s company.

Kim, 35, also gave birth to a son more than a year ago whom she did not expect to have so soon.

“I always pictured having a child late in my years or being married without kids,” she said.

“Working for a major company meant nearly no time at home and weekends spent in the office. It’s almost impossible to raise kids in Seoul without the help of parents or childcare services, and finding an affordable housing arrangement is even harder,” she said.

‘You’re judged for literally everything’

While Don’t Worry Village has become a prototype for more than 50 youth-centred communities around the country that the government has created in recent years, the reality for young adults moving away from Seoul to live in rural regions has proven to be difficult.

Workplaces, jobs and key infrastructure are still concentrated in Seoul.

And that is why, despite Hong hosting more than 21 workshops for people considering moving to Don’t Worry Village and attracting more than 2,000 visitors, only 20 people have remained there.

The Ministry of Interior and Safety, which helped start the youth villages, said about 10,000 people have participated in workshops at youth-centred communities across the country, but only about 900 ended up moving to them.

For many South Korean youth, starting a second chapter in life outside the country has become increasingly popular.

Brianna Lee is one of the tens of thousands of young adults who apply every year for working holiday visas to live and work abroad for a set time.

“Life in South Korea is just too intensive,” 30-year-old Lee said.

“You’re expected to get a job, get married, buy a house and have an amount of money at a certain age. And you’re judged for literally everything,” she said.

Working as a nurse in Ilsan, a city just north of Seoul, Lee said there is widespread discrimination inside hospitals, where people are critical towards nurses and view them as socially inferior.

“On top of working 11-hour shifts, we would be asked to do tasks that we weren’t required to perform,” she said.

After facing burnout, Lee applied for a working holiday in Canada, where she worked at restaurants and attended classes at an English-language academy for about a year.

Today, she is back home preparing to take a test to become a nurse in the US.

“They pay much better, and people give a lot of respect towards nurses in the US,” Lee said.

“Most importantly, people aren’t nosy,” she said.

“I think people care less about what you do for work and how you choose to live your life there.”

FAIRVIEW, N.C. — Jamie Ager has spent much of the past year rebuilding his farm in the foothills of western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene tore through the region, cutting power, destroying fences and scattering livestock.

Then, earlier this year, Ager lost his beef contract with local schools, a casualty of billions of dollars in cuts to the U.S. Department of Agriculture under the Trump administration.

Now, the fifth-generation farmer is running for Congress — part of a new crop of Democratic candidates the party is turning to as it tries to compete in the tough, often rural districts it may need to flip to retake the U.S. House in 2026.

Democrats say these new recruits are uniquely suited to break through in districts where President Trump’s popularity dominates. Many, like Ager, are already a well-known presence in their communities. And in parts of North Carolina, Kentucky, Michigan and elsewhere, the party is betting local credibility can cut through skepticism where the Democratic brand has fallen.

Ager says he sees national Democrats as out of touch with rural life: too “academic” and “politically correct and scripted.”

“That’s just not what people are interested in,” he says. “The ideas of helping poor people, being neighborly, the ideal of doing those things, I think, are worthy, good ideas that are actually popular. But the execution of a lot of those ideas has been gummed up, you know, not well executed.”

A shifting House map

Heading into next year’s midterms, Democrats believe momentum is on their side. Historically, the president’s party loses ground in the midterms. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, Democrats flipped 41 seats to take control of the House. Republicans currently control the House by such a slim margin, Democrats need to pick up only a few seats to break the GOP’s hold on Washington.

The Republican-led tax break and spending cut bill has added to Democrats’ optimism. About two-thirds of U.S. adults expect the new law will help the rich, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. About half say it’ll do more harm than good for middle-class people and people like them.

Still, Republicans remain confident. They point to having fewer vulnerable seats than Democrats have this cycle. Only three Republicans hold House districts Democrat Kamala Harris won last year, while 13 Democrats represent districts Trump won.

They also note Democrats’ low opinion of their own party after last year’s losses. In a July AP-NORC poll, Democrats were likelier to describe their own party negatively than Republicans, with many Democrats calling it weak or ineffective.

In places where local dynamics may give Democrats a shot, it means finding the right candidates is especially important, party leaders say.

“Recruitment matters in these years when the environment is going to be competitive,” Democratic pollster John Anzalone said.

Democrats hope a farmer in western North Carolina can regain trust

With power, water and telecommunications down due to last year’s hurricane, Ager’s Hickory Nut Gap farm became a hub for the community — hosting cookouts and using propane to grill food for neighbors.

Statewide, the storm caused nearly $60 billion in damage and killed more than 100 people. Little federal aid has reached the hardest-hit parts of western North Carolina.

“Helene hitting definitely put an exclamation point on, like, ‘Whoa, we need help and support,’” Ager said.

Democrats see Ager as a high-risk, high-reward candidate who could be successful in a district where Democrats have struggled.

No Democrat has won North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District since it was redrawn by the Republican-controlled legislature in 2011. A court-ordered redistricting ahead of the 2020 election made it slightly more favorable to Democrats, encompassing Asheville and much of western North Carolina. Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards still won by nearly 14 percentage points last year and is expected to seek reelection.

Grayson Barnette, a Democratic strategist who helped recruit Ager, said in some districts it’s a risk to run a candidate who hasn’t held elected office before.

“But I would argue that’s a good thing, especially when the Democrats just took the big hit we did,” Barnette said. “We have to look in the mirror and say, ‘Let’s try something new.’”

In a district where nearly 62% of residents live in very low-density areas, Barnette believes Ager’s identity — as a business owner, coach and father with deep local roots — could cut through. His unpolished, direct style, he says, may resonate more than a polished political résumé.

In the video launching his campaign, Ager shows flooding on the farm and is seen on the porch of his home, feeding chickens, driving a tractor and spending time with his wife and three sons.

“I’m not flashy, but I’m honest,” he says in the video.

Ager doesn’t call himself a Democrat in the roughly two-minute video and rarely used the word during a three-hour interview. Still, his ties to the party run deep: His brother serves in the state House, following in the footsteps of their father. His grandfather served six years in the U.S. House.

Asked whether that might be a liability in the district, Ager shrugged: “Then don’t vote for me.”

Trump’s big bill could reshape a conservative district in Michigan

In western Michigan, state Sen. Sean McCann is a different kind of candidate from Ager. He’s buttoned-up and soft-spoken, with a long resume in elected office and deep roots in Kalamazoo, having served for a decade on the city commission before winning a seat in the state House in 2010.

In a district anchored by conservative and religious values, Democrats see McCann as the kind of steady, experienced figure who can make inroads — especially as backlash builds to Trump’s tax bill, which includes deep spending cuts.

At a recent meeting at Kalamazoo’s Family Health Center, where nearly 65% of patients rely on Medicaid, the center’s president warned the proposed Medicaid cuts would be devastating.

“It’s about being home in the community and listening to our community’s values — and carrying those to Washington,” McCann said.

The district is represented by Republican Rep. Bill Huizenga, who won reelection by nearly 12 percentage points in 2022. But Huizenga hasn’t said whether he’ll seek another term, and Trump carried the district by only 5.5 percentage points in 2024.

Democrats hope strong ties help elsewhere

Across the country, Democrats are watching similar races in places like Iowa and Kentucky, where local candidates with strong community ties are running. In Iowa’s 2nd District, state Rep. Lindsay James — a fourth-term lawmaker and Presbyterian pastor — is weighing a run in the northeast part of the state. In Kentucky’s 6th, which includes Lexington and Richmond, former federal prosecutor Zach Dembo is running his first campaign, describing himself as a political outsider.

It’s a mix of profiles: Ager, the farmer-turned-candidate feeding neighbors after a hurricane. McCann, the public servant meeting with health workers in his hometown. And others like them trying to reconnect a skeptical electorate.

“Yes, the Democratic Party has some taint to it,” Ager said. “But when I go talk to Republicans who are friends that I’ve known forever, there’s genuine admiration and mutual respect for each other. And that comes from being in this community forever.”

Cappelletti writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Maya Sweedler in Washington contributed to this report.

Israeli forces ordered the Bedouin residents of Ein Ayoub to leave after declaring their village a ‘closed military zone’. Residents had faced weeks of settler attacks, arson, and drone flights over their homes, before soldiers gave them just minutes to leave.

Joyce Birdwell survived the North Complex fire in 2020, though it devoured her home, and a life she loved, in the mountain town of Berry Creek.

Her partner, Art Linfoot, built the house they lost, a cabin with a wraparound porch and a year-round brook where deer drank and the sound of the water lulled the couple to sleep. Birdwell fired up her chain saw nearly every morning, she told me, aware that keeping the brush at bay was crucial for safety.

Los Angeles knows how to weather a crisis — or two or three. Angelenos are tapping into that resilience, striving to build a city for everyone.

But the fire that came through their Butte County home didn’t care about her trimmed trees, or her hard work or our persistent belief that everything will somehow be OK after a disaster. Birdwell, 69, and Linfoot, 80, are in Irvine now, with no intention of returning, or rebuilding.

Berry Creek Elementary School burned to the ground in the North Complex fire in 2020.

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

“I never thought twice about it as soon as we went back there and saw what was left,” she told me. “I know how long it takes for a tree to grow, and I just knew this would never, never work out for us.”

Hers is a bit of wisdom that is too often lost in our conversations about urban fire: Sometimes, recovery is not rebuilding. Politicians won’t admit it, but the ethos of #strong — measuring success with how quickly we can raise up houses on scorched earth — is snake oil, an emotional rallying cry that often delivers little more than a slippery bit of comfort that benefits the rich more than the rest. Because even rebuilding the most beloved of homes at the fastest of paces will not restore lives or communities to what they were. Or what they need to be. And by focusing on this powerful but narrow idea of recovery, we do a disservice to individual survivors and our collective good.

We need to change our understanding of what recovery is, because we live in an era when the climate crisis has created not just survivors, but refugees and migrants in California and the United States — and they deserve more than a slogan that, to steal a favorite phrase from our governor, does not “meet the moment.”

As we hurl forward to rebuild after January’s fires in the Palisades and Altadena — and all the disasters yet to come — it’s time to acknowledge that recovery and rebuilding, for all our talk, is never fair. There is a bias toward the rich embedded in the process. And for every recovery that we allow to be unfair under the guise of #strong, we march deeper to a California where the elite live in comfort and the rest live in fear — a rightful anxiety that everything we have is tenuous, given and taken as afterthoughts in a tug-of-war between Mother Nature and the wealthy.

‘Conspicuous resilience’

The idea that fire recovery is fair has always been a scam. In his infamous 1998 essay, “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn,” the much-revered and equally despised environmental activist and historian Mike Davis wrote that the “flatland majority” has always been paying “the ever increasing expense of maintaining and, when necessary, rebuilding sloping suburbia,” those rarefied neighborhoods that consider themselves part of Los Angeles proper only when they need something from the rest of us.

If that was true at the turn of the millennium, it’s even more so now.

A 75-year history of fires in the Santa Monica Mountains

1950-1959

1960-1969

1970-1979

1980-1989

1990-1999

2000-2009

2010-2019

2020-2025

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection

Sean Greene LOS ANGELES TIMES

When Davis wrote his controversial piece, he also noted that “late August to early October is the infernal season in Los Angeles.” More than three decades later, climate change has intensified our weather so much that floods and fires haunt almost every month of the California calendar, eclipsing the chthonic terrors of earthquakes that rattle us only now and then.

Summer Gray, an associate professor at UC Santa Barbara who studies the inequities in our responses to climate change, says disaster recovery can be “highly performative, often driven by more privileged members of the community” who have the money and clout that allow them to suck up resources. She saw this firsthand by examining recovery after the debris flows in Montecito in the wake of the 2017 Thomas fire.

Though talk in the ultra-wealthy enclave was all about community recovery, Gray concluded — through interviewing community members — that those with the ability to speak loudest and earliest often received more help, and set the agenda for what recovery included, and didn’t. She found that “narratives of resilience were actually obscuring systemic inequalities.”

Gray warns that sometimes, whether consciously or not, these privileged groups leverage “the optics of this collective recovery to accelerate their own rebuilding,” leaving working-class survivors “sidelined or ignored.” Gray calls this attitude part of “conspicuous resilience,” conflating being temporarily displaced and inconvenienced with being oppressed and vulnerable, leading to the celebration and glorification of a recovery that mostly benefits the few.

“I am not saying that our billionaire class has bad intent,” Gray said. But the elite, “don’t really understand what the needs are.”

My colleague Liam Dillon reported not long ago that before the fire, “the average home in Pacific Palisades cost $3.5 million, the median household earned $325,000 and the total number of rental units restricted as affordable housing was two.”

Two.

When Dillon asked former mayoral candidate and developer Rick Caruso, whose super-high-end mall is an anchor of Palisades commerce, if that should be expanded at this unique moment when everything must be rebuilt anyway, Caruso told him, “Now is not the time for outside groups with no ties to the area to slow down the ability of people to rebuild their homes by trying to impose their agenda.”

Two people ride past a burning house off Enchanted Way in the Marquez Knolls neighborhood of Pacific Palisades in January.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

No ties to the area except our tax dollars, of course, and our erstwhile equality as Angelenos and Californians.

Mayor Karen Bass’ now-ousted recovery czar, developer Steve Soboroff, who supported more affordable housing, put the mood more succinctly.

“We’re not rethinking,” Soboroff said. “We’re rebuilding.”

But if now is not the time to rethink, when is?

The climate crisis is costly, whipping up more and more disasters each year. When Davis wrote his book, there were about six natural disasters in the U.S. every year where the costs of recovery exceeded a billion dollars. Last year, there were 27. This year, we stopped counting, as part of government cost cutting, but that has not stopped floods, fires and heat waves.

Even if the federal government, largely through our taxes, was able to pick up the tab for every tornado, hurricane and wildfire, our current administration has made it clear it does not want to. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been gutted, and may hand off many of its former duties to states, including California, that even if prosperous, lack the money to cover those costs.

Add to that the financial precariousness of tariffs that are making building more expensive, immigration policies that are decimating our construction workforce and insurance costs that are skyrocketing, if you can get a policy, and the prospect of the poor and middle class recovering from fire as quickly as the rich seems naive at best.

Fixes for the future

There are three actions we can take that have the potential to keep California from further devolving into climate rich and poor, housing winner and housing loser.

First, we need to end the fixation on speed.

“If it’s speed without a plan, it means you’re more likely to return to the status quo,” Laurie A. Johnson told me. She’s an urban planner who specializes in disaster recovery and a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Climate Action and Fire Safe Recovery convened by L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath.

Johnson views a focus on speed as “an empowerment of those who have everything they need, or who can easily get it.”

Volunteer archaeologists Elyse Mallonee, left, and Parker Sheriff carefully sift through rubble and ash while looking for cremated remains at a house in Altadena on Feb. 18.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Why don’t we acknowledge that fire destroys more than owner-occupied houses and give equal weight to graduation rates for affected students or the number of renters successfully relocated to safe apartments? What about measuring success around health outcomes for those with asthma or heart conditions exposed to the smoke, or count the number of people who feel their mental health needs have been met or their jobs stabilized?

Certainly home ownership is emotionally and financially important, especially in unique places such as Altadena where a Black middle class found refuge and economic security. But home ownership — and by extension rebuilding — is predominantly a measure of an upper-class recovery, especially in L.A. County, where less than half of the people own the place where they live.

It’s time to slow down, and, yes, rethink.

The second action that will help us reform how we handle disaster is even more difficult: Openly talk about who gets to recover with public money (which repaves roads and fixes water systems and sewers, for example) and who gets to decide who recovers with public money.

Returning to Davis’ point all those years ago, do we continue to rebuild in places that we know, for certain, will experience fire again? What do we owe places such as Malibu, where housing values have increased significantly with each post-fire rebuilding and which have made their elitism part of their identity? What do we owe places such as Altadena, if we allow homeowners with modest means to rebuild without robustly mitigating risk of a future fire?

Maybe not every place should be rebuilt. Maybe in some places, it’s time to let Mother Nature win, or at least create buffers so that she doesn’t have the upper hand.

Our better natures want to help everyone who faces loss, rich or poor. The idea that we would tell a community that they cannot have the money to restore themselves sounds like a political and moral absurdity. But it is increasingly likely that there simply will not be enough money in the future to rebuild everything.

To be honest, we are not rebuilding everything now, though we shove that truth out of our consciousness. Trump has already denied or delayed federal disaster aid to places including West Virginia and Washington state. North Carolina remains in crisis from its recent floods. And in the middle of both hurricane and fire season, FEMA recently proposed cutting $1 billion in grant funding for disaster preparedness and security, while at the same time allocating funds to build immigration detention centers.

It is absolutely time to impose a recovery “agenda” that takes into account the realities of climate change and our housing crisis and seeks to create communities that are safe and in service of our collective needs. Anything less ignores the reality of the majority, and nearly ensures that these places will return more gentrified, wealthier and even more exclusive, the exact opposite of what public dollars should support.

The Tahitian Terrace mobile home park, destroyed by the Palisades fire, is seen along Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu on Jan. 10.

(Zoe Meyers / AFP via Getty Images)

The last action we need to take to better face a difficult future is to expand what recovery means. It is not always rebuilding. More often than we like to acknowledge, it means moving on. But currently, few of our resources or even our conversations include help for those who don’t want to stick around. In fact, they’re often scorned or simply forgotten.

The Palisades fire wiped out 600 homes in Malibu, 5,500 overall. The Eaton fire destroyed more than 9,000 homes and buildings. Almost certainly, something will be built on all of those lots. Developers are already snapping some of them up. But almost as certain, many of the people who once lived in these places will not return — and probably shouldn’t.

Age, finances, health — there are myriad reasons why spending five to 10 years rebuilding a lost home is not the right decision. Recovery needs to support other options with government money, including moving elsewhere, without shame and without the pressure of the elite-driven #strong ethos that forces us to believe recovery looks like the past.

California’s best example of what this could include is the ReCoverCA Homebuyer Assistance (HBA) Program. This program gave financial assistance of up to $350,000 per household through a forgivable second mortgage loan to low- and middle-income folks, mainly renters, displaced by past fires — basically helping to buy houses for economically-challenged survivors.

The catch? The new home had to be outside a high-risk fire zone. That’s a win for displaced people, for the climate, and for encouraging safe housing and wealth building for the future. But the state is not currently funding the program for fire survivors, though some impacted by floods have a shot.

None of this is to argue that rebuilding is wrong, or that losing a home is undeserving of sympathy or help. It is. But there is so much more to survivors, and recovery, than a house.

Birdwell, who lost her home in Berry Creek, still thinks of that cabin as a “slice of heaven” and reminiscences “about how life used to be.” But she is left with anxiety — a remnant of the fire for which no one has offered her help — and a sense of dislocation and discontent. A few nights ago, she dreamed fire was coming at her again.

“I woke up, my heart was beating out of my chest,” she said. “That might be something that will happen the rest of my life.”

Her fire was five years ago, but like so many, her recovery is as incomplete as it is ignored. The conversation about Berry Creek still doggedly sticks to rebuilding.

In the next 30 years, we will assuredly have more climate refugees, more climate migrants, like Birdwell and Linfoot and the thousands of Angelenos still reeling from our recent fires. We can plan for that now if we choose to, leave behind the gratifying but false camaraderie of #strong and instead broaden our response to ensuring everyone who survives climate tragedy has options and equity.

If we don’t, we will simply move further into a future that bends recovery to benefit the wealthy, as Davis predicted long ago — prioritizing the rebuilding of hazardous communities again and again until the only people who can afford to live in them are the people who can afford to watch them burn.

FA Cup winners Crystal Palace upset Premier League champions Liverpool in English season opening Community Shield.

Crystal Palace twice came from behind to stun a new-look Liverpool and win the FA Community Shield for the first time on penalties after a 2-2 draw at Wembley.

New signings Hugo Ekitike and Jeremie Frimpong scored for the Premier League champions, but Palace responded through Jean-Philippe Mateta and Ismaila Sarr before winning an error-strewn shootout 3-2 on Sunday.

Mohamed Salah blazed over from the spot, while Alexis Mac Allister and Harvey Elliott were denied by an inspired Dean Henderson as Palace built on winning their first ever major trophy by beating Manchester City in May’s FA Cup final.

The traditional curtain-raiser to the English football season was given extra significance after a summer marked by tragedy for Liverpool.

Forward Diogo Jota was killed in a car accident alongside his brother Andre Silva.

Reds legend Ian Rush and Palace chairman Steve Parish laid wreaths on the side of the pitch before kickoff, while the Liverpool end was awash with banners and flags paying tribute to the Portuguese international.

A minute’s silence, however, had to be cut short due to disturbances in the crowd.

Jota’s death has dampened the excitement over Liverpool’s transfer spending spree to build on a squad that romped to a record-equalling 20th league title last season.

All four of their new signings at a cost of 260 million pounds ($350m) – Ekitike, Frimpong, Florian Wirtz and Milos Kerkez – started.

Ekitike’s role this season could depend on whether Liverpool are successful in their pursuit of Newcastle striker Alexander Isak.

But the Frenchman – signed from Eintracht Frankfurt last month for an initial 69 million pounds ($93m) – made his case to be Liverpool manager Arne Slot’s preferred number nine, no harm at all.

Wirtz also bagged his first assist for the Reds when Ekitike spun onto the German’s pass and fired into the far corner in just the fourth minute.

Palace were making their first-ever appearance in the fixture, but the Eagles again showed their ability to match one of the Premier League’s giants over 90 minutes.

Mateta missed a glorious chance to level when he failed to beat Alisson Becker one-on-one.

But from the rebound Sarr charged into the box and was tripped by an out-of-sorts Virgil van Dijk.

Mateta coolly sent Alisson the wrong way from the penalty spot to equalise.

Liverpool’s players were sporting a “Forever 20” emblem, referencing Jota’s now-retired shirt number, that they will wear all season.

The Liverpool fans had risen to chant Jota’s name as the game entered the 20th minute when their side retook the lead.

Frimpong’s chipped cross caught out Henderson and flew into the far corner.

Ekitike wasted a great chance for his second early in the second half from another Wirtz pass, as this time he fired over.

However, Slot’s new-look side are still to find the right balance between attack and defence, as has been evidenced during pre-season.

Palace were a constant threat with balls in behind the Reds defence and levelled again 13 minutes from time.

Sarr sped onto Adam Wharton’s through ball and calmly slotted past Alisson for his fourth goal in seven games against Liverpool.

Liverpool also survived a VAR review for a penalty against Mac Allister for handball before the match went to a shootout without extra time.

Youngster Justin Devenny was the unlikely hero as he blasted the winning spot kick high past Alisson, showing Salah, Mac Allister and Elliott how it is done.