company

NBCUniversal is cutting “Access Hollywood” and several other of its daytime talk shows, effectively ending its first-run syndication business as daytime television atrophies.

The company confirmed that “Access Hollywood,” and its counterpart “Access Live,” will be coming to an end in September. The shows, produced in Los Angeles, are currently hosted by Mario Lopez, Kit Hoover, Scott Evans and Zuri Hall.

Talk shows “Karamo” and “The Steve Wilkos Show,” produced out of NBC’s facility in Stamford, Conn., are also shutting down. The programs have already completed their production for the season and will run through the summer.

NBC previously announced that “The Kelly Clarkson Show” is also ending later this year after seven seasons.

“The Steve Wilkos Show” ran for 19 seasons. The host is a former bouncer for “The Jerry Springer Show.”

Francis Berwick, chairman of Bravo and Peacock unscripted, said in a statement that the company will continue to distribute library episodes of its talk programs and network shows such as “Law & Order.” But NBCU’s days of launching series for daytime and the hour before prime time are over.

“NBCUniversal is making changes to our first-run syndication division to better align with the programming preferences of local stations,” Berwick said. “The company will remain active in the distribution of our existing program library and other off-network titles, while winding down production of our first-run shows.”

“Access Hollywood” was first launched by NBC in 1996 as a competitor to CBS Media Ventures’ “Entertainment Tonight.”

First-run syndication allows producers to sell TV shows to stations on a market-by-market basis, instead of distributing them through a single network. This model was a major success for talk show staples such as Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres.

But streaming has pulled viewers away from traditional television, as viewers can watch their favorite shows and movies anytime on demand. The audience levels needed to generate enough ad revenue to support first-run programming in daytime no longer exists.

Many TV stations are filling their hours with more local news as daytime talk goes away.

It has been nearly three years since Hollywood writers went on a historic strike that lasted 148 days and ushered in an extraordinary period of labor unrest that virtually shut down the film and TV business.

Now, writers are poised to commence another round of bargaining with the major studios on a new three-year film and TV contract. Few observers think the union is girding for another showdown, especially at a time when many of its members are struggling to find work amid media consolidation and belt-tightening.

But in advance of negotiations that begin on Monday , union leaders are eager to dispel any perception that they might have scaled back their demands.

“Our members have shown many times that they’re willing to fight for what we need as a collective group,” WGA West President Michele Mulroney said in an interview. “And there’s no exception here.”

With its current contract expiring on May 1, the WGA hopes to improve its members’ healthcare plans, increase streaming residuals and expand AI protections.

Michele Mulroney speaks as the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) and Writers Guild of America (WGA) join GLAAD in releasing the 11TH Annual GLAAD Studio Responsibility Index at The Village at Ed Gould Plaza Los Angeles LGBT Center in Los Angeles, California, on September 14, 2023.

(Michael Tran/AFP via Getty Images)

Ellen Stutzman, the union’s executive director, said despite popular belief, the studios have weathered the transition from cable television to streaming “very well,” citing their efforts to maximize revenue with streaming bundling, rising subscription fees and advertising revenue.

“Writers are watching as Netflix and Paramount are fighting it out to acquire Warner Bros… Paramount is spending $81 billion,” said Stutzman. “There’s money for a fair deal for writers.”

The union leaders agree that this year’s negotiations are all focused on the sustainability of a writer’s career.

A spokesperson from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the major studios in negotiations, said in a statement that they look forward “to engaging in a constructive and collaborative bargaining process with the WGA. Through continued good-faith dialogue, we are confident we can reach balanced solutions that support talented writers while sustaining the long-term success and stability of our industry and its workforce.”

A top priority for the WGA is to increase the caps that companies contribute to the union’s healthcare plan. Union officials say the current cap has remain unchanged for two decades as healthcare contributions have steadily declined due to fewer writers working.

AI is also top of mind for the WGA.

In 2023, the guild secured various AI protections by establishing that AI isn’t a writer and nothing it produces is considered literary material.

But as major studios start to make deals with AI companies, like Disney’s $1 billion investment into OpenAI’s Sora platform, many writers are concerned about how their work could be used.

“AI is using [studios’] IP, which is stuff that we wrote to license these models,” said John August, the co-host of the “Scriptnotes” podcast and WGA’s negotiating committee co-chair. “With the Sora deal, it seems clear that the companies intend to monetize this IP for use with AI.”

August says the union will be skeptical toward arguments that it’s still too early to seek more safeguards around such a nascent industry, citing the union’s past history with the rise of DVDs and the internet and how profoundly those technologies changed the compensation for writers.

“If you’re taking the work that we created to generate AI outputs, we are owed money. They’re using our work to do something down the road,” added August.

WGA’s negotiating committee also is looking to boost streaming residuals, expand the minimum number of people allowed in a writers’ room and add protections for scribes working on pilots.

“We very much hope that lessons were learned in 2023 and that the AMPTP will come to the table ready to take our proposal seriously and to make a fair deal, and to do that quickly,” Mulroney said. “It provides stability for the companies and for our membership. It’s better for everybody.”

WGA is entering contract negotiations nearly a month after the actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, began its bargaining sessions. Last week,
the AMPTP said it was extending negotiations another seven days.

Disneyland Resort President Thomas Mazloum has been named chairman of Walt Disney Co.’s experiences division, the company said Tuesday.

Mazloum succeeds soon-to-be Disney Chief Executive Josh D’Amaro as the head of the Mouse House’s vital parks portfolio, which has become the economic engine for the Burbank media and entertainment giant. His purview includes Disney’s theme parks, famed Imagineering division, merchandise, cruise line, as well as the Aulani Resort and Spa in Hawaii.

Jill Estorino will become the head of Disneyland Resort in Anaheim. She previously served as president and managing director of Disney Parks International and oversaw the company’s theme parks and resorts in Europe and Asia.

Estorino and Mazloum will assume their new roles on March 18, the same day as D’Amaro and incoming Disney President and Chief Creative Officer Dana Walden.

“Thomas Mazloum is an exceptional leader with a genuine appreciation for our cast members and a proven track record of delivering growth,” D’Amaro said in a statement. “His focus on service excellence, broad international leadership and strong connection to the creativity that brings our stories to life make him the right leader to guide Disney Experiences into its next chapter.”

Mazloum had been about a year into his tenure at Disneyland. Prior to that, he was head of Disney Signature Experiences, which includes the cruise line. He was trained in hospitality in Europe.

In his time at Disneyland, Mazloum oversaw the park’s 70th anniversary celebration and recently pledged to eliminate time limitations for park-hopping, which are designed to manage foot traffic at Disneyland and California Adventure.

Mazloum will now oversee a 10-year, $60-billion investment plan for Disney’s overall experiences business, which includes new themed lands in Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World. At Disneyland, that expansion could result in at least $1.9 billion of development.

The size of that investment indicates how important the parks are to Disney’s bottom line. Last year, the experiences business brought in nearly 57% of the company’s operating income. Maintaining that momentum, as well as fending off competitors such as Universal Studios, is key to Disney’s continued growth.

In his new role, Mazloum will have to keep an eye on “international visitation headwinds” at its U.S.-based parks, which the company has said will likely factor into its earnings for the fiscal second quarter. At Disneyland Resort, that dip was mitigated by the park’s high percentage of California-based visitors.

Times staff writer Todd Martens contributed to this report.

It took months of effort, lobbying and mounds of cash for Paramount Skydance to finally clinch its prize of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Now, however, the David Ellison-led company faces a long and challenging road to merge these two media giants and set it up for a successful future.

Key to that will be striking a delicate balancing act between investment and paying down its debt load of $79 billion, which is massive even by Hollywood standards.

Notably, the figure is even greater than Warner’s nearly $55 billion of debt post-merger with Discovery, a burden that hamstrung the company for years and led to successive rounds of layoffs and relentless cost cutting.

Last week, my colleague Meg James wrote about the concerns Fitch Ratings and S&P Global Ratings have about Paramount’s credit, given the mountain of debt the company will now carry. Fitch downgraded its credit to BB+ — “junk” territory — from BBB-, and S&P Global Ratings placed the company’s ratings on “negative watch.”

Carrying that amount of debt comes with significant risks.

For one, a company with a lot of debt that is “junk”-rated is going to be under pressure to cut costs. “Junk status” means a company’s debt is rated below the level that credit agencies consider investment grade. Such a rating means it can be more expensive to refinance or take out new loans, raising the cost of capital.

Paramount executives have already said they plan to find $6 billion in “synergies” within three years, though they’ve emphasized that the majority of their cost cutting will come from “non-labor sources,” including consolidating their streaming technology and cloud providers, combining IT systems across the company and “optimizing the combined real estate footprint and the broader corporate overhead,” among other ideas.

And as I wrote last week, most Hollywood observers and those familiar with Ellison’s plans predict that Paramount will be forced make steep layoffs to offset the cost of the deal and eliminate overlapping roles and functions between the two historic studios.

At the same time, in order to compete with well-funded rivals, Paramount-Warner Bros. will also need to invest in new programming — something that can be difficult for a heavily leveraged business .

Paramount executives have said their cost-cutting efforts won’t include a reduction in production capacity, and Ellison has reiterated that there will be continued spending on programming. Beyond content, he’ll also likely need to invest in improving the technology along with the look and feel of the streaming platforms.

“Whether or not they have the capital to do all of that and to try to get their leverage down is something I’m curious to hear about,” said Naveen Sarma of S&P Global Ratings.

It’s possible that Paramount may not be able to pursue a good opportunity in the future because it has used up all its debt capacity and can’t raise additional financing, said Kelly Shue, a professor of finance at Yale School of Management.

“It might cause them to underinvest in good projects in the future,” she said.

And the company needs to spend on good projects.

The economics of this deal hinge on the combined heft of Paramount and Warner’s two libraries and valuable intellectual property, which will unite Harry Potter, DC Studios, SpongeBob SquarePants and “Mission Impossible” all under one roof.

Building up its streaming platform, which will combine Paramount+ with HBO Max, is important for competing with the behemoth Netflix, which bowed out of the Warner Bros. auction.

And on the theatrical side, Ellison has said the combined company will release 30 films a year — 15 from each studio. That would be a substantial increase from 2025, when the two companies released 18 films — eight at Paramount and 10 from Warner Bros.

“While studios content budgets might not come under immediate focus for cost cutting, we have a hard time seeing no content costs savings considering opportunities to reallocate or pull back from at least the linear networks,” MoffettNathanson’s Robert Fishman wrote in a note to clients last week.

Of course, all of this would come only after the deal’s completion. On the immediate horizon, Paramount needs to secure international regulatory approval as well as at home. Although state attorneys general including Rob Bonta of California have said this is not a “done deal,” most analysts expect that any opposition there is only likely to slow — not stop — the transaction.

A very masculine year in film

A recent study from San Diego State University put a number on something we all suspected: The percentage of female protagonists in the top 100 films last year dropped. A lot.

Female protagonists made up just 29% of the top-grossing films in 2025, down from 42% in 2024, according to the university’s annual study of women’s representation in top films. A selection of film titles from the last year says it all: “The Running Man,” “A Working Man,” “Superman.”

That 29% figure has, unfortunately, been very consistent over the years — it was the same in 2016 and has largely hovered in the range of high 20s to low 30s for the last decade, with a few exceptions (40% in 2019 and 42% in 2024).

Focusing on just the protagonists in the top 100 films means that small fluctuations can change that percentage greatly.

But when the study looked at a broader sample size of the more than 1,900 characters in those films, the results weren’t much better.

The percentage of women in speaking roles was 38%, up just 1% from 2024. And the percentage of major female characters declined to 36% in 2025 from 39% the year before.

The fact that these figures have not moved much, in spite of the countless panels and think pieces about the issue, suggests there isn’t much will in Hollywood to change, said Martha Lauzen, author of the study and founder and executive director of San Diego State’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film.

“Representation is social relevancy and social capital,” she told me. “So when you see fewer women than men, that’s a message.”

Stuff We Wrote

Film shoots

Number of the week

Walt Disney Co. and Pixar’s “Hoppers” came in big at the box office this weekend with a $46-million opening in the U.S. and Canada — the strongest domestic debut for an original animated movie since “Coco” in 2017. Globally, the film made $88 million.

The reception is an encouraging sign for original animated movies, which have largely struggled at the box office since the COVID-19 pandemic while their sequel counterparts have shined.

What I’m watching

Several months ago, some friends and I started a movie club, where we each nominate a film we want to watch and we rotate who gets to make the final selection. Last week, we watched the 1996 comedy “First Wives Club,” which I had never seen but loved for its goofy antics, unexpected song-and-dance number and the focus on the enduring power of female friendships.

As Hollywood writers continue contract negotiations with major studios, one topic remains front and center: the role of artificial intelligence.

On Friday, the Writers Guild of America released a list of contract demands, which 97% of the union membership supports. Though some details have yet to be revealed, many of the union’s asks involve expanding protections over the use and abuse of AI, in addition to improved health coverage and higher residuals.

AI and streaming residuals were central issues in strikes by actors and writers in 2023.

WGA’s current contract, which expires May 1, established that AI isn’t a writer and nothing it produces is considered literary material. It prohibits companies from giving writers AI-generated scripts for a rewrite fee or requiring writers to use AI software, and a company must disclose whether any written materials were developed using AI.

The union says its current demand is to simply “expand” these protections. Other priorities include increasing contributions to the WGA benefit plans, raising minimums for “page one” rewrites and boosting streaming residuals.

The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has identified similar issues as it negotiates a new contract for actors. Last week, SAG-AFTRA and the bargaining group for the major studios disclosed that they are extending their negotiations for seven days. The discussions began Feb. 9.

The union, whose contract expires June 30, is expected to propose what has been called the Tilly tax, a fee that studios would have to pay to the union in exchange for using an AI actor. This demand is in response to the first AI actor, Tilly Norwood, being introduced to Hollywood. Though the bot has yet to star in a major project, the fear of AI-generated characters taking jobs is real for many actors. The bot’s creator, Xicoia, also recently announced the expansion of its AI actor universe, called the “Tillyverse.”

WGA’s negotiations are set to start Monday and will be led by Ellen Stutzman. The studios will be represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers’ new president, Gregory Hessinger.

The negotiations are happening as WGA West’s own staff members have been on strike, forcing the guild to call off its L.A.-based award show. The staff union, with more than 100 employees, are similarly demanding higher pay and protections against AI.

Live Nation has reached a settlement with the Justice Department in an antitrust case that put the entertainment giant at risk of being separated from Ticketmaster.

The ticket vendor’s settlement offer was announced, in a court hearing on Monday, less than a week after the long-awaited trial began. With pending approval from the judge, Live Nation will have to pay damages to the suing states and allow competitors to sell tickets on its platform. Media reports have said the company agreed to pay more than $200 million as part of the settlement.

The settlement caught Judge Arun Subramanian off guard. He said no one informed him of the tentative deal until late Sunday, even though a term sheet for a possible settlement was signed on Thursday, according to the Associated Press.

A 12-person jury was seated last Tuesday in a Manhattan federal courthouse and the trial had reached witness testimony by the end of last week. The complaint was filed in 2024, when the federal government, 39 states including California and the District of Columbia, alleged that Live Nation and Ticketmaster have monopolies in various aspects of the live music industry, such as concert promotion, venue operations, artist management and ticketing services.

Live Nation could not immediately be reached for a comment.

Many of the large monopoly claims were thrown out during a pretrial hearing last month, including an allegation that Live Nation’s industry power raises ticket prices and harms consumers. But the new settlement offers major structural changes to the company’s ticketing services.

If the trial judge approves the settlement, the Beverly Hills-based company will have to open parts of its platform to rival ticketing operators. This means third-party sellers like SeatGeek could list tickets and have access to Ticketmaster’s technology.

Another key claim in the lawsuit concerned Ticketmaster’s alleged exclusivity contracts, which required artists who booked Live Nation-owned venues to also use its ticketing services. The settlement now limits these contracts to four years and allows venues to place a number of its tickets on competing platforms.

The original lawsuit also argued that Live Nation manages more than 400 artists and controls more than 265 venues in North America — all while Ticketmaster simultaneously controls around 80% of the primary ticket marketplace and is increasing its involvement in the resale market. Under the pending legal agreement, Live Nation would have to divest more than 10 of its venues and Ticketmaster would also have to cap service fees at 15%.

Serona Elton, attorney and interim vice dean at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, said this outcome can be understood in two ways — it’s either a win that addresses anti-competitive behaviors or a deal that does not go far enough.

“It is important to understand that it is not illegal to be a monopoly and control a large portion of the market,” said Elton in a statement. “What is illegal is the use of anti-competitive tactics. In analyzing the settlement, the question to ask is if it does enough to address the alleged tactics and the harm they may have caused.”

Elton added that venues could benefit from these adjustments, but “music fans should not think this is going to bring ticket prices down to an affordable level as there are other causes behind the sky-high ticket prices.”

Stephen Parker, the executive director of the National Independent Venue Association, similarly expressed some skepticism about the potential settlement.

“The reported settlement does not appear to include any specific and explicit protections for fans, artists, or independent venues and festivals,” he said in a statement.

“Reported details also indicate that ticket resale platforms could be further empowered through new requirements for Ticketmaster to host their listings, which would likely exacerbate the price gouging potential for predatory resellers and the platforms that serve them,” Parker added . “If these facts are true, NIVA views this as a failure of the justice system.”

A settlement could mark the potential end to one of the major legal battles Live Nation is facing. The company is also being sued by the Federal Trade Commission and is dealing with a handful of class-action lawsuits from groups of concertgoers.

After the news of the settlement broke, Live Nation’s stock jumped over 5% to $164.03.

Paramount’s $111-billion deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery will put two of the most storied journalism brands — CNN and CBS News — under one roof.

The combination has been proposed before with the aim of consolidating news-gathering costs. Those plans fell apart largely over who would be in control.

But if the Paramount-WBD transaction is approved by regulators, CNN and CBS News will be forced into potentially rocky marriage where they will have to sort out leadership roles, personnel and editorial direction.

It’s still too early to determine what those moves will be and how widely they will be felt.

Last week CNN Chief Executive Mark Thompson told his troops to avoid “jumping to conclusions about the future.”

But what is certain is that every permutation will be scrutinized closely due to the fraught relationships both CNN and CBS News have with the Trump administration.

“There have been many conversations over the years about combining CBS News and CNN,” said Jon Klein, a digital media entrepreneur who previously held leadership roles at both organizations. “But this time, it’s different. The business case always made sense — but today you’ve got the overlay of the political agenda.”

Before Paramount prevailed in its bid for CNN’s parent, Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison’s father Larry Ellison reportedly discussed changes to the network with Trump. For years, Trump has made CNN the poster child of his “fake news” claims and impugned many of its journalists.

“What has David Ellison and Larry Ellison promised Donald Trump with regard to what they’re going to do with CNN?” said one former executive. “Before you even get through the hurdles of doing this, that’s the overriding question. Are they going to fire anchors Trump doesn’t like?”

There is also apprehension at CBS News, where David Ellison installed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief in October, with a mandate to have network’s coverage appeal to the political center.

CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss with Turning Point USA’s Erika Kirk at a town hall that aired Dec. 20.

(CBS Photo Archive / CBS via Getty Images)

Weiss — founder of the independent media company The Free Press — came into the role with no experience running a TV news organization, building her reputation as an opinion writer with contrarian views and a disdain for woke ideology.

The former New York Times opinion writer, who is staunchly pro-Israel, drew criticism over the weekend for putting a fire emoji over a comment criticizing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s condemnation of the U.S. military action in Iran — an unusual public reaction for the head of a major news organization.

Weiss wasted no time taking on the prestigious CBS news magazine “60 Minutes,” which has long been a stubbornly independent operation. She delayed a story on the harsh El Salvador prison used by the U.S. to house undocumented migrants saying it needed more reporting. The story’s correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi accused CBS News management of placating the White House, turning the decision into a public relations fiasco for the network.

Significant changes are coming to “60 Minutes” later this spring, with one or more of its correspondents possibly being replaced, according to people familiar with Weiss’ plans who were not authorized to comment. Weiss has also expressed interest in hiring right-leaning on-air talent for CBS News.

Weiss arrived after Paramount settled a Trump lawsuit with the dubious claim that a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris was deceptively edited to aid her 2024 presidential election campaign against him.

The willingness to settle the suit was largely seen as Paramount capitulating to Trump in order to get government approval of its merger with Skydance Media. The Ellisons’ tight relationship with Trump was also seen as an asset in their successful pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery.

The stew of issues bubbling through the transactions is why most of the rank and file at CNN rooted for Netflix to prevail in its bidding for Warner Bros. Discovery. The Netflix bid for WBD did not include CNN or the company’s cable networks, which in the words of one insider would have made it “a stay of execution.”

Now CNN staffers, speaking on the condition of anonymity, are bracing for upheaval. When they look at CBS News navigating the changes under Weiss, they are reminded what they went through after Warner Bros. Discovery took over their network and tried to push the coverage to the center.

After a declaration by WBD Chief Executive David Zaslav that the network needed to be more accommodating to conservative voices — and the telecast of a rowdy Trump town hall — CNN experienced an exodus of viewers.

But the biggest fear that the merger brings is consolidation and the loss of jobs. CNN has 3,400 employees while CBS News is at around 1,000. Cost-cutting is expected to be aggressive across the combined Paramount-WBD, which will have a mountain of debt to service.

The parent companies of CBS and CNN have discussed merging or sharing news-gathering operations and on-air talent numerous times over several decades. In 2019, Viacom, the CBS News parent at the time, had a deal in place to pay CNN an annual license fee to provide international coverage.

Under that plan, CBS would have maintained a few of its signature overseas correspondents, while shuttering its bureaus around the world. But Viacom backed out of the deal.

CNN’s international coverage has long been its calling card and its likely the network will handle that reporting for CBS News once Paramount takes ownership.

Combining the news-gathering operation stateside will be trickier, as CBS News has employees and vendors that operate under contracts with the Writers Guild of America East, SAG-AFTRA and other unions. CNN is a non-union shop.

Resolving the union issue has been a snag in every previous discussion to combine CBS News and CNN over the years, according to several former executives at both outlets.

CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper in New York in 2016.

(Associated Press)

Another development worth watching is what role Anderson Cooper will play in the merged operation. Cooper signed a new deal with CNN last year, but turned down an offer to remain as a “60 Minutes” correspondent, a role he’s had since 2007.

CBS News has pursued Cooper several times over the years to be its evening news anchor. There was even a proposal in 2018 for him to helm “CBS Evening News” while keeping his nightly prime time program on CNN. That idea was shot down at CNN, where leadership believed he was unique to the network’s brand.

In a statement, Cooper cited a desire to spend more time with his two children as the reason for passing on another “60 Minutes” deal. However, associates have said his wariness over the direction of CBS News under Weiss made his decision easier.

Now Cooper is likely headed into the CNN-CBS News tent, which may make him feel a bit like Michael Corleone in “Godfather III” when he said “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”

The iPic dine-in movie theater chain has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and intends to pursue a sale of its assets, citing the difficult post-pandemic theatrical market.

The Boca Raton, Fla.-based company has 13 locations across the U.S., including in Pasadena and Westwood, according to a Feb. 25 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of Florida, West Palm Beach division.

As part of the bankruptcy process, the Pasadena and Westwood theaters will be permanently closed, according to WARN Act notices filed with the state of California’s Employment Development Department.

The company came to its conclusion after “exploring a range of possible alternatives,” iPic Chief Executive Patrick Quinn said in a statement.

“We are committed to continuing our business operations with minimal impact throughout the process and will endeavor to serve our customers with the high standard of care they have come to expect from us,” he said.

The company will keep its current management to maintain day-to-day operations while it goes through the bankruptcy process, iPic said in the statement. The last day of employment for workers in its Pasadena and Westwood locations is April 28, according to a state WARN Act notice. The chain has 1,300 full- and part-time employees, with 193 workers in California.

The theatrical business, including the exhibition industry, still has not recovered from the pandemic’s effect on consumer behavior. Last year, overall box office revenue in the U.S. and Canada totaled about $8.8 billion, up just 1.6% compared with 2024. Even more troubling is that industry revenue in 2025 was down 22.1% compared with pre-pandemic 2019’s totals.

IPic noted those trends in its bankruptcy filing, describing the changes in consumer behavior as “lasting” and blaming the rise of streaming for “fundamentally” altering the movie theater business.

“These industry shifts have directly reduced box office revenues and related ancillary revenues, including food and beverage sales,” the company stated in its bankruptcy filing.

IPic also attributed its decision to rising rents and labor costs.

The company estimated it owed about $141,000 in taxes and about $2.7 million in total unsecured claims. The company’s assets were valued at about $155.3 million, the majority of which coming from theater equipment and furniture. Its liabilities totaled $113.9 million.

The chain had previously filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019.

Paramount Skydance’s jubilation over its come-from-behind victory to claim Warner Bros. Discovery has entered a new phase:

Call it the deal-debt hangover.

Two major ratings agencies have raised concerns about Paramount’s credit because of the enormous debt the David Ellison-led company will have to shoulder — at least $79 billion — once it absorbs the larger Warner Bros. Discovery, bringing CNN, HBO, TBS and Cartoon Network into the Paramount fold.

Fitch Ratings said Monday that it placed Paramount on its “negative” ratings watch, and downgraded its credit to BB+ from BBB-, which puts the company’s credit into “junk” territory. Fitch said it took action due to “uncertainty” surrounding Paramount’s $110-billion deal for Warner Bros. Discovery, which the boards of both companies approved on Friday.

S&P Global Ratings took similar action.

To finance the Warner takeover, Ellison’s billionaire father, Larry Ellison, has agreed to guarantee the $45.7 billion in equity needed. Bank of America, Citibank and Apollo Global have agreed to provide Paramount with more than $54 billion in debt financing.

“Potential credit risks include the prospective debt-funded structure, Fitch’s expectation of materially elevated leverage and limited visibility on post-transaction financial policy and capital structure,” Fitch said.

Late last week, Paramount sent $2.8 billion to Netflix as a “termination fee” to officially end the streaming giant’s pursuit of Warner Bros. That payment paved the way for Warner and Paramount’s board to enter into the new merger agreement.

Paramount hopes the merger will be wrapped up by the end of September. It needs the approval of Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders and regulators, including the European Union.

Paramount executives acknowledged this week the new company would emerge with $79 billion in debt — a considerably higher total than what Warner Bros. Discovery had following its spinoff from AT&T. That 2022 transaction left Warner Bros. Discovery with nearly $55 billion of debt, a burden that led to endless waves of cost-cutting, including thousands of layoffs and dozens of canceled projects.

Warner still has $33.5 billion in debt, a lingering legacy that will be passed on to Paramount.

Paramount plans to restructure about $15 billion in Warner Bros. Discovery’s existing debt.

Paramount CEO David Ellison at a 2024 movie premiere for a Netflix show.

(Evan Agostini / Invision / AP)

Paramount told Wall Street it would find more than $6 billion in cost cuts or “synergies” within three years — a number that has weighed heavily on entertainment industry workers, particularly in Los Angeles.

Hollywood already is reeling from previous mergers in addition to a sharp pullback in film and television production locally as filmmakers chase tax credits offered overseas and in other states, including New York and New Jersey.

Some entertainment executives, including Netflix Co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos, have speculated that Paramount will need to find more than $10 billion in cost cuts to make the math work. More recently, Sarandos went higher, telling Bloomberg News that Paramount may need $16 billion in cuts.

Cognizant of widespread fears about additional layoffs, Paramount Chief Operating Officer Andrew Gordon took steps this week to try to tamp down such concerns.

Gordon is a former Goldman Sachs banker and a former executive with RedBird Capital Partners, an investor in Paramount and the proposed Warner Bros. deal. He joined Paramount last August as part of the Ellison takeover.

During a conference call Monday with analysts, Gordon said Paramount would look beyond the workforce for cuts because the company wants to maintain its film and TV production levels.

Paramount plans to look for cost savings by consolidating the “technology stacks and cloud providers” for its streaming services, including Paramount+ and HBO Max, Gordon said. The company also would search for reductions in corporate overhead, marketing expenses, procurement, business services and “optimizing the combined real estate footprint.”

It’s unclear whether Paramount would sell the historic Melrose Avenue lot or simply centralize the sprawling operations onto the Warner Bros. and Paramount lots in Burbank and Hollywood.

Workers are scattered throughout the region.

HBO, owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, maintains its West Coast headquarters in Culver City; CBS television stations operate from CBS’ former lot off Radford Avenue in Studio City; and CBS Entertainment and Paramount cable channels executive teams are located in a high-rise off Gower Street and Sunset Boulevard, blocks from the Paramount movie studio lot.

“The combination of PSKY and WBD could create a materially stronger business than either individual entity,” Standard & Poor’s said in its note to investors. “However, this transaction presents unique challenges because it would involve the combination of three companies, with the smallest, Skydance, being the controlling entity.”

David Ellison’s production firm, Skydance Media, was the entity that bought Paramount, creating Paramount Skydance.

Ellison has not announced what the combined company will be called.

Paramount shares closed down more than 6% Tuesday to $12.45.

Warner Bros. Discovery fell 1% to $28.20. Netflix added less than 1% to close at $97.70.

After years of ticketing complaints and frustrations, the trial for the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation is officially underway.

As part of its case, the DOJ has accused Live Nation of requiring artists to use its promotional services when they play a Live Nation-owned venue. Because so many venues are owned by the company, the government claims Live Nation’s alleged practices are anti-competitive.

Jury selection began Monday in a New York federal court and opening statements are expected Tuesday for the complaint first filed in 2024. Since then, the antitrust case against the Beverly Hills-based company has been streamlined — examining whether Live Nation uses illegal anti-competitive practices and whether the company and Ticketmaster should be broken up.

The legal proceeding is expected to last around a month, with Judge Arun Subramanian, who also presided over Sean Combs’ sentencing last year, at the helm.

Live Nation’s presidents Michael Rapino and Joe Berchtold, executives from competing companies like Anschutz Entertainment Group and Irving Azoff, the former Ticketmaster CEO, are expected to testify. Musicians like Ben Lovett of Mumford & Sons and entertainer Kid Rock could also take the stand.

Key claims in the lawsuit

The original lawsuit led by a cadre of interested parties including the federal government, 39 states and the District of Columbia alleged that Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster have monopolies in various aspects of the live music industry, such as concert promotion, venue operations, artist management and ticketing services.

The lawsuit states that Live Nation manages over 400 artists and controls more than 265 venues in North America. Ticketmaster simultaneously controls around 80% of the primary ticket marketplace and is also increasing its involvement in the resale market.

Many of the large monopoly claims were thrown out during a pretrial hearing with Judge Subramanian last month, including an allegation that Live Nation’s industry power raises ticket prices and harms consumers.

The claim with arguably the greatest potential impact centers on whether Live Nation should own Ticketmaster. The two companies merged in 2010, a move that has frequently been considered controversial. Beyond the ownership of Ticketmaster, the DOJ claims Live Nation forces venues to sign exclusive contracts with Ticketmaster, barring the inclusion of other ticket vendors.

“For over a decade, Ticketmaster and Live Nation have promised reform, but meaningful competition has remained out of reach. The industry now stands at an inflection point: restore a competitive marketplace that supports innovation, or allow the status quo to continue narrowing options for American consumers,” Dustin Brighton of the Coalition for Ticket Fairness said in a statement.

“Yet the very competitors that could check this monopoly and restore balance are routinely boxed out by restrictive practices that limit innovation and reduce consumer options,” Brighton added.

Live Nation did not respond to a request for comment. When the complaint was first filed, the company called the claims “baseless.”

“Calling Ticketmaster a monopoly may be a PR win for the DOJ in the short term, but it will lose in court because it ignores the basic economics of live entertainment,” wrote Live Nation in a previous statement.

Next steps after the trial

If Live Nation loses the trial, the judge will decide how the company should be restructured, which could mean selling Ticketmaster to a competitor. Live Nation maintains the right to appeal such a decision, if it materializes, and take the matter to a higher court.

“If the court finds Live Nation violated the law, monetary penalties and behavioral commitments alone will not be sufficient,” Stephen Parker, executive director of the Independent Venue Association, said in a statement.

“The relief must be proportionate to the harm,” Parker added, “and that means structural separation of primary ticketing, resale ticketing, venue operation, national tours, advertising/sponsorship, and artist management must be seriously considered.”

Beyond the current DOJ trial, Live Nation is also facing a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission and a handful of class action lawsuits from groups of concertgoers.

Four days after the stunning news that Paramount Skydance would acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount executives tried to calm fears that the blockbuster deal would result in massive layoffs.

In a call Monday, Paramount Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Operating Officer Andy Gordon told Wall Street analysts that $6 billion in merger “synergies” would come from “non-labor sources” and not a “reduction in production capacity.”

Instead, Gordon said, the company would reduce costs by consolidating its streaming technology and cloud providers, finding marketing efficiencies and “optimizing the combined real estate footprint,” likely an allusion to widely anticipated plans that the new owners will consolidate operations around the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank.

Efficiencies aside, most Hollywood observers — including people who are familiar with Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison’s plans — predict that Paramount will be forced to make large-scale layoffs in order to offset the enormous costs of the mega-deal, which is valued at more than $111 billion (counting debt).

It’s a reasonable expectation, at least if history is any guide.

Many at Warner dread the kinds of cuts seen after Walt Disney Co. bought most of 21st Century Fox’s assets, resulting in thousands of layoffs as the two companies combined operations and shed redundant jobs.

In the case of Warner-Paramount, the new company will have two film and TV studios, as well as two streaming businesses, two legal departments, two marketing departments and so on. It’s doubtful these overlapping functions will survive budget cuts.

Already, consolidation plans are underway.

This week Paramount announced it would combine the two streaming services — Paramount+ and HBO Max — to reach a total of more than 200 million subscribers and better compete against the behemoth Netflix, which boasts 325 million subscribers worldwide.

Ellison was full of praise for the HBO team on Monday’s analyst call, saying the premium service was a “crown jewel” and that it will “continue to have the resources and independence to do what it does best.”

He also reiterated that there is “no intention to pull back on production,” and that the company intends to make 30 films a year — 15 apiece from Paramount and Warner Bros.

“We have all the economic incentives to make sure that we grow this business and are going to invest in content to basically achieve those goals,” Ellison said Monday.

But this deal also includes $79 billion in net debt — a staggering load that overshadows even that of the merger that resulted in Warner Bros. Discovery. That amount became an albatross around that company’s neck and led to waves of layoffs.

“What everybody’s hoping is that the noise that’s being made around prioritizing content will hold true,” said Kevin Klowden, a Milken Institute fellow focused on entertainment and technology. “But until they see that happen, it’s really a question.”

Further job losses would be a blow to an industry that has been reeling from a steady drumbeat of job cuts fueled by media consolidation, dwindling streaming profits and the migration of film and TV jobs to cheaper states and countries.

Paramount executives have said the deal is expected to close in the fiscal third quarter of this year, and Ellison said he was “absolutely confident” they will meet that goal, based on conversations with regulators.

Despite support from the Trump administration, the acquisition is not yet final. Already, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said he was in communication with other states’ attorneys general about challenging the merger on antitrust grounds, saying it wasn’t a “done deal.”

And on Monday, Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-San José), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called on Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to provide details of their conversations about the merger with Ellison and Netflix co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos, highlighting the role of politics in the auction.

Paramount plans to keep the two studios separate for now, though company executives have discussed combining operations at the Warner Bros. Burbank lot at some point, according to sources close to Paramount who were not authorized to speak publicly. That could mean a wind down at the historic Paramount lot on Melrose Avenue — and more job losses.

The anxiety over looming cuts is especially deep inside Warner, where staff are still trying to process the news, according to people I spoke with. They noted that when Netflix was the winning bidder, co-Chief Executives Sarandos and Greg Peters came to the Burbank lot and spoke with several hundred of Warner’s senior leaders and outlined their plans, giving staff more clarity about a future under their ownership. No such conversations have occurred with the Paramount team, they said.

“I think genuinely, everyone’s nervous and a little uneasy,” said one Warner Bros. Discovery employee. “With the Netflix option, people had become a little more hopeful. But this outcome is a little more frightening for the staff.”

Stuff We Wrote

Film shoots

Number of the week

After 30 years, the Ghostface killer has still got it. Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s “Scream 7” topped the box office this last weekend with $64.1 million in the U.S. and Canada, marking a franchise-best domestic opening. Globally, the film made $97.2 million.

The film centered on original franchise actors Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox, and featured numerous callbacks to the previous movies.

But the film’s debut did not come without controversy. Pro-Palestinian groups protested outside the “Scream 7” premiere on the Paramount lot last week and called for a boycott of the film after franchise star Melissa Barrera was fired more than two years ago for her comments on the Israel-Hamas war.

What I’m watching

On Sunday, I watched the UCLA women’s basketball team dominate USC in what I think is one of the best college rivalries out there (though I’m probably biased. Go Bruins!)

So much Trump-related news has appeared lately on the airwaves and in web pixels — what with Iran and Epstein and Minnesota and so on — that inevitably a nugget will fall between the cracks.

That seems to have been the fate of the most recent annual financial report of Trump Media and Technology Group, which covered calendar year 2025 and was issued Friday.

Trump Media, which is 52% owned by Donald Trump and trades on Nasdaq with a ticker symbol based on his initials (DJT), is the holding company for Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social.

The annual financial disclosure has garnered minimal press coverage. That’s a pity, because it makes fascinating reading, though not in a good way.

Here are the top and bottom lines from the 10-k annual report: Trump Media lost $712.1 million last year on revenue of about $3.7 million. That’s quite a bit worse than its performance in 2024, when it lost $409 million on revenue of about $3.6 million. The company attributed most of the flood of red ink to “loss from investments,” of which more in a moment.

Truth Social isn’t an especially strong keystone of this operation. The platform is chiefly an outlet for Trump’s social media ramblings and the occasional official White House statements. But no one has to sign in to Truth Social to see them — they’re almost invariably picked up by the news media or reposted by users on other platforms such as X.

That might explain Truth Social’s relatively scrawny user base. The platform is estimated to have about 2 million active users, according to the analytical firm Search Logistics. By comparison, X has about 450 million monthly active users and Facebook has more than 2.9 billion.

It’s no mystery, then, why TMTG disdains “traditional performance metrics like average revenue per user, ad impressions and pricing, or active user accounts, including monthly and daily active users,” according to its annual report.

Relying on those metrics, which are used to judge TMTG’s social media rivals, “might not align with the best interests of TMTG or its stockholders, as it could lead to short-term decision-making at the expense of long-term innovation and value creation.”

Instead, the company says it should be evaluated based on “its commitment to a robust business plan that includes introducing innovative features, new products, new technologies.” But it also acknowledges that, at its heart, TMTG is a proxy for “the reputation and popularity of President Donald J. Trump.” The company warns that “the value of TMTG’s brand may diminish if the popularity of President Donald J. Trump were to suffer.”

How has that played out in real time? Trump Media notched its highest closing price as a public company, $66.22, on March 27, 2024, the day after its initial public offering. In midday trading Monday, the shares were quoted at $11.08, for a loss of 83% since the IPO.

One can’t quibble with stock market price quotes; nor can one finagle annual profit and loss statements, at least not without receiving questions, and perhaps lawsuit complaints, from attentive investors and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In recent months, TMTG has engaged in a number of baroque financial transactions.

In May, the company announced that it was planning to raise $3.5 billion from institutions to invest in bitcoin, with the money to come from issues of common and preferred shares. The goal was to climb onto the cryptocurrency train, which Trump himself was fueling by, among other things, issuing an executive order promoting the expansion of crypto in the U.S. and denigrating enforcement efforts by the Biden administration as reflecting a “war on cryptocurrency.”

Under Trump, federal regulators have dropped numerous investigations related to cryptocurrencies. Trump has also talked about creating a government crypto strategic reserve, which would entail large government purchases of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies; a March 3 announcement on that subject briefly sent bitcoin prices soaring by nearly 20%, though they promptly fell back.

Then there’s TMTG’s relationship with Crypto.com, a Singapore-based crypto “service provider” best known to Angelenos unfamiliar with the crypto world as the firm with naming rights to the Los Angeles arena that hosts the NBA Lakers and Clippers, WNBA Sparks and NHL Kings.

In August, Crypto.com and TMTG announced a deal in which TMTG would pursue a crypto treasury strategy consisting mostly of Cronos tokens, a cryptocurrency sponsored by Crypto.com. The initial infusion would consist of 6.4 billion Cronos valued at $1 billion, or about 15.8 cents per Cronos.

As of Dec. 31, TMTG said in its 10-K, it owned 756.1 million Cronos, acquired at a cost of about $114 million, or 15 cents each. By year’s end, they were worth only about nine cents each, for a paper loss of about $46 million. In trading this week, Cronos was quoted at about 7.6 cents, producing a paper loss for TMTG of about $56.5 million, or roughly half the investment.

The financial maneuvering involved in this trade is a little dizzying. The initial transaction was a 50% stock, 50% cash trade in which Crypto.com bought $50 million in TMTG stock and TMTG bought $105 million in Cronos. Who gained in this deal? It’s almost impossible to say.

Crypto.com did gain, if not purely in cash, then arguably through the Trump administration’s good graces.

On March 27, the SEC formally closed an investigation of the company that it had launched during the Biden administration, when the agency was headed by a known crypto skeptic, Gary Gensler. Trump appointed a crypto-friendly regulator, Paul Atkins, as Gensler’s successor.

It’s reasonable to note that as a business model, crypto treasuries have been in vogue over the last year or so, allowing investors to play the crypto market without all the complexities of actually buying and holding the digital assets by buying shares in treasury companies.

I asked Crypto.com whether the steady decline in Cronos’ price suggested that the hookup with TMTG wasn’t bearing fruit. “The fluctuation in value during this time period is consistent with the entire crypto market, which is typical in a bear market,” company spokeswoman Victoria Davis told me by email.

Davis also asserted that the SEC’s investigation of the company had been closed by Gensler, “not the current administration” (i.e., Trump). That’s misleading, at best. Gensler put the investigation on hold after the 2024 election, when it became clear that Trump was going to be in charge.

Crypto.com’s March 27 announcement of the formal end of the case attributed the action to “the current SEC leadership” and blamed the case on “the previous administration.” I asked Davis to explain the discrepancy but got no reply.

TMTG, like Crypto.com, attributed the decline in Cronos’ value to the secular bear market raging in the entire cryptocurrency space, a reflection of “temporary price swings across the crypto market,” said TMTG spokeswoman Shannon Devine. She said the price decline “will not diminish our enthusiasm for the enormous potential of the [CRONOS] ecosystem.”

Trump’s coziness with crypto companies hasn’t gone unnoticed by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, who issued a scathing report on the topic in November. (The White House scoffed at the report, saying in response to the report that Trump “only acts in the best interests of the American public.”)

In mid-December, TMTG launched yet another remaking — this time, plunging into the business of fusion power. The instrument is TAE Technologies, a Foothill Ranch-based company working to develop the technology of nuclear fusion as a clean energy source. According to a Dec. 18 announcement, TMTG and TAE will merge, creating what they say is a $6-billion company.

According to the announcement, TMTG will contribute $200 million to the merged company when the deal closes in mid-2026, and an additional $100 million subsequently. Following the merger, TMTG said last month, it will consider spinning off Truth Social into a new publicly traded company.

These arrangements are murky. TAE is privately held and the value of Truth Social is conjectural at best, so TMTG shareholders could be hard-pressed to assess their gains or losses from the merger and spin-off.

What makes them even murkier is the speculative nature of fusion as an electrical power source. Although numerous companies have leaped into the field — and TAE, which has been backed by Alphabet, the parent of Google, is among the oldest — none has shown the capability of generating electrical power at commercial scale with the elusive technology.

Although some researchers say that fusion could become a technically and economically feasible power source within 10 years, only in 2022 did fusion researchers (at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) achieve the goal of using fusion to produce more energy than is required to sustain a reaction. They were able to do so only for less than a billionth of a second.

Others working on the technology have expressed doubts that fusion could become a viable power source before the 2040s. The technical challenges, including how to convert the energy produced by a fusion reactor into electricity, remain daunting.

All this points to the fundamental question of what TMTG is supposed to be. TMTG’s original mission, according to its own publicity statements, was to build Truth Social into an alternative social media platform “to end Big Tech’s assault on free speech by opening up the Internet.”

Spinning off Truth Social would place that goal on the side. TMTG is on its way too becoming a hodgepodge of crypto, fusion and other investments selected without regard to whether they fit together or are even achievable. The only constant is Trump himself.

If you want to invest in him, TMTG may be the best way to do it. But judging from its latest financial disclosure, that’s not the same as being a good way to do it.

The warm smiles coming from Chadrack Mpoyi are plentiful these days. After forcefully dominating the paint and protecting the rim in Crean Lutheran wins, the imposing big man beams as teammates, classmates and supporters congratulate him. He offers a hug in return.

Mpoyi says he’s having fun each game in his one season of high school basketball in the U.S., the 6-foot-11 African enjoying a meteoric rise to become one of the top West Coast centers in this year’s class. A virtual unknown coming from Congo two summers ago to attend school in Orange County, Mpoyi saw his recruitment skyrocket and lead to him signing with Minnesota. He scored 14 points during Crean Lutheran’s 59-52 win over JSerra in the Southern Section Division 1A championship game Saturday. The Saints (26-7) qualified for for the CIF Southern California Regional that begins Tuesday, extending Mpoyi’s senior season.

In a way, it all happened so quickly, by leaps and bounds. Within a week of arriving in June 2024 on a student visa, Mpoyi was donning the Saints’ jersey and playing in a tournament in Corona in preparation for the NCAA evaluation period when college coaches can watch recruits play in person. By that August, he claimed an offer from Washington. The following summer, he had about two dozen offers.

Still, Mpoyi’s swift emergence came amid a rather inauspicious beginning to his journey. He left his father, mother and siblings to pursue a basketball opportunity on another continent. He tried seeking international student transfer eligibility with the highly regarded Crean Lutheran program, but the CIF Southern Section ruled he couldn’t play on the varsity team in the 2024-25 season. He’d be sitting out.

Chadrack Mpoyi saw the Crean Lutheran community support him before he was ever able to play in an official game for the Saints.

(Diamond Leung / For The Times)

And soon after that …

“My mom passed away,” Mpoyi said quietly, declining to discuss it much further.

The Crean Lutheran community responded by wrapping its arms around the teenager with the 7-foot-5 wingspan. A second family — a prominent Orange County one — stepped forward to open its doors to Mpoyi and form a stateside support system.

“And he blended in beautifully,” said Stacy Jones, the mother of his host family.

Crean Lutheran is named after John Crean, the recreational vehicle pioneer and philanthropist with a rags-to-riches story. As a child, Crean and his family left North Dakota at the start of the Great Depression and settled in Southern California as they barely scraped by, and his Irish immigrant father was in poor health. As an Orange County businessman, Crean ultimately became the founder and chief executive of Fleetwood Enterprises, a Fortune 500 company with annual revenue surpassing $3 billion. His foundation donated $10 million after his 2007 death to help establish Irvine’s first Christian high school.

The school has made it a well-worn path for international students to come for a faith-centered education in one of the newer planned residential communities in the city. And boys’ basketball coach Austin Loeb, through his connection to the Luol Deng Foundation, has facilitated the addition of several players from the former NBA All-Star’s native South Sudan. They’ve stayed with host families and gone on to play at the college level. The Saints currently include two Sudanese players in senior forwards Jacob Majok, who has signed with UC Riverside, and Will Malual.

“It’s a ministry as well [as] an opportunity to get kids that come from nothing and give them this,” Loeb said in Crean Lutheran’s gym after a Saints win.

Mpoyi is the first player from Congo to play for Crean Lutheran. He arrived with the ability to speak three languages — French, Swahili and Lingala.

Crean Lutheran guard Caden Jones recalled how the team communicated with the new kid as Mpoyi joined a trip to Santa Barbara for a summer tournament the week after he arrived.

“Through Google Translate,” said Jones, a dual-sport standout who also stars at quarterback for Crean Lutheran. “Every food place we went to, he wanted a cheeseburger or pizza. By the end of it, we just knew what he wanted so we didn’t have to ask him.”

Jones’ mom, Stacy, upon first spotting Mpoyi wearing the Crean Lutheran jersey, wondered who was the player sitting by himself.

“Nobody was talking to him,” Stacy recalled. “Nobody offered him water or anything. We went to him and said, ‘Do you need water or a protein bar?’ He didn’t speak English. He didn’t know what we were talking about. So we just went and got it, and we asked the coach, ‘What’s going on with this kid?’”

Mpoyi was limited not only by the language. He’d been playing basketball only a few years, after he started watching videos of Hakeem Olajuwon, an NBA star from Nigeria, so he also had more to learn on the court.

“He traveled every other possession,” said Loeb, who served as Crean Lutheran’s top assistant coach last season. “I’m not kidding.”

Eventually, Stacy learned about Mpoyi’s living situation off campus and found it to be unsatisfactory for him.

“The coach says, ‘Do you mind? Can you just take him for a couple weeks until I can find a host family?’” Stacy recalled. “And so we did, and then … we couldn’t give him away.”

Chadrack Mpoyi greets Stacy Jones, right, the mother of his host family, after leading Crean Lutheran to a win at Cypress.

(Diamond Leung / For The Times)

She laughed and smiled.

Said Caden: “Just being with him every day, he’s like a brother to me now. I love him to death.”

Stacy never got a chance to speak with Mpoyi’s mother, but she could tell they were very close. She understood that his mom’s life revolved around church and raising nine kids, Mpoyi being the baby of the family.

Less than three months after he left his hometown of Likasi, his mother died.

“It’s pretty sad and incredible,” Loeb said. “His mom had cancer and when this opportunity came about for him to come over to the U.S., she didn’t tell him because she thought he would stay. Once he was here, she told him she was sick, but he didn’t know how quick it would be. Talk about putting your kids above yourself.”

Mpoyi was neither able to travel back home nor play in high school basketball games as an outlet. As Mpoyi mourned, the team had to encourage him to step outside of the house to clear his mind, said Caden, who extended empathy beyond the hospitality inside of it. Mpoyi’s faith deepened.

“I was driving him to school — he wanted to go to school, and put his hand on my arm, and he says, ‘… I really want to get baptized in honor of my mom,’” Stacy Jones said, her voice shaking. “And I just lost it.”

A month after losing his mother, Mpoyi was baptized at chapel held in the school gym. Wearing a Crean Lutheran hoodie, he bowed his head in front of the whole school, including teammates and coaches, and received a standing ovation.

Stacy, who had arranged a French-speaking pastor, also surprised Mpoyi with a letterman jacket, with his mom’s favorite picture and Bible verse custom-printed on the back.

“It was just cool to see him continuing his faith and how happy inside he was to take the journey,” Caden said.

Caden’s father, Steve, is the global chairman and chief executive of Allied Universal, the private security provider for many Fortune 500 companies, and he oversees the third-largest private employer in North America. The only companies with more employees are Walmart and Amazon.

Crean Lutheran teammates Chadrack Mpoyi and Caden Jones, waiting to check into a game, say they are like brothers after living together.

(Diamond Leung / For The Times)

Stacy, his wife, is a philanthropist who has joined him in raising $13 million in the last seven years for victims of human trafficking by supporting Vera’s Sanctuary, an Orange County residential drug rehabilitation center for young women.

Together they opened the doors of their home to Mpoyi and later signed on for guardianship. Mpoyi didn’t know the family well upon arriving to the gated community of Coto de Caza, but adapted — and grew in more ways than one.

Stacy said she enlisted an English instructor who also spoke French and that Mpoyi picked up the language in two weeks. “He’s a sponge,” she said. “He just absorbs everything. He’s wicked smart.”

Mpoyi said it was hard, but in four or five months, Loeb described a night-and-day difference in his English-speaking ability and marveled at the progress, noting that he carries a grade-point average above 3.0. Stanford would join the schools offering him a scholarship.

The Joneses were especially busy during the fall of 2024 raising two sons as elite athletes as well. Caden was a four-star quarterback when he suffered a season-ending knee injury that September before bouncing back as a junior by throwing for 30 touchdowns and more than 3,000 yards to draw heavy recruiting interest. Carter Jones flipped his commitment from California to Arizona that October after developing into a three-star linebacker at Crean Lutheran, and he formed a tight bond with Mpoyi before leaving for college.

With the new dynamics, what was it like in that household?

“We are a very physical family,” Stacy said. “Lots of hugs.”

Said Caden: “A lot of food. We eat a lot.”

And with the team, Loeb said what made Mpoyi special was how he connected, explaining, “He loves people so much and he cares about them. He’s a natural leader.”

Sidelined last season, Mpoyi dedicated himself to lifting weights and adding muscle. That part he could control, according to Loeb, who credited Mpoyi for sticking with the plan. With Crean Lutheran’s strength program — and having access to some weights at the Jones home — he went from 195 pounds to about 245. The transformation of his body enabled him to transform his game as he progressively improved his combination of physicality and skill.

“I can do several things,” said a smiling Mpoyi, who watches video of another 6-11 talent, NBA great Kevin Garnett, before games. “I can dunk on people, and then I can face up.”

Said Loeb: “When he came over, he was more of like a stretchy forward. I wanted to turn him into a more traditional big right now because that would help him to be successful. But he still has the mobility to get out and guard and still be physical. He’s learning the game, and he has really good touch.”

And perseverance, for which Loeb nominated Mpoyi for the Naismith High School Basketball Courage Award. Loeb believes the trait comes from Mpoyi’s strong faith.

Steve Jones, who wrote a book about achieving more in business and life titled, “No Off Season: The Constant Pursuit of More,” sees the same.

“All people see is this giant 7-foot kid,” Steve said. “What people don’t see is how hard of a worker he is.”

Midnight neared as Steve, dressed in Crean Lutheran gear, visited with Arizona football staffers at the Saints’ basketball game at the Nike Extravaganza in Santa Ana. They watched Caden hoop with Crean Lutheran fighting for a spot in the Open Division playoff field, as there’s interest in having him join his older brother on the Wildcats’ football team. Caden, a 6-foot-3 point guard, also has received basketball offers from Washington and UC Santa Barbara.

Aside from running a global company that does about $23 billion in annual revenue out of its Irvine headquarters, Steve, a former college football player at Cal Poly whose father played for Bear Bryant, also oversaw the recruitment process for Mpoyi last summer and looked out for his best interests.

Forced to sit out last season, Mpoyi developed into a three-star prospect while playing for All In Elite on the Under Armour circuit and in summer high school events. Mpoyi and Crean Lutheran traveled to Mesa, Ariz., last June and captured a bracket title at Section 7, an event crawling with college coaches. Minnesota offered the following week, and Loeb counted 23 offers over the summer.

“I wanted to make sure no one took advantage of him,” Steve said. “I wanted to make sure he found the right fit. I wanted to make sure that coaches really wanted him for the right reason, that it was the right offense for him.”

Crean Lutheran coach Austin Loeb has watched Chadrack Mpoyi fight to overcome obstacles after he arrived from Congo.

(Diamond Leung / For The Times)

That ended up being in the bruising Big Ten with Minnesota. After the 19-year-old signed with just five years of playing experience, Coach Niko Medved said in a statement in November: “Chadrack has an incredible upside, has a great motor and is athletic. One of the first things we noticed was how well he moves for his size and his ability to move his feet and protect the rim.”

It’s Stacy who has taken on the difficult task of trying to track down Congolese documentation as she works with Minnesota’s compliance department to help Mpoyi meet NCAA eligibility requirements.

Mpoyi not only acknowledges that the Joneses have supported him but also has shown protective instincts with the family. When they’re walking around, he’ll wait and make sure she’s nearby, Stacy said.

“He’s very humble and I know he comes from small beginnings but he never lets you know it,” she said. “We live in a nice house, and they ask him all the time, what’s it like to live with the Joneses? And he’s like, what are you talking about? He doesn’t engage with those kinds of conversations. How much money do they have? Like, why are you asking? Does it matter?

“He’s a gift.”

“He’ll be in our lives forever,” said Steve, who envisions holidays in which Mpoyi is able to come back from college to their home. “It’s like he’s turned into our son. I don’t know if we originally thought that was going to happen. When you say, ‘Can someone live at your house for a little bit,’ you say ‘Yes.’

“It’s like we have a third son forever.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump, his Treasury secretary and his choice to lead the Federal Reserve believe they can coax the U.S. economy back to a boom reminiscent of the 1990s.

They are putting their faith in artificial intelligence to duplicate what happened when another technology arrived during the Clinton era: the internet. Back then, the American economy surged as businesses became more productive, unemployment tumbled and inflation remained in check.

Trump expresses confidence that his nominee to become Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, can unleash an economic bonanza by jettisoning what the president sees as the central bank’s hidebound reluctance to slash interest rates.

Many economists are skeptical.

The world looks a lot different today than it did when the Spice Girls ruled radio and “Titanic’’ dominated the box office. And the story the Trump team is telling — that a visionary Fed chair, Alan Greenspan, fueled the 1990s boom by keeping interest rates low — is incomplete at best.

“The administration is offering a rather distorted version of what actually happened in the 1990s,’’ economist Dario Perkins of TS Lombard said in a commentary.

Nonetheless, the Trump administration believes history can repeat itself. All that’s been missing, Trump says, is a Fed chair with Greenspan’s foresightedness.

AI’s influence over interest rates

Trump has repeatedly attacked current Fed chief Jerome H. Powell, whose term as chair ends in May, for his caution in lowering rates while inflation hovers above the central bank’s 2% target. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on social media in January that the president sought to replace Powell with someone with “an open, Greenspan-like mind.”

“Our nation can see productivity boom like we did in the ’90s when we are not encumbered by a Federal Reserve which throws the brakes on,’’ Bessent wrote.

On Jan. 30, Trump said he was picking Warsh.

In speeches and writings, Warsh has argued that AI-driven improvements in productivity could justify lower interest rates.

These views align with Trump’s desires for Fed rate cuts but mark a break with Warsh’s past as an inflation hawk.

In the aftermath of the 2007-09 Great Recession, Warsh — then a Fed governor — objected to some of the central bank’s efforts to help the struggling economy by pushing down rates even though unemployment exceeded 9%. He warned then, wrongly, that inflation would soon accelerate.

At issue now are gains in productivity and the possibility that AI will make them bigger — much bigger.

To economists, productivity improvements are almost magical. When companies roll out new machines or technology, their workers can become more efficient and produce more stuff per hour. That enables firms to earn more and to raise employees’ pay without raising prices. In short: Surging productivity can drive economic growth without spurring inflation.

Greenspan and the internet

In the mid-1990s, Greenspan was contending with a strange set of economic circumstances: Wages were rising but inflation wasn’t heating up.

Big productivity gains might have explained things, but government data showed no sign of them. Other Fed policymakers worried that surging wages and tame inflation couldn’t coexist and that higher prices were coming. They wanted to raise interest rates.

But Greenspan suspected that the official productivity numbers were missing something. For one thing, they didn’t jibe with the amazing tales of efficiency improvements the Fed was hearing from companies investing in computers and turning to the internet.

So he ordered his lieutenants to dig through decades of productivity numbers. The official statistics they assembled told an implausible story: Services firms — including retailers and legal practices — had supposedly seen productivity fall over the years, despite intense competitive pressure and massive investments in technology.

Greenspan didn’t believe it. He persuaded his Fed colleagues that the government’s numbers were wrong and were understating productivity. They agreed in September 1996 to hold off on raising rates.

The economy took flight.

Tardily, productivity advances began to show up in the official data. Overall, American economic growth surpassed 4% every year from 1997 through 2000, something it would do again only once in the next quarter century. The unemployment rate plunged to 3.8% in April 2000, the lowest in three decades. Inflation stayed in its cage, coming in below 2% — later the Fed’s official target — for 17 straight months in 1997-99.

History repeats itself … maybe?

American productivity looked strong in the second and third quarters of 2025, and some economists attribute the improvements to the early adoption of AI; they see bigger gains and stronger economic growth ahead.

Others aren’t so sure.

Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at consulting firm RSM, wrote that the 2025 productivity improvements “are not because of artificial intelligence’’ but reflect investments in automation that companies made when they couldn’t find enough workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Those investments are starting to pay off,’’ Brusuelas wrote.

Economist Martin Baily, senior fellow emeritus at the Brookings Institution, believes it will take time for AI to have a big effect on the way companies do business and on the nation’s productivity.

“Companies don’t change that fast,” said Baily, chair of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors during the boom era. “It’s expensive to change. It’s risky to change. The managers don’t necessarily understand the new technology that well. So they have to learn how to use it. They have to train their staff. All that stuff takes a long time.’’

A productivity boom can raise the economy’s speed limit — how fast it can grow without pushing prices higher. But it might not justify lower interest rates, Fed Gov. Michael Barr said in a speech last month.

Businesses will borrow to invest in AI, putting upward pressure on interest rates. Likewise, American workers and their families probably would save less and borrow more in anticipation of higher wages, the payoff for being more productive; that would put still more pressure on rates to rise.

Bottom line, Barr said: “The AI boom is unlikely to be a reason for lowering policy rates.’’

Even Greenspan’s Fed eventually came to the same conclusion, reversing course and starting to raise its benchmark rate in mid-1999, taking it from 4.75% to 6.5% in less than a year. (The rate Trump complains about now is around 3.6%.)

“Warsh and Bessent talk only about the dovish 1995/96 version of Greenspan; they overlook the hawkish 1999/2000 variant,’’ Perkins wrote.

Then and now

Many of Warsh’s potential future colleagues on the Fed’s interest-rate setting committee see the late-1990s experience differently than he does, setting up what could be a clash at the central bank if the Senate confirms Warsh as chair.

Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said last week that “the analogy to the late ‘90s is a little harder for me to understand.” Greenspan’s insight was that productivity gains meant the Fed could hold off on raising rates, not that it should slash them, Goolsbee noted.

“It wasn’t, ‘Should we cut rates because productivity growth is higher?’” he said.

The economic backdrop that awaits Warsh is also far less friendly than the one Greenspan enjoyed.

Greenspan was avoiding rate hikes at a time when the usually profligate U.S. government was running rare budget surpluses and didn’t need to borrow so desperately. Now, after a series of spending hikes and tax cuts, deficits are piling up year after year, and the Congressional Budget Office expects federal debt to hit a historic high of 120% of America’s gross domestic product by 2035.

Nor was productivity the only thing controlling inflation in the 1990s. Countries were lowering tariffs and dismantling trade barriers. Immigration was surging.

Now, due largely to Trump’s policies, notably his sweeping taxes on imports and his crackdown on immigration, the world is much different. “Trade barriers are going up,’’ Perkins wrote. “Globalization has given way to de-globalization.’’

“That benign era is clearly behind us,’’ said Michael Pearce, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics.

Wiseman writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.

Santa Cruz tried out the surveillance company Flock Safety for a little over a year before deciding it was time to move on.

Cambridge, Mass., also had enough and tore up its contract in December. Now, some officials in San Diego have begun to have second thoughts of their own.

In recent months, dozens of cities have cut ties with Flock — the nation’s largest provider of automated digital license plate readers — over fears that data the company captures is helping power President Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

The same can’t be said in one particularly surprising place: Los Angeles. Here, Flock still has an eager customer base of local elected officials, police officers, homeowners associations and businesses.

Unlike some of its competitors, the Atlanta-based company has not only marketed its plate readers to law enforcement as a vital crime-fighting tool, but aggressively pitched its product to private citizens, experts say.

“They are tremendous investigative tools,” said LAPD spokesman Capt. Michael Bland.

But for critics, there’s an obvious downside: the potential tracking of law-abiding citizens without a warrant on a scale once thought unimaginable.

“These can be really powerful tools to find someone, and identity them. But when you don’t have a suspect, everyone can be a suspect,” said Hannah Bloch-Wehba, a professor of law at Texas A&M University.

A Flock spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.

Typically mounted on street poles or atop police cars, plate readers continuously monitor passing vehicles, recording their location at a specific date and time. But Flock’s AI-powered cameras go even further by also documenting other identifying vehicle details, such as make, model and color, as well as any distinctive markings like scratches or dents on a bumper.

From there, police can easily search for the location of specific vehicles in the company’s vast national database, allowing them not only to potentially retrace the whereabouts of someone suspected of a crime, but also receive predictions about future movements.

In a presentation to the Picfair Village Neighborhood Assn., Flock boasted that its plate readers had helped solve “10% of reported crime in the U.S.” In L.A., the company said, its technology had been deployed to nab porch pirates and car thieves, not to mention played a role in solving a “high-profile crime involving stolen weapons from a politician’s home.”

The problem, at least in the minds of a growing number of privacy and immigration advocates, is that the readers capture a vast amount of information not related to any specific criminal investigation. The ability of federal authorities to access Los Angeles Police Department surveillance data directly from companies like Flock or from regional intelligence hubs called fusion centers undermines the city’s promise as a haven for immigrants, critics say.

“License plate readers play a critical role in providing directions and a road map to ICE for going out to kidnap people,” said Hamid Khan, an organizer with the activist group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, which last spring wrote a letter to the Police Commission urging it to rewrite the LAPD’s policies to ensure information on law-abiding drivers isn’t shared with federal authorities.

The commission, the LAPD’s civilian oversight panel, ordered a study on the department’s license plate reader system that is expected to be completed this summer.

LAPD officials say records collected by the plate readers are accessible only to five smaller police agencies with which the department has data-sharing agreements. Furthermore, they say the use of the readers, like with other police technology, is restricted by state laws that limit information sharing with federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Plate-reading technology has been around for decades. But as the Trump administration’s deportation crackdown has ramped up, residents, privacy advocates and officials in some cities across the country have mounted campaigns urging their local governments to stop using the technology.

Much of the backlash has been aimed specifically at Flock — a heavyweight in the surveillance market that contracts with a reported 5,000 U.S. policing agencies. The company’s data-sharing with federal authorities and cybersecurity lapses have been documented by 404 Media and other outlets.

After previously denying it had federal contracts, Flock Chief Executive Garrett Langley admitted in interviews in recent months that the company has worked with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security Investigations. The company has since said that it has severed ties with both agencies, and responded to other concerns by giving communities more power to decide whom to grant access to state or nationwide lookup networks.

In Bloch-Wehba’s view, Flock’s meteoric rise is a triumph of marketing over results.

“There’s very little evidence on the actual impact of these technologies on violent crime rates at all,” said Bloch-Wehba, who noted an explosion of surveillance technology in 2020 to monitor protesters or enforce rules implemented to curb the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic.

In the L.A. area, Flock has gone head to head with competitor Vigilant Solutions, which has for years supplied the majority of the LAPD’s plate readers. But today, cops tout Flock cameras at community meetings and some City Council members have paid to bring them to their districts.

Flock has also sought to flex its political might. City records show the company has stepped up its lobbying efforts at City Hall in recent years — hiring Ballard Partners, a powerful Florida-based firm whose employees now include former City Councilmember Joe Buscaino.

Many Flock plate readers, though, have been purchased by community groups. In most cases, residents band together to raise money to buy the devices, which they then either grant access to or donate to the LAPD via the Police Foundation, the department’s nonprofit charity. By donating the equipment, neighborhood groups may get to control what type of technology is installed and by whom.

“My real preference would be a fully staffed LAPD, and then we don’t have any cameras,” said Jim Fitzgerald, who lives in Venice and serves on its neighborhood council.

Roy Nwaisser, who chairs the Encino Neighborhood Council’s public safety committee, said that Flock often played up the shortage of police officers during its presentations to residents in his neighborhood.

“I personally have concerns with how Flock conducts their businesses, but they are the biggest player and if LAPD is working with them, they just have to make sure that there are those safeguards,” he said. “I don’t know that automated license plate readers are all that effective when owned by neighbors living on the street who decided to get together.”

Police executives have defended the practice, saying license plate data has helped solve untold numbers of crimes, from run-of-the-mill porch theft to high-profile cases like the 2024 attempted assassination of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump at a Florida golf course. The technology also came into play during an investigation into the fatal drive-by shooting of a 17-year-old boy at a North Hills intersection last month. According to a search warrant affidavit, detectives tracked a suspect vehicle to a home in Sun Valley after it was captured by several scanners near where the shooting occurred.

Because so many plate scanners are in private hands, it’s difficult to say how many of the devices are in operation citywide.

The L.A. Bureau of Street Lighting, which is responsible for installing the devices on city-owned property, said it has mounted 324 over five years — though that tally doesn’t include mobile plate readers.

Bland said the LAPD has 1,500 police vehicles equipped with the scanners. Police also have access to an additional 280 plate readers in fixed locations throughout the city, which are owned privately or by the department, he said. He estimated that about 120 of those readers belong to Flock.

The cameras are also integrated with the department’s new drones, which are being paid for by a $1.2-million donation from the Police Foundation.

The devices are also used for many other purposes outside of regular law enforcement. Big box retailers like Home Depot and Lowe’s have installed Flock cameras across hundreds of parking lots. Many border crossings have them. In East L.A., they are used as an emissions-reduction tool by tracking semi-trailers. USC uses them to enforce parking violations, and the L.A. Department of Transportation has deployed such cameras to nab motorists who park in bus lanes.

Since the beginning of 2025, a small-but-growing number of states and cities have enacted laws aimed at curbing the use of surveillance technology such as license plate readers.

Under California law, police agencies are required to adopt detailed usage and privacy policies governing license plate data, restrict access to authorized purposes, and regularly audit searches to prevent misuse. Gov. Gavin Newsom previously vetoed a bill that would have restricted use of such data, saying the regulations would impede criminal investigations, but the bill has been reintroduced this year.

Nearly 50 cities nationwide have opted to deactivate their scanners or cancel contracts with Flock, mostly in recent months, according to the website DeFlock.me, which has set out to map locations of the company’s cameras. Responding to public pressure, some places like Santa Cruz canceled their contracts after realizing that they had been sharing their data more broadly than they had known, including with federal authorities.

Other Flock customers, like Oakland, have dug in and decided to keep their cameras at the urging of local homeowners association representatives and small business owners — but over the objections of the city’s own Privacy Advisory Commission.

Among the places that have started to reconsider their relationship with Flock is San Diego. In December, city leaders split on the issue, but ultimately voted to keep using Flock’s scanners after a contentious public hearing meeting in which they heard from hundreds of residents opposed to the surveillance technology.

Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera said he voted against working with Flock based on what he saw as the company’s poor track record of “data retention” and “consumer protections.” Although the city has operated Flock plate readers and cameras for years, the stakes are far higher now, he said.

“We have a presidential regime that is not only flouting the law, but takes pride in ignoring due process, in violating rights of people they deem unworthy of the rights and protections,” said Elo-Rivera, who represents an ethnically diverse district in San Diego’s Mid-City area. “They have a by-any-means-necessary approach when it comes to immigration enforcement. And now they have a tool that makes it very easy for them to track people down.”

Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.

After Nexstar Media Group announced layoffs at KTLA-TV this week, some viewers have expressed shock and dismay over losing several longtime local broadcast journalists at the station.

The cuts included KTLA weatherman Mark Kriski, weathercaster Kacey Montoya, midday anchors Lu Parker and Glen Walker and reporter Ellina Abovian. The layoffs come as Nexstar attempts to cut costs and pursues a merger with rival media company Tegna.

Abovian, who was a general assignment reporter at the station, reflected on the layoffs on social media, saying in a video posted to Threads on Thursday that she was “blindsided,” and that the cuts were “part of corporate restructuring.”

“Corporate layoffs are a part of life and this is just the game of life. They’re impacting people across multiple industries right now, so I’m not the only one, and my situation certainly isn’t unique,” said Abovian, who worked at the station for more than a decade. “But it’s hard to process, considering how it happened.”

Some viewers and fellow journalists have also expressed their disappointment.

CNN anchor Elex Michaelson responded on X, writing, “Mark Kriski is an L.A. broadcasting icon. As a kid, the OG KTLA Morning News crew (Carlos, Barbara, Mark, Sam, Eric, Gayle, etc) inspired me to want to be a journalist. I have great respect for Glen, Lu, Kacey, and Elina as well … all great people … and talented broadcasters.”

Each of the laid-off journalists had been with the station for a number of years. Kriski had been with KTLA since 1991, and Walker sat at the station’s anchor desk since 2010. Parker joined KTLA in 2005.

KTLA morning news anchor Frank Buckley addressed the situation before continuing with the broadcast Thursday.

“As you probably know, we are extremely limited in what we can say,” Buckley said. “But if you are a regular viewer of this program and of this TV station, you also know that we are a family here. We consider you to be part of that family. And when family members experience tough times, we all feel it. So this is a difficult time for us. And we will go through it together.”

SAG-AFTRA, which represents the laid-off journalists, issued a release on Wednesday condemning the cuts. The guild disclosed that it is “actively bargaining with Nexstar stations in multiple markets.” It accused Nexstar of pushing “to gut severance pay and insert onerous provisions into the union contract that limit workers’ ability to freely negotiate the terms of their own employment.”

“By laying off journalists across the country, Nexstar is eroding the resources and talent that local communities rely on for trusted news,” said SAG-AFTRA’s President Sean Astin in the release. “These actions highlight the risks of media consolidation and underscore the urgent need for regulators and the company to prioritize the public interest and the professionals who serve it.”

Nexstar operates 201 stations in 116 local markets in the U.S., reaching 70% of American households. It is the largest TV station ownership group in the U.S. Tegna owns television stations in 51 U.S. markets. Following the pending $6.2-billion merger, the standing company will have 265 stations, representing 80% of U.S. TV households.

President Trump has expressed his support for the deal in a social media post earlier this month.

He wrote, “Letting Good Deals get done like Nexstar – Tegna will help knock out the Fake News because there will be more competition, and at a higher and more sophisticated level. Those that are opposed don’t fully understand how good the concept of this Deal is for them, but they will in the future.”

A bartender who worked at Soho House’s exclusive Soho Warehouse in downtown Los Angeles is alleging a supervisor at the posh membership club and hotel drugged and raped her, according to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday.

The woman, who filed as Jane Doe, said in her complaint that she was “subjected to repeated sexual advances and unwelcomed physical touching” by one of her supervisors, Leonard Marcelo Vichique Maya, immediately after she began working as a bartender at Berenjak, the club’s restaurant, in September 2025.

Doe is suing Vichique Maya, Soho House, Soho House Los Angeles and Soho Warehouse for sexual harassment, retaliation and other claims..

“This is as egregious an instance of callous corporate indifference to workplace sexual violence that anyone can experience,” said her attorney Nick Yasman of Los Angeles-based West Coast Trial Lawyers in a statement.

Representatives for Soho House and Vichique Maya were not immediately available for comment.

Doe has further alleged that Vichique Maya made “numerous comments” about her appearance, propositioned her to be his “hook-up buddy” and told her that she “would be pregnant by now” had they met earlier, all within earshot of her supervisors and colleagues.

After two weeks on the job, Doe said that she reported Vichique Maya’s conduct to two male supervisors, including Soho House’s floor manager and food and beverage director, states the complaint, but “neither took any semblance of corrective or investigatory action.”

According to the suit, Doe claims that despite “his pattern of harassing behavior and complaints,” the company, did not address his alleged misconduct. ”

She claims his behavior escalated after a “team-bonding” work event on Sept. 13, where Doe said she became disoriented after drinking with supervisors and co-workers, eventually losing consciousness, and woke up naked in Vichique Maya’s apartment.

“Paralyzed and speechless despite her consciousness slowly returning, Plaintiff was condemned to simply watch in horror as [sic] MARCELO repeatedly raped her inanimate body,” states the suit.

The next day, Doe said that she reported to her floor manager that Vichique Maya had “sexually assaulted her.”

She said her general manager “confirmed” that he “appeared to be preying” on her during the work event, telling her that “These things happen between coworkers.”

When she proclaimed that she could no longer work with Vichique Maya,” she said the general manager dismissed her concerns telling her: “I have a restaurant to run; I can’t have it blow up on me.”

Despite informing three managers that she was “raped,” Doe said she was continuously scheduled to work shifts with Vichique Maya during which he repeatedly sexually harassed her.

In December, Doe filed a complaint with Soho House human resources, and she was assured that an investigation would be opened and “immediate corrective action” taken.

However, during the investigation, Doe said that she was placed on indefinite leave while Vichique Maya continued working. A month later, she was informed the company had completed its investigation and found her report of rape “was uncorroborated” and he “would not be disciplined.”

In February, the plaintiff said that she was forced to quit her job.

One of the first, exclusive members-only social clubs, Soho House debuted in London in 1995 and quickly became the bolt-hole of choice for celebrities and the deep-pocketed. It expanded globally with 48 houses in 19 countries.

It drew high-profile investors, including Ron Burkle through his investment fund Yucaipa.

In 2021, the company filed for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, but it has faced financial challenges. .

Last year, Soho House went private, selling itself to a group of investors including Apollo Global Management and actor Ashton Kutcher, who also joined its board of directors, at a $2.7-billion valuation.

The morning after Netflix clinched its deal to buy Warner Bros., Paramount Skydance Chairman David Ellison assembled a war room of trusted advisors, including his billionaire father, Larry Ellison.

Furious at Warner Bros. Discovery Chief David Zaslav for ending the auction, the Ellisons and their team began plotting their comeback on that crisp December day.

To rattle Warner Bros. Discovery and its investors, they launched a three-front campaign: a lawsuit, a hostile takeover bid and direct lobbying of the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress.

“There was a master battle plan — and it was extremely disciplined,” said one auction insider who was not authorized to comment publicly.

Netflix stunned the industry late Thursday by pulling out of the bidding, clearing the way for Paramount to claim the company that owns HBO, HBO Max, CNN, TBS, Food Network and the Warner Bros. film and television studios in Burbank. The deal was valued at more than $111 billion.

The streaming giant’s reversal came just hours after co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos met with Atty Gen. Pam Bondi and a deputy at the White House. It was a cordial session, but the Trump officials told Sarandos that his deal was facing significant hurdles in Washington, according to a person close to the administration who was not authorized to comment publicly.

Even before that meeting, the tide had turned for Paramount in a swell of power, politics and brinkmanship.

“Netflix played their cards well; however, Paramount played their cards perfectly,” said Jonathan Miller, chief executive of Integrated Media Co. “They did exactly what they had to do and when they had to do it — which was at the very last moment.”

Key to victory was Larry Ellison, his $200-billion fortune and his connections to President Trump and congressional Republicans.

Paramount also hired Trump’s former antitrust chief, attorney Makan Delrahim, to quarterback the firm’s legal and regulatory action.

Republicans during a Senate hearing this month piled onto Sarandos with complaints about potential monopolistic practices and “woke” programming.

David Ellison skipped that hearing. This week, however, he attended Trump’s State of the Union address in the Capitol chambers, a guest of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). The two men posed, grinning and giving a thumbs-up, for a photo that was posted to Graham’s X account.

David Ellison, the chairman and chief executive of Paramount Skydance Corp., walks through Statuary Hall to the State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 24, 2026.

(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

On Friday, Netflix said it had received a $2.8-billion payment — a termination fee Paramount agreed to pay to send Netflix on its way.

Long before David Ellison and his family acquired Paramount and CBS last summer, the 43-year-old tech scion and aircraft pilot already had his sights set on Warner Bros. Discovery.

Paramount’s assets, including MTV, Nickelodeon and the Melrose Avenue movie studio, have been fading. Ellison recognized he needed the more robust company — Warner Bros. Discovery — to achieve his ambitions.

“From the very beginning, our pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery has been guided by a clear purpose: to honor the legacy of two iconic companies while accelerating our vision of building a next-generation media and entertainment company,” David Ellison said in a Friday statement. “We couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead.”

Warner’s chief, Zaslav, who had initially opposed the Paramount bid, added: “We look forward to working with Paramount to complete this historic transaction.”

Netflix, in a separate statement, said it was unwilling to go beyond its $82.7-billion proposal that Warner board members accepted Dec. 4.

“We believe we would have been strong stewards of Warner Bros.’ iconic brands, and that our deal would have strengthened the entertainment industry and preserved and created more production jobs,” Sarandos and co-Chief Executive Greg Peters said in a statement.

“But this transaction was always a ‘nice to have’ at the right price, not a ‘must have’ at any price,” the Netflix chiefs said.

Netflix may have miscalculated the Ellison family’s determination when it agreed Feb. 16 to allow Paramount back into the bidding.

The Los Gatos, Calif.-based company already had prevailed in the auction, and had an agreement in hand. Its next step was a shareholder vote.

“They didn’t need to let Paramount back in, but there was a lot of pressure on them to make sure the process wouldn’t be challenged,” Miller said.

In addition, Netflix’s stock had also been pummeled — the company had lost a quarter of its value — since investors learned the company was making a Warner run.

Upon news that Netflix had withdrawn, its shares soared Friday nearly 14% to $96.24.

Netflix Chief Executive Ted Sarandos arrives at the White House on Feb. 26, 2026.

(Andrew Leyden / Getty Images)

Invited back into the auction room, Paramount unveiled a much stronger proposal than the one it submitted in December.

The elder Ellison had pledged to personally guarantee the deal, including $45.7 billion in equity required to close the transaction. And if bankers became worried that Paramount was too leveraged, the tech mogul agreed to put in more money in order to secure the bank financing.

That promise assuaged Warner Bros. Discovery board members who had fretted for weeks that they weren’t sure Ellison would sign on the dotted line, according to two people close to the auction who were not authorized to comment.

Paramount’s pressure campaign had been relentless, first winning over theater owners, who expressed alarm over Netflix’s business model that encourages consumers to watch movies in their homes.

During the last two weeks, Sarandos got dragged into two ugly controversies.

First, famed filmmaker James Cameron endorsed Paramount, saying a Netflix takeover would lead to massive job losses in the entertainment industry, which is already reeling from a production slowdown in Southern California that has disrupted the lives of thousands of film industry workers.

Then, a week ago, Trump took aim at Netflix board member Susan Rice, a former high-level Obama and Biden administration official. In a social media post, Trump called Rice a “no talent … political hack,” and said that Netflix must fire her or “pay the consequences.”

The threat underscored the dicey environment for Netflix.

Additionally, Paramount had sowed doubts about Netflix among lawmakers, regulators, Warner investors and ultimately the Warner board.

Paramount assured Warner board members that it had a clear path to win regulatory approval so the deal would quickly be finalized. In a show of confidence, Delrahim filed to win the Justice Department’s blessing in December — even though Paramount didn’t have a deal.

This month, a deadline for the Justice Department to raise issues with Paramount’s proposed Warner takeover passed without comment from the Trump regulators.

“Analysts believe the deal is likely to close,” TD Cowen analysts said in a Friday report. “While Paramount-WBD does present material antitrust risks (higher pay TV prices, lower pay for TV/movie workers), analysts also see a key pro-competitive effect: improved competition in streaming, with Paramount+ and HBO Max representing a materially stronger counterweight to #1 Netflix.”

Throughout the battle, David Ellison relied on support from his father, attorney Delrahim, and three key board members: Oracle Executive Vice Chair Safra A. Catz; RedBird Capital Partners founder Gerry Cardinale; and Justin Hamill, managing director of tech investment firm Silver Lake.

In the final days, David Ellison led an effort to flip Warner board members who had firmly supported Netflix. With Paramount’s improved offer, several began leaning toward the Paramount deal.

On Tuesday, Warner announced that Paramount’s deal was promising.

On Thursday, Warner’s board determined Paramount’s deal had topped Netflix. That’s when Netflix surrendered.

“Paramount had a fulsome, 360-degree approach,” Miller said. “They approached it financially. … They understood the regulatory environment here and abroad in the EU. And they had a game plan for every aspect.”

On Friday, Paramount shares rose 21% to $13.51.

It was a reversal of fortunes for David Ellison, who appeared on CNBC just three days after that war room meeting in December.

“We put the company in play,” David Ellison told the CNBC anchor that day. “We’re really here to finish what we started.”

Times staff writer Ana Cabellos and Business Editor Richard Verrier contributed to this report.

President Trump on Friday directed federal agencies to stop using technology from San Francisco artificial intelligence company Anthropic, escalating a high-profile clash between the AI startup and the Pentagon over safety.

In a Friday post on the social media site Truth Social, Trump described the company as “radical left” and “woke.”

“We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!” Trump said.

The president’s harsh words mark a major escalation in the ongoing battle between some in the Trump administration and several technology companies over the use of artificial intelligence in defense tech.

Anthropic has been sparring with the Pentagon, which had threatened to end its $200-million contract with the company on Friday if it didn’t loosen restrictions on its AI model so it could be used for more military purposes. Anthropic had been asking for more guarantees that its tech wouldn’t be used for surveillance of Americans or autonomous weapons.

The tussle could hobble Anthropic’s business with the government. The Trump administration said the company was added to a sweeping national security blacklist, ordering federal agencies to immediately discontinue use of its products and barring any government contractors from maintaining ties with it.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who met with Anthropic’s Chief Executive Dario Amodei this week, criticized the tech company after Trump’s Truth Social post.

“Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States Government or the Pentagon,” he wrote Friday on social media site X.

Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Anthropic announced a two-year agreement with the Department of Defense in July to “prototype frontier AI capabilities that advance U.S. national security.”

The company has an AI chatbot called Claude, but it also built a custom AI system for U.S. national security customers.

On Thursday, Amodei signaled the company wouldn’t cave to the Department of Defense’s demands to loosen safety restrictions on its AI models.

The government has emphasized in negotiations that it wants to use Anthropic’s technology only for legal purposes, and the safeguards Anthropic wants are already covered by the law.

Still, Amodei was worried about Washington’s commitment.

“We have never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner,” he said in a blog post. “However, in a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.”

Tech workers have backed Anthropic’s stance.

Unions and worker groups representing 700,000 employees at Amazon, Google and Microsoft said this week in a joint statement that they’re urging their employers to reject these demands as well if they have additional contracts with the Pentagon.

“Our employers are already complicit in providing their technologies to power mass atrocities and war crimes; capitulating to the Pentagon’s intimidation will only further implicate our labor in violence and repression,” the statement said.

Anthropic’s standoff with the U.S. government could benefit its competitors, such as Elon Musk’s xAI or OpenAI.

Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and one of Anthropic’s biggest competitors, told CNBC in an interview that he trusts Anthropic.

“I think they really do care about safety, and I’ve been happy that they’ve been supporting our war fighters,” he said. “I’m not sure where this is going to go.”

Anthropic has distinguished itself from its rivals by touting its concern about AI safety.

The company, valued at roughly $380 billion, is legally required to balance making money with advancing the company’s public benefit of “responsible development and maintenance of advanced AI for the long-term benefit of humanity.”

Developers, businesses, government agencies and other organizations use Anthropic’s tools. Its chatbot can generate code, write text and perform other tasks. Anthropic also offers an AI assistant for consumers and makes money from paid subscriptions as well as contracts. Unlike OpenAI, which is testing ads in ChatGPT, Anthropic has pledged not to show ads in its chatbot Claude.

The company has roughly 2,000 employees and has revenue equivalent to about $14 billion a year.

For the trendiest tenants in Hollywood office buildings, it’s the latest fad that goes way beyond designer furniture and art: mini studios

To capitalize on the never-ending flow of stars and influencers who come through Los Angeles, a growing number of companies are building bright little corners for content creators to try products and shoot short videos. Athletic apparel maker Puma, Kim Kardashian’s Skims and cheeky cosmetics retailer e.l.f. have spaces specifically designed to give people a place to experience and broadcast about their brands.

Hollywood, which hasn’t historically been home to apparel companies, is now attracting the offices of fashion retailers, says CIM Group, one of the neighborhood’s largest commercial property landlords.

“When we’re touring a space, one of the first items they bring up is, ‘Where can I build a studio?’” said Blake Eckert, who leases CIM offices in L.A.

Their studio offices also serve as marketing centers, with showrooms and meeting spaces where brands can host proprietary events not open to the public.

“For companies where brand visibility is really important, there is a trend of creating spaces that don’t just function as offices,” said real estate broker Nicole Mahalka of CBRE, who puts together entertainment property leases and sales.

Puma’s global entertainment marketing team is based in its new Hollywood offices, which works with such musical celebrity partners as Rihanna, ASAP Rocky, Dua Lipa, Skepta and Rosé, said Allyssa Rapp, head of Puma Studio L.A.

Allyssa Rapp, director of entertainment marketing at Puma, is shown in the Puma Studio L.A. The company keeps a closet full of Puma products on hand to give VIP guests. Visits to the studio sanctum are by invitation only, though.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Hollywood is a central location, she said, for meeting with celebrities, stylists and outside designers, most of whom are based in Los Angeles.

The office is a “creation hub,” she said, where influencers can record Puma’s design prototyping lab supported by libraries of materials and equipment used to create Puma apparel. The company, founded in 1948, is known for its emblematic sneakers such as the Speedcat and its lunging feline logo, and makes athletic wear, accessories and equipment.

Puma’s entertainment marketing team also occupies the office and sometimes uses it for exclusive events.

“We use the space as a showroom, as a social space that transforms from a traditional workplace into more of an experiential space,” Rapp said.

Nontraditional uses include content creation, sit-down dinners, product launches, album listening parties and workshops.

“Inviting people into our space and being able to give them high-touch brand experiences is something tangible and important for them,” she said. “The cultural layer is really important for us.”

The company keeps a closet full of Puma products on hand to give VIP guests. Visits to the studio sanctum are by invitation only, though. There’s no retail portal to the exclusive Hollywood offices.

Puma shoes are on display in the Puma Studio L.A.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Puma is also positioning its L.A studio as a connection point for major upcoming sporting events coming to Los Angeles, including the World Cup this summer, the 2027 Super Bowl and 2028 Olympics.

In-office studios don’t need to be big to be impactful, Mahalka said. “These are smaller stages, closer to green screen than a massive soundstage.”

Social media is the key driver of content created by most businesses, which may set up small booth-like stages where influencers can hawk hot products while offering discounts to people watching them perform.

Bigger, elevated stages can accommodate multiple performers for extended discussions in front of small audiences, with towering screens behind them to set the mood or illustrate products.

Among the tricked-out offices, she said, is Skims. The company, which is valued at $5 billion, is based in a glass-and-steel office building near the fabled intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street.

The fashion retailer declined to comment on the studio uses in its headquarters, but according to architecture firm Odaa, it has open and private offices, meeting rooms, collaboration zones, photo studios, sample libraries, prototype showrooms, an executive lounge and a commissary for 400 people.

Pieces of a shoe sit on a workbench in the Puma Studio L.A.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

The brands building studios typically want to find the darkest spot on the premises to put their content creation or podcast spaces, Eckert said, where they can limit outside light and sound. That’s commonly near the center of the office floor, far from windows and close to permanent shear walls that limit sound intrusion.

They also need space for green rooms and restrooms dedicated to the talent.

Spotify recently built a fancy podcast studio in a CIM office building on trendy Sycamore Avenue that is open by invitation-only to video creators in Spotify’s partner program.

“Ambitious shows need spaces that support big ideas,” Bill Simmons, head of talk strategy at Spotify, said in a statement. “These studios give teams room to experiment and keep pushing what’s possible.”

California’s landmark single-use plastic law is slowly being eroded by pressures within the state. Now legal attacks from outside threaten to kneecap it entirely.

Earlier this month, a federal district court judge in Oregon put parts of its single-use plastic law, which is similar to California’s, on hold while he decides whether it violates antitrust and consumer protection laws.

At the same time, 10 Republican attorneys general sent letters directly to companies that are taking part in plastic reduction campaigns, telling them to stop.

They threatened legal action against Costco, Unilever, Coca-Cola and 75 other companies for participating in the Plastic Pact, the Consumer Goods Forum and the Sustainable Packaging Coalition. These efforts all include industry as an active partner in reducing plastics, but the letters say the companies are colluding against consumers “to remove products from the market without considering consumer demand, product effectiveness, or the cost and impact on consumers of a replacement product.”

Charges of corporate collusion and conspiracy are central to both cases.

Anti-waste advocates and attorneys well versed in packaging say the lawsuit and the letters to Costco and the other companies highlight vulnerabilities in several of California’s waste laws, including the seminal Senate Bill 54 — the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act. At issue are what are known as Extended Producer Responsibility laws.

These put the cost of cleanup and waste disposal on the companies that make materials — plastic, paint or carpet — rather than on consumers, cities and municipalities.

In 2024, a report from California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta estimated that collectively, the state’s cities spend more than $1 billion each year on litter management. In 2023, 2.9 million tons of single-use plastic (or 171.4 billion pieces) were sold or distributed, according to one state analysis.

These producer responsibility laws emphasize the idea of “circular economy”: that the producer of a material must consider its fate — making sure it can be reused or recycled, or at least reduced.

The laws organize companies into entities, called Producer Responsibility Organizations (PROs), that generally oversee the management of the laws, set fees and collect them from members.

In the Oregon lawsuit, the National Assn. of Wholesaler-Distributors alleges a state-sanctioned product responsibility organization levied fees on trade group members that were onerous and opaque.

“Their fee structure was designed in secret by board members of the PRO,” said Eric Hoplin, president and chief executive of the group.

“Oregon is attempting to build a statewide recycling system by granting vast authority to a private entity to impose what amount to hidden taxes on businesses and consumers,” said Brian Wild, chief government relations officer for the wholesalers. “This law raises prices, shields decision-making from scrutiny, and advantages large, vertically integrated companies at the expense of smaller competitors.”

The group he references, the Circular Action Alliance, is the same one that oversees California’s single-use plastic law. Amazon, Colgate-Palmolive, General Mills and Procter & Gamble are part of it.

Others, however, say California’s laws are strong.

People shop at Costco in Glendale, Calif., on April 10.

(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

“Extended Producer Responsibility laws are public policies passed by legislatures and implemented with government oversight,” said Heidi Sanborn, the executive director and CEO of the National Stewardship Action Council, which advocates for the laws and a more circular economy.

She helped craft many of California’s waste laws, including SB 54 and was also involved in Oregon’s law. “They create clear, consistent rules so all producers contribute fairly to the cost of recycling and waste management,” she said.

Sen. Benjamin Allen (D-Santa Monica), who wrote SB 54, said California’s plastic bill was designed to avoid violating antitrust laws.

CalRecycle declined to comment.

Some advocates actually hope the California laws fall. They include Jan Dell, of Last Beach Cleanup, an anti-plastic group based in Laguna Beach.

Extended Producer Responsibility “programs are based on the false premise that plastic is recyclable and are counterproductive because they green wash plastics and preempt proven solutions like strategic bans on the worst forms of plastic pollution (e.g. single use bags, six pack rings),” Dell wrote in an email.

Even those, however, can be problematic if they’re not enforced. Dell pointed to SB 54’s de facto ban on polystyrene, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2025.

“There is still Styrofoam stuff sold in 250 Smart and Final stores across the state!” she said. “It is totally noncredible and outrageous to claim that CalRecycle will ever enforce regulations on thousands of types of packaging when they can’t enforce the regulations on JUST ONE!”

Recently, I asked Claude, an artificial-intelligence thingy at the center of a standoff with the Pentagon, if it could be dangerous in the wrong hands.

Say, for example, hands that wanted to put a tight net of surveillance around every American citizen, monitoring our lives in real time to ensure our compliance with government.

“Yes. Honestly, yes,” Claude replied. “I can process and synthesize enormous amounts of information very quickly. That’s great for research. But hooked into surveillance infrastructure, that same capability could be used to monitor, profile and flag people at a scale no human analyst could match. The danger isn’t that I’d want to do that — it’s that I’d be good at it.”

That danger is also imminent.

Claude’s maker, the Silicon Valley company Anthropic, is in a showdown over ethics with the Pentagon. Specifically, Anthropic has said it does not want Claude to be used for either domestic surveillance of Americans, or to handle deadly military operations, such as drone attacks, without human supervision.

Those are two red lines that seem rather reasonable, even to Claude.

However, the Pentagon — specifically Pete Hegseth, our secretary of Defense who prefers the made-up title of secretary of war — has given Anthropic until Friday evening to back off of that position, and allow the military to use Claude for any “lawful” purpose it sees fit.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, center, arrives for the State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday.

(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

The or-else attached to this ultimatum is big. The U.S. government is threatening not just to cut its contract with Anthropic, but to perhaps use a wartime law to force the company to comply or use another legal avenue to prevent any company that does business with the government from also doing business with Anthropic. That might not be a death sentence, but it’s pretty crippling.

Other AI companies, such as white rights’ advocate Elon Musk’s Grok, have already agreed to the Pentagon’s do-as-you-please proposal. The problem is, Claude is the only AI currently cleared for such high-level work. The whole fiasco came to light after our recent raid in Venezuela, when Anthropic reportedly inquired after the fact if another Silicon Valley company involved in the operation, Palantir, had used Claude. It had.

Palantir is known, among other things, for its surveillance technologies and growing association with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It’s also at the center of an effort by the Trump administration to share government data across departments about individual citizens, effectively breaking down privacy and security barriers that have existed for decades. The company’s founder, the right-wing political heavyweight Peter Thiel, often gives lectures about the Antichrist and is credited with helping JD Vance wiggle into his vice presidential role.

Anthropic’s co-founder, Dario Amodei, could be considered the anti-Thiel. He began Anthropic because he believed that artificial intelligence could be just as dangerous as it could be powerful if we aren’t careful, and wanted a company that would prioritize the careful part.

Again, seems like common sense, but Amodei and Anthropic are the outliers in an industry that has long argued that nearly all safety regulations hamper American efforts to be fastest and best at artificial intelligence (although even they have conceded some to this pressure).

Not long ago, Amodei wrote an essay in which he agreed that AI was beneficial and necessary for democracies, but “we cannot ignore the potential for abuse of these technologies by democratic governments themselves.”

He warned that a few bad actors could have the ability to circumvent safeguards, maybe even laws, which are already eroding in some democracies — not that I’m naming any here.

“We should arm democracies with AI,” he said. “But we should do so carefully and within limits: they are the immune system we need to fight autocracies, but like the immune system, there is some risk of them turning on us and becoming a threat themselves.”

For example, while the 4th Amendment technically bars the government from mass surveillance, it was written before Claude was even imagined in science fiction. Amodei warns that an AI tool like Claude could “conduct massively scaled recordings of all public conversations.” This could be fair game territory for legally recording because law has not kept pace with technology.

Emil Michael, the undersecretary of war, wrote on X Thursday that he agreed mass surveillance was unlawful, and the Department of Defense “would never do it.” But also, “We won’t have any BigTech company decide Americans’ civil liberties.”

Kind of a weird statement, since Amodei is basically on the side of protecting civil rights, which means the Department of Defense is arguing it’s bad for private people and entities to do that? And also, isn’t the Department of Homeland Security already creating some secretive database of immigration protesters? So maybe the worry isn’t that exaggerated?

Help, Claude! Make it make sense.

If that Orwellian logic isn’t alarming enough, I also asked Claude about the other red line Anthropic holds — the possibility of allowing it to run deadly operations without human oversight.

Claude pointed out something chilling. It’s not that it would go rogue, it’s that it would be too efficient and fast.

“If the instructions are ‘identify and target’ and there’s no human checkpoint, the speed and scale at which that could operate is genuinely frightening,” Claude informed me.

Just to top that with a cherry, a recent study found that in war games, AI’s escalated to nuclear options 95% of the time.

I pointed out to Claude that these military decisions are usually made with loyalty to America as the highest priority. Could Claude be trusted to feel that loyalty, the patriotism and purpose, that our human soldiers are guided by?

“I don’t have that,” Claude said, pointing out that it wasn’t “born” in the U.S., doesn’t have a “life” here and doesn’t “have people I love there.” So an American life has no greater value than “a civilian life on the other side of a conflict.”

OK then.

“A country entrusting lethal decisions to a system that doesn’t share its loyalties is taking a profound risk, even if that system is trying to be principled,” Claude added. “The loyalty, accountability and shared identity that humans bring to those decisions is part of what makes them legitimate within a society. I can’t provide that legitimacy. I’m not sure any AI can.”

You know who can provide that legitimacy? Our elected leaders.

It is ludicrous that Amodei and Anthropic are in this position, a complete abdication on the part of our legislative bodies to create rules and regulations that are clearly and urgently needed.

Of course corporations shouldn’t be making the rules of war. But neither should Hegseth. Thursday, Amodei doubled down on his objections, saying that while the company continues to negotiate and wants to work with the Pentagon, “we cannot in good conscience accede to their request.”

Thank goodness Anthropic has the courage and foresight to raise the issue and hold its ground — without its pushback, these capabilities would have been handed to the government with barely a ripple in our conscientiousness and virtually no oversight.

Every senator, every House member, every presidential candidate should be screaming for AI regulation right now, pledging to get it done without regard to party, and demanding the Department of Defense back off its ridiculous threat while the issue is hashed out.

Because when the machine tells us it’s dangerous to trust it, we should believe it.