WASHINGTON — Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who has led an effort in the Trump administration to cut jobs and programs across the federal government, stood by President Trump’s side on Friday in the Oval Office, officially for the last time as a government employee. But neither man was clear whether Musk’s active hand in government is truly over.
Their display of unity comes after Musk, the entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX, issued a series of criticisms of Trump’s policies, both directly and through his companies, and as reports emerge that the billionaire fought fierce battles with the president’s aides and has relied on potent drugs while serving as Trump’s confidante.
“Nobody like him,” Trump said of Musk at the White House event. “He had to go through the slings and the arrows, which is a shame, because he’s an incredible patriot.”
“Many of the DOGE people, Elon, are staying behind. So they’re not leaving. And Elon’s really not leaving,” Trump added. “He’s going to be back and forth, I think, I have a feeling. It’s his baby.”
Musk praised the team of DOGE, an acronym for the Department of Government Efficiency program, for saving what he said was $175 billion in government spending. The program had initially set a more lofty goal of cutting $2 trillion, and it is unclear if Musk’s team has even met its revised figure, with the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service documenting an increase in federal spending over this time last year.
“The DOGE team is doing an incredible job,” Musk said. “I’ll continue to be visiting here, and be a friend and advisor to the president.”
Whether Musk continues in his role will have legal consequences. As a special government employee, Musk is obligated to end his service, now that the maximum work period allowed of 130 days has passed.
A group of 14 states has sued, arguing that Musk’s employee status was a ruse for the Trump administration to bring him into a powerful government role without having to go through a Senate confirmation process.
A federal judge in Washington on Wednesday ruled that Musk’s initial appointment was questionable, stating he “occupies a continuing position” and “exercises significant authority,” opening up a broader legal challenge over the constitutionality of his work for DOGE.
In a series of interviews leading up to his official departure from government, Musk has said that he plans to lessen his political spending going forward, and has criticized the Trump administration and congressional Republicans for pursuing legislation that would balloon the national deficit, a move he said was contrary to DOGE’s mission.
His departure this week comes after the New York Times reported on Musk’s heavy use of ketamine, a potent anesthetic drug, and after a Wall Street Journal article detailed Musk’s attempts to thwart Trump from pursuing partnerships on artificial intelligence in the Middle East that would benefit Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI and a personal nemesis of Musk’s.
Musk’s time in government has been marked by multiple setbacks for his companies. SpaceX has failed to meet essential engineering milestones for Starship, a critical super-heavy rocket ship that is critical to the U.S. effort to return humans to the moon and his own personal goal of reaching Mars. And Tesla, his electric vehicle company, saw a 71% plunge in profits in the first quarter of 2025 and a 50% drop in stock value from its highs in December.
“I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics,” Musk told Ars Technica, a science and technology publication, in an interview on Tuesday.
“It’s not like I left the companies,” he added. “It was just relative time allocation that probably was a little too high on the government side, and I’ve reduced that significantly in recent weeks.”
May 29 (UPI) — The U.S. Treasury Department Thursday sanctioned a Philippines-based computer infrastructure company and its administrator for allegedly providing services for sites involved in cryptocurrency scams.
Treasury said Funnull Technology and administrator Liu Lizhi provides infrastructure for hundreds of thousands websites allegedly involved in the scams known as “pig butchering.”
“Today’s action underscores our focus on disrupting the criminal enterprises, like Funnull, that enable these cyber scams and deprive Americans of their hard-earned savings,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender said in a statement.
The sanctions were imposed in close cooperation with the FBI.
The Treasury described the “pig butchering” scams as Southeast Asian organized crime using victims of labor trafficking to scam millions of unsuspecting people worldwide.
“The scammers leverage fictitious identities, the guise of potential relationships, and elaborate storylines to deceive victims into believing they are in trusted relationships. The scammers then steal victims’ assets by convincing them to invest in virtual currency through a fake website designed to look like a legitimate investment platform that reflects significant, but fabricated, returns on the investment,” the Treasury said.
When victims stop paying more into the scam, the Treasury said the scammer “will abruptly cease communication, taking the victim’s entire investment with them.”
Funnull’s role, according to the Treasury, is to buy IP addresses in bulk from major cloud services companies and then sell them to cybercriminals to host the scam web platforms.
Treasury said Funnell is linked to the majority of virtual currency investment scam websites reported to the FBI.
U.S. victims, Treasury said, have lost over $200 million with an average loss per person of $150,000.
The Treasury alleged that in 2024 Funnell bought a repository of code used by web developers and “maliciously altered the code to redirect visitors of legitimate websites to scam websites and online gambling sites, some of which are linked to Chinese criminal money laundering operations.”
According to Treasury the Lizhi, a Chinese national, is an administrator of Funnell involved in tasks allegedly including “assigning domain names to cybercriminals, including domains associated with virtual currency investment fraud, phishing scams, and online gambling sites.”
CBS has notched another small victory in its legal battle with Sony Pictures Television, winning an appellate court ruling that allows the network to continue to distribute “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!” as its court case continues.
Sony owns the shows and produces them on its Culver City lot.
On Wednesday, the judges wrote that they had reviewed filings from both sides. In a one-page order, the panel granted CBS’ request to keep the stay in place, allowing the network to continue its distribution duties during the appeal .
CBS maintains Sony lacks the legal right to unilaterally severe ties.
Sony terminated its distribution deal with CBS in August and later filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit that claimed CBS entered into unauthorized licensing deals for the shows and then paid itself a commission. Sony also maintained that rounds of budget cuts within CBS had hobbled the network’s efforts to support the two shows.
CBS has said Sony’s claims “are rooted in the fact they simply don’t like the deal the parties agreed to decades ago.”
CBS takes in up to 40% of the fees that TV stations pay to carry the shows. The company took over the distribution of the program when it acquired syndication company King World Productions in 1999.
King World struck deals with the original producer, Merv Griffin Enterprises, in the early 1980s to distribute “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel.” Sony later acquired Griffin’s company, but those early agreements remain in effect.
As viewing of traditional TV has declined due to competition for streaming in recent years, the two daily game shows have continued to thrive and are among the most-watched programs in television.
A Sony representative was not immediately available for comment.
Netflix Chairman Reed Hastings is joining the board of San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company Anthropic.
Anthropic, valued at $61.5 billion after its most recent funding round in March, is known for its AI chatbot model Claude.
“Anthropic is very optimistic about the AI benefits for humanity, but is also very aware of the economic, social, and safety challenges,” Hastings said. “I’m joining Anthropic’s board because I believe in their approach to AI development, and to help humanity progress.”
Hollywood is grappling with the implications of generative artificial intelligence, which studios believe could save money and time, but also comes with downsides. Labor groups fear job displacement, and there are also concerns about the use of copyrighted material when training AI models.
Hastings was selected by Anthropic’s Long Term Benefit Trust, which the company describes as “five financially disinterested members” that can select and remove a portion of the board.
The group selected Hastings because of his leadership experience, philanthropic work and “commitment to addressing AI’s societal challenges makes him uniquely qualified to guide Anthropic at this critical juncture in AI development,” said Buddy Shah, chair of Anthropic’s Long Term Benefit Trust, in a statement.
Hastings will join the company’s five-member board, which includes Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei, President Daniela Amodei, investor Yasmin Razavi and Jay Kreps, CEO of Mountain View-based data streaming firm Confluent.
Hastings served as CEO or co-CEO of Netflix for 25 years until 2023. He currently serves on the boards of other organizations including Bloomberg, the financial data and media company.
He has donated money to charter school networks serving low-income U.S. communities and recently gave $50 million to Bowdoin College to establish the Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity that aims to help the school provide ethical frameworks for AI and examine AI’s impact on work and education.
When filmmakers say they’re experimenting with artificial intelligence, that news is typically received online as if they had just declared their allegiance to Skynet.
And so it was when Darren Aronofsky — director of button-pushing movies including “The Whale” and “Black Swan” — last week announced a partnership with Google AI arm DeepMind to use the tech giant’s capabilities in storytelling.
Aronofsky’s AI-focused studio Primordial Soup is producing three short movies from emerging filmmakers using Google tools, including the text-to-video model Veo. The first film, “Ancestra,” directed by Eliza McNitt, will premiere at the Tribeca Festival on June 13, the Mountain View-based search giant said.
Google’s promotional materials take pains to show that “Ancestra” is a live-action film made by humans and with real actors, though it’s bolstered with effects and imagery — including a tiny baby holding a mother’s finger — that were created with AI.
The partnership was touted during Google’s I/O developer event, where the company showed off the new Veo 3, which allows users to create videos that include sound effects, ambient noise and speech (a step up from OpenAI-owned competitor, Sora). The company also introduced its new Flow film creation tool, essentially editing software using Google AI functions.
Google’s push to court creative types coincides with a separate initiative to help AI technology overcome its massive public relations problem.
As my colleague Wendy Lee wrote recently, the company is working with filmmakers including Sean Douglas and his famous father Michael Keaton to create shorts that aren’t made with AI, but instead portray the technology in a less apocalyptic light than Hollywood is used to.
Simply put, much of the public sees AI as a foe that will steal jobs, rip off your intellectual property, ruin your childhood, destroy the environment and possibly kill us all, like in “The Terminator,” “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the most recent “Mission: Impossible” movies. And Google, which is making a big bet by investing in AI, has a lot riding on changing that perception.
There’s a ways to go, including in the entertainment industry.
Despite the allure of cost-savings, traditional studios haven’t exactly dived headfirst into the AI revolution. They’re worried about the legal implications of using models trained on troves of copyrighted material, and they don’t want to anger the entertainment worker unions, which went on strike partly over AI fears just a couple years ago. The New York Times and others have sued OpenAI and its investor Microsoft, alleging copyright theft. Tech giants claim they are protected by “fair use.”
AI-curious studios are walking into a wild, uncharted legal landscape because of the amount of copyrighted material being mined to teach the models, said Dan Neely, co-founder of startup Vermillio, which helps companies and individuals protect their intellectual property.
“The major studios and most people are going to be challenged using this product when it comes to the output content that you can and cannot use or own,” Neely said by phone. “Given that it contains vast quantities of copyrighted material, and you can get it to replicate that stuff pretty easily, that creates chaos for someone who’s creating with it.”
But while the legacy entertainment business remains largely skeptical of AI, many newer, digitally-native studios and creators are embracing it, whether their goals are to become the next Pixar or the next Mr. Beast.
The New York Times recently profiled the animation startup Toonstar, which says it uses AI throughout its production process, including when sharpening storylines and lip-syncing. John Attanasio, a Toonstar founder, told the paper that leaning into the tech would make animation “80 percent faster and 90 percent cheaper than industry norms.”
Jeffrey Katzenberg, the former leader of DreamWorks Animation, has given a similar estimate of the potential cost-savings for Hollywood cartoons.
Anyone working in the traditional computer animation business would have to gulp at those projections, whether they turn out to be accurate or not. U.S. animation jobs have already been hammered by outsourcing. Now here comes automation to finish the job. (Disney’s animated features cost well over $100 million to produce because they’re made by real-life animators in America.)
Proponents of AI will sometimes argue that the new technology isn’t a replacement for human workers, but rather a tool to enhance creativity. Some are more blunt: Stop worrying about these jobs and embrace the future of uninhibited creation. For obvious reasons, workers are reluctant to buy into that line of thinking.
More broadly, it’s still unclear whether all the spending on the AI arms race will ultimately be worth the cost. Goldman Sachs, in a 2024 report, estimated that companies would invest $1 trillion in AI infrastructure — including data centers, chips and the power grid — in the coming years.
But that same report raised questions about AI’s ultimate utility.
To be worth the gargantuan investment, the technology would have to be capable of solving far more complex problems than it does now, said one Goldman analyst in the report. In recent weeks, the flaws in the technology have crossed over into absurd territory: For example, by generating a summer reading list of fake books and legal documents polluted with serious errors and fabrications.
Big spending and experimentation doesn’t always pan out. Look at virtual reality, the metaverse and the blockchain.
But some entertainment companies are experimenting with the tools and finding applications. Meta has partnered with horror studio Blumhouse and James Cameron’s venture Lightstorm Vision on AI-related initiatives. AI firm Runway is working with Lionsgate. At a time when the movie industry is troubled in part due to the high cost of special effects, production companies are motivated to stay on top of advancing tech.
One of the most common arguments in favor of giving in to AI is that the technology will unshackle the next generation of creative minds.
Some AI-enhanced content is promising. But so far AI video tools have produced a remarkable amount of content that looks the same, with its oddly dreamlike sheen of unreality. That’s partly because the models are trained on color-corrected imagery available on the open internet or on YouTube. Licensing from the studios could help with that problem.
The idea of democratizing filmmaking through AI may sound good in theory. However, there are countless examples in movie history — including “Star Wars” and “Jaws” — of how having physical and budgetary restrictions are actually good for art, however painful and frustrating they may have been during production.
Even within the universe of AI-assisted material, the quality will vary dramatically depending on the talent and skill of people using it.
“Ultimately, it’s really hard to tell good stories,” Neely said. “The creativity that defines what you prompt the machine to do is still human genius — the best will rise to the top.”
Like other innovations, the technology will improve with time, as the new Google tools show. Both Veo 3 and Flow showcase how AI is becoming better and easier to use, though they are still not quite mass-market products. For its highest tier, Google is charging $250 a month for its suite of tools.
Maybe the next Spielberg will find their way through AI-assisted video, published for free on YouTube. Perhaps Sora and Veo will have a moment that propels them to mainstream acceptance in filmmaking, as “The Jazz Singer” did for talkies.
But those milestones still feel a long way off.
Newsletter
You’re reading the Wide Shot
Ryan Faughnder delivers the latest news, analysis and insights on everything from streaming wars to production — and what it all means for the future.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
Stuff we wrote
Number of the week
The Memorial Day weekend box office achieved record revenue (not adjusting for inflation) of $329.8 million in the U.S. and Canada, thanks to the popularity of Walt Disney Co.’s “Lilo & Stitch” and Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.”
Disney’s live-action remake generated $183 million in domestic ticket sales, exceeding pre-release analyst expectations, while the latest Tom Cruise superspy spectacle opened with $77 million. The weekend was a continuation of a strong spring rebound for theaters. Revenue so far this year is now up 22% versus 2024, according to Comscore.
This doesn’t mean the movie business is saved, but it does show that having a mix of different kinds of movies for multiple audiences is healthy for cinemas. Upcoming releases include “Karate Kid: Legends,” “Ballerina,” “How to Train Your Dragon” and a Pixar original, “Elio.”
“Lilo & Stitch” is particularly notable, coming after Disney’s previous live-action redo, “Snow White,” bombed in theaters. While Snow White has an important place in Disney history, Stitch — the chaotic blue alien — has quietly become a hugely important character for the company, driving enormous merchandise sales over the years.
The 2002 original wasn’t a huge blockbuster, coming during an awkward era for Walt Disney Animation, but the remake certainly is.
In the last several years, YouTube has become an increasingly formidable competitor to streaming services and entertainment studios, providing videos from amateur and professional creators, as well as livestreaming major events and NFL games.
Now its growing threat to studios is playing out in the courts.
The Google-owned platform recently poached Justin Connolly, president of platform distribution from Walt Disney Co.
On Wednesday, Disney sued YouTube and Connolly for breach of contract, alleging that Connolly violated an employment agreement that did not expire until March 2027 at the earliest.
Connolly oversaw Disney’s distribution strategy and third-party media sales for its streaming services like Disney+ and its television networks. He also was responsible for film and TV programming distribution through broadcasting and digital platforms, subscription video services and pay networks.
As part of his role, Connolly led Disney’s negotiations for a licensing deal renewal with YouTube, Disney said in its lawsuit.
“It would be extremely prejudicial to Disney for Connolly to breach the contract which he negotiated just a few months ago and switch teams when Disney is working on a new licensing deal with the company that is trying to poach him,” Disney said in its lawsuit.
Disney is seeking a preliminary injunction against Connolly and YouTube to enforce its employment contract.
YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At YouTube, Connolly will be become the company’s head of media and sports, where he will be in charge of YouTube’s relationships with media companies and its live sports portfolio, according to Bloomberg.
YouTube accounted for 12% of U.S. TV viewing in in March, more than other streaming services like Netflix, according to Nielsen. YouTube’s revenue last year was estimated to be $54.2 billion, making it the second-largest media company behind Walt Disney Co., according to research firm MoffettNathanson.
Unlike many other major streaming platforms, YouTube has a mix of content made by users as well as professional studios, giving it a diverse and large video library. More than 20 billion videos have been uploaded to its platform, the company recently said. There are over 20 million videos uploaded daily on average.
Streaming services such as Netflix have brought some YouTube content to their platforms, including episodes of preschool program “Ms. Rachel.”On a recent earnings call, Netflix co-Chief Executive Greg Peters named YouTube as one of its “strong competitors.”
Connolly entered into an employment agreement with Disney on Nov. 6, Disney said in its lawsuit. That contract ran from Jan. 1, 2025 to Dec. 31, 2027, with Connolly having the option of terminating the agreement earlier on March 1, 2027, the lawsuit said.
As part of the agreement, Connolly agreed not to engage in business or become associated with any entity that is in business with Disney or its affiliates, the lawsuit said. Disney said YouTube was aware of Connolly’s employment deal with Disney but still made an offer to him.
Entertainment companies have brought lawsuits in the past to stop executive talent poaching by rivals.
In 2020, Activision Blizzard sued Netflix for poaching its chief financial officer, Spencer Neumann. That case was later closed, after Activision asked to dismiss the lawsuit in 2022.
Netflix years ago also faced litigation from Fox and Viacom alleging executives broke their contract agreements to work for the Los Gatos-based streaming service. In 2019, a judge issued an injunction barring Netflix from poaching rival Fox executives under contract or inducing them to breach their fixed-term agreements.
Editorial library director Cary Schneider contributed to this report.
At the top of a hill in a sprawling Santa Clarita industrial park in the shadow of Magic Mountain’s roller coasters, a significant chapter in the history of motorsports was written.
But the story isn’t finished yet.
From the outside, the building is nothing special. Behind its walls, however, Honda Racing Corporation has designed, tested and built the engines that have won 14 of the last 21 IndyCar championships and all five IndyCar races this season. In Sunday’s Indianapolis 500, a race Honda has won 15 times since 2004, four of the top six starters will have Honda engines, including two-time winner Takuma Sato, who qualified second.
It’s a level of dominance unmatched in IndyCar history — in a series Honda probably helped save.
A technician works on an engine at Honda Racing Corporation. All of Honda’s engines for North American racing series are built in Santa Clarita.
(Robert Hanashiro / For the Times)
Amid the open-wheel civil war between Championship Auto Racing Teams and the Indy Racing League, Honda was prepared to walk away. Robert Clarke, who started Honda Performance Development (before it was renamed HRC in 2024) and made it a cutting-edge research and development facility, convinced American Honda president Koichi Amemiya to supply engines to IRL teams in 2003 after Honda left CART in 2002.
“It just was not Honda’s image of what a race car should be. That’s why Honda initially didn’t want to be involved,” Clarke said. “In my discussion with the president it was ‘OK, we developed all these skills and know-how. Are we just going to give that up and just walk away?’ That’s crazy.
”We invested literally billions of dollars. And we’ve seen the success.”
Chevrolet and Toyota eventually did quit, leaving Honda as the only IndyCar engine manufacturer for six seasons. Amemiya then doubled down, funding Honda’s move to its 123,000-square-foot home while expanding its workforce to 250 from an original staff of fewer than 10.
Honda hasn’t looked in the rearview mirror since.
Clarke, 75, left Honda in 2008 though he’s still something of an executive emeritus, one who wears the brand on his sleeve and often refers to the company with the collective pronoun “we.”
Robert Clarke, left, speaks to IndyCar driver Dario Franchitti at Mid-Ohio Race Course in July 2007.
(Jay LaPrete / Associated Press)
He was 10 when his father took him to his first race to watch a friend run in an amateur open-wheel event. When young Robert was invited into the garage and allowed to work on the car “I was hooked,” he said. “My bedroom walls were covered with pictures of Formula One cars and all kinds of racing.”
He took the long road to Honda racing, though, studying architecture and art/industrial design in college, then teaching for five years at Notre Dame. His first job at Honda was in the motorcycle accessory and product planning departments but when the company announced it was going to enter open-wheel racing, Clarke volunteered and he was soon tasked with building the program from the ground up.
That was in 1993. By the time Clarke left Honda 15 years later, the company’s place as a major force in IndyCar racing was secure and Honda’s two-story hilltop headquarters became his legacy.
The focus of work in the building now is mainly on supporting Honda teams in IndyCar and the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. As such, it has become a one-stop shop for racing teams, housing comprehensive engine research and development operations; prototype and production parts manufacturing; engine preparation and rebuilding; a material analysis facilities; more than a half-dozen engine dynamometer test cells; a machine shop; electronics lab; parts center; multiple conference rooms; and administrative offices.
A view of the machine shop at the at the Honda Racing Corporation in Santa Clarita.
(Robert Hanashiro / For the Times)
Next year it will provide support for Honda’s effort to supply Formula One engines to Aston Martin.
Mostly the building is a maze of quiet office space where engineers sketch out their designs on computer screens, well-lit assembly bays where mechanics assemble the prototypes, and the noisy high-tech dyno rooms where those prototypes are tested. Every stage of a racing engine, from conception and construction to being shipped to the track, is managed at the facility.
“We develop the technology quickly,” said David Salters, the British-born engineer who heads HRC. “We try them. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t work and you try again. The point of having a racing facility inside your company is you can be agile. You can try stuff. You can train the people.
“The people are the most important thing of all this.”
The whole process is more NASA than NASCAR in that there’s not a speck of grease or oil on the bright, white vinyl flooring and everybody’s hands are clean.
David Salters, president of Honda Racing Corporation.
(Michael L. Levitt / LAT Images via American Honda Motor Co.)
“This is a world-class facility. It needs to be clinical and professional in the processes and systems we have here,” said Salters, who was head of engine development for the Ferrari F1 team and held a similar position at Mercedes-Benz before joining Honda a decade ago.
“It’s like an operating theater. We’re basically dealing with engines or electrical systems, which are like jewelry. They cannot tolerate dirt or anything like that. Everything has to be spotless and clean and well-organized. This is aerospace.”
And when the engines don’t work, they’re brought back to HRC and the engineering process is repeated in reverse in search of flaws. As for why they’re doing all that in a sleepy bedroom community better known for its paved bike paths and rustic hiking trails than for its motorsports history, that’s easy: Location, location, location.
Clarke originally expected to recruit engineers from Indianapolis and Charlotte, N.C., the heartland of American racing, while Honda insisted on keeping its operations near its corporate offices in Torrance. Clarke feared dropping people from the Midwest and South into L.A.’s traffic-clogged sprawl would be such a culture shock, he’d lose his best engineers.
So he chose Santa Clarita, which was isolated enough to not feel like L.A., but close enough to Torrance to be accessible. And the building came with an “Only in L.A.” feature: It shares a driveway with the studio where the popular TV series “NCIS” is filmed.
“Every so often a helicopter will land in the car park and we’re all told we can’t go outside in case we get swept away,” Salters said with a chuckle. “There was some ‘Star Trek’ thing where they decided our foyer could be useful. So for a few weeks we had a movie set in our foyer; we rented it out.
“You’ve got to look at business opportunities.”
Adi Susilo, chief engineer of powertrain at Honda Racing Corporation, looks over large monitors before the start of the 12 Hours of Sebring in March.
(Robert Hanashiro / For the Times)
It’s early on a chilly Saturday in March and HRC’s headquarters is mostly empty save for one corner on the building’s second floor where nearly a dozen people, some wearing headphones, have gathered behind computer screens facing six giant TV monitors.
A continent away, in central Florida, more than 50 cars are lined up for the 12 hours of Sebring. Each driver with a Honda engine has an engineer monitoring their car’s performance.
Before the pandemic, engineers would travel and work with race teams on site. But for the last four years the engineers have been working mostly at HRC, monitoring in-car telemetry that provides real-time information about everything from engine status and tire pressure to suspension behavior.
“Data is king,” said Adi Susilo, one of the HRC engineers. “Humans make mistakes. Data rarely does.”
F1 teams have monitored telemetry remotely for years, but it didn’t become common in IndyCar racing until 2023. Now it’s a vital part of every major racing series, including NASCAR.
Powertrain chief engineer Adi Susilo looks at a full-size mock up of an IMSA prototype at Honda Racing Corporation.
(Robert Hanashiro / For the Times)
Engineers work out of what looks like a college classroom, only quieter. When the sound of a disembodied voice does cackle out of a headphone, it sounds like NASA Mission Control, the tone flat and unemotional, the conversation short and to the point.
“It’s better for solving problems,” said Susilo about working away from the track. “If there’s a problem, you just walk downstairs and talk to the guy who built the engine.”
That won’t be the case Sunday. For the Indy 500, Susilo said it’s all hands on deck, so most of Honda’s race-day engineers are in Indianapolis where the telemetry will be broadcast to their work stations in trailers at the track.
“A few of the IndyCar races are run that way,” he said, “but the 500 is almost always run that way just because everyone’s out here for the event. We’re also testing a new, hopefully more robust, telemetry streaming as it’s much harder to make sure we get 15 car’s worth of data.”
At first, the idea of having engineers looming electronically over the timing stand was a hard sell. Trusting someone with clean fingernails watching the race on monitors thousands of miles away wasn’t easy for some crew chiefs.
“What happens for people like me is that you have to erase the old-school way of thinking,” said Mike Hull, a former mechanic and driver who is now the managing director for Chip Ganassi Racing and chief strategist for driver Scott Dixon, a six-time IndyCar champion. “You’re electronically shoulder to shoulder with them.
“If you don’t listen to what somebody has to say, it stifles free thinking. Free thinking sends you down a path that you may not have originally been on, but makes you stronger at what you’re doing.”
1
2
3
4
1.Race engines being assembled at Honda Racing Corporation.2.A technician in the HRC machine shop works on an engine.3.Engineers monitor data during the 12 Hours of Sebring in March.4.A engineer monitors telemetry remotely from HRC headquarters.(Robert Hanashiro / For the Times)
Dixon, the 2008 Indy 500 champion who will start Sunday’s race in the second row, agrees. Which is he why he’s made several trips to HRC to personally thank the engineers who design his engines and those who help direct his races.
“You always feel like there’s a big group behind you,” he said. “You just don’t get to see all them in one place but you know the machine is there, working pretty hard.”
One drawback, Dixon said, is you have to be careful what you say on the radio during races because you never know who’s listening.
“Twenty people at home, just on the team side, will be listening just on that one car,” he said. “So the communication is very wide open. You definitely have to watch your Ps and Qs.”
Two years later race teams have grown so comfortable with people looking over their shoulders, the engineers have become as much a part of the team as the cars. So when a nearby wildfire forced the evacuation of the building, Honda rented rooms at a nearby hotel, set up their TVs, computer monitors and a coffee machine in a conference room and worked from there.
“We’re pretty blind without it. The race teams are pretty competitive,” Susilo said. “They feel that instinct still does work. But it’s more data-driven.”
Honda powertain engineer Jake Marthaler monitors data during the 12 Hours of Sebring in March.
(Robert Hanashiro / For the Times)
Given the investment, the pressure can be intense.
“Every two weeks we want to have the latest development. We want to have made progress,” Salters said. “Every two weeks you have a deadline and the deadline does not move. It’s not like they’re going to say ‘OK, we’ll just delay the race a week.’ The flag drops, you’ve got to be ready.
“It’s sort of an engineering sport isn’t it? It’s like a true sport; the best team will win.”
If the IndyCar-Honda marriage has mostly been good for both sides, it has recently hit a rocky patch.
Honda’s supply contract with IndyCar ends next year and the company hasn’t hid its distaste over the cheating scandals that have recently tarnished the series. Last week Team Penske drivers Josef Newgarden, the two-time defending Indy 500 champion, and Will Power were forced to the back of the field for the start of Sunday’s race after illegally modified parts were found on their cars. Team Penske, which uses Chevrolet engines, was also caught cheating at the beginning of the 2024 season.
On Wednesday, the team fired three of its top racing executives. IndyCar, which is owned by Roger Penske (also the owner of Team Penske) said it is exploring the creation of an independent governing body absent of Penske employees.
Scott Dixon drives into the first turn during practice for the Indianapolis 500 on Friday.
(Michael Conroy / Associated Press)
That may not be enough to restore trust in the series. Honda, which supplies engines to 13 full-season IndyCar entries and three Indy 500-only cars, has declined to comment on the rules violations, but confirmed its continued participation in the series beyond 2026 may depend on Penske’s ability to separate himself from policing the series he owns and also competes in.
Honda said in a written statement Thursday that it has many concerns, among them “the relatively high overall cost to participate as an engine supplier” and “the potential (perceived or real) conflict of interest which may exist” with Penske’s ownership of the racing series, three of the cars competing in the series and his “significant stake” in Ilmor Engineering, which designs and manufactures engines for Chevrolet, Honda’s biggest competitor.
“Honda continues to have ongoing negotiations with IndyCar’s management and technical teams regarding our future as an engine supplier for the series,” said Chuck Chayefsky, manager of Honda & Acura Motorsports.
Whatever road Honda takes with IndyCar, it’s unlikely to change most of the day-to-day work at HRC, which is heavily involved with IMSA and will soon be working on F1 power-unit development.
So while the cars may change, the racing will never stop.
The car Ryan Hunter-Reay drove to victory for Andretti Autosport in the 2014 Indianapolis 500 sits on display at Honda Racing Corporation in Santa Clarita.
(Robert Hanashiro / For the Times)
“Thirty years ago our sole purpose in life was to look after racing in North America for Honda and Acura,” Salters said before last week’s events in Indianapolis. “Last year we changed that. We’re now part of a global racing organization. That’s another opportunity for associates here.”
“The automotive world, it’s pivoting,” he continued. “We are trying some new stuff. We’ll see how it goes.”
One chapter has been written. But the story isn’t finished.
In a room inside a North Hollywood warehouse, dozens of pets are ready for their owners to take them home.
Boots, a young black-and-white domestic shorthair cat, lies on his back, pawing playfully at the air. A trio of red, yellow and green parrots and cockatiels sit on wooden perches, oblivious to the piercing stare of a blue-eyed feline a few feet away. Princess, a senior Chihuahua, rests with her eyes closed and body curled into a tight cocoon, as a frenetic hamster named Ponby stands upright, his eyes bulging. There’s a naked guinea pig, a giant red macaw and an adorably chunky pit bull named Messy.
Eyes, such as those shown here on Messy the pit bull, are made of glass and closely match the animal’s original colors.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
All of these animals are loose, liberated from the confines of cages and leashes, and yet no havoc has ensued.
These animals are also all dead.
It’s an everyday scene at Bischoff’s the Animal Kingdom, a Los Angeles taxidermy business that has been preserving animals for 103 years. The business is multifold — Bischoff’s creates and rents out prop animals to film studios, museums and nature centers. Posters on the lobby walls boast the company’s work on shows like “American Horror Story” and “Westworld.” But in recent years, a bulk of its taxidermy requests now come from bereaved pet owners, those willing to shell out thousands of dollars for a tangible commemoration of their late “fur babies.”
Birds are commonly preserved at Bischoff’s, but the business has made mementos of more obscure pets, including chameleons, roosters and hairless guinea pigs.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
From full-body taxidermy to partial mementos — skulls, bronzed hearts or freeze-dried paws, for example — such services provide closure in ways that, clients say, traditional burials or urns cannot.
“It was honestly really comforting to have her back, and just be able to touch her and, in a sense, talk to her too,” said Bischoff’s customer Zoe Hays of the preservation of her Chihuahua-Yorkie mix Pixie. “She was a great little dog — also a menace to society, for sure — but she’s still with me, and she always will be.”
Bodily preservation, beyond the ashes or cemented paw prints offered by veterinarians and animal hospitals, has become a growing facet in the world of pet aftercare, with traditional taxidermists fulfilling many of the niche requests.
Redlands business Precious Creature initially only offered full-body taxidermy of pets until customers started suggesting other ideas, such as lockets containing patches of fur and cat-tail necklaces. (Most recently, owner Lauren Kane sewed a zippered pillowcase using the black-and-white fur of a rescue named G-Dog, or, as his owner fondly called him, “Fluffy Butt.”) In her documentary “Furever,” filmmaker Amy Finkel explores the lengths to which pet preservationists will go, asking, “Who decides what kind of grief is acceptable, or appropriate?”
Bischoff’s co-owner Ace Alexander had a songwriting career before transitioning to taxidermy.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Ace Alexander, 40, and Rey Macias, 55, the fourth owners in Bischoff’s long history, have steered the company to meet the new demand. Describing each other as “good friends,” the two men dress similarly in unofficial uniforms of black T-shirts and black pants, and they’re so in sync they sometimes finish each other’s thoughts. Since taking over the business, both have transitioned to primarily vegan diets.
“Bischoff’s used to be taxidermists to the stars in the trophy era, but now we’re taxidermists in the pet preservation era,” Alexander said. “People no longer hunt. Now they just love their pets.”
Hollywood needs supporting actors, even if they’re stuffed
Over the decades, Bischoff’s has preserved hundreds of animals. The Sumatran tiger has made many appearances in films and TV shows, including “Snowfall,” “Palm Royale” and “Welcome to Chippendales.”
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
In 1922, when Al Bischoff first opened the business on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, he’d stuff and plaster any animal brought to him. Most of the time, that meant trophies from hunting and safari trips, but it also included beloved pets owned by Hollywood elite. Roy Rogers used Bischoff’s to preserve his co-stars Trigger the horse and Bullet the dog. Buck — the dog from “Married with Children” — also got the Bischoff’s treatment.
Under Alexander and Macias’ tutelage, that’s still the case. They’ll preserve any animal you bring them — so long as it is not a protected species or an illegal pet. They’ll even make you a unicorn or a sasquatch or a wearable Velociraptor costume that roars and can open and close its jaws. The largest animal Alexander and Macias have preserved was an 11-foot-long buffalo, while the smallest, not including insects, was a hummingbird. Off the top of their heads, the only animal they haven’t preserved — yet — is the genetically rare white tiger.
Bischoff’s owners Ace Alexander, left, and Rey Macias show off a custom order of a pink peacock (sans tail) for a film.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The majority of Bischoff’s clientele still comes from Hollywood. Due to federal and state laws, as well as industry regulators like the American Humane Association, it often makes more sense to use body doubles for animals when filming and is occasionally mandatory (such as scenes that involve roadkill or drowning incidents).
On a recent Wednesday, Alexander fielded calls from studios about the types of snake skins in stock, how to clean dirt off a rented coyote and the particular body poses of their turkeys.
“So what are you thinking?” Alexander said, talking on the phone. “Turkeys in flight? Perched? Or did you need a floppy version?”
As for the pet sector, which accounts for around 40% of their business, dogs and cats, unsurprisingly, make up the majority of the preservations, but the team has also worked on rabbits, rodents, chameleons and roosters. And although they will preserve your pet goldfish, they will strongly encourage you to consider having a synthetic version made of it due to the oils in the scales, which inevitably lead to deterioration.
Bischoff’s works on pets shipped from around the country as well as overseas. Dr. Xanya Sofra, who is based in Hong Kong, has had at least half a dozen of her papillons preserved by Bischoff’s. Another client, who was an avid hiker, had Bischoff’s preserve his golden retriever in an upright position so that he could carry it in his backpack on his treks.
Neither Alexander nor Macias had a background in taxidermy when they started working at Bischoff’s. They were both musicians, which is how they initially met. Macias also owned an auto shop and has been taking apart and fixing appliances from a young age.
Alexander picked up jobs at Bischoff’s when it was owned by the previous owner, Gary Robbins. The pay was good, the work interesting and he realized he had a knack for airbrushing and sculpting. In 2017, when Robbins was ready to retire, Alexander and Macias, who by then had also started working there, decided to buy the business.
Blending artistic skill with scientific knowledge
Each multi-level freeze-dryer can fit around a dozen pets at a time. Smaller pets need three to four months to dry out, while larger animals take nearly a year.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Bischoff’s specializes in a form of hybrid taxidermy, incorporating traditional techniques with the more new-fangled freeze-drying process. The results are not only more lifelike and long-lasting than the standard gut-and-stuff method, but it also allows for the bulk of the original animal to remain, including the skeletal structure, toenails, whiskers, eyelids, nose and teeth. The eyes, however, are made of glass.
The method leaves room for error. Water can be used to dampen and repose the body and paint can be removed or retouched.
“You can definitely backpedal,” Alexander said, making a note to check the texture of the preserved hearts on sticks in the next 24 hours.
Alexander credits this attention to detail to his predecessors, former owner Robbins and then-main taxidermist Larry Greissinger, who taught him the trade. Strict in their teachings, Robbins and Greissinger emphasized getting every bodily facet correct: from recreating the natural anatomy to sewing the perfect hidden stitch to making sure the eyes looked right.
“That’s where the emotion is,” Alexander said. “You can get the perfect body pose, but if the eyes aren’t sitting well or don’t carry any emotion, then the animal will never look alive.”
Bischoff’s has old and new taxidermy, including two polar bears from the 1940s and 1950s, a bull created in 2013 for the “Yellowstone” prequel “1923” and a buffalo that appeared in “The Lone Ranger.”
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
A few of Bischoff’s early taxidermy pieces are still on display, including a dog, which looks more like a cross between a wolf and a baboon, dating to the 1920s. Its plaster interior, an old taxidermy technique, gives it a stiff visage and makes it exceedingly heavy.
Bischoff’s prices reflect its modernized techniques, as well as the amount of time and attention to even the smallest of details required to make a dead pet come back to life. The cost for a fully preserved cat or a small dog like a Chihuahua starts at $2,640, with small birds, like a budgie, starting at $850.
A photo booth is set up in Bischoff’s warehouse, where images of the completed pets are taken.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Although most customers order full-body taxidermy, an “a la carte” menu has expanded over the years with jars of whiskers or fur, bundles of bones tied in a bow and, the most recent addition, freeze-dried hearts, which come mounted inside of a glass cloche. Bischoff’s also offers cloning services through its Texas-based affiliate Viagen Pets, to whom they send the pet’s skin tissues.
Pelts, paws and bronzed skulls are among the smaller items purchased by pet owners.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Bischoff’s in-house artist Laischa Ramirez creates hand-drawn portraits of pets for owners who request it.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Costly though their work is, Alexander and Macias see it as an investment. Pets, they point out, are friends you look at every day. You’re intimately aware of their nuances and quirks, like how their left ear might curl back more than the right one or the way their nose tilts ever-so-subtly upwards. Entrust their preservation to a novice or lower-cost taxidermist, and you risk losing some of the elements that made your pet who they were.
Bischoff’s has seen its share of people who’ve preserved their pets with budget taxidermists only to be disappointed. “It’s unfortunate because at that point, there’s not much we can do,” Alexander said. Such pets are cremated “because they just can’t stand to look at them.”
Bischoff’s key component? Compassion
Pets and pet hearts sit in a freeze-dryer at Bischoff’s.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
In the back of Bischoff’s warehouse is where the equipment resides and the smells of the oils running the machines permeates the space. The company has one aquamation machine that uses alkali solution, heat and pressure to break down the organic material into ashes. With interior chambers lined with perforated metal walls, the contraption somewhat resembles a fast-food restaurant’s deep fryer. Except, one taxidermist notes, when the process is done, instead of having golden fried potato strips in each basket, all that is left are bones.
Oftentimes at the ends of these processes, Bischoff’s workers will find inorganic remnants from the pets, such as microchips, metal plates or orthopedic screws. They give them to their owners as keepsakes.
Macias’ son, 29-year-old Chris Macias, works alongside his dad at Bischoff’s. He started helping out to make extra money while attending nursing school, but when business picked up, he decided to transition fully into the taxidermy business. He does a little bit of everything — recently, it was prepping a seal pelt for the San Pedro Marine Mammal Care Center — but tends to do pet pickups the most. Less technical though it may be, it is more emotionally taxing as he’s interfacing with grieving clients who might still be in shock or confused as to what exactly they want to do with their late pets.
Two calico cats were returned to Bischoff’s by the children of the woman who owned them after her death.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“Everybody’s different, but I just try to be there for them,” Chris said. “Their pet was part of their family, so I totally understand. Because all of us here, we have our own pets as well. We get it.”
Though Alexander never imagined building a career out of preserving dead pets, he said, “We’ve found joy in this work and we just see preservation as another form of art.”
It’s that art that is helping keep the memories of beloved pets alive — for generations even. Hays, the owner of Chihuahua-Yorkie mix Pixie, already has a contingency plan in place for Pixie’s taxidermy upon her own death. It will be “adopted” by another family member. Her daughter has already called dibs.
And many of Bischoff’s pet preservation customers are repeat clients, which is something that Alexander and Macias take pride in. Two women picking up the taxidermy body of their late cat recently chatted with Alexander about their newest rescue, a diabetic stray cat burnt in the Altadena fires. They couldn’t help but comment on the “beautiful bone structure” of the feline, still very much alive.
“I was like, ‘Hmm, you’re definitely going on the altar some day,’” one of the women said.
At least three people aboard a jet headed for Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport in San Diego were killed when the aircraft crashed into a neighborhood early Thursday.
The Federal Aviation Administration said six people were on the Cessna 550 when it crashed amid dense fog around 3:45 a.m. While authorities have not named anyone who died in the crash, a spokesperson for Sound Talent Group, a San Diego-based music agency, confirmed to The Times that the company lost three employees.
Among them was Dave Shapiro, the company’s co-founder. The other employees were not named.
“We are devastated by the loss of our co-founder, colleagues and friends,” read a company statement. “Our hearts go out to their families and to everyone impacted by today’s tragedy. Thank you so much for respecting their privacy at this time.”
Dave Shapiro, 42
Shapiro’s digital presence encapsulated the spirit of an adventurer. He was a music agent, airplane and helicopter pilot, husband, puppy dad and retired BASE jumper, according to his Instagram bio.
Shapiro, who co-founded Sound Talent Group in 2018, also started Velocity Aviation, a company that offers scenic flight tours in San Diego and Homer, Alaska. The aviation company also specializes in aircraft leasing, aircraft sales consulting, ferry flights and flight instruction, according to the Velocity Aviation website.
Shapiro took his first flight class in 2005 as a 22-year-old executive in the music business and was immediately “hooked to all things aviation,” the website reads.
Shapiro also owned a restaurant, record label and a merchandise manufacturing business.
“From BASE jumping to aerobatic flying, Helicopters to twin engines, flight instructing to furthering his own education, doesn’t matter to Dave as long as he gets to be in the sky,” the Velocity Aviation website reads. “With over 15 years of flight experience, thousands of hours logged, and over a million miles flown, Dave continues to grow his experience and share it with the aviation community through the many services Velocity Aviation offers.”
Videos on Instagram show him performing rolls and other aerobatic maneuvers while piloting an aircraft. In 2020, he posted a photo of his pilot licenses announcing that he’d been certified as an airline transport pilot.
“For non-aviators, this is the license above commercial. Although I have a career and don’t plan to change that I always want to learn more and be a better pilot,” he wrote in the caption. “Passed the check ride a couple months ago and got my cert in the mail! Did the test in a citation 525 series so I’m now rated for the CJ jets too. Fun times.”
Flying was more than a business to Shapiro. It was also an element of one of life’s biggest milestones — his wedding.
In 2016, Shapiro and his wife boarded a bright red plane mounted with skis to fly over Denali National Park in Alaska to get to their ceremony. The couple said “I do” on Kahiltna Glacier — the bride wearing a gold sequined dress and the groom a dark suit and an Iron Maiden T-shirt.
Shapiro’s wife detailed the whirlwind celebration in a story published online, ending it with a message of adoration for her groom: “my beautiful husband, thank you for existing and I love you way more.”
An outpouring of condolences were posted to social media Thursday. The music industry veteran worked as a band manager, promoter and other roles in American metalcore, pop-punk and emo rock music.
“He was my manager and agent for years and a huge part of my career as a producer and musician,” musician Carson Slovak wrote on Facebook. “He was a truly good person and an inspiration to countless people. His contributions to the music industry are legendary and his charitable spirit had a profound effect on so many. I’m heartbroken and in shock.”
Bill D’Arcangelo, an artist manager at Mid Atlantic Management, said in a post on Facebook that Shapiro was “a pillar of the music industry that will never be replicated or replaced.”
State waste officials have taken another stab at rules implementing a landmark plastic waste law, more than two months after Gov. Gavin Newsom torpedoed their initial proposal.
CalRecycle, the state agency that oversees waste management, recently proposed a new set of draft regulations to implement SB 54, the 2022 law designed to reduce California’s single-use plastic waste. The law was designed to shift the financial onus of waste reduction from the state’s people, towns and cities to the companies and corporations that make the polluting products. It was also intended to reduce the amount of single use plastics that end up in California’s waste stream.
The draft regulations proposed last week largely mirror the ones introduced earlier this year, which set the rules, guidelines and parameters of the program — but with some minor and major tweaks.
The new ones clarify producer obligations and reporting timelines, said organizations representing packaging and plastics companies, such as the Circular Action Alliance and the California Chamber of Commerce.
But they also include a broad set of exemptions for a wide variety of single-use plastics — including any product that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture has jurisdiction over, which includes all packaging related to produce, meat, dairy products, dog food, toothpaste, condoms, shampoo and cereal boxes, among other products.
The rules also leave open the possibility of using chemical or alternative recycling as a method for dealing with plastics that can’t be recycled via mechanical means, said people representing environmental, recycling and waste hauling companies and organizations.
California’s Attorney General, Rob Bonta, filed a suit against ExxonMobil last year that, in part, accuses the oil giant of deceptive claims regarding chemical recycling, which the company disputes.
Critics say the introduction of these exemptions and the opening for polluting recycling technologies will undermine and kneecap a law that just three years ago Newsom’s office described as “nation-leading” and “the most significant overhaul of the state’s plastic and packaging policy in history.”
The “gaping hole that the new exemptions have blown” into the bill make it unworkable, practically unfundable, and antithetical to its original purpose of reducing plastic waste, said Heidi Sanborn, director of the National Stewardship Action Council.
Last March, after nearly three years of negotiations among various corporate, environmental, waste, recycling and health stakeholders, CalRecycle drafted a set of finalized regulations designed to implement the single-use plastic producer responsibility program under SB 54.
But as the deadline for implementation approached, industries that would be affected by the regulations including plastic producers and packaging companies — represented by the California Chamber of Commerce and the Circular Action Alliance — began lobbying the governor, complaining the regulations were poorly developed and might ultimately increase costs for California taxpayers.
Daniel Villaseñor, a spokesman for the governor, said Newsom was concerned about the program’s potential costs for small businesses and families, which a state analysis estimated could run an extra $300 per year per household.
He said the new draft regulations “are a step in the right direction” and they ensure “California’s bold recycling law can achieve its goal of cutting plastic pollution,” said Villaseñor in a statement.
John Myers, a spokesman for the California Chamber of Commerce, whose members include the American Chemistry Council, Western Plastics Assn. and the Flexible Packaging Assn., said the chamber was still reviewing the changes.
CalRecycle is holding a workshop next Tuesday to discuss the draft regulations. Once CalRecycle decides to finalize the regulations, which experts say could happen at any time, it moves into a 45 day official rule making period during which time the regulations are reviewed by the Office of Administrative Law. If it’s considered legally sound and the governor is happy, it becomes official.
The law, which was authored by Sen. Ben Allen (D- Santa Monica) and signed by Newsom in 2022, requires that by 2032, 100% of single-use packaging and plastic foodware produced or sold in the state must be recyclable or compostable, that 65% of it can be recycled, and that the total volume is reduced by 25%.
The law was written to address the mounting issue of plastic pollution in the environment and the growing number of studies showing the ubiquity of microplastic pollution in the human body — such as in the brain, blood, heart tissue,testicles, lungs and various other organs.
According to one state analysis, 2.9 million tons of single-use plastic and 171.4 billion single-use plastic components were sold, offered for sale, or distributed during 2023 in California.
Most of these single-use plastic packaging products cannot be recycled, and as they break-down in the environment — never fully-decomposing — they contribute to the growing burden of microplastics in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the soil that nourishes our crops.
The law falls into a category of extended producer responsibility laws that now regulate the handling of paint, carpeting, batteries and textiles in California — requiring producers to see their products throughout their entire life cycle, taking financial responsibility for their products’ end of life.
Theoretically such programs, which have been adopted in other states, including Washington, Oregon and Colorado, spur technological innovation and potentially create circular economies — where products are designed to be reused, recycled or composted.
Sanborn said the new exemptions not only potentially turn the law “into a joke,” but will also dry up the program’s funding and instead put the financial burden on the consumer and the few packaging and single-use plastic manufacturers that aren’t included in the exemptions.
“If you want to bring the cost down, you’ve got to have a fair and level playing field where all the businesses are paying in and running the program. The more exemptions you give, the less funding there is, and the less fair it is,” she said.
In addition, because of the way residential and commercial packaging waste is collected, “it’s all going to get thrown away together, so now you have less funding” to deal with the same amount of waste, but for which only a small number of companies will be accountable for sorting out their material and making sure it gets disposed of properly.
Others were equally miffed, including Allen, the bill’s author, who said in a statement that while there are some improvements in the new regulations, there are “several provisions that appear to conflict with law,” including the widespread exemptions and the allowance of polluting recycling technologies.
“If the purpose of the law is to reduce single-use plastic ad plastic pollution,” said Anja Braden from the Ocean Conservancy, these new regulations aren’t going to do it — they are “inconsistent with the law and fully undermine its purpose and goal.”
She also said the exemptions preclude technological innovation, dampening incentives for companies to explore new recyclable and compostable packaging materials.
Nick Lapis with Californians Against Waste, said his organization was “really disappointed to see the administration caving to industry on some core parts of this program,” and also noted his read suggests many of the changes don’t comply with the law.
However, Sanborn fears there will be little time or appetite from the agency or the governor’s office to make substantial changes to the new regulations.
“They’re basically already cooked,” said Sanborn, noting CalRecycle had already accepted public comments during previous rounds and iterations.
“California should be the leader at holding the bar up in this space,” she said. “I’m afraid this has dropped the bar very low.”
He had the ability to communicate with God, the angels and one of the most powerful spirits in the voodoo religion.
This is what Won-G Bruny had been texting Lil Mosey for years. Bruny, a music manager who himself had started out as a hip-hop artist, believed he had a special connection with the spiritual realm that would help guide the up-and-coming Mosey’s rap career. In 2021, Bruny took the musician, then 19, to his native Haiti where, deep in the woods, he blessed the young man with what he described as his family power. After Mosey was accused of rape, Bruny urged him to partake in a Haitian rum-bath ritual; when Mosey was acquitted in March 2023, Bruny told him the voodoo gods had taken a hand in the verdict.
Won-G Bruny, left, and Lil Mosey attend the 66th Grammy Awards at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, California.
(Johnny Nunez / Getty Images for the Recording Academy)
Bruny soon began urging Mosey to get out of his contract with Interscope Records, the company that signed him in 2017, after the then-16-year old’s debut single went viral. During Mosey’s five-year relationship with Interscope, Bruny believed the would-be star was not compensated fairly by the label.
“I want to express my disappointment on how … Interscope … have treated Mosey. I think it’s disgusting and despicable. You play with my clients career and have caused him mental trama [sic] …,” Bruny wrote in an August 2023 email to two executive vice presidents at Interscope that was viewed by The Times. “Believe me, you’ve never dealt with anyone like me in real life from the spiritual haiti [sic] I am indigenous and have techniques that the eye cannot see. If 48 hours go by and we do not have a release this is going public in a very bad way for you and Interscope. And I will arrive to your office soon as the worst [N-word] you every [sic] met.”
The message was signed: “Worst Nightmare.”
Interscope’s media representatives and the label executives Bruny emailed did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
Angela Thatcher, Mosey’s mother, never had a good feeling about Bruny. After accompanying her son on the trip to Haiti, the early-childhood educator had advised him to be wary of Bruny: “If he’s trying to finesse you,” she said she told him, “please do not fall for it. I think he talks a lot bigger than he actually is.”
“I just want my son away from [Bruny]. I think he’s being controlled and manipulated by this guy who has convinced him that everyone in his life is against him, including his own family.”
— Angela Thatcher, Lil Mosey’s late mother
Big was how Bruny lived. On social media, he portrayed himself as a wealthy jetsetter, driving around Beverly Hills in a buffed Rolls-Royce one day, partying with soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo on a private yacht in the United Arab Emirates the next. He favored the trappings of the hip-hop culture he’d aspired to since he was a boy: heavy diamond chains, Rolex watches, tailored blazers that showcased his considerable biceps. His shiny veneers and taut skin make it difficult to ascertain his age — public records list various birth dates, putting him somewhere in the range of 46 to 53.
By the time he met Mosey, Bruny had spent decades honing his skills as a promoter. When he embarked on his career as a rapper in his 20s, he got Paris Hilton and Carmen Electra to appear in his music videos and turned up on “The Real Housewives of Orange County” to help one of its stars record her first song. He teamed with former L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca on a ballot initiative, promoting himself as a law enforcement-friendly rapper. For a time, he managed rappers Sean Kingston and Tyga. These were among the associations he boasted of in the promotional materials he shared with potential investors, collaborators and those Interscope executives to spotlight his accomplishments.
Won-G and Paris Hilton
(Getty Images / Jeff Kravitz via FilmMagic)
Mosey’s mother didn’t buy it. Though she had no evidence that Bruny was defrauding Mosey, Thatcher believed the manager was a negative influence. In 2023, she started doing more than just regularly checking the Instagram page where Bruny had 487,000 followers. When Google searches turned up references to lawsuits and scam alert websites, she hired a private investigator. The findings revealed numerous civil suits against Bruny alleging breach of contract, as well as a bankruptcy filing.
Thatcher shared the report with her son. But Mosey, just a few weeks out of his Interscope contract, continued working with Bruny, cutting ties with his old representatives and, according to Thatcher, distancing himself from her.
In October 2024, Thatcher died unexpectedly, of “a severe infection,” according to her obituary. She was 55.
“I just want my son away from [Bruny],” Thatcher said in an interview with The Times last summer. “I think he’s being controlled and manipulated by this guy who has convinced him that everyone in his life is against him, including his own family.”
A Times investigation found that, over the past two decades, Bruny has utilized a perception of affluence, supposed personal ties to celebrity and references to Haitian voodoo to convince more than two dozen people to give him thousands of dollars in investments or loans — money that they never saw again, according to lawsuits and bankruptcy filings. In the last 20 years, Bruny, or companies associated with him, have been sued at least 19 times in Los Angeles County Superior Court; in nine of those cases, he was ordered to pay judgments amounting to more than $2.1 million, none of which was ever paid.
During that period, he filed for bankruptcy three times in California, most recently in 2019, when between his personal and business Chapter 7 records he was discharged of roughly $9.9 million in debt liabilities.
Lawsuits and bankruptcy filings show a striking range of individuals who say they lost money through investments in Bruny’s music career and fashion line, including a septuagenarian Old Hollywood starlet, a cancer patient, a former girlfriend, an Australian fashion designer, an airline pilot and a UCLA professor who served on committees for Presidents Biden and Obama. Because the U.S. Bankruptcy Court found he had no legal obligation to pay his debts, none of them were ever repaid by Bruny.
Bruny did not respond to multiple requests for comment or a detailed list of questions sent to him by The Times via email and social media. His lawyer, Kenneth Sterling, said in a statement: “We find no merit to the allegations or implications currently circulating regarding Mr. Bruny. While, like many others, Mr. Bruny acknowledges he has grown from mistakes made in the distant past, these are nearly or more than a decade old and wholly irrelevant to his current work or character. It is worth noting that this current media inquiry appears to have been instigated by a former manager and relative of one of Mr. Bruny’s clients — individuals who, based on credible information, mismanaged and acted in their own financial interests at the expense of the artist.
“To be clear: Mr. Bruny has never been arrested, charged, or the subject of any criminal investigation. He has no criminal record. Any civil matters from years past have long been resolved and are, in every sense, ancient history. We live in a society that believes in growth, redemption, and new chapters — Mr. Bruny embodies all three.”
Mosey declined to be interviewed for this story, saying via text message that he had “nothing but great things to say about Won.” When asked specifically if he believed a former manager and relative mismanaged and acted in their own financial interests at his expense, Mosey did not respond.
Lil Mosey, now 23, was born Lathan Moses Stanley Echols; his father, Thatcher said, wasn’t very involved in his upbringing. He was 15 when his music started to take off online — he and his two brothers created a makeshift studio in a closet of their Washington state home, where Mosey made music that he then uploaded onto SoundCloud. In late 2017, his song “Pull Up” garnered attention on a rap blog. Music manager Josh Marshall reached out and flew the then-16-year-old and his mother to New York City. After discussions with about half a dozen companies, Mosey, represented by Marshall, signed with Interscope in March 2018. His debut album, “Northsbest,” was released that same year.
By 10th grade, Mosey had dropped out of high school and gone on tour with Juice WRLD and YBN Cordae. He told Billboard at the time that he was surprised by his sudden popularity. Asked how his mother was reacting to his newfound fame, Mosey told the magazine: “She always told me like, ‘Why do you want to do this? Why don’t you wait? You can always do this later. You could just be a normal kid.’ … But you can’t do it later. The time is now.”
Mosey’s sophomore album, “Certified Hitmaker,” took him to the next level. Featuring Chris Brown and Gunna, the 2019 release yielded the rapper’s first hit single: “Blueberry Faygo.” After the song went viral on TikTok, Mosey inked a $4-million deal with Universal Music Publishing Group in May 2020; to date, “Blueberry Faygo” has amassed 1.4 billion streams on Spotify.
His ascent to stardom came to an abrupt halt in April 2021, when the state of Washington charged Mosey with second-degree rape. An affidavit filed in Lewis County Superior Court alleged that, in January 2020, Mosey had sex at a house party with a young woman who was too intoxicated to consent.
Interscope did not terminate Mosey’s contract but put its work with the rapper on pause until a verdict was reached.
Tyga, left, and Won-G in 2019.
(Johnny Nunez / Getty Images)
According to Thatcher, it was during the two-year trial that Mosey’s relationship with Bruny deepened. He had met Bruny through Sean Kingston, then best known for the 2007 hit “Beautiful Girls.”
According to press clippings he posted on social media, Won-G Bruny was born in Port-Au Prince, Haiti, and immigrated to the U.S. when he was 13. Bruny’s father, MacNeal Bruny, has said he was a high-ranking member of the Haitian army during the authoritarian regime of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier. After MacNeal noticed an advertisement for a company that would press compact discs for cheap, Bruny embarked on a music career, releasing his first independent rap album in 1995.
In 2001, he teamed up with an unlikely partner — Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, the son of the president of Equatorial Guinea, who was attempting to become a rap mogul. Mangue released Bruny’s third album on his newly launched TNO Entertainment.
But that album was unsuccessful, and TNO never released any music of note. When Bruny filed for bankruptcy for the first time, in 2002, he owed TNO $75,000 relating to a recording contract.
Bruny forged ahead. In 2004, he landed his first record deal with a major label: Sanctuary Urban, an imprint headed by Beyoncé’s dad, Mathew Knowles. That year, Bruny also teamed up with L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca to support a ballot initiative that proposed raising taxes to fund broader law enforcement. To help gather signatures for the initiative, Bruny said he planned to drive around the city with his “Haiti Boys Street Team” in 28 Ford Excursions with 27-inch wheels plastered with decals of him and Baca.
“Pictures belie personality,” Baca told the Los Angeles Daily News, which described Bruny as a “rapper with a $250,000 Elvis watch and penchant for fur coats and Rolls-Royces.” “He’s a faith-based hip-hop star. No vulgarity. No anti-public safety … There’s nothing in his work that’s bad boy.”
But Bruny had had at least one previous run-in with the law. In 1998, a judge in Pomona granted Bruny’s ex-girlfriend a one-year domestic violence restraining order. In court documents, the woman claimed that she and Bruny had been dating for two years and “during that time he demonstrated extreme physical violence by kicking, slapping, grabbing, bruising, spitting on my face and cutting my face.”
A year after his philanthropic efforts with the sheriff, Bruny began facing a string of lawsuits. There were four in 2005 alone, all alleging breach of contract. One case revolved around Bruny’s first role in a movie, an independent film called “Hack!” During production, the plaintiff — director Mike Wittlin — claimed that Bruny missed a day of shooting, leading the actor and the filmmaker to get into a heated verbal dispute. Following the argument, Bruny refused to return to set, according to the lawsuit. In his complaint, Wittlin said he then received an email from Bruny’s father, MacNeal, drafted “on behalf” of his son, which read: “I’m from a Royal family, little do you know. … I’m a self-made man and a self-made millionaire.”
When he was deposed in 2006, Bruny arrived wearing what Wittlin’s attorney described as a “large diamond ring” that Bruny said was owned by his father. “I just told you I don’t own anything,” Bruny said, according to the transcript. “I’m not a millionaire, I’m bankrupt.”
The court ultimately dismissed the case on the condition that Bruny pay $25,000 to the plaintiffs; according to a 2008 court judgment, he breached that settlement and was subsequently ordered to pay $108,236.25 in damages and fees. Wittlin told The Times he never received any of the money.
A clean-cut, God-fearing rapper. That was how Bruny represented himself to a pair of friends in their 70s.
Gita Hall, then 71, and Terry Moore, then 75, met for lunch nearly every day at Caffe Roma in 2004. They’d reminisce about the golden era of Hollywood: Hall, a onetime Miss Stockholm, had been photographed by Richard Avedon as a Revlon model and appeared in films like 1958’s “The Gun Runners”; Moore earned an Oscar nomination for her turn in 1952’s “Come Back, Little Sheba,” had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and dated Howard Hughes.
Grant Cramer, Moore’s son and a film producer, had an office a block away from his mother’s favorite restaurant in Beverly Hills. One day, she wandered in unannounced with Hall and about 10 Haitian men he’d never met.
“They all sat down and said, ‘We are hereby announcing that we are becoming hip-hop moguls,’” said Cramer. “‘We’re going to raise all this money and become his producers.’”
He was stunned. He was fairly certain the women had never heard a hip-hop song before. After Bruny and his entourage left the office, Cramer tried desperately to talk them out of their new plan.
“But they were dead set on it,” said Cramer. “I said, ‘You’re going to lose your money. You don’t know who these guys are.’ And they said, ‘Oh, yes, we do. They’re Christian.’ Bruny had shown them this video he made with Paris Hilton, told them it was the new hottest thing, that he needed money to release a new album and they were gonna make 10 times their money.’”
(Through her publicist, Hilton did not respond to a request for comment.)
Hall had just moved back to Los Angeles after decades in Manhattan following the death of her husband. She wasn’t wealthy but had enough money to sustain her lifestyle, said one of her daughters, Tracie May Wagner.
Wagner joined Hall and Bruny for dinner at Mr. Chow one evening in an attempt to suss out her mother’s unlikely new friend.
“He rolls in, in his Rolls-Royce, handshake handshake, I know everybody on the planet,” remembered Wagner, a former entertainment publicist who now lives in Vietnam. “On first impression, he was very kind and sweet and doting. He would open the door for you. He would pull out my mother’s chair. He’d have this look in his eye of adoration, like, ‘I’m such a fan of yours. I know you were such a movie star.’ He would just keep playing into her reliving her golden years in her heyday.”
Hall ultimately loaned Bruny $93,000 under a contract that promised she’d be repaid in six months. But the day she and Moore transferred their money to Bruny, “Won-G and the money disappeared,” Cramer said.
“No album, no nothing,” said Cramer, who did not know the sum Moore invested. “Money’s gone.”
Hall sued Bruny, making similar allegations. In 2007, a judge ordered the rapper to pay her $107,319.45 — a sum her attorney said the family was unlikely to ever collect.
“When it was time to seize assets, he had none,” said Hall’s daughter, Wagner. “The mansion in Beverly Hills, all the cars, the jewelry — it was all registered under someone else’s name.”
That same year, Bruny appeared on two episodes of the Orange County installment of Bravo’s “Real Housewives” franchise. In Season 2, cast member Jo De La Rosa decided she wanted to be a singer. She invited Bruny and another producer to her home to discuss the possibility of collaborating.
“Won-G is a rap artist, producer, super-talented, amazing person,” De La Rosa said in a voice-over as Bruny exited a white Rolls-Royce in her driveway. “He’s worked with some big names in the music industry.”
De La Rosa recorded a song with Bruny but soon abandoned her musical pursuits. Bruny also shifted in another direction, attempting to expand his brand from music to fashion.
Taking a page from wealthy rappers like Jay-Z, 50 Cent and Sean “Diddy” Combs, he created an extensive pitch deck for investors, explaining how he’d use his music career to leverage “ancillary revenue possibilities” with a clothing line called Sovage. His business documents said he had signed Philippe Naouri, one of the designers behind Antik Denim, to create his jeans. (Naouri did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)
Bruny’s deck also included collages of him with dozens of celebrities — Kanye West, Bill Maher, Fergie — as well as images of him taken by paparazzi. His pitch said his forthcoming album would feature “exciting collaborations” with artists like Snoop Dogg, Alicia Keys and Timbaland, none of which ever came to fruition.
In 2001, Garry Heath, a technology executive, loaned Bruny $170,000. When he reached out to Bruny for repayment, Heath said the rapper warned him to stop “harassing” him because his father was “connected in Haiti. My family could really do damage to you if you don’t watch out.” One day, Heath said, Bruny’s father and brother turned up at his home in Orange County trying “to bury some voodoo thing in my yard that was gonna ‘protect me’ from losing my money or something … they wanted me to pay them, or else it was going to turn into a curse.”
In 2016, Heath finally decided to take Bruny to court. After a process server was unable to track him down to deliver legal documents for nearly two years, Heath said, a judge ultimately decided that posting the lawsuit on Bruny’s active Facebook page constituted service.
Bruny evaded service and court proceedings so many times that at least seven plaintiffs, including Heath, received default judgments in their favor in advance of any trials.
When she was fighting to recoup her late mother’s money, Wagner often relied on her connections with colleagues in the publicity industry to find out what events Bruny might attend. Then she’d show up to confront him. But after a few years without any movement in court, she backed off. “I knew it was never going to amount to anything, and I started having fear,” she said.
In December 2019, Bruny filed for personal bankruptcy and non-individual bankruptcy on behalf of his company, Real Sovage, claiming $9.9 million in debt liabilities. In his bankruptcy documents, Bruny said his personal assets amounted to just $10,700, about half of which consisted of “real & costume jewelry.”
“Debtor is currently living with friends until he is back up on his feet,” said the paperwork. “He hopes to be able to move into his own home within the next 6 months.”
On Instagram, Bruny had been depicting a very different image. Earlier that year, he posted a photo featuring himself, the rapper Tyga (his first major management client) and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. “I’m so happy to be your friend and to study and learn your method to success,” the caption of the February 2019 photo read. (A source close to Bezos said the billionaire doesn’t know Bruny and has never interacted with him beyond posing for the photograph.)
“He had the audacity to come to court in a T-shirt and flip-flops, looking like he was in poverty just a few days after posting pictures of himself driving a Rolls-Royce car and wearing a Rolex watch.”
— Garry Heath, a creditor who faced Won-G Bruny in bankruptcy court
In October, Bruny’s dad shared an image on Facebook of a Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon — which retails for over $100,000 — describing it as “A VERY EXPENSIVE & PRECIOUS GIFT FROM WON-G AND HIS PARTNER TO SHOW ME THEIR APPRECIATION”.
Angered by the lifestyle he saw online, Heath — whom Bruny had yet to pay a $229,984 judgment — unsuccessfully attempted to get his money back in court.
“He had the audacity to come to court in a T-shirt and flip-flops, looking like he was in poverty just a few days after posting pictures of himself driving a Rolls-Royce car and wearing a Rolex watch,” said Heath, who presented images from Bruny’s Instagram page to the court. “He said the car was borrowed from a friend and the gold chains and watch were fakes.”
After a bankruptcy is filed, creditors can meet a trustee to ask questions about the finances of the debtor. In California, creditors then have 60 days to file a complaint like Heath did, objecting to the discharging of a specific debt. It is unclear if any of the 25 other creditors listed in Bruny’s personal filing took this step — but legal experts say such paperwork often falls through the cracks.
“Bankruptcy is premised on all the creditors receiving notice of the bankruptcy case and either taking action or not. But people don’t read their mail,” said Evan Borges, the attorney who represented “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Erika Girardi in the bankruptcy proceedings against her estranged husband, disbarred lawyer Tom Girardi. “It’s a hard-and-fast deadline to file a complaint, and if people miss it, they’re screwed.”
Without such complaints, it falls on the trustee appointed by the Justice Department to monitor Chapter 7 cases for potential fraud. “But they drop the ball all the time,” said Borges. “They’re there as watchdogs to safeguard the integrity of the system, and they’re supposed to refer people who have abused the bankruptcy system to the United States attorney for criminal prosecution. But they’re extremely overworked and can barely keep up.”
Even as he filed bankruptcy, Bruny was entering a business relationship with Tyga, a Grammy-nominated artist whose hit “Rack City” was then quadruple platinum. In his subsequent press materials, Bruny took credit for orchestrating “a huge comeback” for Tyga, whose music had become less popular than his relationship with Kylie Jenner.
But Bruny and Tyga parted acrimoniously. In April 2022, Bruny sued Tyga, alleging breach of contract and promissory fraud, saying he was owed $800,000 for his work on behalf of the rapper. A few months later, Bruny’s lawyer requested the case be dismissed. (Tyga did not respond to a request for comment sent to his publicist.)
By then, Bruny had moved on with Kingston, another partnership that would crash and burn.
“He promised us the world. He promised my son, ‘If you sign the papers, I have a $3-million deal,’” Janice Turner, Kingston’s mother, said in an interview.
During the year Kingston and Bruny worked together, Turner said, Bruny received 20% of everything Kingston made off his prior hits, but they were not satisfied with the partnership. Turner said she kicked Bruny out of the house he was sharing with her and Kingston and fired him. “I told him, ‘You’re a failed artist trying to live through other people,’” she said. “He was upset with me. He said that’s why God doesn’t like me.”
(In March, in a case unrelated to Bruny, a Florida jury found Turner and Kingston guilty of wire fraud for failing to pay for more than $1 million in luxury goods. Turner and Kingston await sentencing in July.)
As Bruny’s relationship with Kingston soured, he was strengthening his bond with Lil Mosey.
They began sharing a Redondo Beach rental — “I have a mansion in Beverly Hills, but it’s cooler here for the summer,” Bruny claimed, according to Mosey’s mom Thatcher. By the fall, Bruny had floated his first business proposition to Mosey: investing $50,000 in a four-unit apartment building being built by a company called Harmony Real Estate Developments.
“See when Justin [Bieber] gave Scooter [Braun] his trust they went to billions,” Bruny texted Mosey in February 2023, when he sent through more details about the project. “This is how I want to be for you as being seen together as business partners will take us to a whole new level.”
But Mosey’s team advised him against pursuing the opportunity. His funds were dwindling as he continued to fight the rape charge. As a jury prepared to deliver its verdict, Bruny urged Mosey to partake in a rum-bath ritual, according to two sources close to the situation. In the voodoo religion, rum baths are used “for good luck or to take off something bad,” said Elizabeth McAlister, a Wesleyan University professor whose research centers on Afro-Carribbean religions like Haitian voodoo.
On March 2, 2023, Mosey was acquitted.
“It’s been tough, mentally,” the rapper admitted to Billboard in an interview a month later. “It sucks to have something like that be attached to my name, knowing I didn’t do it, and the whole world can see that. … I feel like my last two years kind of been a sickness.”
While facing bills from the trial and the interruption of his music career, Mosey’s bank account had dwindled from millions down to a couple hundred thousand dollars — and he owed more than that in legal bills, according to a former business associate who requested anonymity because he still works in the music industry. Mosey’s team worked out a payment plan with Mosey’s attorney and jumped into action, setting up a nationwide college tour to bring in immediate revenue.
But Mosey wasn’t interested in doing the shows.
“Suddenly this tour that had been put in place wasn’t enough money, and he kept saying he deserved more,” his mother said.
Then Mosey began requesting his financial documents from his accounting team — materials he had never before asked to view. The team obliged. Gathering nearly 70,000 pages of bank statements, royalty metrics and tax returns, members of Mosey’s team, his mother and Marshall, met in L.A.
At the Glendale rental where Mosey was staying, Thatcher said, the team presented a new business strategy, suggesting new profit avenues like a beverage company or a lifestyle brand. But Mosey felt like he was being ambushed, his mother said.
Before she left, Thatcher made a final plea: “Please promise me you won’t sign a contract with Won-G,” she said. “Think about it. Talk to other people. You don’t have to sign a contract with him yet.”
Thatcher did not manage her son’s career, though she was a signer on his bank account when he was a minor. In recent years, he sent her around $4,000 a month to cover her rent in Washington, according to Mosey’s former business associate. Sometimes, Thatcher said, she would offer Mosey financial advice — “I think you’re spending too much. I know it feels like a lot of money right now, but this is not gonna last you forever” — but he disregarded it. She was also wary of becoming “that mom that took money from my son,” so she kept her job in the education sector.
Before her death, she’d started work on a trilogy of children’s books with an L.A.-based husband-and-wife writing team, Maya Sloan and Thomas Warming. The couple became some of the only people she confided to about Mosey.
“I felt terrible for Angela, because I saw her desperation and anguish when she’d come to L.A. in the hopes of just having a brief moment with her son,” said Warming. “She would keep motel rooms and wait for him to call or sit in cars outside his house to try to talk to him. That’s how difficult it had become.”
Sloan began helping Thatcher research Bruny and connected her with a private investigator. When the PI report confirmed Thatcher’s fears, she pressed Mosey for an in-person meeting. According to Thatcher, Mosey went home and read through the background documents. A half an hour later, he called, saying “I don’t know what to do. I’m really confused.’”
“I said, ‘Well, I know you’ve signed a contract with him. But if you really want, there’s always a way out. And I’m here for you,’” Thatcher said.
That night, he left the home he shared with Bruny and stayed in a hotel. Still uneasy, he flew back to Seattle to visit his family in Washington. But by the end of the trip, any concerns he’d had about Bruny had seemingly vanished. He returned to L.A., and they continued working together.
Mosey had given his mother something that would provide her with insight into his relationship with Bruny: His old phone, which was still logged into Mosey’s account. She had access to his text messages.
She began scrolling through her son’s interactions with Bruny. In August 2023, she saw herself mentioned: Mosey was urging him to stop mentioning voodoo in conversation with his mother.
“you gotta stop saying your the reason i beat the case bro cuz even if ogu is the reason i beat it anybody that does not know what voodoo is will not believe you and it makes you look bad for trying to take credit,” Mosey said in a text message. “not saying that you and ogu did not help i’m just saying it makes you look bad cuz most people will not believe you.”
But in the days that followed, Bruny mentioned Ogu, a warrior god, numerous times as the battle with Interscope ramped up.
“papa ogu never loses or fails. … I have won battles taken Artist out of many situations that are legal contractual,” Bruny texted his client. “You have to be a killer, I’m like trump. … You have 24 hours to give me a answer or I will drop a bomb on you.”
“my Power is ordained by God, No one will understand the angels that walk with me … My father & Ogu walk with us, interscope are fools”
— A 2023 text from Bruny to Mosey
After Bruny sent his Aug. 22 email to Interscope executives demanding Mosey be let out of his contract, text messages revealed he continued to press other members of the rapper’s team. Two days later, he messaged Marshall, Mosey’s prior manager, demanding him to aid in the situation with the record label.
“I now have everybody’s home address and will pop up to their home at 1 AM in the morning and start waking them up by knocking on your door,” Bruny wrote to Marshall in a text reviewed by The Times. “We are very smart it is not a threat. It is not a violent act in America. You’re allowed to walk up to anybody you want and have a discussion with them.” (Marshall did not respond to interview requests for this story.)
In the end, Interscope agreed to let Mosey out of his contract with the stipulation that the company would continue to collect around 2% of his future earnings, according to the former business associate.
“my Power is ordained by God, No one will understand the angels that walk with me,” Bruny texted Mosey after the deal was executed. “My father & Ogu walk with us, interscope are fools … What interscope feared happened., you finding me was the blow. God, Ogu destroyed all of them, including that lying bitch in court.”
Thatcher was so worried about her son that she consulted Rick Ross, a cult intervention specialist whom she and Sloan had seen pop up in a few true crime documentaries. While she considered hiring Ross, she continued to strategize with Sloan. Last August, they approached the FBI about Bruny, then met with the director of the Bureau of Fraud & Corruption Prosecutions in the Los Angeles district attorney’s office.
A source close to the D.A.’s office confirmed a meeting with Thatcher and Sloan took place but said no investigation into Bruny was pending. Laura Eimiller, the FBI’s media coordinator, said the bureau does not confirm or deny information provided to the organization unless it results in a court charge.
Two months later, Thatcher died.
Sloan, who spoke to her the night before her death, said she was slurring her words because her “tongue wasn’t working right.” Thatcher told her friend that a doctor told her she’d be OK and that she just needed to take the antibiotics she’d been prescribed.
“Her spirit was broken,” Sloan said. “She was afraid that her son was … going to lose everything he’d worked so hard for. That he wasn’t going to ever be able to do a real album again.”
In February 2024, Mosey officially went independent, signing a global distribution partnership with Cinq Music. “As a manager, it is rare to have a young artist that is truly gifted in creating hit records and is equally an amazing human being,” Bruny said in the press release announcing the news. Since then, Lil Mosey has released an EP and a few singles but none have brought him close to the commercial success of “Blueberry Faygo.” This summer, he has 10 North American concert dates lined up at venues that can hold between 450 and 1,500 people; tickets start at $31.
In one of Mosey’s recent Instagram posts, he starts out standing in front of a Rolls-Royce on that palm-tree-lined street in Beverly Hills that all influencers flock to. The April photo shoot continues: He’s flipping the bird. He’s holding a huge bag from Louis Vuitton.
But scroll down just three posts, and the tone shifts. He’s on the ground, seated next to a pay phone. “miss u mom this one’s for u,” say the words below the picture. It’s from November 2024 — just weeks after his mother’s passing — an announcement for his new single, “Call.” He wrote the song for Thatcher, its lyrics lamenting how he’d “give everything” to hear her voice again. Between his rap verses, there’s an interlude where he samples voicemail messages he’s saved from her.
“Hey, it’s me, your mom,” she says gently, barely audible. “Just checking in, hope everything’s good. Stay safe, be strong, love you. You know I’m here for you, always. Reach out anytime. ”
Times librarian Cary Schneider contributed to this report.
Edison International officers and directors misled the company’s investors about the effectiveness of its efforts to reduce the risk of wildfire in the months and years before the devastating Eaton fire, a shareholder lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, points to repeated statements that the utility made in federal regulatory reports that said it had reduced the risk of a catastrophic wildfire by more than 85% since 2018 by increasing equipment inspections, tree trimming and other work aimed at stopping fires.
The complaint also raises doubts about news releases and other statements that Edison made soon after the start of Eaton fire, which killed 18 people and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses in Altadena.
“We take all legal matters seriously,” said Jeff Monford, a spokesman for Edison. “We will review this lawsuit and respond through the appropriate legal channels.”
The lawsuit claims that Edison’s early statements on the Eaton fire — in which it detailed why it believed its equipment was not involved in the fire’s start — were wrong.
“Edison obfuscated the truth by making false and misleading statements concerning its role in the fire,” the lawsuit claims.
More recently, Pedro Pizarro, the chief executive of Edison International, said the leading theory for the fire’s start was the reenergization of an unused, decades-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon.
The investigation by state and local fire investigators into the official cause of the deadly fire is continuing.
The lawsuit was filed as a derivative action in which shareholders sue a company’s officers and directors on behalf of the company, claiming they had breached their fiduciary duties. It seeks financial damages from Pizarro, Chief Financial Officer Maria Rigatti and members of the company’s board of directors. Money recovered would go to the company.
It also directs Edison “to take all necessary actions” to reform its corporate governance procedures, comply with all laws and protect the company and its investors “from a recurrence of the damaging events.”
The lawsuit was brought by Charlotte Bark, a shareholder of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison.
“Prior to the outbreak of the Eaton Fire, the Company had a long history of not prioritizing the safety of those who lived in the areas it serviced, and paying fines as a result,” the lawsuit states. Since 2000, it says, Edison has paid financial penalties of $1.3 billion for violating utility safety regulations.
The complaint points to an October regulatory report that was the focus of a Times report. In the article, state regulators criticized some of Edison’s wildfire mitigation efforts, including for falling behind in inspecting transmission lines in areas at high risk of fires.
The lawsuit lists the major destructive wildfires that investigators said were sparked by Edison’s equipment in recent years, including the Bobcat and Silverado fires in 2020, as well as the Coastal and Fairview fires in 2022.
“The recurring wildfire incidents connected to the Company display that the Board has repeatedly failed to mitigate a risk that materially threatens Edison,” the complaint states.
The lawsuit accuses Pizarro, Rigatti and the company’s board of directors of “gross mismanagement” and claims that the defendants “unjustly enriched” themselves.
“Because the Individual Defendants failed to carry out their respective duties, the compensation they received was excessive and undeserved,” the suit states.
It asks the court for an order that would require the officers and directors to pay restitution, including returning the compensation they received that was tied to how well the company performed.
A MAN and his company have been charged after a 27 tonne mountain of rotting rubbish was dumped in a road.
The mound of industrial waste, which is longer than two double-decker buses combined, was dumped by fly-tippers back in January.
6
The27 tonne mound of rubbish was fly-tipped on Watery Lane, LichfieldCredit: BPM
6
A man and a company have now been charged for dumping the wasteCredit: BPM
6
The pile is longer than two double-decker buses combinedCredit: PA
Furious locals complained about being trapped inside their homes by the humongous 80ft mountain of waste.
Local businesses were also been left stranded due to the blockage on Watery Lane in Lichfield,Staffordshire.
Now, Lichfield District Council said a man from Uttoxeter now faces multiple charges.
These include depositing waste, endangering road users, dangerous driving, breaching HGV drivers’ hours regulations, and obstructing the highway.
A company, based near Stafford, has been charged with depositing the waste and obstructing the highway.
Resident Elaine Hutchings, who owns a livery yard, previously said that the festering pile could be smelled from a distance.
She explained that the rural road – which was already inaccessible on one end due to ongoing works – was now completely unusable.
She said: “It’s industrial rubbish, building waste, you can smell it.
“Watery Lane is used as a cut-through. The one end was already shut due to scheduled works and this being dumped this morning means residents and businesses will be left isolated.”
She added that nine or ten households had been cut off – with a small number, including Elaine’s, able to escape their properties via an alternative route set up by housing developer Redrow.
The local told how staff from Lichfield District Council had been on-site to move the build-up, adding: “I had a message from a farmer and they sent me a photograph.
“I drove up and called the council, councillors and the police were already there.
“They are trying to sort the logistics of trying to get it moved.”
Both the man and company who have been charged are due to appear at Cannock Magistrates’ Court on July 1.
Councillor Doug Pullen, the leader of Lichfield District Council, said: “This was an appalling act of environmental crime.
“Local people woke up to find their only route to and from their homes completely blocked, and the cost to the taxpayer of removing and disposing of the waste was nearly £10,000.
“Thanks to the swift action of our environmental health officers, suspects were quickly identified, leading to these charges.
“We take a zero-tolerance approach to fly-tipping, because that’s what our communities rightly expect.
“This case is about more than prosecution. It’s about protecting our environment, supporting law-abiding businesses, safeguarding local people—and sending a strong message that illegal dumping will not be tolerated.”
CRIMINAL OFFENCE
FLY-TIPPING means dumping waste illegally, instead of using the kerbside collection service or your local recycling centre.
From a bin bag left in front of your bin store or on the street to a mountain of tyres abandoned in a field, it’s all flytipping.
Flytipping is a criminal offence. If you’re caught you face a fixed penalty notice of £200.
But if you get taken to court, you could be fined up to £40,000 or sent to prison for a maximum of five years.
It’s up to you to store and dispose of your household waste legally, safely and responsibly.
This means using your bins correctly and taking them in again once emptied. Check your local Council website for the correct way to use your bins.
If you have any information relating to a flytipping incident you can report it anonymously on your local council website.
Credit: The Scottish Government / Glasgow City Council
6
The mound was 10ft highCredit: PA
6
Resident Elaine Hutchings said that the festering pile could be smelled from a distanceCredit: PA
6
Aerial shots reveal the full length of the moundCredit: PA
If you want to understand what’s going on in the streaming business, go find Elmo and Cookie Monster.
Netflix’s recent deal to stream the upcoming season of “Sesame Street” is, on its own, a major step in the entertainment giant’s effort to become a go-to destination for preschooler programming. At the same time, it’s a useful way to understand one of the media industry’s other big stories of the last week — Warner Bros. Discovery’s re-rebranding of its streaming service back to HBO Max.
First, the deal itself.
Los Gatos, Calif.-based Netflix will begin streaming the beloved children’s show’s upcoming 56th season, along with 90 hours of older episodes, later this year. New “Sesame Street” episodes will continue to air in the U.S. on PBS’ stations and digital platforms, the nonprofit Sesame Workshop’s longtime TV partner (which could use a win amid Congress’ efforts to defund public broadcasting). Episodes will premiere the same day on PBS and Netflix.
The new season will be released in three batches, and will include some format changes and the return of popular segments such as “Elmo’s World” and “Cookie Monster’s Foodie Truck.” Episodes will now be built around one 11-minute story, reflecting the shorter attention spans of younger viewers. The partnership includes a new animated segment, “Tales from 123.” Additionally, Netflix will be able to develop “Sesame Street” video games.
Netflix is welcoming “Sesame Street” to its block after HBO parent company Warner Bros. Discovery opted not to re-up its deal for new episodes, citing a shift in corporate priorities during a period of harsh cost-cutting.
HBO — and by extension, the streaming service known until recently as Max — had been the home of “Sesame Street” for years. The company then called Time Warner inked its deal with Sesame Workshop a decade ago, before AT&T or David Zaslav and his Discovery empire entered the picture.
Having Big Bird appear on the exclusive and adult-skewing “Game of Thrones” network never made much sense, but the deal was a lifeline for Sesame Workshop and kept the show alive, though it raised concerns among parent groups.
After AT&T took over, WarnerMedia launched HBO Max, a much reviled rebranding that was meant to make room for more populist content, including “Friends” and “The Big Bang Theory.” It also allowed for more kids’ programming, such as shows from Cartoon Network and Hanna-Barbera, along with “Sesame Street.”
Then came Zaslav, who stripped HBO from the streamer’s name entirely, leaving it as just Max. Part of the justification of the change was that the name HBO, while well known and respected among fancy people in New York and L.A., was a turnoff for Middle America and those who might otherwise sign up to binge-watch “Dr. Pimple Popper” and Guy Fieri.
The executives were also convinced that the HBO brand, known for “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City,” was a deterrent for parents.
This was the era when streaming services were trying to be everything to everyone, and were losing billions of dollars trying to catch up to Netflix. Few companies other than Walt Disney Co. and HBO had distinct brands that made sense to people outside corporate conference rooms.
The decision to excise the HBO moniker was widely derided at the time as flawed managerial thinking.
Larry Vincent, a professor at USC Marshall School of Business and former UTA chief branding officer, called it a “classic case of right question, wrong answer” that will go down alongside New Coke in the annals of marketing blunders.
The name HBO has historically stood for quality, to the point that when people try to describe Apple TV+’s boutique streaming strategy, they compare it to early HBO. Last week, in an effective mea culpa during the media business’ big upfront week of presentations for advertisers, the company said the service would be called HBO Max again.
“It just violated everything we know about how you build a premium brand,” Vincent said of the earlier rebrand. “HBO has been at this for 50 years. It connotes a certain level of quality…. What we see now is that this is a reset to going back to the default position, because they realized this was silly.”
The backpedaling move drew howls from social media, journalists and rivals. Even Max’s own X account joined in on the fun. Warner Bros. Discovery executives were bracing for whatever John Oliver would say Sunday night during his show, and the comedian — never shy about bashing his own bosses — did not disappoint.
The decision was an admission of a couple things: First, that trying to be an “everything store” for entertainment was foolhardy when Netflix and Amazon both serve that exact purpose; and second, that it was a mistake to shy away from the brand that makes the streaming offering special.
Casey Bloys, chairman of HBO and Max content, said in a statement that returning to the old name “clearly states our implicit promise to deliver content that is recognized as unique and, to steal a line we always said at HBO, worth paying for.”
As my colleague Stephen Battaglio recently pointed out, when media companies put out new streaming services these days, there’s a tendency to avoid the now-cliche plus sign and stick with the brand name consumers already understand.
For example, Disney’s new $30 a month ESPN flagship service is simply called ESPN (ESPN+ is already taken by a more limited service).
Under Bloys, HBO has continued its tradition of highly regarded original series, with recent examples including the latest seasons of “The White Lotus,” “The Last of Us” and “The Righteous Gemstones.”
The brand confusion is still real, though. I’ve spoken with agents and read publications that should know better that mistakenly think “Hacks” and “The Pitt” are HBO shows, when they’re actually Max originals. That may not be important to consumers, but within the industry and for artists, it matters.
As for preschool-focused programming such as “Sesame Street,” that’s no longer a priority for Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming strategy. The company has said it now wants to focus on “stories for adults and families.”
People who want shows for their toddlers can find them almost anywhere, including for free on YouTube. Disney+, of course, has troves of kids content, including Australia’s acclaimed and much-watched “Bluey.”
And, increasingly, kids are tuning into Netflix, which is now the land of “Ms. Rachel,” “CoComelon” and “Blippi,” all of which rose to popularity on YouTube. Kids and family programming now accounts for 15% of the platform’s viewership, according to the company. Netflix also has “Peppa Pig” and “Hot Wheels Let’s Race.”
Suffice to say, if you want or need to turn your little ones into couch zombies for a while, Netflix has an increasingly crowded ZIP Code of shows for you.
Newsletter
You’re reading the Wide Shot
Ryan Faughnder delivers the latest news, analysis and insights on everything from streaming wars to production — and what it all means for the future.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
Stuff we wrote
Numbers of the week
Cable’s consolidation continues with Friday’s announcement that Charter and Cox will merge in a $34.5-billion deal, uniting Southern California’s two major cable TV and internet providers.
The Charter-Cox combination would have 38 million customer homes in the nation, a larger footprint than longtime cable leader Comcast.
Of the many interesting aspects of the deal, this one is particularly relevant to Los Angeles residents — if approved by Charter shareholders and regulators, the merger would end one of the longest TV sports blackouts, my colleague Meg James reports.
Cox customers in Rancho Palos Verdes, Rolling Hills Estates and Orange County would finally have the Dodgers’ TV channel available in their lineups. For more than a decade, Cox has refused to carry SportsNet LA because of its high cost.
New Line Cinema’s horror franchise revival “Final Destination: Bloodlines” won the weekend box office with $51 million in the U.S. and Canada (more than $100 million globally), exceeding pre-release analyst estimates.
The horror genre’s power to draw moviegoers is undeniable. The marketing was clever (complete with morbid 3D billboards), and this series has built-in nostalgic value. The new grisly supernatural teen movie comes 14 years after the previous one, “Final Destination 5.” The audience response has been generally positive.
With a reported production budget of $50 million, this was a no-brainer, and another win for Warner Bros. chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy coming after “Minecraft” and “Sinners.” All eyes are now on James Gunn’s “Superman,” coming in July.
Finally …
Listen: “Chaise Longue” rock band Wet Leg has new music on the way. Here’s a preview.
The state law that shielded Southern California Edison and other utilities from liability for wildfires sparked by their equipment came with a catch: Top utility executives would be forced to take a pay cut if their company’s safety record declined.
Edison’s safety record did decline last year. The number of fires sparked by its equipment soared to 178, from 90 the year before and 39% above the five-year average.
Serious injuries suffered by employees jumped by 56% over the average. Five contractors working on its electric system died.
As a result of that performance, the utility’s parent company, Edison International, cut executive bonuses awarded for the 2024 year, it told California regulators in an April 1 report.
For Edison International employees, planned executive cash bonuses were cut by 5%, and executives at Southern California Edison saw their bonuses shrink by 3%, said Sergey Trakhtenberg, a compensation specialist for the company.
But cash bonuses for four of Edison’s top five executives actually rose last year, by as much as 17%, according to a separate March report by Edison to federal regulators. Their long-term bonuses of stock and options, which are far more valuable and not tied to safety, also rose.
Of the top five executives, only Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, saw his cash bonus decline. He received a cash bonus of 128% of his salary rather than the planned 135% because of the safety failures, the company said, for total compensation including salary of $13.8 million.
The cash bonuses increased for the other top four executives despite the safety-related deductions because of how they performed on other responsibilities, said Trakhtenberg, Edison’s director of total rewards. He said bonuses would have been higher were it not for safety-related reductions.
“Compensation is structured to promote safety,” Trakhtenberg said, calling it “the main focus of the company.”
Consumer advocates say the fact that bonuses increased in spite of the decline in safety highlights a flaw in AB 1054, the 2019 law that reduced the liability of for-profit utility companies like Edison for damaging wildfires ignited by their equipment.
AB 1054 created a wildfire fund to pay for fire damages in an effort to ensure that utilities wouldn’t be rendered insolvent by having to bear billions of dollars in damage costs.
In return, the legislation said executive bonus plans for utilities should be “structured to promote safety as a priority and to ensure public safety and utility financial stability.”
“All these supposed accountability measures that were put into the bill are turning out to be toothless,” said Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, a consumer advocacy group in San Francisco.
“If executives aren’t feeling a significant reduction in salary when there is a significant increase in wildfire safety incidents,” Toney said, “then the incentive is gone.”
One of the executives who received an increased cash bonus was Adam Umanoff, Edison’s general counsel.
Umanoff was expected to get 85% of his $706,000 salary, or $600,000, as a cash bonus as his target at the year’s beginning. The deduction for safety failures reduced that bonus, Trakhtenberg said. But Umanoff’s performance on other goals “was significantly above target” and thus increased his cash bonus to 101% of his salary,
So despite the safety failures, Umanoff received a cash bonus of $717,000, or 19% higher than he was expected to receive.
“If you can just make it up somewhere else,” Toney said, “the incentive is gone.”
The utility recently told its investors that AB 1054 will protect it from potential liabilities of billions of dollars if its equipment is found to have sparked the Eaton fire on Jan. 7, resulting in 18 deaths and the destruction of thousands of homes and commercial buildings.
The cause of the blaze, which videos captured igniting under one of Edison’s transmission towers, is still under investigation. Pizarro has said the reenergization of an idle transmission line is now a leading theory of what sparked the deadly fire.
The 2019 legislation was passed in a matter of weeks to bolster the financial health of the state’s for-profit electric companies after the Camp fire in Butte County, which was caused by a Pacific Gas & Electric transmission line.
The wildfire destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people, and the damages helped push PG&E into bankruptcy.
At the bill-signing ceremony, Gov. Gavin Newsom touted its language that said utilities could not access the money in a new state wildfire fund and cap their liabilities from a blaze caused by their equipment unless they tied executive compensation to their safety performance.
In April, Edison filed its mandatory annual safety performance metrics report with the Public Utilities Commission as it seeks approval to raise customer electric rates by more than 10% this year.
In the report, Edison said that because its safety record worsened in 2024 on certain key metrics, its executives took “a total deduction of 18 points” on a 100-point scale used in determining bonuses.
“Safety and compliance are foundational to SCE, and events such as employee fatalities or serious injuries to the public can result in meaningful deduction or full elimination” of executive incentive compensation, the company wrote.
Edison didn’t explain in the report what an 18-point deduction meant to executives in actual dollar terms, another point of frustration with consumer advocates trying to determine if executive compensation plans genuinely comply with AB 1054.
“Without seeing dollar figures, it is impossible to ascertain whether a utility’s incentive compensation plan is reasonable,” the Public Advocates Office at the state Public Utilities Commission wrote in a 2022 letter to wildfire safety regulators.
To try to determine how much the missed safety goals actually impacted the compensation of Edison executives last year, The Times looked at a separate federal securities report Edison filed for investors known as the proxy statement.
In that March report, Edison detailed how the majority of its compensation to executives is based on its profit and stock price appreciation, and not safety.
Safety helps determine about 50% of the cash bonuses paid to executives each year, the report said. But more valuable are the long-term incentive bonuses, which are paid in shares of stock and stock options and are based on earnings.
The Utility Reform Network, which is also known as TURN, pointed to those stock bonuses in a 2021 letter to regulators where it questioned whether Edison and the state’s other two big for-profit utilities were actually tying executive compensation to safety.
“Good financial performance does not necessarily mean that the utility prioritizes safety,” TURN staff wrote in the letter.
Trakhtenberg disagreed, saying the company’s “long-term incentives are focused on promoting financial stability.” A key part of that is the company’s ability “over the long term to safely deliver reliable, affordable power,” he said.
Trakhtenberg noted that the state Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety had approved the company’s executive compensation plan in October, saying it met the requirements of AB 1054, as well as every year since the agency was established in July 2021.
The Times asked the energy safety office if it audited the utilities’ compensation reports or tried to determine how much money Edison executives lost because of the safety failures.
Sandy Cooney, a spokesman for the agency, said that the office had “no statutory authority … to audit executive compensation structures.” He referred the reporter to Edison for information on how much executive compensation had actually declined in dollar amounts because of the missed safety goals.
A committee of Edison board members determines what goals will be tied to safety, Trakhtenberg said, and whether those goals have been met.
Even though five contractors died last year while working on Edison’s electrical system, the committee didn’t include contractor safety as a goal, according to the company’s documents.
And the committee said the company met its goal in protecting the public even though three people died from its equipment and there was a 27% increase in deaths and serious injuries among the public compared to the five-year average.
Trakhtenberg said most of the serious injuries happened to people committing theft or vandalism, which is why the committee said the goal had been met.
Edison has told regulators that if its equipment starts a catastrophic wildfire, the committee could decide to eliminate executives’ cash bonuses.
But the company’s documents show that it hasn’t eliminated or even reduced bonuses for the 2022 Fairview fire in Riverside County, which killed two people, destroyed 22 homes and burned 28,000 acres.
In 2023, investigators blamed Edison’s equipment for igniting the fire, saying one of its conductors came in contact with a telecommunications cable, creating sparks that fell into vegetation.
Trakhtenberg said the board’s compensation committee reviewed the circumstances of the fire that year and found that the company had acted “prudently” in maintaining its equipment. The committee decided not to reduce executive bonuses for the fire, he said.
In March, the Public Utilities Commission fined Edison $2.2 million for the fire, saying it had violated four safety regulations, including by failing to cooperate with investigators.
Trakhtenberg said the compensation committee would reconsider its decision not to penalize executives for the deadly fire at its next meeting.
TURN has repeatedly asked regulators not to approve Edison’s compensation plans, detailing how its committee has “undue discretion” in setting goals and then determining whether they have been met.
But the energy safety office has approved the plans anyway. Toney said he believes the responsibility for reviewing the compensation plans and utilities’ wildfire safety should be transferred back to the Public Utilities Commission, which had done the work until 2021.
The energy safety office has rules that make the review process less transparent than it is at the commission, he said.
“The whole process, we feel is rigged heavily in favor of utilities,” he said.
Epic Games on Friday said that its popular game “Fortnite” will be offline on Apple devices because the iPhone maker blocked its recent app update.
The dispute comes just weeks after Epic Games and other app developers cheered a judge’s ruling that limited the commissions that Apple makes through third party apps distributed through its app store.
Apple received a scathing rebuke from U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who sided with Epic Games, which alleged that the Cupertino, Calif., tech giant ran afoul of an order she issued in 2021 after finding the company engaged in anticompetitive behavior.
Under the ruling, Apple can’t collect commissions on purchases U.S. customers make through links inside iPhone apps that direct them to outside websites. Developers, which make money by selling digital goods and services via their apps and games, want to avoid giving Apple a cut of their revenue by sending customers to other websites.
“That [Apple] thought this court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation,” the judge wrote in her ruling.
Many developers applauded the court’s ruling, which limits what they call the Apple tax, and said they would pass on the savings to customers.
Epic Games’ Chief Executive Tim Sweeney earlier this month said “Fornite” would return to the App Store in the U.S. and possibly worldwide if Apple extends “the court’s friction free, Apple tax-free framework” globally. But on Friday, the “Fortnite” X account said that Apple blocked its submission.
“Now, sadly, Fortnite on iOS will be offline worldwide until Apple unblocks it,” the account posted. Epic Games did not return requests for further comment.
Apple said on Friday that it asked that “Epic Sweden resubmit the app update without including the U.S. storefront of the App Store so as not to impact Fortnite in other geographies.”
“We did not take any action to remove the live version of Fortnite from alternative distribution marketplaces,” Apple said in a statement.
Rob Enderle, principal analyst with advisory services firm Enderle Group, said the recent ruling applies to the U.S. and Apple wants to retain the rest of its control worldwide. Apple makes significant money through apps.
“Apple is using their monopoly strength to prevent ‘Fortnite’ from benefiting globally from their core win,” Enderle said.
Epic Games filed its lawsuit against Apple in 2020. “Fornite” generates revenue by letting people buy digital goods, such as “skins,” in the game, and Epic wanted to let users buy items outside the Apple system to avoid the company’s commission.
The court ordered Apple to let app developers put links in its apps so customers could make outside purchases and bypass the company’s commission fee. Apple, however, defied the order, the court said.
Apple limited the ways that developers could communicate with its customers about out-of-app purchases and used wording that discouraged users from clicking on those links, the judge wrote. Apple would charge a commission fee for any goods or services purchased within seven days of a consumer clicking on a link that took them out of the app, the ruling said.
Apple is appealing the ruling and has said it strongly disagreed with the judge’s decision.
The TV industry and buyers of commercial time were able to breathe a little easier going to their annual week of presentations known as the upfronts.
Not long before the curtain went up Monday at Radio City Music Hall for NBCUniversal’s event, President Trump announced he would hold off on tariffs on China, easing some of the economic uncertainty going into the selling season for television networks.
But the messaging from media executives throughout the week acknowledged that advertisers will be under pressure to get more from their marketing dollars. Between performances by Lizzo, Lady Gaga and the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, ad buyers heard about the new artificial intelligence-powered tools for targeting specific audiences.
While traditional TV still commands the bulk of U.S. advertising spending, advertisers’ increasing comfort with streaming was apparent.
Seven years ago, YouTube executives had to reassure sponsors that the company would work harder to keep their ads from running in user-created videos that pushed conspiracy theories or hate speech.
But at the Google-owned platform‘s gathering at Lincoln Center on Wednesday, the audience saw a glowing testimonial video from Marc Pritchard, chief branding officer for Procter & Gamble, a company known for being meticulous about its marketing and media decisions.
Netflix and Amazon marched into the week buoyed by the growing number of streaming subscribers who see ads. Netflix said its service carrying commercials now reaches 90 million subscribers worldwide while Amazon’s Prime Video is now at 130 million in the U.S.
The week of parties and parade of celebrities offered a glimpse into the current state of the TV business. Here’s what stood out:
Live sports rule, especially the NFL
Walt Disney Co.’s TV lineup is packed with big-name talent. But the company kicked off its upfront with an opening number by an unlikely singing duo — former NFL quarterbacks Eli and Peyton Manning.
The audience at North Javits in Manhattan saw two more NFL stars, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley, before a single actor appeared on stage. It was a sign of the NFL’s vital importance to the company and the TV business writ large.
Disney — where not too long ago Chief Executive Bob Iger mused about spinning off ESPN — wasn’t alone in touting its commitment to the league.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell did a walk-on at the YouTube presentation to announce the platform’s first exclusive livestream of a league game, the Los Angeles Chargers season opener against the Chiefs in Brazil on Sept. 5.
Roger Goodell speaks onstage during Netflix’s Upfront 2025 on Wednesday in New York.
(Roy Rochlin / Getty Images for Netflix)
On the Netflix stage, Goodell was joined by Cowboys owner Jerry Jones to plug a documentary series on the franchise and announce this year’s two Christmas games that will be carried on the platform.
Jason and Travis Kelce promoted their Wondery podcast at Amazon’s show. Former tight end Rob Gronkowski showed up at two upfront presentations, one for Fox where he is part of the network’s NFL coverage and later at YouTube because, well, why not?
NFL games accounted for 95 out of the top 100 most-watched TV programs last year and is now setting records on streaming. Netflix had its most watched Christmas Day in history when 65 million U.S. viewers streamed some portion of its NFL double header. (Goodell wore a Santa Claus suit for his announcement of this year’s Netflix games).
For TV industry veterans, the emphasis on live sports was surprising. “Traditionally entertainment was the driver of the upfront,” Ben Silverman, co-CEO of production company Propagate, told CNBC.
Or as ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel put it during his annual Disney upfront roast: “This is all sports. What happened? We used to be so gay.”
But as the audience continues to be atomized by the growing number of streaming options, sports are more valuable than ever for advertisers who want to reach a mass audience.
Executives at Netflix, long on the leading edge of providing niche offerings to fit every consumer’s taste, now extol the virtues of the mass audience viewing experience now that it carries NFL games.
Live sports have become a lifeline to traditional TV, as most young viewers have turned to streaming for scripted series and movies. The trend was reflected in NBCUniversal’s presentation, which emphasized the arrival of the NBA on the network that will cost $2.5 billion a year.
“Tonight” host Jimmy Fallon may have summed it up best when he said, “Good morning, I’m glad to be at the NBA upfront — I mean NBC upfront.”
Planning for life after cable
Warner Bros. Discovery stunned the crowd at the Theater at Madison Square Garden with the announcement that its streaming service Max will once again be called HBO Max. The company stripped HBO from the name in 2023, believing the HBO brand name was too exclusive for the service’s ambitions to broaden its audience.
Dropping the prestigious HBO logo from the name of the service was a dubious decision from the start. But restoring it was a recognition of an undeniable fact: the future belongs to streaming, so why relegate a familiar and respected brand name to the waning cable box?
CNN and ESPN announced that their direct-to-consumer streaming services rolling out later this year will use the network names that have been familiar to cable viewers for more than four decades. The monikers will not carry a plus sign or any other designation that suggest the product differs from what’s on TV, and that’s by design.
Younger viewers may be forgoing cable subscriptions, but they know the CNN and ESPN brand names through their digital content. For those viewers, streaming isn’t an add-on, it is the way they watch TV
Movies are open for ad business, too
Not so long ago, seeing a movie star on stage at a network upfront presentation was a big deal.
But streaming has blurred the line by offering both series and original movies, and media companies are using that to their advantage when pitching to advertisers. The trend has given the platforms a bit more sizzle in their pitches.
Charlize Theron speaks onstage during Netflix’s upfront presentation Wednesday in New York.
(Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images for Netflix)
Arnold Schwarzenegger riffed at length about his upcoming Christmas film for Amazon, “The Man With the Bag.” The moment got added mileage when the former California governor’s “True Lies” co-star Jamie Lee Curtis joined him on stage.
Charlize Theron took the stage at the Perelman Performing Arts Center to plug her upcoming Netflix feature “Apex.”
NBCUniversal teased the sequel to “Wicked,” which will eventually run on its Peacock streaming service.
Warner Bros. Discovery touted its sponsor partnerships for the theatrical blockbuster “A Minecraft Movie” and brought out James Gunn and Peter Safran, keepers of DC Studios, to say there will be opportunities for the upcoming Superman movie and other projects.
SEOUL — In South Korea, the Trump administration’s 25% tariff on imported cars has sent local automakers Hyundai and Kia scrambling to protect one of the country’s most valuable exports. But General Motors, which last year shipped 418,782 units from its factories here to American consumers — or 88.5% of its total sales — may be facing a much larger predicament.
Unlike Hyundai and Kia, which control over 90% of the domestic market here, the Detroit-based automaker produces budget SUVs like the Chevrolet Trax or Chevrolet Trailblazer almost exclusively for the U.S. market. The Trax has been South Korea’s most-exported car since 2023.
That business model has made GM, which operates three factories and employs some 11,000 workers in the country, uniquely exposed to Trump’s auto tariffs, resurfacing long-running concerns in the local automobile industry that the company may ultimately pack up and leave.
Until last month’s tariffs, cars sold between the U.S. and South Korea were untaxed under a bilateral free trade agreement. That helped South Korea become the third-largest automobile exporter to the U.S. last year to the tune of $34.7 billion — or around half of its total automobile exports. In contrast, South Korea bought just $2.1 billion worth of cars from the U.S.
Earlier this month, GM executives estimated that the tariffs would cost the company up to $5 billion this year, adding that the company would boost production in its U.S. plants to offset the hit. With additional factories in Mexico and Canada, GM currently imports around half of the cars that it sells in the U.S.
“If the U.S. tariffs remain in place, GM will no longer have any reason to stay in South Korea,” said Lee Ho-guen, an automotive engineering professor at Daeduk University.
“The tariffs may add up to $10,000 to the sticker price on cars shipped to the U.S., while GM sells less than 50,000 units a year in South Korea. There is very little room for them to adjust their strategy.”
Kim Woong-heon, an official in GM Korea’s labor union, said that the union is approaching current rumors of the company’s potential exit with a dose of caution, but added that broader concerns about the company’s long-term commitment remain.
“The cars we’re manufacturing here are on the lowest end of GM’s price range so labor costs will make it impossible to immediately shift production to the U.S.,” he said.
“But we have painful memories of GM shutting down one of its factories in 2018, so we get nervous every time these rumors surface.”
GM Chevrolet automobiles bound for export sit parked at the Port of Incheon in South Korea.
(SeongJoon Cho / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
This isn’t the first time that GM’s prospects in the country have come under question. The company first established itself in South Korea in 2002 by acquiring the bankrupt Daewoo Motor Co. in a government-backed deal that some at the time criticized as “GM taking the cream off Daewoo for almost nothing.”
Struggling to compete with the likes of Hyundai, GM briefly positioned itself as a production base for European and Asian markets until its bankruptcy in 2009.
Amid the global restructuring efforts that followed, concerns that it would close its South Korean operations led the government to once again intervene. In the end, GM stayed after receiving $750 million in financing from the country’s development bank on the condition that it would remain open for at least 10 more years.
But in 2018, the company closed its factory in the city of Gunsan, which had employed around 1,800 workers, and spun off its research and development unit from its manufacturing base — a move that many saw as the company strategically placing one foot out the door.
In February, shortly after President Trump announced the 25% tariffs on foreign-made cars, Paul Jacobson, GM’s chief financial officer, hinted that the company may once again be facing similarly tough decisions:
“If they become permanent, then there’s a whole bunch of different things that you have to think about in terms of, where do you allocate plants, and do you move plants.”
In recent weeks, executives from GM Korea have sought to assuage the rumors that the company’s South Korean operations would be affected.
“We do not intend to respond to rumors about the company’s exit from Korea,” said Gustavo Colossi, GM Korea’s vice president of sales, at a news conference last month. “We plan to move forward with our sales strategies in Korea and continue launching new models in the coming weeks and months, introducing fresh GM offerings to the market.”
The union says the company’s two finished car plants have been running at full capacity, with an additional 21,000 units recently allocated to the factory in Incheon, a city off the country’s western coast — a sign that business will go on as usual for now.
But with GM’s 10-year guarantee set to expire in 2027, Kim, the union official, said that their demands for measures that prove the company’s commitment beyond that have gone unanswered.
These include manufacturing GM’s electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in South Korean factories, as well as making a greater range of its products available for sale in South Korea and other Asian markets.
”If the company intends to continue its operations here, it needs to make its business model more sustainable and not as reliant on imports to the U.S.,” Kim said.
“That will be our core demand at this year’s wage and collective bargaining negotiations.”
GM’s immediate prospects in the country will depend on the ongoing tariff talks between U.S. and South Korean officials that began last month with the goal of producing a deal by July 8.
Although South Korean trade minister Ahn Duk-geun has stressed that cars are “the most important part of the U.S.-South Korea trade relationship,” few expect that Seoul will be able to finesse the sort of deal given to the U.K., which last week secured a 10% rate on the first 100,000 vehicles shipped to the U.S. each year.
Unlike South Korea, which posted a $66-billion trade surplus with the U.S. last year, the U.K. buys more from the U.S. than it sells. And many of the cars that it does sell to the U.S. are luxury vehicles such as the Rolls-Royce, which Trump has differentiated from the “monster car companies” that make “millions of cars.”
“At some point after the next two years, I believe it’s highly likely GM will leave and keep only their research and development unit here, or at least significantly cut back on their production,” Lee, the automotive professor, said.
In the southeastern port city of Changwon, home to the smaller of GM’s two finished car plants, local officials have been reluctant to give air to what they describe as premature fearmongering.
But Woo Choon-ae, a 62-year-old real estate agent whose clients also include GM workers and their families, can’t help but worry.
She says that the company’s exit would be devastating to the city, which, like many rural areas, has already been under strain from population decline.
GM employs 2,800 workers in the region, but accounts for thousands more jobs at its suppliers. The Changwon factory, which manufactures the Trax, represented around 15% of the city’s total exports last year.
“People work for GM because it offers stable employment until retirement age. If they close the factory here, all of these workers will leave to find work in other cities, which will be a critical blow to the housing market,” she said.
“Homes are how people save money in South Korea. But if people’s savings are suddenly halved, who’s going to be spending money on things like dining out?”
Airbnb wants to do your hair, cook your dinner, massage your back and possibly photograph your honeymoon. All these services, and several more, are part of a new bid by the company to further expand beyond its roots as a lodging broker.
The company unveiled Airbnb Services — which includes 10 initial categories — while relaunching its experiences program and introducing a new app design at a media event in Los Angeles on Tuesday. Rather than heavily emphasizing lodging, the redesigned app more strongly integrates all of its offerings and encourages more interaction among guests and hosts.
This new approach opens new possibilities for the company and its customers, who could order services and experiences from home or on the road. But this step depends on a lot of behind-the-scenes work. The new services menu — which went live Tuesday with 10,500 offerings — will be offered in 260 cities, and Airbnb vows to protect consumers by carefully vetting those legions of service providers.
Airbnb, born in 2007, grew to challenge the hotel industry and became a giant in the world of hospitality. It first launched its Airbnb Experiences program in 2016, serving as a matchmaker between travelers and people offering their services as specialized tour guides and teachers. But that effort sputtered.
By 2022, many critics on Reddit and elsewhere were complaining that Airbnb experiences were unreliable, and industry website Skift reported that Airbnb had stopped adding new experiences and reduced emphasis on them on its homepage. With this relaunch, company representatives said, Airbnb is aiming to focus more narrowly on distinctive experiences that have been more closely vetted. The company also said it would include more experiences focused on meeting or spending time with celebrities.
To start, Airbnb would offer about 22,000 experiences in 650 cities in 22 categories. To announce the new moves, Airbnb co-founder and Chief Executive Brian Chesky convened hundreds of influencers, podcasters and media in a special-event space in Boyle Heights.
“What if you could Airbnb more than a place to stay?” Chesky asked the audience. “Today we are changing travel again.”
For instance, Chesky said, “Now you can book a professional chef to come right to your home.” The same goes for photographers, personal trainers, massage and spa treatments, hair-styling, makeup and nails. Moreover, “you don’t need to stay at an Airbnb to book these services. You can book them in your own city.”
Chesky said he expects to add thousands of more services over the course of 2025.
In the case of Airbnb Experiences, “we’ve learned a lot about how to make them better,” said Chesky, tacitly acknowledging the feature’s uneven history. As before, the goal is to give travelers an experience that reaches beyond the usual photo-op spots and bus-tour stops.
Stressing small groups, specific themes, Chesky said the new experiences will fall into five categories: history and culture; food and drink; nature and outdoors; art and design; and fitness and wellness. He encouraged anyone who is an expert in their city and has something to share to apply to be a host. Airbnb representatives said the vetting process, which can take up to two weeks, includes online scrutiny of a host’s work history, licensing, education and any awards — along with ongoing attention to guest reviews.
The renewed program also includes about 1,000 Airbnb Originals — adventures in the company of “the world’s most interesting people.” As examples, Chesky cited a mezcal-tasting session in Mexico City with an expert, a class with a ramen master in Tokyo, a dance with a K-pop performer in Seoul and a visit to Notre Dame with an architect who worked on the cathedral’s restoration.
Those offerings feature at least a few celebrity options, which include spending a Sunday with Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, “learning to throw the perfect spiral” or an anime-intensive encounter called “Become an Otaku Hottie with Megan Thee Stallion.” Airbnb said those initial celebrity experiences are free, offered as a promotion, with guests chosen from applicants.
