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After spending less than a year living in Southern California, quarterback Ford Green of Westlake High retains his distinct South Carolina accent, still answers questions with “yes sir” and “no sir,” and greets adults with a handshake that can be described as nothing less than crushing.

The first impression he makes is off the charts, which piques the curiosity of strangers wanting to learn more. It only gets better., with As on his report card, an arm that throws frozen ropes and a sports history that includes baseball and boxing, which means defensive linemen better think long and hard if they want to do something stupid.

As a freshman last season, Green guided Westlake to an 11-1 record with 2,195 yards passing and 31 touchdowns. It was his first time playing quarterback with the idea of “going all in.” During the spring, Ohio State was among the schools offering a scholarship despite his lack of football experience. The Buckeyes might be on to something.

The 2026 season could be the year the 6-foot-2 Green rises to a whole different level because of his expected improvement from workouts, practices and devoting total attention to where he wants to go.

Before last season, he said he played football for fun in South Carolina. He was a baseball player, with his focus on pitching. Then, in 2025, everything changed. He said he went “all in” on playing quarterback.

“I fell in love,” he said. “When I wake up, I think about football. When I’m eating, I think about football. When I’m at school, I think about football. I’m infatuated by the game. Not a second goes by where I don’t think something about football. It’s my life.”

Green is someone to pay close attention to this summer during passing tournaments and showcases. Call it the bandwagon effect that happens when one person after another comes to the same conclusion and recognition that someone is going to be very successful.

Twice a week, he goes on Zoom to receive training from a Canadian Football League quarterback. Other times, he works with a private quarterback coach. He already understands the intricacies of the position.

“There’s so many more factors in playing quarterback than just arm,” he said. “It all starts between the ears.”

As scrutiny heightens, attention grows and expectations increase, Green said he’ll follow a big lesson already learned.

“Take it day by day,” he said. “It’s never as good as it seems, it’s never as bad as it seems. Stay neutral and get better every day. I feel if I get better every day, I’ll be able to reach my goals and dreams.”

He said he was too busy with football this year to go out for Westlake’s baseball team, but in the spring of 2027, prepare for his high school pitching debut.

Green was part of an outstanding group of class of 2029 quarterbacks last fall, all of whom should be continuing their rise to prominence.

Seven-on-seven tournaments will be happening almost every weekend in June. Then, next month, prepare for one of the best on July 11 at Huntington Beach Edison, which brings out St. John Bosco, Santa Margarita and Mission Viejo, among others. The “offseason” has been shortened, with zero week scheduled for the weekend of Aug. 21-22. Programs are required to take a mandatory two-week summer break. Some take it in June, others in July. And then there’s the inevitable movement of players through transfers to change teams.

For Green, the 2026-27 school year is shaping up as his most pivotal season to show where he’s headed and what kind of talents he has in the classroom, on the football field and on the pitching mound.

Monitor the journey closely. Something tells me he won’t disappoint.

According to Abs Mechial, there is a specific minute every day in which holidays can be booked for cheaper on average – but you may need to set your alarm to take advantage of it

If you are yet to book a getaway this year and are wondering when the ideal moment might be to do so, a financial expert has identified precisely when you should – and shouldn’t – make your move. Abs Mechial turned to TikTok to reveal that not only are certain days preferable for booking, but specific times of day matter too.

“When is the worst time to book a holiday and when is it actually cheapest? he asked his followers in a video. Surprisingly, according to research, Abs claimed there is a one-hour window in each day when holidays can cost you significantly more money to book.” he asked his followers.

“According to the data, the most expensive time to book is between 9am and 10am,” he explained. “Bookings in that window came in around 30 per cent more than the cheapest time of the day – so no more booking holidays as soon as you log in for the day.”

As for the most economical time of day, Abs warned that you might need to set your alarm. “Early… and I mean really early,” he said. “Between 4am and 5am – and the logic does make sense.”

Abs highlighted that overnight, demand “drops off” and consequently prices “reset” to their baseline.

He elaborated: “Then as the day goes on, the more searches and more clicks result in prices starting to creep back up again.”

For those reluctant to wake up before sunrise, however, Abs provided guidance for anyone wanting to book during “more realistic hours”.

“Late evening, around 8pm to 10pm tends to be noticeably cheaper than the morning rush,” he enthused. “But if you want to go even further and want the exact moment – not just the hour, but the minute – according to the data, the single cheapest minute to book a holiday is 2:48am.”

Surprisingly, bookings made at that precise time worked out up to 60 per cent cheaper on average, according to Abs.

He concluded with a word of caution, however: “Now, definitely take that with a pinch of salt – booking at 2:48am isn’t going to make every holiday 60 per cent cheaper, but the pattern is clear – if you want to save money, avoid peak booking hours because timing, just like everything else with money, makes a massive difference.”

Responding in the comments, one TikTok user offered their own unverified tip: “Best to search in private browser so prices do not increase if you are searching for same destinations. Prices increase with demand so private searching will prevent this.”

A second person added: “I usually book mine within 72 hours of departure… like 50% cheaper! I find the hotels I want and then I wait for them to deal them off.”

A third exclaimed: “Wow that’s crazy how the time of day can cost you!”

While a fourth TikTok user pointed out: “Doesn’t change if you want a certain resort at a certain time of year.”

The Times’ results pages reveal how Californians voted for governor, U.S. House seats and in local city, school board and ballot measure races.

Every registered voter in the state receives a ballot by mail. Polls close at 8 p.m. on June 2, and mailed ballots need to be postmarked on or before that day. Winners may not be known on election night due to the high volume of mail-in ballots arriving after election day.

The vote counts on these pages update periodically as results are reported by the Associated Press and the L.A. County registrar. On election day, those results include in-person voting as well as any mail-in ballots already received. In the days and weeks following, votes will be reported approximately once a day, as they are processed by county registrars. Voters can track their own cast ballot here.

The Associated Press surveys the numbers posted by local election officials. The AP projects the winner for all statewide and federal races using vote returns and other data. A race may be called before all expected votes are in. Results can change as more ballots are counted.

These pages will update until the secretary of state certifies results on July 10.

Travel companies have been contacting people with holidays booked after change made

Jet2 passengers have been told that a key change is now ‘in force’ after some got in touch worried that an email they received could be a fake. Holiday travel companies have also been getting in touch with customers to tell them of the change.

Thousands of travellers have received emails notifying them that their holiday documents will be arriving later than originally expected. This has raised alarm bells among some customers who fear it could be a scam – particularly as Jet2 has recently been warning about numerous fake social media accounts being created in an attempt to defraud passengers.

Previously Jet2 sent all documents to travellers 28 days in advance of the break – however in 2026 this has changed with great uncertainty about the situation this summer with the Middle East conflict still not resolved. In a recent post on Facebook travel company Holiday Getaway said: “Just a quick update for customers travelling with Jet2. Holiday documents will now be available 14 days before departure to ensure you have the most up-to-date information for your trip. No action needed. Online check-in is still available from 28 days before travel.”

One passenger wrote on X: “@jet2tweets Hi, I’ve just received this email apparently from Jet2 saying I will now get my holiday documents 14 days before my holiday departure instead of 28, is this true or is it still 28, I’ve a feeling this was a spam email though.”

Another passenger added: “I had the same email. Flying on 25 May with jet2,” A traveller added: “Ive just had the same email !”

The email says: “Just so you know, following a change to when we send out the documents for your holiday, you’ll now receive your documents 14 days before departure, rather than 28 days as stated on your original booking confirmation. You don’t need to contact us or take any action – you’ll receive your documents 14 days before you travel. Have a lovely holiday!”

Responding on X, Jet2 confirmed it was a genuine message and explained: “Hi there, thanks for reaching out. Yes we can confirm that you will receive your documents 14 days before departure. Should you require any further assistance, then please feel free to send us a DM. “

Jet2 advice says: “At 10 weeks before departure we will take any outstanding balance payment and send a confirmation that the balance has been paid. At 14 days before departure, we will send you a final confirmation with your travel documents attached, consisting of your booking confirmation; your flight voucher; your accommodation voucher, your cruise voucher (where applicable) and your transfer or car hire voucher. We will also provide you with your ATOL Certificate. Please remember to print off all your vouchers as well as your booking confirmation and your ATOL Certificate where applicable.”

Jet2 has also explained why some flight schedules may change, and has moved to remind passengers of an action they must take during a 48-hour period. The major airline states in the Frequently Asked Questions section of its website that it “always aims to operate our flights at the scheduled time of departure”. However, Jet2 added: “Sometimes we may need to make changes or provide alternative carriers or aircraft and cannot always notify you of this in advance. We may also alter or remove the planned schedules as shown on your booking confirmation.”

The guidance notes that Jet2 does not wish to cause inconvenience to passengers, yet “unfortunately sometimes changes to scheduled flight times may be required for operational or technical reasons outside our control”. Jet2 confirmed that in such circumstances, travellers would be given as much advance warning as possible.

Passengers flying with Jet2 are encouraged to keep a close eye on their email and text message inboxes, as these are typically the methods used to get in touch should any changes arise. Jet2 added: “Please contact us if you change your email address or mobile number so we can update your details.

“From the Manage My Booking section on our website you can see your booking summary, request a further email confirmation or select a different email address.” Jet2 is also reminding travellers that they are obligated to review their flight summary within a 48-hour window prior to departure.

Jet2 said: “Please be aware that it is one of our Terms and Conditions that you re-check your flight summary 72 to 24 hours before departure.” The airline also continues to urge passengers to consult the “latest travel information” on its website at least 12 hours before take-off to ensure they remain fully informed.” Additional advice reads: “Please check this section of the website at least 12 hours before your flight for the latest flight information.

“We recommend arriving at the airport at least 2 hours before your scheduled departure time. Please remember – check-in desks close 40 minutes before this.”

Nick Pasqual, an actor who appeared in “How I Met Your Mother,” has been sentenced to 32 years to life for the attempted murder of his estranged girlfriend, L.A.-based makeup artist Allie Shehorn.

Following a jury trial, Pasqual was also convicted of counts of injuring a spouse or partner, first-degree burglary and rape, according to court documents. During the trial, Shehorn had visible scars on her hands and neck when she testified, per ABC.

The incident occurred in May 2024, when Pasqual repeatedly stabbed Shehorn in her Shadow Hills home. Prosecutors said that the actor broke into Shehorn’s home just before 4:30 a.m. on May 23, attacked her with a knife and fled California.

Days before the attack, Shehorn had filed a restraining order against Pasqual, detailing acts of sexual and physical assault. While the judge approved the order, it was unclear whether Pasqual had been served prior to the stabbing.

Christine White, Shehorn’s friend and roommate, discovered the makeup artist lying in a pool of blood and called emergency services. Friends believe Shehorn was stabbed more than 20 times. Following the attack, Shehorn underwent emergency surgery and spent days in intensive care.

Pasqual was ultimately stopped by authorities at a border checkpoint in Sierra Blanca, Texas, and extradited to Los Angeles.

The former couple met on the set of Zack Snyder’s film “Rebel Moon,” where Pasqual worked as a background actor and Shehorn worked as a makeup artist.

Last week, Shehorn sued the actor for sexual battery, assault and negligence, among other counts, according to a lawsuit submitted in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

The 17-page complaint echoes details about the May 2024 stabbing that led to Pasqual’s arrest two years ago and his attempted murder conviction.

Staff writer Alexandra Del Rosario and former staff writer Nathan Solis contributed to this report.

Tiki, an offshoot of the Midcentury Modern movement, flourished in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, but began to experience a decline in the ’70s. Thus, by the ’90s, there were concerns at Disney that the Enchanted Tiki Room — the pivotal 1963 attraction that pioneered audio-animatronics — was no longer in vogue, its singing birds, totems and flowers a relic of another era.

The company explored some early concepts to remake the Enchanted Tiki Room. One idea was to transform it into an ecological, save-the-rainforest show. Another was to redesign it with a “Lion King” theme.

“Let me tell you, we hated it,” says artist and designer Kevin Kidney of the latter concept.

Kidney, who worked in Disneyland’s art department in the ’90s, says he and his longtime collaborator Jody Daily were “terrified” the Enchanted Tiki Room would disappear, so much so that they began making fliers to advertise the show and putting them up all over L.A., in restaurants, bars and museums. “We started an underground movement to save the Tiki Room even while we were working on these projects. We tried to frame it in a cool, hip way, like, ‘Everyone needs to go and re-experience this amazing show.’”

Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar took its influence from Disneyland’s Adventureland attractions, namely the Enchanted Tiki Room and the Jungle Cruise.

(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)

Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed, and the Enchanted Tiki Room remains to this day a vital piece of Disneyland history. And now with the modern tiki revival, it’s no longer an archival curiosity. In fact, the connection between Disney and tiki may be as strong as it has ever been, as this spring the Disneyland Hotel’s Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar turned 15. Trader Sam’s took its cues heavily from the Adventureland attraction, its bar flanked by tiki totems with slowly wandering eyes. And watching over guests and bartenders is a re-creation of one of the show’s tiki gods.

“The totem pole on the bar, and Koro up in the rafters above the bar, are all original designs and sculpts for the Tiki Room at Disneyland,” Kidney says. “They made new castings for the bar off of the elements from the attraction.”

Kidney and Daily collaborated with Walt Disney Imagineering, the arm of the company devoted to theme park experiences, on some of the early designs for Trader Sam’s. It’s their mug collection, for instance, that was seen in the bar on opening day. And the pair designed a magnificent glowing ship in a bottle, which thanks to a Pepper’s ghost illusion, occasionally looks as if it’s breaking apart and sinking.

Trader Sam’s, says author and historian Sven Kirsten, writer of “The Book of Tiki,” is one of the more influential bars on the modern tiki landscape. Though it didn’t kickstart today’s movement, says Kirsten, it often serves as “a gateway,” introducing Disney’s millions of guests to the scene.

Kirsten says Trader Sam’s has rightfully earned its place among SoCal’s most respected tiki bars. And most popular. An unofficial Instagram page devoted to the bar, keeping tabs on its mug releases and off-menu bartender creations, has more than 39,000 followers.

The erupting volcano “windows” of Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar.

(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)

“In the early 2010s the craft cocktail revival brought forth these so-called tiki bars that thought if they had a tiki cocktail menu they were a tiki bar,” Kirsten says. “But it was basket lamps and palm leaf wallpaper and that was it. Places like Trader Sam’s and Strong Water and Royal Hawaiian are floor-to-ceiling fully decorated. They’re what a tiki bar should be.”

Before the Disneyland Hotel had Trader Sam’s, the space was home to Hook’s Pointe, which was lightly themed to “Peter Pan.” Yet about a decade after the Walt Disney Co. completed a purchase to assume control of the Disneyland Hotel, Hook’s Pointe was earmaked for renovation.

“We were designing a Caribbean-style bar where Trader Sam’s is now, and that was where I said, ‘Let’s rethink this,’” said Kyle Barnes, an Imagineer who was instrumental in the creation of Trader Sam’s. Barnes was speaking at a recent event hosted by Disney’s fan club D23 on the history of Adventureland and Trader Sam’s.

“I said, ‘That’s more East Coast. This is West Coast.’ Hawaii and Midcentury really fit together with the tiki theme,” Barnes said, noting that the park’s Enchanted Tiki Room was initially pitched as a restaurant and once sat next to the Tahitian Terrace, a Polynesian-themed restaurant complete with hula dancers.

Trader Sam’s is home to many show elements. In addition to the sinking ship, there are bar seats that will begin to drop the longer guests sit in them. Also, there are two theatrical windows looking out toward a volcano, which will erupt when guests order a specific drink. The ship in a bottle and dipping barstools, said Barnes, were inspired by the Adventurers Club at Florida’s Walt Disney World, while the volcano windows were influenced by Florida’s version of the Enchanted Tiki Room.

The Kungaloosh cocktail at Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar.

(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)

The Adventurers Club closed in 2008, but I was fortunate enough to visit it as a child, and it was instrumental in my love of Disney, theater and, well, bars. Full of actors, puppets and walls filled with artifacts that seemed to spring to life, the Adventurers Club was a place of play, and I still remember as a kid being asked by one of the actors to join the imaginary guild. It was a glimpse into a grown-up world full of revelry, silliness and colorful cocktails.

Trader Sam’s fills a similar niche for me today, and as part of its 15th anniversary, it added the Adventurers Club signature drink, the sweetly tropical Kungaloosh, to its menu. As a kid, I longed to enter an adult world. As a grown-up, I love an adult world with a childlike playfulness.

Tiki bars aren’t perfect, and have occasionally come under criticism as escapist fantasy that appropriates Hawaiian or Polynesian iconography. As such, Trader Sam’s has changed over the years. Shrunken heads, for instance, that once hung from the walls, were years ago removed.

Progress, and part of Trader Sam’s enduring appeal. “The jokes that we accepted long ago, they were jokes for only a part of the population,” says Kidney.

And Trader Sam’s remains full of absurdities — spend some time just soaking up the puns and ephemera that dot the walls. Just be prepared to duck when you see the bartenders reach for a spray bottle.

So cheers to another 15 years, and I hope to see you at the bar.

This week in SoCal theme parks

Space Mountain at night.

(Paul Hiffmeyer / Disneyland Resort)

• A refreshed cartoon world. Magic Mountain will on Saturday unveil its new kid-targeted Looney Tunes Land, which is a makeover of its previous Bugs Bunny-focused area. Expect a brand new live show, and spaces designed to represent the personality of characters such as Bugs, Daffy Duck, the Tasmanian Devil, and Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner. Each of the attractions, such as calming train and balloon rides, has received a tune-up. I’ll take a closer look next week!
• ‘The Odyssey’ comes to Universal. While theme park fans await the opening date of Universal Studios Hollywood’s new “Fast & Furious” coaster, the park is zooming ahead with its Mega Movie Summer promotion. As part of the latter, a ship from Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” will be added to the park’s tram tour. Elsewhere, Minions from “Minions & Monsters” will start meeting with guests, and various dining locations will receive light makeovers to represent films such as “Jaws” and the “Fast & Furious” franchise.
• Changes afoot at CityWalk. Universal’s CityWalk is in the midst of a multiyear transformation. New spaces, such as one from Malibu Brewing Co., are on the way, while some legacy retailers are unfortunately disappearing. The latest: Publisher Dark Horse Comics is closing its Things From Another World retail location. The pop-culture shop is slated to close in September. No word yet on what may move into the space.
• Space Mountain is back! After a brief overlay as the “Star Wars”-themed Hyperspace Mountain, Disneyland’s classic Space Mountain has returned just in time for the busy summer season. The coaster, which tops off at about 32 mph in near total darkness, should be back in all its vintage glory as of today.
• A renewal perk. The Disneyland Resort in a move to create more loyalty among its Magic Key passholders is offering a bonus for those who opt to stick around for another year. A dining promotion, in which annual passholders can receive a dining gift card for as much as $100 if they choose to re-up, is underway through May of next year.

Tell us your stories. Ask us your questions.

Have a theme park tale to share? Whether it was a good day or less-than-perfect day, I would love to hear about it. Have a question? A tip? A fun photo from the parks to share? Email me at todd.martens@latimes.com. I may feature your note in an upcoming newsletter.

Ride on,

Todd Martens

P.S.

I’m curious if any longtime Disneyland fans have any memories of the Carousel of Progress. I’d love to hear them. The theater show, built around a rotating auditorium, debuted at the 1964 World’s Fair before making its way to Disneyland in 1967. It was moved to Florida’s Walt Disney World in 1975.

In case anyone missed it, the Walt Disney Co. announced last week that Carousel of Progress would be undergoing a top-to-bottom overhaul to update the show. No longer will it begin in the distant past, as the refreshed attraction will now start in the 1960s and take guests into the ’80s, the late ’90s and beyond. An ode to technological optimism, the original show was overseen by Walt Disney, but had undergone multiple changes throughout the decades, most notably in its final scene.

I’ll miss its glimpses of the 1920s and 1940s, but concede the attraction was notable today more for its Disney history than its cultural relevancy. Thus, I’m cautiously hopeful that this makeover can ensure the Carousel of Progress remains a Disney staple for decades to come.

It’s election day in California’s 2026 primary, and you’re headed to the polls — until you realize you’re not sure you’re registered, or fear you might not make it to the vote center on time.

Here are some common election day concerns and challenges and how to end your Tuesday with an “I voted” sticker.

I forgot to register to vote

You can still register to vote on election day as a conditional voter through the same-day voter registration process.

Eligible citizens who need to register or re-register to vote within 14 days of an election can complete this process and vote at county elections offices, polling places or vote centers. To register you’ll need to provide a driver’s license, a state identification number or the last four digits of your Social Security number.

A complete list of county election office addresses can be found here.

Your submitted ballot will be processed and counted once the county elections office has completed the voter registration verification process.

If you’re unsure about your voter status, you can find your record here by providing some personal information including your date of birth and driver’s license number.

I don’t know where my polling place is

You can find your nearest polling place on the California secretary of state’s website here.

You can also use Los Angeles County’s voter center locator on the registrar-recorder/county clerk website here.

On election day, voting centers are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. across the state.

I can’t submit my mail-in ballot myself

You can have someone else submit your ballot.

Anyone can drop off your mailed ballot as long as you authorize them to do so and they do not get paid on a per-ballot basis, according to the secretary of state.

You and the person you’ve authorized to submit your mailed ballot must fill and sign the outside of the ballot envelope.

I forgot my check-in code for in-person voting

Los Angeles County election officials say you can check in at a vote center by scanning your “quick check-in code” — a number that verifies your voter registration.

Your code can be found on your mailed sample ballot and vote center postcard. Take either of those hard copies to the vote center.

If you forgot the hard copies, you can retrieve the code by verifying your voter registration here. You’ll need to input your last name, birth date, the house number of your residential address and ZIP Code. For assistance call, (800) 815-2666, Option 2.

I want to drop my ballot in a box but fear it’s too late

There are three ways you can submit your mailed ballot on election day:

• You can put it in a ballot drop box. The cutoff time for doing so is 8 p.m., which is also when the polls close on election day.
• Drop it off at a vote center, where the deadline is the same.
• Drop it off at a United States post office. Be sure to get a hand-stamped postmark from a postal employee. Mailed ballots must be postmarked on election day and received no later than seven days after election day.

I think I forgot to sign by mailed ballot envelope

If you failed to sign your vote-by-mail ballot return envelope, your vote will still count.

Your county elections official will notify you by mail, phone or email, according to the secretary of state. You can also be notified by way of the “Where’s My Ballot?” tracking tool if you have signed up for automatic notifications that will ping you if there are issues with your ballot.

Your county elections office will provide you with a form to fill out and return completed.

The form will be given to you two days prior to the day your county certifies the election, so be sure to fill it out and return it to your county elections office right away.

I’m going to be late getting to the polls; can I still vote?

In California, any voter who is in line at 8 p.m. when the polls are scheduled to close is allowed to vote, according to the secretary of state.

If there is a line when the polls close, a poll worker stands at the back of the line to let people who arrive after 8 p.m. know that the polls have closed.

Any voter who arrives after the polls have closed may not be allowed to vote, even if voters who were in line to vote before the polls closed are in the process of voting.

LOOKING back on all of her recent holidays, Helen Dalling recalled all the amazing adventures she had in such a short amount of time.

Over the course of one year, she managed to do more travelling that many could wish to do in a lifetime – and she did it without breaking the bank.

Seven countries, £2,000 spent, and more memories made than anyone could dream of.

It all started when Helen decided to see how many new places she could visit for as cheap as possible – and managed to keep costs low while making the most of each new adventure.

She did this by making each trip as short as possible, with some being ‘extreme day trips’ – where you fly in and out of a country within the same 24 hours – and others being just an overnight stay.

And despite packing in a full holiday experience each time, the total cost came in at around £1,600 including flights, airport parking, any hotels, sightseeing, food and drink, and spending money.

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“I’ve always loved travelling but as I’m getting older and I’ve got kids and I work full-time, I thought ‘I’m not going to see enough countries in the world,” Helen, who is from Milton Keynes, said.

“‘If I don’t start going to see a few of them, I need to do them quick and cheap’.

“That’s really why I started doing it.”

While Helen started her extreme day tripping in 2024, it was in 2025 that she really went all out – visiting seven new countries throughout the year.
She headed to Paris, Budapest, Geneva, Split in Croatia, Prague, Amsterdam and several places in Spain in 2025.

The 55-year-old stayed just hours in some places, and spent the night in others, and visited most with friends, while others she headed to alone.

She added: “I went to seven brand new countries.

“That’s what I really wanted to do, I thought ‘I’ve never been to Hungary so let’s go to Budapest’.”

Helen says she tries to keep costs as low as possible, by regularly searching for bargains on the websites of different airlines she knows fly from her nearest airport, Luton.

She added: “When I went to Paris, I was basically just browsing on New Year’s Day, not doing much else and I spotted that you could get a flight to Paris for £13, one way and £12 the other.

“I just booked it – and then when I told a friend, she booked it too and came with me.

“The Budapest flights were about £8.99 each way, you can’t even get them that cheap anymore.

“I’ve done others that were £15-£20 return; I just book them – when I see the price, I just go for it.”

While Helen does some of her trips solo, she often has friends tag along for the day.

She says she treats her trips as “an opportunity to catch up with a friend.”

She added: “Instead of going to London for lunch, let’s go somewhere for the day.

“I did Geneva twice last year, but the second one I did at Christmas was with a real old friend of mine who is really into her food.

“So we went and did a foodie trip to the Christmas markets in Geneva and just went for the day, she’d never done one.

“Everybody that I’ve done one with has said ‘oh my God, that was amazing’.

“I’ve got a bit of a queue of people wanting to go as well, but only so much money.”

Of all her trips in 2025, Helen says her adventure to Budapest, which cost £191 for an overnight stay, was the best – particularly for its Thermal Baths.

She said: “We just fell in love with Budapest.

“Every time we did something else afterwards, I just said to my friend ‘it’s not Budapest though, is it? It’s not Budapest.’

“It was February when we did that but the sky was blue and we had the best time.

“It was super cheap and everything just worked.

“It was so lush.

“We were just sat in these massive pools of boiling hot water with the cold air on our skin, just going ‘this is amazing.’”

Helen shows no signs of slowing down with her bargain trips either, having already undertaken several in 2026.

She recently visited Palma, Mallorca with a friend, for under £120 each.

They spent the day exploring the city, visiting a sky bar restaurant for lunch, heading to the beach to swim and even stopping for iced coffee at a beach bar.

Most recently, Helen spent the night in Lithuania, and even visited Albania for the day.

She added: “ I’m always buzzing after a day trip.

“I would definitely do it again, it’s a great way to visit countries you’d never visit by going on one holiday a year.

“Last year I visited seven new countries and it’s liberating.”

CLOVIS, Calif. — Jurupa Valley senior AB Hernandez stood on a hillside overlooking Veterans Memorial Stadium, a booklet of encouraging letters tucked under one arm and two gold medals hanging from her neck.

She rolled the medals between her fingers.

“I still feel like I’m gonna be here next year,” she said. “I guess I’ll process it overnight maybe, then tomorrow, I’m going to Disneyland.”

For most high school seniors, a state championship marks the end of a season.

For Hernandez, it marks the end of three years spent competing as a transgender athlete under a spotlight few teenagers could imagine.

On Saturday, she won state titles in the high jump and triple jump, capping her career as a four-time state champion. Days earlier, she had graduated from high school.

AB Hernandez leaps in the air during the CIF state track and field championship finals in Clovis on Saturday.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

Away from the spotlight, Hernandez likes swimming, spending time with friends and working on her makeup routine. During the past two years, politicians and activists stoked by President Trump have turned her into a symbol in the national fight over transgender athletes’ right to participate in girls’ sports.

“I feel like I’m always going to be in the public eye,” Hernandez said. “It’s never going to go away and that’s weird. But maybe someday it’ll be for something else.”

At the state championships, that fight was visible everywhere except where Hernandez seemed most comfortable: among the athletes competing in the stadium.

At the end of Friday’s preliminary competition, Hernandez and five other high jump contenders sprawled on their stomachs beneath the high jump tent, cheering on West Ranch junior Avery Prestridge and La Jolla junior Anastasia Volkov in a jump-off for the final qualifying spot.

AB Hernandez, second from right, laughs while standing on the first place podium alongside Monta Vista’s Leilani Laruelle after the CIF state track and field high-jump finals on Saturday.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

When Prestridge secured the berth, she and Hernandez exchanged a high-five and a smile.

“That’s what will stick with me,” Hernandez said. “Laying on the field, cheering for other girls, everyone being sweet.”

It was a stark contrast to the image detractors tried to paint earlier in the day.

While Hernandez warmed up on the track, anti-trans activists and politicians gathered across the street in an area marked by a CIF sign reading “free speech area.”

There, organizers who have protested women’s athletic events involving transgender participants across California delivered speeches demanding that the CIF prohibit Hernandez and other transgender athletes from competing. They were unmoved by CIF’s policy requiring that any transgender athlete who advances in track and field playoffs or places in competition be joined by the next cisgender girl in the rankings, with both advancing or receiving the same medal.

“The message being sent to female athletes is clear — your opportunities, your records, your placement and your hard work comes second to males,” former NCAA soccer player Sophia Lorey said during the rally.

California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton spoke alongside the protesters.

“The first thing we have to do is overturn the law that set all this in motion, AB 1266, that was passed in 2013, that’s why we’ve been living with this for so long,” Hilton said to Fox News. “That law violates the California state Constitution. … I will immediately suspend the law while we begin legal proceedings to overturn it.”

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton held a news conference outside the state track and field championships in Clovis denouncing CIF for allowing transgender athletes to compete alongside girls.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

Earlier in the day, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer posted a video on X with Hernandez.

“I’m so proud of you for what you’re doing,” Steyer told Hernandez. “So proud of you for succeeding. So proud of you for competing. That’s really the point. … And I’m going to hope like heck that you don’t just make state but you do really well there. Deal?”

Last year, Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, that, “As a Male, he was a less than average competitor. As a Female, this transitioned person is practically unbeatable.”

He also threatened to withhold federal funding from California if the CIF allowed Hernandez to compete. That came after he enacted an executive order in February 2025 barring transgender women and girls from participating in sports according to their gender identity.

Transgender participation in sports has become a central Republican talking point in recent years and it is impossible to separate Hernandez’s story from that political context.

Focus on the Family, Family Research Council and California Family Council have invested years and millions of dollars into messaging, advocacy and legal efforts surrounding the issue. According to ProPublica and public filings, those organizations collectively reported hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue in 2024.

Transgender athlete AB Hernandez, center, poses with other athletes at the CIF state track and field championships in Clovis on Saturday.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

As a result, a California athlete who confirmed her transgender status became the focus of a national political fight.

“The voice of the kid who’s been targeted gets lost,” said activist Daisy Gardner, who spoke at a news conference supporting Hernandez before Saturday’s meet. “We’re up against a million[-dollar] machine on the other side who has launched the ‘Protect Girls’ Sports’ campaign, and we need to have a little ray of sunshine pushing through the darkness.”

The Trump administration’s Executive Order 14201, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” was issued on Feb. 5, 2025, and was followed the next day by an NCAA ban on transgender athletes participating in women’s sports.

AB is not sure whether she will find a way to continue competing in college.

“I don’t think any child should have to go through this,” AB’s mother Nereyda Hernandez said. “These are adults willingly doing this to a minor child. This is a kid, a breathing human, a child. It’s not what people are making this out to be.”

For the first time during Friday’s preliminary competition, the clouds broke and the Clovis sun beat down on the field.

AB, who had posted the top regional mark, needed only one jump to qualify for the next day’s finals. She went last in the second flight.

As she prepared for her attempt, the public address announcer’s voice echoed through the stadium.

“In girls’ long jump, here comes AB Hernandez.”

A ripple of applause spread through the crowd from those who recognized the name. Nereyda and family friend Trevor Norcross were among the loudest.

Transgender athlete AB Hernandez won the high jump title during the state track and field championships in Clovis.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

Two hours later, after completing her triple jump qualifying leaps, Hernandez headed to the high jump, where she again found herself among the final competitors remaining.

During the long wait between events, Nereyda was interviewed by ABC30. At the same moment, AB was preparing for a high jump attempt.

Gardner, the activist, hurried over, tapped Nereyda on the shoulder and pointed toward the pit.

Nereyda quickly turned her phone sideways and hit record.

“Let’s go AB!”

The night before qualifying, AB, Nereyda and friends sat in a hotel room making bracelets. At first, they strung rainbow-colored beads. AB shook her head. Her colors were pink and gold.

“I know what looks good on me,” she said. “I want something that represents me. People see a flag, and that’s not me in my entirety. I want something that is me personally, me entirely.”

While Nereyda felt the familiar butterflies about what the next day might bring, AB focused on what mattered to her. She decided how she wanted to wear her hair and prepared the custom-made letterman jacket she got last year with money donated by supporters.

Transgender athlete AB Hernandez wears a letterman jacket funded by her supporters and waves during the CIF state track and field championships in Clovis.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

AB Hernandez’s mom, Nereyda, shows a friendship bracelet she made alongside supporters of her daughter that reads “I stand with AB.”

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

“She said, ‘I want my letterman jacket,’ and I was like, OK,” Nereyda said. “And she said, ‘I want that to be a reminder every time I wear it, I want it to be a reminder of the people who supported me,’ and that’s what she did.

“It was a daily reminder that she wasn’t alone.”

Those are the memories Nereyda says will stay with her more than the vitriol she and her daughter have faced during the past two years. AB is a reluctant transgender athlete pioneer who prefers to be known for so much more than just her gender identity, but the prospect of hiding because she was relentlessly attacked didn’t feel right, either.

“I’m always going to think about how hard she tried to be here,” she said. “She didn’t quit. Despite all the pressure, you can’t change my kid.”

The night before AB’s final competition, Nereyda felt sick. She suspected it was stress over what the next day might bring.

But Saturday passed with minimal disruption.

AB’s long jump did not meet her usual standard. She finished third with a mark of 20 feet, 2 1/4 inches, a result she described as “bittersweet.”

“It was a little nerve-wracking,” Nereyda said. “I could see it was a different vibe when she got into the high jump and triple jump.”

In those events, Hernandez delivered the top performances of the day to repeat as a state champion.

She leaped 42-8 3/4 in the triple jump, comfortably ahead of Los Altos senior Daniela Hughes, who finished at 41-1 before sharing the podium. Standing together atop the first-place position, the two posed for photos with Hughes’ arm draped around Hernandez.

“I’m just happy with my performance,” Hughes said when asked about sharing a podium. “I wanted to win a championship.”

Transgender athlete AB Hernandez clinches her fists and reacts after completing a high jump during the CIF state track and field meet in Clovis.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

About 30 minutes after the high jump medal ceremony, AB walked toward her mother.

Nereyda spotted her and threw her hands into the air.

“My baby!”

The two embraced, away from the crowd, the cameras and the ire.

“She did it,” Nereyda said. “With everything else, it didn’t matter, she did it.”

UCLA baseball eliminated

From Joaquin Ruiz: Saint Mary’s has achieved the seemingly unthinkable — the Gaels have eliminated UCLA, the nation’s top-ranked team, from the NCAA tournament.

With two outs in the 10th inning, Makoa Sniffen drove in Cody Kashimoto on a walk-off single off UCLA reliever Easton Hawk to lift Saint Mary’s to a 6-5 comeback win Sunday in a Los Angeles Regional elimination game at Jackie Robinson Stadium.

The Gaels (36-26), who also stunned the Bruins (52-8) in the regional opener on Friday, made the Big Ten champions just the second NCAA No. 1 overall seed — after Vanderbilt in 2025 — to be eliminated from the regional round since the current format was established in 1999.

“Obviously, this weekend, we just did not play up to our standards,” UCLA coach John Savage said. “I really felt it was a struggle, for whatever reason — all three games, really. But it’s nothing to take away from this team. You win 52 games [and are] preseason [No.1], and you never leave that spot; it’s really remarkable and a lot of credit to our captains, to our seniors, to the entire program … I just can’t say enough about the people that I’m around and that I’ve coached.”

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UCLA softball eliminated

From Tim Willert: Jordan Woolery nearly saved UCLA’s season Sunday night at the Women’s College World Series. She lined a single up the middle in the ninth inning off former teammate Kaitlyn Terry to score Rylee Slimp from second base and pull the Bruins within a run of Texas Tech.

But Red Raiders ace NiJaree Canady replaced Terry in the circle and retired the final two batters, stranding Megan Grant at second in UCLA’s 8-7 season-ending loss.

Woolery, the nation’s RBIs leader, homered twice and drove in five runs for UCLA (53-10), which got nine innings and 181 pitches from workhorse Taylor Tinsley.

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UCLA softball coaches Kelly Inouye-Perez and Lisa Fernandez inspire nation’s top offense

USC baseball sets up showdown with Texas A&M

From Jose de Jesus Ortiz: On a night when the crowd at Blue Bell Park saw some of the most majestic home runs you’ll see in college baseball, USC’s Andrew Johnson showed why pitching is still paramount Sunday.

The sophomore right-hander delivered arguably the most important pitching performance of the season for USC, beating Texas A&M 14-3 to propel the Trojans to a winner-take-all College Station Regional Final on Monday.

After needing five pitchers in a rout over Texas State earlier in the day just to reach the regional final out of the losers’ bracket, USC coach Andy Stankiewicz rode Johnson on Sunday night.

Two nights after throwing 21 pitches over 1⅔ innings, Johnson threw 124 pitches over 7⅓ strong innings to beat the host Aggies (41-14) before a crowd of 6,934.

Leading 11-2, Johnson retired the first batter in the top of the eighth inning before Nico Partida singled to right. Jake Duer followed with an RBI triple to right field, prompting a call to right-hander Rohan Kasanagottu.

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Dodgers beat the Phillies

From Liana Handler: Not a cake or a ribbon-wrapped present, but the Dodgers celebrated manager Dave Roberts’ 54th birthday with a 9-1 win over the Phillies on Sunday. The Dodgers ended their homestand with a 5-1 record despite their six-game winning streak ending the night before.

“You’re gonna get beat at times, it’s gonna happen,” Roberts said. “But I do think with the talent that we have, if we focus and play like we’re capable of, we should win series, regardless of home, road.”

Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto (5-4) held the Phillies hitless over the first three innings.

Yamamoto, much like Roki Sasaki the night before, threw his pitches faster than normal. But the elevated velocity didn’t seem to affect his performance beyond extending at-bats. Despite throwing his four-seam fastball 1 mph faster than usual, the pitch resulted in a strike 76% of the time.

“During the preparation this week towards today’s game, I was always having a great feeling, and then I think I was able to get myself pretty ready,” Yamamoto said through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda. “I was prepared. … And then I was getting into the game with confidence.”

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Dodgers box score

MLB standings

Angels lose to Rays

Shane McClanahan pitched one-run ball for five innings, Jonathan Aranda homered and the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Angels 5-2 on Sunday.

McClanahan (6-2) gave up four hits, struck out three and didn’t issue a walk. Bryan Baker pitched a scoreless ninth for his career-high 16th save this season in 19 chances.

Aranda hit a solo homer in the first inning before Jose Siri singled with two out in the second, advanced to third when Logan O’Hoppe doubled and scored on a wild pitch by McClanahan to make it 1-1.

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Angels box score

MLB standings

Arte Moreno should sell the Angels

From Bill Plaschke: He showed up 23 years ago as the lovably grounded steward of one of baseball’s soaring sports franchises.

Remember the first thing Arte Moreno did as Angels owner? He lowered the beer prices!

“I’m not going to think about it,” he said boldly and decisively. “I’m going to.”

The second thing he did was hand out sombreros in honor of his Mexican heritage and status as the first Latino majority owner in America’s major professional sports.

“Being Mexican American, I’d like to reach out to Mexican Americans,” Moreno said. “But also to everyone.”

The third thing he did was answer a question about the Dodgers with a question.

“Who?” he said, “The Angels won the World Series. We are the No. 1 baseball team in the world. There is no reason for us to look over our shoulders.”

It was the most delightful introductory news conference I’ve ever attended, Moreno saying all the right things, doing all the smart things, and ultimately embracing his new purchase’s greatest asset.

“My responsibility is to take care of the Angel fan,” he said. “My job is to make sure we live up to the tradition. My job is to make people comfortable here.”

Twenty-three years later, those first impressions have long since been replaced by lasting erosions.

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Angel City loses to North Carolina

Manaka Matsukubo finished with a goal and an assist to lead the North Carolina Courage to a 2-1 win over Angel City at BMO Stadium on Sunday.

Matsukubo slipped a ball through to Evelyn Ijeh, who calmly finished to give the Courage a 1-0 lead in the 48th minute. With the goal, Ijeh has landed on the scoresheet in three straight matches.

Three minutes later, Evelyn Shores’ pinpoint cross into the box found the head of Maiara Niehues for the equalizer.

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Angel City summary

NWSL standings

This day in sports history

1946 — Assault, ridden by Warren Merhtens, wins the Belmont Stakes to become the seventh horse to capture the Triple Crown.

1968 — Stage Door Johnny, ridden by Heliodoro Gustines, wins the Belmont Stakes in a record time of 2:27 1-5 and spoils the Triple Crown bid of Forward Pass, who finishes 1 1/4 lengths behind.

1975 — Kathy Whitworth wins the LPGA tournament by one stroke over Sandra Haynie.

1977 — Dutch soccer club FC Volendam is established as a result of split up with RKSV; 6-time Eerste Divisie champions.

1979 — NBA Finals: Seattle Supersonics beat Washington Bullets, 97-93 for a 4-1 series victory; Seattle’s first major pro sports championship win.

1986 — Pat Bradley wins the LPGA tournament and becomes the first to win all four major women’s tournaments, beating Patty Sheehan by one stroke.

1992 — The Pittsburgh Penguins win the Stanley Cup for the second straight year, beating the Chicago Blackhawks 6-5 for a four-game sweep.

1993 — Phoenix Suns guard Dan Majerle sets a then NBA Playoff record by sinking eight three-pointers during the Suns’ 120-114 win over Seattle in Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals.

1994 — Indiana guard Reggie Miller drills an NBA Playoff record five three-pointers in the fourth quarter of the Pacers’ 93-86 win over host New York Knicks in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals.

1996 — The LSU women win their 10th consecutive NCAA track team title with 81 points, the longest victory string in women’s college sports.

2002 — Detroit advances to the Stanley Cup finals for the fourth time in eight years with a 7-0 win over Colorado in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals. Colorado becomes the first NHL team to play in four consecutive Game 7s. Detroit goalie Dominik Hasek sets an NHL record by recording his fifth shutout of the playoffs.

2002 — In a battle of former heavyweight boxing champions in Atlantic City, Evander Holyfield beats Hasim Rahman by TKO; fight stopped 1:40 into 8th round because of giant welt above Rahman’s left eye.

2004 — Detroit and Indiana combine for just 60 first-half points in the Pistons’ 69-65 victory, breaking the NBA playoff record of 62 set by the Pistons and Nets during the second round.

2008 — Hillary Will is the 11th woman in NHRA history to win a national event when she takes the Top Fuel event at the O’Reilly NHRA Summer Nationals. Will drives her dragster to a 4.744-second run at a top speed of 304.53 mph, beating No. 1 qualifier Larry Dixon for her first career win in Top Fuel.

2010 — French Open upset specialist Robin Soderling strikes again, rallying past defending champion Roger Federer in a rainy quarterfinal, 3-6, 6-3, 7-5, 6-4. The loss ends Federer’s record streak of reaching the semifinals in 23 consecutive major events.

2019 — Mexican-American boxer Andy Ruiz Jr produces a huge upset when he stops English champion Anthony Joshua in 7 at Madison Square Garden; wins IBF, WBO, IBO and WBA world heavyweight titles.

2019 — UEFA Champions League Final, Madrid: Liverpool beats Tottenham, 2-0 for Reds’ 6th title.

Compiled by the Associated Press

This day in baseball history

1923 — The New York Giants scored in every inning to beat the Philadelphia Phillies 22-8 at the Baker Bowl.

1925 — Lou Gehrig batted for Pee Wee Wanninger in the eighth and replaced Wally Pipp at first base to start his streak of 2,130 consecutive games. The Washington Senators beat the New York Yankees 5-3.

1937 — Bill Dietrich of the Chicago White Sox pitched a no-hitter against the St. Louis Browns in an 8-0 win.

1975 — Nolan Ryan of the Angels pitched his fourth no-hitter, striking out nine. Ryan tied Sandy Koufax’s record by beating the Baltimore Orioles 1-0. It was Ryan’s 100th victory.

1977 — Seattle’s Ruppert Jones homered off Cleveland’s Dennis Eckersley in the fifth inning to snap Eckersley’s no-hit string of 22 1-3 innings, just two outs short of Cy Young’s major league record. The Indians went on to win, 7-1.

1987 — Cleveland’s Phil Niekro pitched the Indians to a 9-6 victory, his 314th, over the Detroit Tigers. The win gave himself and his brother, Joe, a major league record 530 combined victories, surpassing Gaylord and Jim Perry.

2000 — Pawtucket’s Tomo Ohka became the third pitcher in the 117-year history of the International League to throw a nine-inning perfect game when he beat the Charlotte Knights 2-0.

2005 — Miguel Tejada hit a homer, three doubles and scored three runs in Baltimore’s 9-3 victory over Boston.

2009 — The New York Yankees played error free for the 18th straight game in a 5-2 victory over the Cleveland Indians, surpassing Boston’s major league mark of 17 set in 2006. New York’s last error came on May 13 at Toronto when shortstop Ramiro Pena misplayed a groundball.

2011 — Cincinnati’s Francisco Cordero got his 300th save, securing the Reds’ 4-3 win over the Milwaukee Brewers. Cordero pitched a perfect ninth, becoming the 22nd reliever to achieve 300 saves, tying Bruce Sutter at the mark.

2012 — Johan Santana pitched the first no-hitter in New York Mets’ history. Santana was helped by an umpire’s missed call and an outstanding catch in left field in an 8-0 victory over St. Louis Cardinals. Carlos Beltran, back at Citi Field for the first time since the Mets traded him last July, hit a line drive over third base in the sixth inning that hit the foul line and should have been called fair. But third base umpire Adrian Johnson ruled it foul and the no-hitter was intact. Mike Baxter made a tremendous catch in left field to rob Yadier Molina of extra bases in the seventh, getting injured in the process.

2012 — Jonathan Crawford threw the seventh no-hitter in NCAA tournament history, shutting down Bethune-Cookman in a 4-0 victory in the opener of the Gainesville Regional. Crawford, a sophomore, was nearly perfect and faced the minimum 27 batters. The only player to reach base was Bethune-Cookman’s Jake Welch on a walk in the third inning, and Florida catcher Mike Zunino threw him out trying to steal.

2012 — Alex Miklos hit a go-ahead RBI triple in the 21st inning as Kent State outlasted Kentucky 7-6 in the second-longest game in NCAA tournament history. The Golden Flashes held the lead in the ninth and 18th innings, but the Wildcats answered both times to extend the game. It was the longest game in the NCAA tournament since Texas beat Boston College 3-2 in 25 innings on May 30, 2009.

2016 — Indians OF Marlon Byrd is suspended for 162 games after the second positive test for PEDs of his career. At 39, it marks the end of the former All-Star’s career.

2021 — The Olympic hopes end for three countries. Puerto Rico falls, 7-6, in 10 innings to Nicaragua in the Americas Olympic Qualifier, as Benjamín Alegría doubles twice, scores twice and drives in a run while Norman St. Clair and Berman Espinoza turn in six shutout innings of relief. Venezuela walks it off to eliminate Colombia as Diego Rincones breaks a 2-2 tie in the bottom of the 9th with a solo shot off Carlos Ocampo. Canada eliminates Cuba (missing the Olympics for its first time as a medal event), 6-5, as John Axford saves it for Dustin Molleken to overcome three runs by Roel Santos. In the other game, Team USA locks up a spot in the semifinals with an 8-6 win over the Dominican national team, Luke Williams hitting a big two-run triple. Nicaragua and the Dominicans will play tomorrow for the last semifinal spot to join the US, Canada and Venezuela.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

As Israel faces growing international scrutiny for its actions in Gaza and Lebanon, Al Jazeera’s Ava Warriner takes a look at the Israeli and US officials who joined the annual Israel Day parade in New York – the world’s largest gathering in support of the State of Israel.

The most recent flare-up of hostilities between the U.S. and Iran yet again highlights that while the future of Tehran’s nuclear ambitions remains at the heart of peace negotiations, the status of the Strait of Hormuz is the key flashpoint. On Tuesday, Tehran vowed retaliation a day after U.S. forces struck several targets in southern Iran on and near the Strait. Exacerbating the problems, another vessel was reportedly attacked near the mouth of the vital waterway on Tuesday.

These incidents are complicating work toward a peace deal amid an increasingly fragile ceasefire. After the start of the war on Feb. 28, the strategic chokepoint was closed to most traffic by Iran, which is now letting some vessels through under a new fee system that the U.S. vehemently rejects. The closure is having global economic impacts.

“Undoubtedly, the Islamic Republic of Iran will not leave any act of mischief unanswered and will not hesitate in defending the country’s integrity,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on X in which it labeled the U.S. strikes on Monday “a gross violation of the ceasefire enacted on April 8. 

The ministry offered no specifics about what actions it could take.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei issued a threat against U.S. allies in the region. Countries like Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Oman and Iraq all house U.S. facilities, many of which have already come under attack during Epic Fury and even after the April 8 ceasefire.

“The hand of time does not turn back, and the nations and lands of the region will no longer serve as shields for American bases,” he stated on X. “America will no longer have a safe haven for mischief and the establishment of military bases in the region.”

The statements were among many from Iran decrying the latest kinetic exchange with America. On Monday, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) told us it hit targets being used to endanger its personnel.

U.S. forces “conducted self-defense strikes in southern Iran… to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces,” Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, CENTCOM’s chief spokesman told TWZ Monday evening. “Targets included missile launch sites and Iranian boats attempting to emplace mines. U.S. Central Command continues to defend our forces while using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire.”

CENTCOM carried out the strikes after Iran deployed mine-laying boats in the Strait of Hormuz and flew attack drones near American ships, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

The U.S. “observed Iranian forces taking several actions, including launching the drones and activity at missile launch sites,” the newspaper noted.

CENTCOM’s statement followed reports of explosions in the key southern Iranian city of Bandar Abbas, the epicenter of Iranian naval operations around the Strait of Hormuz. It was attacked repeatedly during Operation Epic Fury and again earlier this month after the ceasefire was in place.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) organization reported that the Olympic Life, a Marshal Islands-registered oil tanker, was attacked 60 nautical miles east of Muscat, Oman on Tuesday.

The maritime security firm Ambrey told us the ship was struck by an unknown projectile, which resulted in an explosion on the vessel’s port side along the waterline, creating a discharge of bunker fuel. There were no injuries reported and neither UKMTO nor Ambrey said who launched the projectile.

EXPLAINER

While a peace deal between the US and Iran remains elusive, Israel has deepened its offensive into southern Lebanon.

The United States military says it has struck Iranian military sites, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it has targeted a US base in response, the latest in a series of exchanges as negotiations to end the three-month US-Israel war on Iran are conducted.

US President Donald Trump also on Monday described Iran as eager to reach an agreement.

“Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the USA and those that are with us,” he posted on his Truth Social platform.

Here is the latest on the US-Iran negotiations as both sides announced on day 94 of the war on Iran that they traded attacks:

In Iran

• Production restored at South Pars: Iran has restored gas production at three offshore platforms in the South Pars gasfield after Israel attacked them in March.
• US says it attacks Iranian military sites: The US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) said it conducted “self-defense strikes” on Iranian radar and drone sites in the city of Goruk and on Qeshm Island at the weekend.
• Iran executes two men over January protests: Iran executed two men convicted over their role in antigovernment protests in January, according to the Mizan news agency. The men were found guilty of setting fire to a mosque in Tehran, damaging public property and clashing with security forces, Mizan reported.

War diplomacy

• Iran says messages being sent to US: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran is continuing to exchange messages with the US on a deal to end the war.

• Trump’s stance: Araghchi’s comments came after US media reported that Trump has called for tougher terms in the preliminary agreement.

In the Gulf

• Kuwait intercepts missiles and drones: The General Staff of the Kuwaiti army said its air defences were “confronting hostile missile and drone attacks”. If sounds of explosions are heard, they are the result of air defences intercepting the projectiles, the army added.

In Lebanon

• Israel pushes farther into Lebanon: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered Israel’s military to push farther into Lebanon after Israeli forces made their deepest incursion into the country in more than 25 years.
• Hezbollah says it downs Israeli drone: The Lebanese armed group said it shot down an Israeli Hermes 450 drone over the western sector of southern Lebanon using a surface-to-air missile on Sunday evening. It said in a statement on Telegram that the strike was in response to Israeli violations of a ceasefire that went into effect on April 8.
• Hezbollah strikes Israeli forces in southern Lebanon: Hezbollah also said its fighters fired a large number of rockets and artillery shells at Israeli forces on the eastern outskirts of the town of Yohmor al-Shaqif in southern Lebanon early on Monday.
• US proposes new plan: The US has put forward a proposal to de-escalate hostilities in Lebanon, a US official told Al Jazeera, adding that Secretary of State Marco Rubio held separate talks with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Netanyahu.

In Israel

• Israel said rocket fired from Lebanon intercepted: The Israeli military said it intercepted a rocket that set off sirens in northern Israel and destroyed the launcher from which Hezbollah fired the projectile. Earlier, Israel’s Ynet News website reported that air raid sirens had been heard in Western Galilee, the town of Kiryat Shmona and surrounding areas.

In the US

• The IRGC says it strikes US airbase: The IRGC said it struck an airbase that was used for an attack on a telecommunications tower on Sirik Island, located in the southern province of Hormozgan, Iran’s Fars news agency reported. The IRGC did not specify the location of the facility.
• Trump says Iran wants to make a deal: In a new Truth Social post, Trump claimed Tehran “really wants to make a deal” and whatever deal is reached will “be a good one” for the US “and those that are with us”.

Election workers collecting ballots from a drop box in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday found multiple mail-in ballots that had been burned, officials say.

The vandalism was discovered Sunday morning outside the Department of Public Social Services building in the Civic Center area. According to county officials, election staff were conducting a routine ballot collection when they found the damaged ballots.

They “appeared to have sustained fire-related damage inside an Official Ballot Drop Box,” according to a news release from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s Office.

Officials did not immediately provide further details.

A second incident of election-related vandalism was reported at a voting center in Long Beach. The incident occurred at the center at Cesar E. Chavez Park. No other details were provided.

News of the vandalism comes just days before election day on June 2.

In L.A. County, ballot drop boxes are collected on a regular schedule by two election workers, according to the county registrar-recorder’s website. Drop-off boxes are available to voters 29 days before election day. Boxes are typically bolted into concrete or chained in place.

“Our responsibility is to protect voters and ensure every eligible voter has the opportunity to cast a ballot,” said Dean Logan, registrar-recorder/county clerk. “Any attempt to interfere with voting or election operations is taken seriously. We will continue working closely with law enforcement and other partners to safeguard the voting process and ensure voters can participate with confidence.”

The registrar-recorder is “carefully reviewing both incidents and working to identify any voters who may have been affected,” according to the release. “Voters whose ballots may have been impacted by the Drop Box incident will be contacted directly and provided information about available options, including replacement ballots if necessary.”

In 2020, a ballot box caught on fire at the Baldwin Park Library, prompting an investigation of potential arson. Firefighters had to cut open the metal drop box to extinguish the fire, and numerous ballots inside were damaged, some charred beyond recognition.

The Los Angeles Police Department did not immediately provide details about Sunday’s incident. A police report was filed, according to the county registrar-recorder.

To check the status of your ballot, visit the county registrar-recorder’s website. Drop boxes close at 8 p.m. on election day.

Yes, voting centers will be open across Los Angeles this week. And no, you don’t have to cast your ballot by mail.

With days left before the June 2 primary, President Trump made a round of misleading claims about the electoral process, this time falsely suggesting that the city was holding elections only by mail.

Trump’s comments came Saturday during an appearance on Fox News when he was asked by host Lara Trump — the president’s daughter-in-law — about his predictions for the upcoming primary.

“You know, they don’t have voting booths; everything’s by mail,” Trump responded. “I don’t think a Republican can win in California unless you pass the Save America Act — then they’re gonna have to show proof of citizenship, they’re going to have to get rid of mail-in voting.”

The L.A. County registrar-recorder moved to set the record straight in a tweet posted Sunday morning that read “MISINFORMATION ALERT.”

Noting that in-person voting was in fact allowed, the agency announced that it had 646 vote centers across the county — each with multiple voting booths. The centers will be open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday, the agency said in the posting, while tagging Fox News and the White House.

A map of polling locations featured on the agency’s website shows that there are dozens of voter centers available countywide. Mobile vote centers also were made available at various sites in the county. Mobile voting runs for the 10 days before election day and will not be available on June 2, according to the county registrar-recorder.

As of Friday morning, 333,000 mail-in votes had been cast in the June 2 primary for Los Angeles mayor, city attorney, city controller and eight of the 15 City Council seats. This was up from 321,000 at the same time in 2022, according to registrar-recorder.

Registered voters already should have received a ballot in the mail. Those who choose to vote in person can take their mail-in ballot to a vote center and ask to vote in person instead. Residents who haven’t yet registered to vote can still do so by requesting a conditional voter registration application at any voter center and filling out their ballot as they normally would.

Recent polling suggests that, ahead of Tuesday’s primary, incumbent Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has what pollsters deem a statistically insignificant lead in her bid for reelection as the city’s top executive. Bass is locked in a tight race with councilmember and former ally Nithya Raman and Spencer Pratt.

Trump has signaled his support for Pratt but hasn’t formally endorsed the former reality TV star and registered Republican. Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon said the president hadn’t done so out of the fear it would hurt Pratt’s chances in Democrat-dominant Los Angeles.

In 2020, during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Gavin Newsom took the unprecedented step of issuing a statewide order for voting by mail for that year’s election in what he described as a necessary step to limit the virus’ spread.

A handful of rural counties had no in-person voting locations that March.

In 1979, the state eliminated the need for an excuse to receive an absentee ballot, and an option to choose permanent absentee voting was created in 2002. In the decades since, Californians have embraced the flexibility that voting away from a polling place offers. In nearly every statewide election since 2008, the majority of votes have not been cast at a traditional polling place.

Fourteen more counties — including Orange, Sacramento and Santa Clara — have adopted the state Voter’s Choice Act, an optional state law that requires them to mail every voter a ballot and to replace traditional neighborhood polling places with multipurpose vote centers. Those in-person locations offer multiple election services for up to 10 days before election day.

Los Angeles, the 15th county to adopt the new state law, was initially given special permission by the Legislature to implement it without mailing every voter a ballot.

Trump has for years repeated baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen and that undocumented immigrants were swaying elections by voting illegally.

In light of these claims, Trump and some Republicans have pushed for new restrictions on voters. A federal proposal known as the Save America Act — which would require Americans to prove they are U.S. citizens before they register to vote and to show identification at the polls, among other things — cleared the U.S. House but stalled out in the Senate.

In November, California voters will weigh in on a similarly contentious ballot measure pushed by Republicans that would require all voters in future elections to show identification every time they vote in person or provide a special PIN when submitting mail-in ballots.

Under current state law, Californians are required to provide identification when registering to vote and must swear under penalty of perjury, a felony, that they are eligible to vote and are U.S. citizens. They are not required to show or provide identification when casting a ballot in person or by mail.

If passed, the California ballot measure would require voters to present government-issued identification, such as a state driver’s license, every time they vote. Voters mailing ballots would be required to write a four-digit number, essentially a PIN, on their ballot envelopes matching the one generated when they registered to vote.

Critics of California’s voter ID initiative, including many legal scholars, say the ballot measure addresses a problem that does not exist.

In May, a federal judge handed Trump a victory by declining to halt the president’s executive order creating a federal list of eligible voters and then directed the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to those on the list. Observers say the decision opens the door for potential sweeping changes in how American elections are run shortly before this year’s midterm elections.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The leading candidates for mayor fanned out across Los Angeles this weekend to make their final cases to voters ahead of Tuesday’s hotly contested primary election.

An energized Mayor Karen Bass galvanized crowds of labor union workers sporting union merch Saturday. “Four more years!” crowds chanted as a slew of local and state Democratic heavyweights joined the incumbent.

City Councilmember Nithya Raman spent the day dashing between local restaurants and bars in an old-school yellow Scout convertible to meet with business owners and her supporters.

Meanwhile, former reality TV personality Spencer Pratt hosted a block party in Baldwin Village with barbecue food, free merch and American-flag lawn chairs — although he spent much of the event off to the side, listening to the concerns of Black residents.

Recent polls have placed Pratt and Raman within striking distance of Bass, who had enjoyed a comfortable lead for much of the campaign. A recent survey, co-sponsored by The Times, had Bass at 26%, Raman at 25% and Pratt at 22% — with a roughly 3% margin of error in either direction and 10% of voters undecided.

The top two candidates in Tuesday’s jungle primary will advance to a November runoff, unless one candidate manages to garner over 50% of the vote.

Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt speaks with Diane Waterhouse, a caregiver and Westchester native, about homelessness and drug addiction at a campaign event Saturday in Baldwin Village. “We just talk about it like, ‘oh it’s Skid Row, that’s just where the drug addicts are.’ No, there’s communities, there’s kids, there’s people that work there, businesses,” Pratt said.

(Noah Haggerty / Los Angeles Times)

“I believe God moves mountains; I believe that you can get that 51% on that Tuesday,” Diane Waterhouse, a 60-year-old caregiver, told Pratt at his Baldwin Village event.

On the lawn of Jim Gilliam Park on Saturday, supporters from across the city chanted Pratt’s name, took selfies in front of black campaign vans with his hummingbird logo and ate cookies decorated with his face as kids raced around on scooters and played with the handful of dogs attending.

But Pratt — who had spent the morning at the West Los Angeles Animal Shelter speaking with animal welfare advocates — headed toward the nearby recreation center to talk with residents away from the cameras.

“Most people that come here and want our vote — we give y’all our vote; we’re still living like this. Nothing changes,” Erica Helon, a 40-year-old bus driver, told Pratt in one of the most tense moments of the event.

Pratt, wearing a beige suit and a hat with his name stylized like the L.A. Lakers logo, emphasized he was in South Los Angeles to listen and wasn’t even asking residents for their votes. He pulled Helon aside and gave her his personal phone number so they could talk more.

“I’m here because I want to be a voice for the community,” he said at one point. “I’m here because I don’t know what I don’t know.”

Helon, who is still undecided, left the event open-minded on Pratt.

“I would love to see what he’s going to do for this city,” she said.

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Nithya Raman joins a group photograph during a campaign stop Sunday with SevaSphere volunteers after preparing meals for people experiencing homelessness at Oaks Kitchens.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Raman, who has made publishing detailed policy plans a staple of her campaign, spent Saturday meeting with local restaurant owners after recently dropping a policy plan for small businesses.

Around sunset, the yellow convertible pulled up to Lowboy Bar, an Echo Park staple. Raman, sporting a Japanese Dodgers hat and a rainbow City Council fanny pack, joined campaign staff for drinks at tables covered in “Nithya Raman for Mayor” pins.

A few young Angelenos, starting out their nights in trendy getups, recognized Raman and stopped by to chat and take pictures.

“I’ve lived in L.A. for 12 years. It’s a very, very important city to me,” said Ryan Bergeron, a 35-year-old who works in marketing and does art on the side.

Bergeron, who is on the Echo Park neighborhood council, hopes Los Angeles can serve as a “beacon in an otherwise scary time in the country” as it tackles affordability, the housing crisis and sustainability issues.

As for Raman, “I’ve seen her as a councilmember and been really proud of that,” Bergeron said. When she announced her candidacy for mayor, “It felt like everything really clicked.”

Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Monica Rodriguez attend the Los Angeles Democratic Party and Avance Democratic Club Carne Asada Tour, a community event held Saturday at the Yosemite Recreation Center. Avanceis one of the country’s largest Latino Democratic clubs.

(Karla Gachet / For The Times)

Bass, conversely, wound down after a day of union rallies by eating tacos at the Yosemite Recreation Center’s picnic tables in Eagle Rock with several local politicians, including Councilmember Monica Rodriguez and county Democratic Party Chair Mark Ramos.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna had joined Bass earlier in the day. Although Luna missed out on the picnic, he still enjoyed several tacos in his car.

Come Sunday, Raman, wearing jeans and a chartreuse cardigan, was greeting bike riders at a Sawtelle coffee shop and speaking to a phone bank group at UCLA.

“It is absolutely essential to making sure that our little campaign, without all the political machine behind us, without MAGA millions behind us, that our vision of Los Angeles still manages to get out to the people, and your work today is an essential part of that,” Raman told a group of United Auto Workers-represented graduate students from multiple nearby universities.

She had several other appearances scheduled for the rest of the day, including lunch with a group of Korean American Democrats in Koreatown, Encinofest, a block party in Silver Lake and a visit to Boyle Heights.

“There seems to be increasing awareness about the race and excitement about the issues,” Raman told The Times. “It’s been really exciting to see people engaging and feeling positive about the city’s future.”

About two dozen students spoke to potential voters associated with UAW and urged them to mark Raman’s name on their ballots by Tuesday.

Stephanie Wert, a 30-year-old psychology graduate student at UCLA and head steward for UAW, said the phone bank could determine whether Raman’s campaign would survive the week.

“This vote is going to be decided on the margins, and so I think we could really make the difference that pushes her to the runoff,” Wert said.

Bass peeked around the back doors of a supporter’s Venice home Sunday afternoon to cheers from several dozen supporters at an intimate event. Speaking over small snack plates and beverages, many said they saw real improvements in the homeless populations around their neighborhood during Bass’ tenure as mayor.

Tatiana Barhar, a Venice resident for over 30 years, said she saw in real-time an “extreme” homelessness problem get better during Bass’ term, thanks to her Inside Safe program. “I want to support her,” she said. “I think there’s a lot more she can do.”

Bass spoke of 1960s-level crime rates, thousands of unhoused people pulled off the street into housing and efforts to build up Hollywood during her time as mayor. “We got a lot to do,” Bass said. “We have such a bright future in the nation’s second-largest city, and I hope that you will continue to be there with me as we win.”

Pratt’s moves on Sunday remained more elusive. His campaign emphasized he was hoping to have intimate moments with L.A. communities, instead of a media and influencer frenzy like some of his previous, more widely publicized events.

One of those more intimate moments was a community event in a Latino neighborhood near downtown L.A. on Sunday morning. Pratt had spent Thursday in New York for some national media interviews to “get the message to as many people as possible.”

WASHINGTON — David Johnston was a licensed attorney when he illegally entered the U.S. Capitol with a mob of President Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. More than five years later, the South Carolina man is offering to help fellow “J6ers” apply for payouts from the Trump administration’s nearly $1.8-billion fund for people claiming to be victims of a “weaponized” government.

He’ll do it for a 10% cut of any award, capped at $5,000 apiece.

“I think the narrative is changing” about how the history of that day is being told, Johnston said in a video he posted to social media. “I think good things are happening for us.”

Hundreds of Trump loyalists pleaded guilty to storming the Capitol, admitting under oath that they broke the law. Some were convicted of sedition, and many attacked police officers while trying to overturn Trump’s election loss. Now pardoned by Trump, many hope to capitalize on their crimes by tapping into the $1.776-billion settlement fund designed to compensate the president’s allies who claim they were politically prosecuted.

A bipartisan backlash to the fund and a legal roadblock have not dimmed the celebratory response from Jan. 6 rioters clamoring for a share of the taxpayer money. Some are staking claims even though the government has not established an application process and a judge has frozen the fund’s formation, at least temporarily.

Seeking payouts

The fund’s critics see it as another vehicle for Trump and his allies to whitewash the events of Jan. 6, retroactively justify the mob’s assault on a pillar of American democracy and reward some of Trump’s most loyal followers.

Jason Riddle, a military veteran from New Hampshire who was sentenced to 90 days behind bars after pleading guilty to riot charges, publicly rejected a pardon from Trump. Likewise, he said it would be “ridiculous” for him or any other Jan. 6 rioter to get government compensation.

“I’d love money, but I can’t accept that. That would bother me for the rest of my life,” he said. “We weren’t innocently persecuted just because of who we are or who we vote for. We were persecuted for committing criminal behavior in the Capitol of the United States.”

Plenty of other “J6ers” do not share Riddle’s reluctance.

A Florida man who posed for photos with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s stolen lectern argued on social media that he deserves to be compensated for the cost of his infamy. A rioter from New Jersey described by prosecutors as a Nazi sympathizer hailed the fund as “good news not just for J6ers but all victims of weaponization.” A Texas man who received a seven-year prison sentence for storming the Capitol with a metal tomahawk celebrated the fund as “payback” for “victims of Biden’s tyranny,” referring to President Biden.

Oregon resident Pamela Hemphill, sentenced to 60 days in jail for her conviction, rejected a pardon from Trump but has drafted a written claim for compensation from the fund. Unlike scores of rioters who claim to be victims of a government weaponized by Democrats, Hemphill blames Trump for her legal troubles. Her claims letter says she is seeking $5 million in compensation.

“I wouldn’t have been through all of this if Trump hadn’t lied about the election being stolen,” she said during a telephone interview. “It’s a direct result of his lies that I was even there that day.”

Legal and political challenges

It is an open question whether anyone convicted of a Capitol riot-related crime could be eligible for payments from a fund created to resolve Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns.

Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche has not ruled out that possibility. Blanche said there are no limits on who can apply, but he noted that the fund’s five commissioners — all yet to be named — will decide who deserves to be compensated and why, based on factors such as “what the person did, his sentence, how much time he was in jail.”

“That’s up to the commissioners,” Blanche told the Associated Press on Thursday when asked about his position on whether violent Jan. 6 defendants should be eligible for payments.

“You have to define something and then stick to it. That’s something I’ve been hesitant to try to do, because it’s very fact-intensive,” Blanche said. ”Me sitting here and talking in hypotheticals is something that I don’t think is fair to the process.”

It is unclear whether Congress would block payments to Jan. 6 defendants. Senate Republicans who are angry about the settlement have said they want to place parameters on the fund as part of a Department of Homeland Security spending bill. They abruptly left town this month after a tense meeting with Blanche and will return Monday with the situation unresolved.

A federal judge in Virginia has frozen the fund’s establishment and temporarily blocked any processing or paying of claims. The judge issued that ruling Friday in one of at least three lawsuits challenging the fund.

Brendan Ballou, a former prosecutor who tried several Jan. 6 cases before leaving the Department of Justice last year, sued on behalf of two police officers who helped defend the Capitol from the mob. Ballou views the fund’s creation as part of a broader Trump campaign to undermine democratic institutions and rewrite the history of Jan. 6.

“And if the president is successful in that effort, if he’s able to get people to either forget or condone that day, he knows that he can get people to accept any attack on democracy,” Ballou said.

‘I want vengeance’

Nearly 1,600 people were charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. More than 1,200 were convicted and sentenced before Trump issued mass pardons and ordered the dismissal of all pending Jan. 6 cases upon his return to the White House last year. Trump also freed far-right extremist group members who were imprisoned for plotting to attack the Capitol to keep Trump in office after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Biden.

The self-described “J6 community” isn’t the only pro-Trump constituency angling for cuts of the money after being charged with or convicted of crimes.

Meshawn Maddock, who was charged as being a fake elector for Trump in Michigan before a judge dismissed the case last year, said she and her husband, state Rep. Matt Maddock, “absolutely” plan on making a claim. She believes the fund’s use of taxpayer money is justified because it “paid for the prosecution and investigation of the years that I was being hunted down.”

“I want vengeance and I want retribution,” Maddock said.

Trump’s campaign to recast the violence of Jan. 6 as a peaceful protest seems to have emboldened many convicted rioters.

Johnston’s eagerness to help other Capitol rioters with claims contrasts with his remorse he expressed at his sentencing in 2022. He apologized for his “terrible lapse in judgment” before a judge sentenced him to three weeks in jail and three months of home detention. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor trespassing charge.

“It was a dumb, dumb thing to do,” Johnston told the judge. “I am 100% responsible for what I did that day.”

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Jamie Stengle, Mary Claire Jalonick and Joey Cappelletti contributed to this report.

On this date in history:

In 1790, President George Washington signed a bill creating the first U.S. copyright law.

In 1859, construction concluded and bells rang out for the first time from London’s Big Ben clock tower.

In 1889, a flood in Johnstown, Pa., left more than 2,200 people dead.

In 1902, Britain and South Africa signed a peace treaty ending the Boer War.

In 1916, the Battle of Verdun passed the 100-day mark. It would continue for another 200 days, amassing a casualty list of an estimated 800,000 soldiers dead, injured or missing.

In 1921, the Tulsa race massacre was set off when a mob of White residents attacked the Black residents and businesses in the Greenwood District. The total number of those killed in the violence is unknown, with an Oklahoma commission established in 2001 estimating between 75 to 100 people dead. The number of displaced Black residents was far greater.

In 1940, a thick fog hanging over the English Channel prevented the German Luftwaffe from flying missions against evacuating Allied troops from Dunkirk.

Troops evacuated from Dunkirk on a destroyer about to berth at Dover, England, on May 31, 1940. File Photo courtesy of the Imperial War Museum

In 1985, seven federally insured banks in Arkansas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Oregon were closed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. It was a single-day record for closings since the FDIC was founded in 1934.

In 1996, Israeli voters elected opposition Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister.

In 2003, Eric Robert Rudolph, the long-sought fugitive in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing and attacks on abortion clinics and a gay nightclub, was arrested while rummaging through a dumpster in North Carolina. Rudolph, whose bombings killed two people and injured many others, was sentenced to four life terms in prison.

In 2005, Mark Felt admitted that, while No. 2 man in the FBI, he was “Deep Throat,” the shadowy contact whose help to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein on the 1972 Watergate break-in led to U.S. President Richard Nixon’s resignation.

File Photo by Alexis C. Glenn/UPI

In 2012, John Edwards of North Carolina, former U.S. senator and presidential candidate, was acquitted on a charge of taking illegal campaign contributions, and a judge declared a mistrial on five other charges against him.

In 2014, U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, 28, captured in Afghanistan nearly five years earlier, was released by the Taliban in exchange for five detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. In March 2015, the Army announced that Bergdahl had been charged with desertion.

In 2019, a shooting a a Virginia Beach, Va., municipal center left 12 victims and the shooter — a disgruntled former employee — dead.

In 2021, China announced plans to allow couples to have a third child, scrapping its controversial two-child policy amid a slumping birth rate and aging population.

File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI

NEWARK, N.J. — New Jersey state police set up designated protest zones and vehicle checkpoints outside an immigration detention center in Newark on Friday, replacing federal immigration enforcement agents who have been clashing with protesters for days.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill said she sent in state police to bring order outside Delaney Hall as the demonstrations have intensified, with violence and arrests increasing as night falls.

“It has grown unsafe, and that’s completely unacceptable,” the Democratic governor said at a news conference announcing the new measures. “We need to take this opportunity to lower the temperature.”

As police erected protest barriers, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who had formed a line in front of protesters moved inside the building’s perimeter fence.

New Jersey State Police Lt. Col. David Sierotowicz said ICE officers agreed to stand down with state police assuming responsibility.

Demonstrators had mixed reactions. Some staged a sit-in and refused to move into one of the new protest areas police set up using metal barriers and concrete blocks.

Rachel Cohen worried that demonstrators exercising their 1st Amendment rights were being silenced.

“It is not helpful to quell protest for the sake of a false peace,” she said. “There is no peace while we are torturing our neighbors on [the] government dime inside this facility.”

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, on social media, called the measures a “win for law and order” and noted that Sherrill had resisted sending state police for days.

The protests began a week earlier after immigrant advocates said detainees inside launched a hunger strike over poor living conditions at the 1,000-bed facility, which opened last May.

Demonstrators have been attempting to block people and vehicles from entering and exiting, linking their arms in a human chain and using trash cans, umbrellas and other items as makeshift shields and barricades.

ICE officers wearing helmets and tactical vests have used pepper spray and batons to try to disperse the protesters and clear the roadway for vehicles.

At least six demonstrators were arrested and accused of assaulting law enforcement officers Wednesday night, and more have been arrested on other nights, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Acting U.S. Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche shared images online Friday of bloody wounds and bruises sustained by ICE officers.

“These riots are clearly not ‘peaceful protests’ as you can see from the photos of these horrific wounds,” he said. “Assault a federal officer, you’ll be held accountable.”

Another demonstrator, Lisa O’Dwyer, said she was fine with the designated protest areas.

“I like to get my point across and stay safe at the same time,” the Westfield resident said.

Eyesha Marable, pastor at Mt. Zion AME Church in Millburn, agreed, even while acknowledging that there were “different schools of thought” among protesters.

“There are people here who are angry. Their family members are inside. Their friends are inside. People have been taken off the streets, out of their communities,” she said.

“We have to keep the peace,” Marable said. “The goal is to get our people free, to get them liberated, and we cannot do that if we’re fighting out here.”

State Atty. Gen. Jennifer Davenport said it was important to “de-escalate” the situation as “violence, either against protesters or by protesters, is unacceptable.”

Sherrill said she did not want to give ICE a pretext to expand operations in the state, noting that federal immigration officers around the country have killed and injured protesters in recent months.

“We all need to do everything we can to cool things down now,” she said.

The governor and other Democratic officials tried to visit detainees Monday but were denied entry.

Democratic members of Congress from New York City, however, were able to tour Delaney Hall the day after that. They reported dire conditions, with detainees being fed small portions of often spoiled food and their varied medical needs going ignored.

Families and supporters of detainees also say their loved ones have also been subjected to pepper spray and physical force in retaliation for their hunger strike and the protests outside.

Marcelo and Shaffrey write for the Associated Press and reported from New York and Newark, respectively.

“Pressure,” the new World War II movie from director Anthony Maras and writer David Haig, is a hyperfocused look at the days leading up to D-day with a special focus on the weather. It’s a one-setting thriller that unspools in the pressure-cooker environment of General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s war room at an English country estate. The movie works backward from a famous 1961 Eisenhower quip to JFK that attributed his success in Normandy, France, to the Allies having “better meteorologists than the Germans.”

If you’re skeptical about how exciting a movie about the weather on D-day might be, “Pressure” takes that as a creative challenge, an argumentative stance from which to start. For the next hour and 40 minutes, Maras and co-writer Haig, who also wrote the 2014 play from which the film is adapted, explain to us exactly how important the meteorologists of D-day were, beginning with the disastrous D-day rehearsal Exercise Tiger.

With the weather app at our fingertips these days, it can be hard to imagine just how difficult it was to forecast the weather in the 1940s, especially in Northern Europe. That was the predicament facing Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) just 72 hours before the planned D-day launch of June 5, 1944. But we know that D-day happened on June 6, so the arrival at that date is part of the film’s narrative intrigue.

After a devastating glimpse of Exercise Tiger, red blood mixing with blue ocean waves and white sandy beaches, we’re quickly introduced to our protagonist, Group Capt. Chief Meteorologist James Stagg (Andrew Scott), in his cozy home with his pregnant wife before he’s swept into critical war planning.

He’s stern, terse and no-nonsense. Stagg is the kind of person who wants to be correct more than he wants to be liked and he insists on a careful collection of live data, using weather balloons, phone calls and mathematical charting. His foil is Col. Irving Krick (Chris Messina), a charming American meteorologist and Eisenhower’s chosen weather guru, a yes man who relies on selective historical data and a persuasive speaker whose approach rankles the fastidious Stagg. Eisenhower instructs the two men to come to an agreement and “Pressure” follows the ups and downs of their working relationship over the course of several days.

The movie becomes a two-hander between Scott’s Stagg and Fraser’s Eisenhower, the former convinced that a storm on June 5 will make conditions less than ideal, the latter raging at the uncertainty while simultaneously attempting to placate a phalanx of military personnel. The troops are requisitioned, the destroyers in place, the full moon just right, the secrecy of the invasion delicate. Fraser’s explosive performance underlines the immensity of the stakes, balancing every precarious element of this enormous mission.

Maras, who is known for another terrific one-setting thriller based on a true story, 2018’s “Hotel Mumbai,” both directs and edits and his films are put together like precision clockwork: propulsive and relentless, the pace italicized by Volker Bertelmann’s scores. “Pressure” is skillfully directed, sweeping us into this world with a kind of addictive immediacy, and is also beautifully lensed by cinematographer Jamie Ramsay. Maras and Ramsay make the wise choice to shoot the film with richly saturated color instead of the usual grayish, desaturated look often assigned to period pieces set in this era. It’s not gritty and harsh, but rather stunning and lovely — an eerie contrast to the terror and bloodshed of the day itself.

While Fraser delivers an external performance as the tough American general, Scott offers a restrained, mostly tamped-down depiction of the repressed and methodical Stagg. But when he finally bursts with a cathartic eleventh-hour speech about the inaccuracy of Krick’s historical forecast, Eisenhower listens. Scott, as seen in “All of Us Strangers” and “Blue Moon,” is so good at this kind of acting, processing every emotion internally but allowing just enough to show to let the audience into his character’s emotional state. It’s wildly compelling to watch.

In a quiet conversation with Eisenhower’s close confidant and aide, Kay Summersby (Kerry Condon), she jokes that weathermen are boring. Stagg reminds her that the weather itself isn’t. Weather feeds us, it can destroy us — it rules our existence, he says. “People ask, ‘When will the wind stop blowing?’ No one ever asks, ‘Why does the wind blow? What is the wind?,’ ” revealing himself as a sort of philosophical poet of the weather. His forecast was the crucial edge in D-day and the volatility of the weather is increasingly relevant in our lives, especially with our changing climate.

Boring? Never. Thrilling and history-making? Indeed.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

Trump weighs next steps on Iran deal as Tehran insists negotiations are continuing and no final agreement exists.

Prospects for a US-Iran agreement to end the conflict remained uncertain on Friday, with President Donald Trump saying he would make a “final determination” on a deal, while Iranian officials stressed that no understanding had yet been reached.

Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said Tehran would judge any agreement by actions rather than words, adding that no steps would be taken unless Washington acted first.

Meanwhile, fighting continued elsewhere in the region. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces had advanced beyond Lebanon’s Litani River, as Israeli attacks across Lebanon on Friday left dozens more civilians reportedly killed or wounded.

Here is what we know:

In Iran

• Iran says talks continue, but no deal yet: Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said exchanges with the United States are continuing but stressed that no final agreement has been reached. He rejected Trump’s demands-based approach and described the US naval blockade as illegal, adding that Tehran would judge any easing of restrictions by actions rather than words.
  

War diplomacy

• CENTCOM highlights ongoing regional patrols: US Central Command (CENTCOM) said its forces remain “present and vigilant” across the region, sharing an image of an F-16 fighter jet conducting a patrol over the Middle East.
• US pushes allies to boost defence spending: Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Trump plans a $1.5 trillion investment in defence and described it as part of a historic expansion of America’s military-industrial base. Hegseth urged allies to spend at least 3.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defence, warning that countries that fail to do so could face changes in their relationship with Washington. He also reiterated that the US remains committed to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
• Washington praises Israel-Lebanon security talks: The US Department of Defense described military-to-military talks between Israeli and Lebanese delegations in Washington as “productive”, saying they focused on regional security and stability. The Pentagon also reaffirmed support for Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

In the US

• Uncertainty remains after White House talks: Reporting from the White House, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said there was still no clarity after Trump’s Situation Room meeting on whether a final agreement with Iran had been reached. Fisher said any easing of restrictions around the Strait of Hormuz could signal progress, but officials are still waiting for concrete details from the White House.

In Israel

• Air raid sirens sound in northern Israel: The Israeli military said it intercepted several projectiles launched from Lebanon, while another landed near Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel. The military reported no casualties and did not specify whether the projectiles were rockets or drones.

In Lebanon

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The success of D-day, a pivotal moment in World War II, partially hinged on the weather forecast. The Allied invasion of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, was planned for months as the American and British forces held practice operations in England.

Enormous efforts were made to mislead the Germans about what was coming. The operation was originally scheduled for June 5 but the day before, James Stagg, a meteorologist and group captain in the Royal Air Force, advised the American commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, to wait for better conditions.

This lesser-known decision is the premise of “Pressure,” a new movie from filmmaker Anthony Maras. It’s an adaptation of David Haig’s play of the same name, in which the playwright himself portrayed Stagg. Haig, who co-wrote the “Pressure” screenplay with Maras, compares it to “The Imitation Game.”

“Some of these heroes who affect history from the sidelines just stay in the sidelines until somebody does research, discovers them lurking and finds they are so quietly heroic that it’s irresistible as a story,” Haig says, speaking via Zoom from London.

Haig began writing a version of the script shortly after the play debuted at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh in May 2014. It moved to the West End in 2018, and opened in North America at Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre in 2023. Maras came onboard after making his 2018 film “Hotel Mumbai,” also based on a true story.

“When I first read the play and the script, I was bowled over by how, with this one decision, so many lives were changed,” Maras says, on a video call from Los Angeles. “Not just the lives of the men on the beach but throughout the Allied world. When you think of a war story, you think of men and now women on the field, but there is so much more to it behind the scenes.”

The film expands Haig’s play and includes additional characters and sequences, including the actual D-day invasion. It stars Andrew Scott as Stagg, Brendan Fraser as Eisenhower, Kerry Condon as Eisenhower’s secretary Kay Summersby, Chris Messina as U.S. Air Force meteorologist Irving P. Krick and Damian Lewis as senior British army officer Bernard Montgomery.

Both Haig and Maras strove to be as historically accurate as possible, even including archival footage from the war. “It is inevitably heightened, as any stage play or film is,” Haig says. “But it is very true.”

“It is absolutely as true as we could get it within the confines of a two-hour runtime,” Maras adds. “We took great lengths to try and be as accurate to the history but also to the deeper story as possible.”

Here’s what is true and what is dramatized in “Pressure.”

The importance of the weather

Brendan Fraser, left, and Andrew Scott in the movie “Pressure.”

(Alex Bailey / Focus Features / StudioCanal)

D-day, secretly known as Operation Overlord, was timed based on several factors, including the weather, the tides and the moonlight. Because the assault was multipronged, with Allied forces coming by sea, land and air, they required good visibility at night and a high tide to ensure less distances between the boats and the defending Germans.

“There were hundreds of meters between low tide and high tide,” Maras says. “So depending on where the boats landed, you either had 50 meters until you made it to the dunes and then the bunkers, or you had to make it 300 meters if it was low tide.”

A clear forecast with low winds and no rain was essential.

“The landing craft were antiquated and flat-bottomed,” Haig says, “and if they had gone on May 5 with the storms that Stagg anticipated coming in with the jet stream, those landing craft would have capsized. The war wouldn’t have been lost, although we do posit that it might have been in the film. In reality, failure would have elongated [the war] and caused countless extra deaths.”

To shoot “Pressure,” the filmmakers used real charts and meteorological instruments. The production design team re-created the famous D-day map from the Allied headquarters in Southwark House. The real one was made in two pieces by separate manufacturers to ensure secrecy.

“When you see that map, it’s a little bit mismatched and our team re-created that,” Maras says. “We got the paper they used to draw the maps from the same mill they used for those maps 80 years ago. A lot of effort was put into the minutiae that adds to the accuracy.”

Exercise Tiger

The film opens with a depiction of an Allied training operation called Exercise Tiger, which took place over several months on England’s Slapton Sands. Because many of the soldiers were young and untested, the Allied leaders wanted to prepare them for the sights and sounds of battle.

“They did a whole series of exercises to try and get together a full-scale dress rehearsal of what D-day would be,” Maras says.

These rehearsals, still widely unknown and spanning from late 1943 through April 1944, involved dangerous friendly fire and suffered from serious coordination errors, resulting in the real-life deaths of at least 700 American and British soldiers.

“That was an absolute disaster and yet we remember D-day as one of the great military triumphs in history,” Haig says.

Maras wanted the film to begin with this moment to emphasize the headspace of the Allied leaders.

“How do you establish what the true consequences of failure are for a story like this?” Maras says. “When we’re in the war room with all of those commanders and officers, they know what the implications of their words mean because they’ve seen it. They’ve lived it. The image of the blood in the water and the young men in that water was to tattoo in the audience’s brain that if these commanders mess up, this could happen again.”

Eisenhower, in particular, felt the magnitude of D-day. “He wrote two letters on the eve of D-day: what happens in success and what happens in failure,” Maras says. “He was sleeping two hours a night. He was a nervous wreck.”

Stagg vs. Krick

In the film, Scott’s Stagg arrives at Southwark House from Dunstable four days before D-day is planned. He is confronted by the American meteorologist Krick, who disagrees with him about the potentially disastrous forecast. Krick believes sun and calm seas are on the horizon thanks to historical analogue charts, but Stagg, using more comprehensive prediction methods, thinks a major storm is coming.

“In actuality, Stagg came onboard in about November 1943 and got to Southwark House a few months earlier,” Maras says. “His transfer came a few months earlier, not a few days earlier. The contours of the relationships between Stagg and Krick and the others are accurate, but they took place in a more compressed timeline.”

Both Stagg and Krick have recounted their version of events in various books, both claiming they were right about the weather. Although Haig and Maras imagine their dialogue and how these conflicts may have played out, the conflicts were real.

“They both adhered to their own meteorological vision,” Haig says, explaining the differences in prediction models from continent to continent. “In the United States, Krick’s system of weather forecasting was viable. If you come to the U.K., you can’t rely on the weather for more than five minutes, so that method doesn’t apply.”

Adds Maras, “They thought, ‘The weather is going to be good. We should hold our nerve and go.’ There was a rhetorically violent disagreement between him and the others.”

In the film, Krick claims that he has never inaccurately predicted the weather ahead of a battle, using his successes in North Africa as evidence. This was technically true.

“He was very good at his job within the context of certain geographical landscapes,” Haig says. “He didn’t make a mistake in North Africa. When Eisenhower challenges Stagg, he says, ‘This man never got it wrong.’ And he didn’t. In the whole of the North African campaign, Krick was spot on.”

After Stagg convinces the leaders to postpone D-day, he is vindicated by a deluge of rain that arrives while everyone is attending church at Southwark House on June 5. There was a church on site, although this moment in the film was dramatized.

“Whether it began raining precisely at that moment I have my doubts,” Haig says. “But it has the framework of truth.”

Ike and Kay

Andrew Scott and Kerry Condon in the movie “Pressure.”

(Alex Bailey / Focus Features / StudioCanal)

Kay Summersby had been an ambulance driver during the Blitz. The film hints at a less-than-professional relationship between Eisenhower and his personal secretary. She was certainly with Eisenhower at Southwark House, although there is less evidence that she had any kind of association with Stagg.

“The biggest fictional thing I did with both the play and the film was to join the third point of the triangle so you’ve got Stagg, Eisenhower and Kay,” Haig says. “The link between Stagg and Kay historically would be tenuous.”

There are differing opinions about Eisenhower and Kay’s relationship. “We know that they were extremely close and they shared a trustful bond,” Maras says. “There are many photos of them together. She was definitely a big force in Ike’s life at that time, and we wanted to pay respect to that.”

“Whatever one’s interpretation of the relationships that she inhabits within the story, her influence was substantial,” Haig adds.

After seeing Peter Jackson’s 2018 World War I documentary “They Shall Not Grow Old,” Maras had the idea to use colorized archival footage in “Pressure.”

“In the D-day sequence at the end, there are various real-life shots of the soldiers landing on the beaches,” Maras says. “We were able to cut between the archival [material] and our footage to increase the scope. And it wasn’t just to get the scale. Yes, we have shots of massive flotillas and ships and trucks, but sometimes it was just for a glance of a soldier where you can see death in his eyes.”

The team ultimately acquired more than 50 hours of archival footage. They hired research editors to go through it and, after a few days, Maras asked if any of the editors could recommend additional crew to help.

Then a man named James Stagg showed up to work. “Stagg’s grandson, 80 years later, walked into our offices and helped edit the archival movie footage that we put in his grandfather’s film,” Maras says.

Stagg’s wife

Andrew Scott in the movie “Pressure.”

(Alex Bailey / Focus Features / StudioCanal)

The play doesn’t include scenes with Stagg’s wife, Elizabeth, but Haig purposefully bookends the film with the couple together. “When he arrives at Southwark House as a terse, brusque, tricky man, you’ve already experienced his level of affection with his wife and that’s really important contextually,” Haig says. “You’re waiting for the end when he goes back to see her and the baby.”

At the time when Stagg went to Southwark House, his wife was pregnant. Stagg was not allowed to make phone calls to her because of the secrecy surrounding D-day. In reality, the hospital where she gave birth was not bombed, as it is in the movie.

“The bombing of the hospital was more reflective of the times that Stagg and his wife had gone through in the lead up to D-day,” Maras says. “That element is to encapsulate that Stagg was fearing for his wife. As he walks down this corridor, he is faced with: Is she alive? Is she dead?”

Truth to power

Ultimately, Stagg tells a room full of military leaders that they have to pause on D-day because of the weather — a truthful inclusion. It was important to Maras to emphasize how he stood up to power.

“Here’s a protagonist who’s not afraid to speak his mind and has the courage to get up in front of a room full of the most powerful military on Earth at that point and tell them something they don’t want to hear,” Maras says.

“When Eisenhower was passing on the baton of leadership at the inauguration for JFK, JFK asked, ‘What gave you the edge on D-day?’ Eisenhower said, ‘We had better meteorologists than the Germans.’ He had the wisdom to trust in the experts. It’s worth heeding that lesson from history.”