The in-game island will also feature a replica of the 70th anniversary sculpture inspired by Sleeping Beauty Castle as well as glimpses of the theme park’s familiar landmarks including the Incredicoaster and Pixar Pal-a-Round across the virtual skyline. Players who complete the island’s mini-games will collect keys that can be used to unlock Disneyland 70th-themed island-exclusive cosmetics so players will be able to show their Disney spirit.
“Fortnite” players can access the island by searching for Disneyland Game Rush or using island code 4617-4819-8826.
“Disneyland Game Rush” marks the latest Disney-affiliated “Fortnite” crossover since Walt Disney Co. acquired a stake in Epic Games in 2024. Earlier this year “Fortnite” launched “Galactic Battle,” which was billed as its biggest Star Wars-themed tie-in, as well as a “Simpsons”-themed battle royale mini-season that kicked off earlier this month.
Still to come is Disney and Epic Games’ interconnected “games and entertainment universe,” which will include brands such as Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar and Avatar. This “new persistent universe” was announced last year.
Elliot Zwiebach was 62 years old when he sang in front of a live audience for the first time.
The retired reporter had always loved show tunes, but he’d never considered singing in public before.
“I sang for my own amusement, and I wasn’t very amused,” he said recently.
But one night, after attending a few open mic nights at the Gardenia Supper Club in West Hollywood as a spectator, he got up the nerve to step onto the stage and perform a tune backed by a live band.
For his first song, he picked the humorous “Honey Bun” from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “South Pacific.” It was frightening and he didn’t sing well. And yet, the following week he came back and did it again.
Newbie Ian Douglas, left, and longtime singer Elliot Zwiebach look over a sign-up sheet at the Gardenia’s long-running open mic night.
Sixteen years later, Zwiebach, now 78, is a core member of what the event’s longtime host Keri Kelsey calls “the family,” a group of roughly 25 regulars who sing jazz standards, show tunes and other numbers from the Great American Songbook at the longest-running open mic night in L.A.
“It’s very much like a community,” Zwiebach said on a recent evening as he prepared to sing “This Nearly Was Mine,” another song from “South Pacific.” “Everyone knows everyone.”
For 25 years, the small, L-shaped Gardenia room on Santa Monica Boulevard has served as a musical home for a diverse group of would-be jazz and cabaret singers. Each Tuesday night, elementary school teachers, acting coaches, retired psychoanalysts, arts publicists and the occasional celebrity pay an $8 cover to perform in front of an audience that knows firsthand just how terrifying it can be to stand before even a small crowd with nothing more than a microphone in your hand.
“You are so vulnerable up there with everyone staring at you,” said Kelsey, who has hosted the open mic night for 24 years and once watched Molly Ringwald nervously take the stage. “But it’s also the most joyous experience in the world.”
Director and acting coach Kenshaka Ali sings “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” by Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
The singers are backed by a live, three-piece band led by guitarist Dori Amarilio. The rotating group of musicians — a few of them Grammy winners — arrive not knowing what they will be playing that night. Some singers bring sheet music, others chord charts. And there are those who just hum a few bars and allow the musicians to intuit the key and melody enough to follow along. Poet Judy Barrat, a regular attendee, usually hands the evening’s piano player a copy of the poem she’ll be reading and asks him to improv along with her.
“It’s totally freeform,” said Andy Langham, a jazz pianist who toured with Natalie Cole and Christopher Cross and often plays the Gardenia. “I read the stanzas and try to paint pictures with the notes.”
Keri Kelsey, singing “Mack the Knife,” has hosted the Gardenia’s open mic night for 24 years.
The Gardenia, which opened in 1981, is one of the few venues in L.A. specifically designed for the intimacy of cabaret. The small, spare room has table service seating for just over 60 patrons and a stage area beautifully lit by an abundance of canned lights. Doors open at 7 p.m. on Tuesday nights, but those in the know line up outside the building’s nondescript exterior as early as 6 p.m. to ensure a reasonable spot on the night’s roster of singers. (Even though there is a one-song-per-person limit, the night has been known to stretch past 12 a.m.) Nichole Rice, who manages the Gardenia, takes dinner and drink orders until the show starts at 8:30 p.m. Then the room falls into respectful silence.
Pianist Andy Langham and guitarist Dori Amarilio perform live music accompaniment for each open mic participant at the Gardenia.
“This is a listening room,” said singer-songwriter Steve Brock, who has been attending the open mic night for more than a decade. “I’ve been to other rooms where I’m competing with tequila or the Rams. Here, when anyone goes up in front of that microphone, everyone stops.”
On a recent Tuesday night, the show began as it always does with an instrumental song by the band (a piano, guitar and upright bass) before an opening number by Kelsey. Dressed in a black leather dress and knee-high boots, she had this time prepared “Mack the Knife.” “This may be one of the loungiest lounge songs ever,” she said. “Maybe that’s why I really like it.”
People begin to line up outside the Gardenia at 6 p.m. to get a spot for the Tuesday open mic night.
The first singer to take the stage was Trip Kennedy, a bearded masseur who performed “The Rainbow Connection” in a sweet tenor. When he finished, Kelsey shared that she was cast as an extra in “The Muppets Take Manhattan.”
“It was the most ridiculous thing,” she said, filling time as the next singer consulted quietly with the band. “I was a college student who dressed up as a college student for the audition.”
Dolores Scozzesi, who sang at the Hollywood Improv in the ’80s between comedy sets, performed a moody arrangement of “What Now My Love.” “This is a [chord] chart from 2011,” she told the audience before she began. “I want to try it because these guys are the best.”
Monica Doby Davis, an elementary school teacher, sings the jazz standard “You Go to My Head” at the Gardenia.
Zwiebach performed a medley of two Broadway hits, “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” (which he altered to “his face”) and “This Nearly Was Mine,” easily hitting all the notes. After, his young friend Ian Douglas, a relative newbie who started attending the open mic night in the spring, sang the jazz standard “You Go to My Head.” Zwiebach praised the performance.
“I know that song very well and you did a great job,” he said.
Monica Doby Davis, who once sang with the ’90s R&B girl group Brownstone and now works as an elementary school teacher, also performed “You Go to My Head.” Although she had left the entertainment business decades ago, she said finding the Gardenia open mic night 13 years ago “brought music back to my life.”
Tom Nobles, left, sings alongside bassist Adam Cohen, center, and pianist Andy Langham at the Gardenia.
There were many beautiful, intimate moments that night, but perhaps the best was when Tom Nobles, an actor and retired psychoanalyst in a purple knit cap and thick plastic glasses, forgot the words to “Lost in the Masquerade” by George Benson.
He stumbled for a moment, a bit perplexed, before turning to his friends for help.
“Whoever knows the words, sing it with me,” Nobles said to the crowd.
Quietly at first and then louder and stronger, the whole room broke out into song.
We’re lost in a masquerade. Woohoo, the masquerade.
TORONTO — As Shohei Ohtani leads a wave of international baseball popularity, major league officials are working with the players’ union and LA28 officials to conclude an agreement for major league players to participate in the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
The concepts on the table include an extended Olympic break during the 2028 season, which could include an All-Star Game in San Francisco to keep baseball’s best players on the West Coast for two weeks rather than shuttling them around the country, and an Olympic baseball schedule that could start before the opening ceremony.
There is no final deal. But, for the first time over years of discussions, commissioner Rob Manfred said publicly that the owners have stopped wavering about whether to interrupt the major league season for a week so that baseball’s biggest stars can play in the Olympics.
“I am positive about it,” Manfred said Saturday at the World Series. “I think the owners have crossed the line in terms of, we’d like to do it if we can possibly make it work, but there are logistical issues that still need to be worked through.”
Manfred suggested that major leaguers participating in the Olympics might be a one-time event. Stopping the season for one week and flying players to Los Angeles, he said, would be very different than stopping the season for two weeks in 2032 and flying players to Australia.
“The chances that we’re playing in Brisbane? Difficult,” Manfred said. ‘“Way more difficult than being in L.A.”
Manfred said the World Baseball Classic would “remain our centerpiece” for international competition. With a Canadian team in the World Series, and with Ohtani as the face of the sport, ratings and merchandise sales are soaring outside the United States.
In the Olympics, Ohtani would play at Dodger Stadium.
“Shohei has just absolutely been the greatest benefit to the game you can imagine throughout the year,” Manfred said. “In the LCS, he had probably the greatest game of all time, and we are fortunate to have him here in the World Series.”
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is set to rule for the first time on whether the president has the power to deploy troops in American cities over the objections of local and state officials.
A decision could come at any time.
And even a one-line order siding with President Trump would send the message that he is free to use the military to carry out his orders — and in particular, in Democratic-controlled cities and states.
Trump administration lawyers filed an emergency appeal last week asking the court to reverse judges in Chicago who blocked the deployment of the National Guard there.
The Chicago-based judges said Trump exaggerated the threat faced by federal immigration agents and had equated “protests with riots.”
Trump administration lawyers, however, said these judges had no authority to second-guess the president. The power to deploy the National Guard “is committed to his exclusive discretion by law,” they asserted in their appeal in Trump vs. Illinois.
That broad claim of executive power might win favor with the court’s conservatives.
Administration lawyers told the court that the National Guard would “defend federal personnel, property, and functions in the face of ongoing violence” in response to aggressive immigration enforcement, but it would not carry out ordinary policing.
Yet Trump has repeatedly threatened to send U.S. troops to San Francisco and other Democratic-led cities to carry out ordinary law enforcement.
When he sent 4,000 Guard members and 700 Marines to Los Angeles in June, their mission was to protect federal buildings from protesters. But state officials said troops went beyond that and were used to carry out a show in force in MacArthur Park in July.
Newsom, Bonta warn of dangers
That’s why legal experts and Democratic officials are sounding an alarm.
“Trump v. Illinois is a make-or-break moment for this court,” said Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck, a frequent critic of the court’s pro-Trump emergency orders. “For the Supreme Court to issue a ruling that allows the president to send troops into our cities based upon contrived (or even government-provoked) facts … would be a terrible precedent for the court to set not just for what it would allow President Trump to do now but for even more grossly tyrannical conduct.”
“On June 7, for the first time in our nation’s history, the President invoked [the Militia Act of 1903] to federalize a State’s National Guard over the objections of the State’s Governor. Since that time, it has become clear that the federal government’s actions in Southern California earlier this summer were just the opening salvo in an effort to transform the role of the military in American society,” their brief said.
“At no prior point in our history has the President used the military this way: as his own personal police force, to be deployed for whatever law enforcement missions he deems appropriate. … What the federal government seeks is a standing army, drawn from state militias, deployed at the direction of the President on a nationwide basis, for civilian law enforcement purposes, for an indefinite period of time.”
Conservatives cite civil rights examples
Conservatives counter that Trump is seeking to enforce federal law in the face of strong resistance and non-cooperation at times from local officials.
“Portland and Chicago have seen violent protests outside of federal buildings, attacks on ICE and DHS agents, and organized efforts to block the enforcement of immigration law,” said UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo. “Although local officials have raised cries of a federal ‘occupation’ and ‘dictatorship,’ the Constitution places on the president the duty to ‘take care that the laws are faithfully executed.’”
He noted that presidents in the past “used these same authorities to desegregate southern schools in the 1950s after Brown v. Board of Education and to protect civil rights protesters in the 1960s. Those who cheer those interventions cannot now deny the same constitutional authority when it is exercised by a president they oppose,” he said.
The legal battle so far has sidestepped Trump’s broadest claims of unchecked power, but focused instead on whether he is acting in line with the laws adopted by Congress.
The Constitution gives Congress the power “to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel Invasions.”
Beginning in 1903, Congress said that “the President may call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary” if he faces “danger of invasion by a foreign nation … danger of a rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States or the president is unable to execute the laws of the United States.”
While Trump administration lawyers claim he faces a “rebellion,” the legal dispute has focused on whether he is “unable to execute the laws.”
Lower courts have blocked deployments
Federal district judges in Portland and Chicago blocked Trump’s deployments after ruling that protesters had not prevented U.S. immigration agents from doing their jobs.
Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, described the administration’s description of “war-ravaged” Portland as “untethered to the facts.”
In Chicago, Judge April Perry, a Biden appointee, said that “political opposition is not rebellion.”
But the two appeals courts — the 9th Circuit in San Francisco and the 7th Circuit in Chicago — handed down opposite decisions.
A panel of the 9th Circuit said judges must defer to the president’s assessment of the danger faced by immigration agents. Applying that standard, the appeals court by a 2-1 vote said the National Guard deployment in Portland may proceed.
But a panel of the 7th Circuit in Chicago agreed with Perry.
“The facts do not justify the President’s actions in Illinois, even giving substantial deference to his assertions,” they said in a 3-0 ruling last week. “Federal facilities, including the processing facility in Broadview, have remained open despite regular demonstrations against the administration’s immigration policies. And though federal officers have encountered sporadic disruptions, they have been quickly contained by local, state, and federal authorities.”
Attorneys for Illinois and Chicago agreed and urged the court to turn down Trump’s appeal.
“There is no basis for claiming the President is ‘unable’ to ‘execute’ federal law in Illinois,” they said. “Federal facilities in Illinois remain open, the individuals who have violated the law by attacking federal authorities have been arrested, and enforcement of immigration law in Illinois has only increased in recent weeks.”
U.S. Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer, shown at his confirmation hearing in February, said the federal judges in Chicago had no legal or factual basis to block the Trump administration’s deployment of troops.
(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
Trump’s Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer presented a dramatically different account in his appeal.
“On October 4, the President determined that the situation in Chicago had become unsustainably dangerous for federal agents, who now risk their lives to carry out basic law enforcement functions,” he wrote. “The President deployed the federalized Guardsmen to Illinois to protect federal officers and federal property.”
He disputed the idea that agents faced just peaceful protests.
“On multiple occasions, federal officers have also been hit and punched by protestors at the Broadview facility. The physical altercations became more significant and the clashes more violent as the size of the crowds swelled throughout September,” Sauer wrote. “Rioters have targeted federal officers with fireworks and have thrown bottles, rocks, and tear gas at them. More than 30 [DHS] officers have been injured during the assaults on federal law enforcement at the Broadview facility alone, resulting in multiple hospitalizations.”
He said the judges in Chicago had no legal or factual basis to block the deployment, and he urged the court to cast aside their rulings.
DALLAS — Adrian Kempe scored 37 seconds into overtime and the Kings beat Dallas 3-2 on Thursday night, handing the slumping Stars their fourth consecutive loss. It was the second game in a row in which Kempe scored the winning overtime goal.
Darcy Kuemper made 29 saves, and former Stars Corey Perry and Cody Ceci also scored as the Kings won in regulation for the first time this season.
Wyatt Johnston and Jason Robertson scored power-play goals for the Stars, and Johnston also had an assist. Jake Oettinger stopped 22 shots.
Kempe scored from the slot on a pass from Quinton Byfield on the Kings’ only rush of overtime. It was Byfield’s second assist of the game.
The Stars have dropped four straight before New Year’s for the first time since Oct. 25-Nov. 2, 2021.
The 40-year-old Perry, who played for Dallas in 2019-20, knocked home a rebound at the crease for the game’s first goal late in the first period 22 seconds into a 35-second five-on-three power play.
Only 1:29 after Robertson tied the score 1-1 early in the second period, Ceci put the Kings back ahead with a slap shot redirected off the stick of Dallas’ Mavrik Bourque. Ceci was acquired by Dallas last February from San Jose and left for L.A. in free agency last summer.
Johnston’s team-high fifth goal of the season tied the score 2-2 early in the third period.
The Kings had a deflection goal by Alex Laferriere midway through the second disallowed after a video review determined his stick was too high.
Pop star Sabrina Carpenter hosted “Saturday Night Live” for the first time ever, but it sure didn’t feel like it.
Carpenter was the musical guest last year when Jake Gyllenhaal hosted, and at the 50th anniversary special, she performed with Paul Simon and appeared in a sketch. Whether it’s because she’s done the show both as a musician and a comedic performer (her song performances are often a mix of both) or not, Carpenter seems perfectly at ease in Studio 8H, like she’s always been there.
That served her well on an episode that started badly with a retread of a sketch that’s been done a few too many times (keyword: Domingo), and a monologue that, despite Carpenter’s charm, didn’t seem to connect with the audience.
But after that, Carpenter’s quicksilver timing and ease, plus a diverse set of sketches, put the episode over the top. She sounded just like a 12-year-old boy in a sketch about preteens hosting a podcast called “Snack Homies” with President Trump (James Austin Johnson) as a guest, sold a provocative neck pillow in a funny Shop TV sketch, performed a pretaped “Grind Song” with Bowen Yang, and was thrown out of a window as the host of a girlboss seminar. She scared a co-worker (Ashley Padilla, quickly becoming a critical “SNL” utility player) on her birthday and played a singing and dancing washing machine alongside new cast member Veronika Slowikowska.
It also didn’t hurt that Carpenter’s two playful and well-sung musical performances, for “Manchild” and “Nobody’s Son,” were showstoppers. Her love of the show was evident: she performed the former wearing a “Live from New York” T-shirt and panties with “It’s Saturday Night!” written on the back.
The best argument for inviting Sabrina Carpenter back sometime might be that she held the show together with no outside guests or surprise cameos, which hasn’t happened on “SNL” in a long time. The only exception was a short film from “Please Don’t Destroy” writer Martin Herlihy at the end of the show that may have been about racism and Frankenstein’s Monsters (yes, plural).
We’ll keep this short because the less said about this week’s cold open the better. Chloe Fineman and Andrew Dismukes returned as Matthew and Kelsey, a couple that has struggled in the past with trust issues from Kelsey’s frequent trips with her friends that usually end with a passionate affair with a guy named Domingo (Marcello Hernández). This time, they’re celebrating Matthew’s 30th birthday, but for some reason, Kelsey has flown in her girlfriends (including Carpenter) to sing some pop songs in bad karaoke style about a recent weekend they spent in Nashville. This time the songs are modeled after Taylor Swift’s “Fate of Ophelia,” Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra” and Alex Warren’s “Ordinary Song.” The ladies went to Nashville and of course Domingo is still around. “This is strike six,” Matthew cries haplessly. “Babe, it won’t happen again,” Kelsey promises. Let’s hope so. The Domingo sketches need to be put to rest.
Carpenter’s monologue was largely about dispelling (but not really) the notion that the singer is overly sexualized, or as she described it, a “Horndog popster.” “There’s so much more to me,” she said, “I’m not just horny. I’m also turned on.” She made hay of the controversy over her “Man’s Best Friend” album cover by joking that it was cropped and revealing that Bowen Yang and Martin Short both originally appeared on it, with Yang pulling her up by her hair and Short pushing her away from a buffet line. The monologue started to fizzle when Carpenter went to the audience for some interaction to prove she can have chemistry with anyone or anything, only to come back to the stage for an awkward bit with Kenan Thompson, who said he wanted a Cameo video for his niece. Carpenter has charisma to spare, but the monologue was too disjointed to go anywhere.
Best sketch of the night: Does making plans to see “Plans” also scare you?
Mock horror movie trailers have done well on “SNL” lately and the streak continues with “Plans,” a Blumhouse horror film featuring Ben Marshall and Carpenter as a couple horrified to realize that plans they made back on Fourth of July have suddenly come to fruition with a cousin and her husband. As their terror grows, they remember that the cousin (Sarah Sherman) talks about marathons (“The way I see it, losing toenails is a badge of honor”) and the husband (Dismukes) likes to show off 11-minute YouTube videos. They’re going to end up at a crowded ramen restaurant and then a bad interactive play. For anyone who’s ever regretted saying yes to socializing, this might be your worst nightmare.
Also good: The neck pillow monologues
The Shop TV sketches wouldn’t work so well if Padilla and Mikey Day didn’t do such a good job infusing their characters Bev and Rhett with such practiced professional panic when things go awry, as they’ve done before. Carpenter appears as Virginia Duffy, a crafter who’s designed an ergonomic pillow that looks just like a giant vagina, which comes in different colors. “Why would you bring the pink one?” asks an exasperated Rhett. By the time the faux fur lining is added and Rhett tries on the neck pillow, culminating in an unwanted baby sound effect, Shop TV has done it again. Bonus points for Johnson as Tim Tucker, who appears at the beginning of the sketch with a trick-or-treat pail in the shape of Jesus Christ’s head. “Trick or treat, smell my feet, walk with Christ down the Halloween street,” he chants.
‘Weekend Update’ winner: Did you see ‘Saw’? He did not
New cast member Tommy Brennan discussed moving to New York and growing up in Minnesota, but it was the return of Hernandez’s Movie Guy character, who wants to talk about scary movies but has seen absolutely none of them. “Everybody saw ‘Weapons!’ I have to tell you, I was not one of those people,” he says. Movie Guy expresses that horror movies often tell you what they’re about: with “Scream,” “everbody scream!” With “Smile,” “everybody smile!” How about “Saw?” “Everybody saw! But not me, I did not see.” He goes on to touch on why Stewie from “Family Guy,” “Shrek” and others are also scary (even if he hasn’t seen them). “‘One Missed Call’ … is this a movie about my mother?”
Fox College Football tweeted that “The Jerry Neuheisel Era has begun with the Bruins.”
ESPN personality Pat McAfee added to the chorus of adoration for UCLA’s new playcaller, tweeting that Neuheisel “just might be a football wizard.”
Other media and sports betting sites tweeting about the Bruins’ turnaround from 0-4 to darlings of the college football world prominently featured pictures of the blond-haired assistant coach.
It was enough to prompt the sports media website Awful Announcing to ask: “Does anyone know that Tim Skipper is actually UCLA’s interim head coach, not Jerry Neuheisel?”
Having been preoccupied with saving a season, Skipper acknowledged being blissfully unaware of any narratives about who’s done what to spark his team’s turnabout.
“I guess it’s good that I don’t get on social media and all that stuff right now because I don’t feel that way,” Skipper said Monday when asked about the notion that he wasn’t getting proper credit. “But I don’t really know what’s happening in the outside world [because] I’m in this [practice] building so much.
“But I love what I’m doing, I’m just working, man, and I just try to put us in the best position to be successful on Saturday.”
Part of any credit distortion might be associated with Skipper having presided over the Bruins’ 17-14 loss to Northwestern after replacing DeShaun Foster. The next week, Neuheisel was elevated to playcaller, helping the Bruins (2-4 overall, 2-1 Big Ten) revive a dreadful offense and roll up a combined 80 points during victories over Penn State and Michigan State.
In truth, there have been enough fingerprints on UCLA’s resurgence to leave countless smudge marks.
UCLA coach Tim Skipper stands on the sideline during the Bruins’ win over Penn State on Oct. 4.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Skipper has provided energy, meticulousness and drive, and his motivational tactics — including leaving printouts asking “ARE YOU A ONE-HIT WONDER?” on players’ seats on the team plane last week — had their intended effect during a runaway victory over Michigan State.
Neuheisel has undoubtedly elevated an offense that struggled mightily under predecessor Tino Sunseri.
Kevin Coyle, the de facto defensive coordinator who was brought in before the Northwestern game to replace Ikaika Malloe, has unleashed an aggressive, disciplined style that has largely compensated for shortcomings that were previously exposed.
There’s also been a host of other contributors, from the scouting staff that helped identify the weakness leading to a successful onside kick against Penn State, to the security guards outside Drake Stadium who continually encouraged players walking into practice amid loss after loss to start the season.
And, of course, don’t forget the players — quarterback Nico Iamaleava’s leadership and poise alongside a slew of others who have risen to the moment after so much early struggle.
The Bruins are favored against Maryland (4-2, 1-2) on Saturday at the Rose Bowl for the first time since they faced New Mexico, and it might be easy to envision their success snowballing. But Skipper said he wasn’t going to introduce the idea of making a bowl game as his next motivational device.
“I’m all about the moment that you’re in, man,” Skipper said. “… This week, kind of, [the mantra] is the standard is the standard and don’t get bored with success. We have to keep doing what we’re doing and always be on the rise, you know?”
As he neared the one-month mark since his Sept. 14 promotion, Skipper acknowledged having initially worried about keeping his roster intact since players could enter the transfer portal or redshirt.
“When I first took over, it was, like, every time I talked to you guys, everybody was asking about who’s redshirting, who’s going to the portal?” Skipper said. “That was the theme that was, like, the No. 1 question. And we’ve been able to keep the team intact, you know, and that’s an everyday thing. I think we’ve shown them that, hey, we can make it, make it a good environment here, even though we have all this change and stuff, just stick with us and we’re going to be all right.”
A clean locker room and the smiles and excitement that come with winning have been among the big changes in the aura around the team that Skipper said he’s noticed since taking over.
“It looks like the guys are in good spirits and things like that, and they know that tomorrow’s gonna be a work day and they better be ready to go,” Skipper said. “But I think we’re giving the guys the ‘why’ and the reasons why we do things, and that’s helping them know what to expect.”
Put me in, coach
UCLA unveiled a sturdy offensive weapon late in the third quarter against Michigan State.
It was Siale Taupaki, a 337-pound defensive lineman used as a blocker when the Bruins reached the red zone. Going in motion on a direct snap to running back Jaivian Thomas, Taupaki flattened a defender as Thomas scored on the second-and-goal play.
“He was begging to be able to do something on the offensive side,” Skipper said of the redshirt junior, who has vacillated between the offensive and defensive lines during his seven seasons with the team. “Sure enough, he went out there and did his job, so that gave us some juice on the sideline and it was good to see.”
Etc.
Skipper said the team’s improved tackling in recent weeks was more of a function of fundamentals than scheme. “We do drills when we get [individual] time that are specifically to use your weapons — your eyes, feet and hands,” Skipper said, “and we’re learning how to wrap up and move our feet on contact because the hardest thing to do is re-start your feet when they stop.” … The University of California regents are scheduled to meet in a closed session Tuesday in San Francisco to discuss the compensation package that will be made available to UCLA’s next coach.
Kyren Williams did not know if the questions would come, but if they did he was prepared.
The Rams running back was less than a week removed from fumbling at the one-yard line during a 26-23 overtime defeat by the San Francisco 49ers.
Now he is in Pacific Palisades, preparing to work with youth flag football players practicing for the first time since last January’s wildfires.
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Gary Klein breaks down what to expect from the Rams as they prepare to face the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday before flying to London ahead of their Week 7 contest against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
“If they ask me, ‘Man, why did you fumble?’” Williams said, raising the pitch of voice to resemble a child’s, “I’m going to tell them exactly why it happens — because it happens.
“They’re wondering more than anything. They’re not trying to knock you down. So for me, tell them how it was, be accountable. Be honest about it and tell them, ‘Man, mistakes happen. … I’m going to grow from this mistake and it’s not going to define who I am.’”
The third-year pro, who received a $23-million extension before the season, is an integral part of an offense that features quarterback Matthew Stafford, the NFL’s leading passer, and receiver Puka Nacua, the league’s leading receiver.
Williams has rushed for 368 yards and a touchdown. He has 16 catches for 118 yards and three touchdowns.
In three-plus regular seasons and three playoff games, Williams has touched the ball as a running back or receiver 805 times. He has fumbled 11 times.
Williams was not the only running back to fumble against the 49ers. Backup Blake Corum dropped the ball on a pitch play.
But Williams’ miscue came at a more dramatic moment.
The Rams were trailing 23-20 when Stafford drove them to the three-yard line with just more than one minute left in the game. Williams took a handoff and plowed toward the goal line, but the 49ers knocked the ball from his grip and recovered the fumble.
Rams running back Kyren Williams, center, loses the ball on a fumble late in the fourth quarter against the 49ers on Oct. 2.
(Marcio Jose Sanchez / Associated Press)
Williams also was stopped on a fourth-and-one play at the 11-yard line in overtime to end the game.
Afterward, he blamed himself for the fumble that he said cost the Rams the victory. The feeling lingered into the next week.
“Throughout the game, I had great ball security,” Williams said. “The one time that I saw pay dirt, I saw green, and I let up and I saw what happened.
“So for me the lesson I learned throughout the situation is, man, you can’t be comfortable until all double zeroes are on that clock.”
Coach Sean McVay said the Rams would take steps to improve ball security. But he stood by Williams.
“Love that guy.” McVay said. “I’m riding with him, and we have to figure out a way to improve, and he’ll be the first to take accountability, which is why you want to put your arm around him and be right there with him.”
As Williams moves forward, he anticipates sharing lessons learned from the situation during his charitable work.
Rams running back Kyren Williams instructs young flag football players in Pacific Palisades on Oct. 7.
(Gary Klein / Los Angeles Times)
Last Monday, Williams met with Molly Higgins, the Rams executive vice president of community impact and engagement, and told her that he wanted to commit to an event or an opportunity every Tuesday of the season.
“After a tough game on Thursday night, for him to want to sit down on Monday, I was fully prepared to say, ‘Hey, we can take a beat,’” Higgins said. “But he was like, ‘No, I want to sit down.”
Said Williams: “I know how when I was little, seeing people who I wanted to be like, how I was inspired and impacted and motivated. … So for me it’s remembering who I was and kind of trying to go above and beyond.”
Williams plans to do the same on the field when the Rams attempt to bounce back against the Ravens.
The fumble against the 49ers will not define him.
“I’m not happy that it happened the way that it did,” he said. “But I’m able to grow from the situation. I’m able to overcome it and show people that like, man, I’m so much better than what I put out there.
Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami went up, up, up for their “Golden” moment on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”
The trio, who provide the singing voices for the animated “KPop Demon Hunters” central girl group Huntr/x, hit the late-night TV show Tuesday to perform the Netflix movie’s signature song. It marks the first time they have hit the stage together for a live, full-length performance of “Golden,” and even Fallon could not contain his excitement.
The first No. 1 female K-pop song in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, “Golden” has helped propel the “KPop Demon Hunters” soundtrack to its newest accolade. Fallon informed Ejae, Nuna and Ami during the show that the record had gone platinum.
When asked about their experiences around the massive popularity of “KPop Demon Hunters,” the trio offered words including “surreal,” “scrumptious” “delicious,” “stunning” and “bonkers.”
“We try to come up with new adjectives every time,” said Nuna, who provides the singing voice for Mira.
Their “Tonight Show” appearance follows their brief cameo on the Season 51 premiere of “Saturday Night Live.” During their sitdown interview with Fallon, both Nuna and Ami (the singing voice of Zoey) recounted real-life encounters with “Golden” that drove home the magnitude of “KPop Demon Hunters’” impact.
For Nuna this happened on a trip to Korea when she saw an elderly street performer playing “Golden” on a traditional Korean instrument.
“I had to do a double take because in Korean culture, it’s especially impressive if an elderly person is impressed with you,” said Nuna, who explained that Korean elders rarely bat an eye at accomplishments like attending an Ivy League college or graduating top of your class. “It’s really hard [to impress them]. They have high standards. So for the older generation to embrace it, it’s something different.”
Ami’s encounter was with a much younger fan. She recalled a trip to an H Mart where she saw a young boy singing “Golden” at the top of his lungs while holding hands with his mother.
“I think it’s one thing to hear our song on the radio, but to hear it come out of a child, live?” Ami said. “In H Mart, my favorite place? … I just cried at HMart.”
Ejae, meanwhile, offered an anecdote that suggests “Golden’s” success may have been preordained.
Prompted by Fallon, the co-writer of “Golden” shared that while recording her part of the song at the studio, she saw a brief glimpse of “a grunge ghost.”
It was “a tall dude with a flannel … and blue jeans,” Ejae said. And this brief encounter may have been auspicious.
“My mom reminded me later [that] there’s a myth in Korea in the music [business], if you see a ghost or any paranormal activity while recording a song, it’s a hit,” she said.
WASHINGTON — For the first time in four years, the federal government plans to begin processing initial applications for DACA, the Obama-era program that grants deportation protection and work permits to immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.
The move, outlined in a proposal Monday by the Justice Department, would reopen DACA to first-time applicants in every state except Texas. The proposal was filed in response to an ongoing lawsuit in U.S. district court in Brownsville, Tex.
According to the filing, Texas residents who already have DACA could continue receiving protection from deportation but would no longer qualify for employment authorization.
Lawsuits over DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, have been ongoing since President Trump moved to end the program during his first term.
Under the government’s proposal, DACA recipients who move into Texas would risk losing their legal ability to work, while moving out of Texas could allow them to resume qualifying for a two-year work permit.
The proposal is pending a final decision by U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen.
“These proposals do not limit DHS from undertaking any future lawful changes to DACA,” the filing states.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.
Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, deputy director of federal advocacy for United We Dream, said misinformation was circulating Tuesday on social media.
“We’ve seen a lot of folks saying initial applications will start right away. That’s not true,” she said. “The status quo stays. If you are a DACA recipient right now, even in Texas, if you can renew you should renew as soon as possible because then you have another two years.”
Other advocacy groups, such as the nonprofit Dreamers2gether, urged DACA recipients and hopeful applicants to leave Texas and file a change of address form with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
More than 525,000 immigrants are currently enrolled in DACA. Texas follows California in the ranking of states with the highest number of program enrollees, according to USCIS.
To qualify, applicants must prove they came to the U.S. before they turned 16 and have graduated from high school or were honorably discharged from the military. Applicants also cannot have serious criminal records.
But for years the program has sat in a state of uncertainty, stoking anxiety for many recipients, amid court battles that stopped applications from being processed and left many younger people who would have aged into qualifying for DACA instead vulnerable to deportation.
In this first term, Trump attempted to shut down the program, but the Supreme Court concluded in 2020 that his administration had acted improperly. The court did not rule on the program’s legality.
Because of the court battle, the program has been closed to new applicants since 2021, though current recipients could still renew their work permits.
Los Angeles resident Atziri Peña, 27, runs a clothing company called Barrio Drive that donates proceeds toward helping DACA recipients renew their applications.
Peña, who also has DACA, said she knows many people in Texas who are thinking about moving out of state. The latest news is another example of how the immigration system breaks families apart, she said.
“A lot of us who are DACA recipients, we don’t necessarily know what it was like to be undocumented before DACA, so most of us have careers that we won’t be able to continue,” Peña said.
United We Dream has recorded at least 19 current DACA recipients detained by immigration agents in recent months. In one case in Texas, immigration authorities have kept Catalina “Xochitl” Santiago detained despite an immigration judge saying she cannot be deported.
“It’s a way of making sure she can’t renew her DACA and then she becomes deportable,” said Macedo do Nascimento. In her view, the Department of Homeland Security’s attitude toward DACA recipients lately has diminished the protections it offers.
“The bigger picture here is DHS is moving onto a new policy on DACA anyway — without having to go through the courts, the rulemaking process or taking DACA away altogether,” she said. “They’re really trying to end the program piece by piece, recipient by recipient.”
Even so, immigrants across the country are looking forward to applying for DACA for the first time.
“While we could still get detained, it’s a little bit of a sense of safety and hope,” Peña said. “I have heard of people who are just waiting for DACA to reopen. But let’s see what happens and let’s hope they don’t use this as a way to catch more of us.”
Trailing at halftime for the first time all season, Palisades faced its toughest test so far and passed with flying colors to stay unbeaten Friday night in San Pedro.
Seeing his potent passing attack sputtering, coach Dylen Smith switched to the ground game in the second half and the Dolphins overcame a 13-point deficit to pull out a 35-28 intersectional victory over host Mary Star of the Sea.
“My message at halftime was we need to run the ball and we don’t need to win the game on one pass,” said Smith, who piloted Palisades to the City Section Division I final last fall. “We finally had a collective effort in the fourth quarter, Harrison Carter ran hard and the defense made stops when it needed to.”
Carter caught a 25-yard touchdown pass from Jack Thomas for the first points of the second half and later took a pitch around left end for a 50-yard score that cut the Dolphins’ deficit to 28-21 with 5:47 left in the third quarter.
After drawing double coverage and being held to one catch through three and a half quarters, star receiver Demare Dezeurn caught two touchdown passes with less than six minutes left, the second a juggling 46-yarder for the go-ahead score with 1:21 remaining.
On its ensuing drive Mary Star marched to Palisades’ 20, but Carter broke up a pass in the flat on fourth and 10 with 12 seconds left to seal the win.
Johnny Rivera scores the first of his four touchdowns runs for Mary Star of the Sea against Palisades.
(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)
Thomas, who entered the game having thrown for 1,304 yards and 17 touchdowns without an interception, was held to 17 yards passing in the first half but finished nine of 16 for 123 yards and four touchdowns.
Carter rushed for 123 yards and caught three passes for 40 yards for the Dolphins (5-0), who are third in The Times’ City Section rankings behind Birmingham and Carson,
Johnny Rivera rushed 40 times for 217 yards and four touchdowns for the Stars (3-2), who led 20-7 at halftime and 28-21 entering the fourth quarter.
Palisades begins Western League action next Friday at Westchester while the Stars host St. Genevieve in their Camino Real League opener the same night.
Two prominent Latino Democratic elected leaders are battling to become a new member of Congress. The race to represent a swath of Southern California that sweeps from southeastern Los Angeles cities to Long Beach will be among the state’s most contested intraparty battles, with the winner earning a perch that could become a springboard to higher office.
Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia and state Assemblymember Cristina Garcia are running to represent the new 42nd Congressional District, a Latino majority district that was created in December by the state’s redistricting commission as California loses a congressional seat for the first time in its history.
For the record:
3:27 p.m. March 4, 2022This article says Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia registered as a decline-to-state voter in 2007. He registered as a Democratic voter in 2007.
“It’s fair to say this is one of the more prominent Democrat-on-Democrat races” on the ballot, said Robb Korinke, a Democratic strategist who lives in Long Beach and is not aligned with either candidate. (Korinke was appointed by Robert Garcia to the city’s Technology and Innovation Commission in 2015.)
The new district combined pieces of the areas currently represented by Reps. Alan Lowenthal and Lucille Roybal-Allard to account for population loss in Los Angeles County without eliminating a district where Latinos could elect a candidate of their choice.
Roybal-Allard’s district, which included much of South Los Angeles, the Eastside and southeast L.A. County, was the most Latino in the nation. Lowenthal’s straddled Los Angeles and Orange counties. Both announced their retirements in December, creating a rare open seat to represent California in the U.S. House of Representatives. Robert Garcia and Cristina Garcia revealed their intentions to seek the seat soon after.
Cristina Garcia and Robert Garcia are both 44, the children of immigrants and the focus of national attention for their work. They are vying to be the most progressive in the heavily liberal district and will face off in a June 7 primary where the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, will advance to compete in the November general election. No prominent Republican is running in the race; the filing deadline is in March.
Robert Garcia’s home is in Long Beach’s Belmont Heights neighborhood, a collection of Craftsmans and beach cottages in walking distance of Colorado Lagoon and the restaurants and boutiques of the city’s 2nd Street entertainment district.
About 14 miles north, Cristina Garcia lives in Bell Gardens — not far from where she grew up — on a working-class block of modest houses with security bars on the windows and a backyard rooster that rousts the neighborhood.
The communities they live in reflect the district’s disparate constituents: Along the coast, affluent residents are focused on issues such as climate change and solar tax credits, while inland, lower-income workers worry that their children suffer higher asthma rates because of their proximity to pollution-spewing industries. Other parts of the district include Downey and Bellflower, the post-World War II tract homes of Lakewood, and Long Beach’s Art Deco airport, Cal State campus and port.
More than half of the new district’s residents are Latino citizens of voting age, but redistricting experts warn that turnout, particularly during nonpresidential elections, might disadvantage that electorate. Though Latinos live throughout the district, they are more concentrated in the southeastern Los Angeles cities.
“The core of the voting base is not in the area that is most heavily Latino and where Voting Act protections lie,” said Democratic strategist Paul Mitchell, referring to the landmark federal legislation that prohibits the disenfranchisement of minority communities.
Voters most likely to turn out are those who live in Long Beach, Lakewood and Signal Hill in the southern part of the district, which Mitchell and other strategists who are not aligned with any candidate in the race say benefits Robert Garcia.
The Peruvian-born, gay Latino mayor of Long Beach is widely considered the front-runner.
He has been endorsed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Lowenthal and several unions. In the two weeks after he announced his campaign on Dec. 17, Garcia raised more than $323,000.
Additionally, at least two independent expenditure committees that can accept unlimited donations are supporting his bid — one funded by business and development interests and the other by LGBTQ activists and labor.
Garcia received national attention for his handling of the pandemic while grieving the loss of his parents to COVID-19. The New York Times called Long Beach “a Model for the Vaccine Rollout”; schools there reopened earlier than in much of California because the city, which has its own health department, prioritized vaccinating teachers early.
“I have proven that as mayor that I can lead a large complex organization and that it can be done in a way that has both common sense and is progressive,” said Garcia, who was among a handful of local officials given a prime-time speaking slot at the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
He has been accused of being too beholden to powerful donors and criticized for registering as a Republican in 2002 — less than a decade after Proposition 187, the GOP-backed ballot measure that sought to deny taxpayer-funded services to those in the country illegally.
He was a California youth coordinator for George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign and founded the Long Beach Young Republicans in 2005. Garcia downplays his involvement in both, although media clips from the time quote him proudly playing a prominent role in the club. He also notes he was in high school during Proposition 187 and wasn’t involved in politics then.
Garcia said he followed his family’s lead in supporting the GOP because of their fondness for President Reagan, whose immigration policy provided the pathway for their citizenship.
He registered as a decline-to-state voter in 2007, two years before he won a City Council seat; and as a Democrat in 2010, four years before he successfully ran for mayor, according to the Los Angeles County voter registration database.
“People are allowed to grow and change,” and former Republicans shouldn’t be treated as “second-class Democrats,” Garcia said, pointing to his refusal to take corporate PAC money and support for single-payer healthcare. “What matters is your record.”
His rival, Cristina Garcia, says that his history concerns her.
“Everyone needs to run as a progressive these days. But is that what our record has shown?” she said. “How committed are you to all of this corridor, not just Long Beach?”
Garcia organized opposition to Proposition 187 while in high school. After college, she became a math teacher and moved away. Then her mother had a heart attack, prompting Garcia to return home.
During her time in Sacramento, Garcia focused on environmental justice, notably the cleanup of the toxic lead-tainted soil near the shuttered Exide Technologies battery recycling plant in Vernon.
She was also dubbed the “tampon queen” or “period princess” — titles she embraced — because of her efforts such as making sure menstrual products are available for free at public schools in California.
The motivations that led her to run for the Legislature also made her decide to run for Congress, Garcia said.
“This region has been ignored for all my life. This is a front-line community,” she said, adding that elected officials give a lot of lip service to the concept of equity. “But how do we make sure we’re putting actions behind that?”
As the leader of the Assembly’s women’s caucus, Garcia was an outspoken advocate for victims when the #MeToo movement rocked the statehouse in 2017 and 2018. She was featured in a Time magazine photo collage of female leaders as part of its “Person of the Year” issue because of her work to hold lawmakers accountable for inappropriate sexual behavior.
Then she was accused of similar behavior. Two Assembly investigations found that, although she had violated the Assembly’s sexual harassment policy and was “overly familiar” with a staff member while intoxicated, her behavior was not sexual.
Garcia, while accepting blame for some allegations, noted that the more serious claims of groping were not substantiated.
In other controversies, she admitted to calling former Assembly Speaker John A. Perez a “homo,” though she said she didn’t mean it as a slur. (Perez has endorsed Robert Garcia.)
She was also accused by other Democrats of making a derogatory statement about Asian Americans during a debate about affirmative action. Cristina Garcia said her remark — reportedly, “This makes me feel like I want to punch the next Asian person I see in the face” — was taken out of context. She said she was trying to explain how the debate was creating unnecessary, “unhealthy” divisions among ethnic groups.
Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, whose Lakewood home is in the district, rebuked Garcia during her controversies. But he has endorsed her congressional run, as have Secretary of State Shirley Weber, Treasurer Fiona Ma, several state legislators and elected officials from southeast Los Angeles communities.
She did not begin fundraising until after the first of the year, so her campaign finances will not be known until spring.
“It’s not the first time I’ve been out-fundraised, and we have been successful,” she said, pointing to her 2012 Assembly race, in which she ran out of money two weeks before the election. Volunteers hand-delivered tens of thousands of fliers.
“We don’t need dollar for dollar,” she said. “We need enough dollars.”
“The Brady Bunch” superfans better hold onto their bell bottoms: The TV family’s retro home in Studio City will finally be accessible to the public for the first time.
The double doors to the midcentury Studio City home — made famous with its appearance in the beloved 1970s sitcom — will open to fans for three days in November thanks to a limited event by pop culture historian Alison Martino and her Vintage Los Angeles. Martino, an on-air host and producer for Spectrum news and the daughter of singer-actor Al Martino, unveiled the “Brady Experience” on Monday on Facebook.
“It’s like stepping back into our childhood! IT IS ASTONISHING and you will see every single room,” she announced. “I will personally be taking each and every one of you throughout the house.”
From Nov. 7 to 9, Martino will guide fans who have shelled out $275 each through the iconic Dilling Street property. The event is now sold out. Though the home’s facade appeared throughout the run of the family sitcom, its interior at the time bore no resemblance to the colorful rooms shown on screen. The interiors of the Brady residence were constructed on sets at Paramount Studios in Hollywood.
The famous abode, originally built in 1959 with late modernist architecture, was renovated decades after “The Brady Bunch” ended in 1974.
HGTV purchased the home in 2018 for $3.5 million (more than twice the asking price) and renovated the interior to match what “Brady Bunch” audiences saw onscreen. The home renovation network documented that process in “A Very Brady Renovation,” which featured the stars who portrayed the Brady children.
As part of the renovations, HGTV reproduced the groovy spaces from the set in the home, adding a second floor to accommodate the additional rooms. The network sold the home in 2023 for $3.2 million to Tina Trahan, a historic-home enthusiast and wife to former HBO executive Chris Albrecht.
The home, in all its “Brady Bunch” glory, has become “even more groovy with more remarkable vintage decor added,” Martino added in her announcement. She said nothing in the home would be off limits, allowing fans to “see every detail up close.”
Proceeds for the three-day event will benefit animal rescue Wags and Walks, a cause that Martino said Brady family dog “Tiger would definitely approve!”
The lights never dimmed and Angel Minguela Palacios couldn’t sleep. He pulled what felt like a large sheet of aluminum foil over his head, but couldn’t adjust to lying on a concrete floor and using his tennis shoes as a pillow.
He could smell unwashed bodies in the cramped room he shared with 40 detainees. He listened as men, many of them arrested at car washes or outside Home Depots, cried in the night for their loved ones.
Minguela, 48, lay in the chilly downtown Los Angeles ICE facility known as B 18 and thought about his partner of eight years and their three children. In his 10 years in the United States, he had built a secure life he had only dreamed of in Mexico, ensconced in their humble one-bedroom rented home, framed photos of the family at Christmas, his “#1 Dad” figurine. Now it was all falling apart.
The morning of Aug. 14, Minguela had been on his last delivery of the day, dropping off strawberries to a tearoom in Little Tokyo. He didn’t know that Gov. Gavin Newsom was holding a news conference there to inveigh against President Trump’s efforts to maintain control of the U.S. House of Representatives through redistricting in Texas. U.S. Border Patrol agents were massing nearby, creating a show of force outside the event.
As they moved in, one agent narrowed in on Minguela’s delivery van. Soon, he was in handcuffs, arrested for overstaying a tourist visa. As his lawyer put it, Minguela became “political, collateral damage.”
Over the six days he spent in B 18, a temporary immigration processing center, Minguela watched as several detainees chose to self-deport rather than remain in detention.
A building marking is painted on a wall at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility known as “B 18.”
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
”No aguanto aqui,” the men would say. “I can’t take it here.”
The harsh conditions, Minguela said, felt intentional. He knew he needed to stay for his family. But he wondered if he’d make it.
::
Minguela fled Mexico in 2015, driven in part by violence he faced there.
In his time servicing ATMs in Ciudad Juárez, he said he was kidnapped twice and at one point stabbed by people intent on stealing the cash. After his employers cut staff, he lost his job, helping drive his decision to leave.
Minguela came to Texas on a tourist visa and left the same day to L.A. drawn by the job opportunities and its many Spanish speakers. He had little money, rented a room as he searched for employment and soon found a job at the downtown produce market.
He met the woman he calls his esposa, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, at the second job he worked in the Piñata District. They are not married but Minguela helped raise her two children and later their son, who is autistic. The children — 15, 12 and 6 — all call him Dad.
With Minguela there, his esposa said she never felt alone. He helped with the laundry and cleaning. He played Roblox with his middle son and helped his 15-year-old daughter with her homework, especially math.
“He would always make sure that we would stay on track,” his daughter said. “He would always want the best for us.”
Photos captured the life they had built in L.A. The family in San Pedro for a boat ride. Celebrating Father’s Day and birthdays with cake and balloons. At a Day of the Dead celebration on Olvera Street downtown.
Angel Minguela Palacios with his partner of eight years and their 6-year-old son.
(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)
When immigration raids began in June, their lives suddenly narrowed. Minguela rarely went out, leaving the house only for work and errands. His daughter would warn him if she heard rumors of immigration officers near her high school, so he wouldn’t risk picking her up.
Minguela planned ahead, made copies of his keys and left money for his family in case he was grabbed by immigration agents. But he never expected it would happen to him.
On Aug. 14, his alarm went off at 1:15 a.m., as it did almost every day. He drank the coffee his wife had brought him as he headed to the produce market, where he’d worked for the same company for eight years.
Minguela helped take orders of strawberries, raspberries and blueberries, before heading out to make deliveries around 8 a.m. He had around half a dozen places to hit before he would call it a day.
His partner called to warn him that she’d seen on social media that ICE officers were near one of his delivery spots. He had just been there and luckily missed them, he said.
He was relieved that the Little Tokyo tearoom was his last stop. It didn’t open until 11 a.m. He arrived 10 minutes after. He found a parking spot out front and began unloading the boxes of strawberries and one box of apples.
Minguela was adjusting wooden pallets in the van when he heard a knock. He turned to see a Border Patrol agent, who began asking him about his legal status. Rather than answer, Minguela said he pulled a red “know your rights” card out of his wallet and handed it to the agent.
Angel Minguela Palacios took this image of a federal agent looking at his identification outside of the Japanese American National Museum on Aug. 14.
(Angel Rodrigo Minguela Palacios)
The agent told him it was “of no use” and handed it back. As he held his wallet, Minguela said the agent demanded his license. After running his information, Minguela said, the agent placed him in handcuffs.
::
Inside B 18, the lights never turned off. No matter the hour, officers would call detainees out of the room for interviews, making it difficult to get uninterrupted sleep, Minguela recounted. The temperature was so cold, family members dropped off sweaters and jackets for loved ones.
The detainees were given thin, shiny emergency blankets to sleep with. He described them as “aluminum sheets.” As the days passed, he said, even those ran out for new detainees. The bathrooms were open-air, providing no privacy. Detainees went days without showering.
The conditions, he said, felt intentional. A form of “pressure to get people to sign to leave.”
Department of Homeland Security officials have previously told The Times that “any claim that there are subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are false.”
When Minguela closed his eyes, he saw the faces of his family. He wondered how his esposa would keep them afloat all alone. He wanted to believe this was just a nightmare from which he would soon awaken.
He replayed the morning events over and over in his head. What if he had gotten to Little Tokyo five minutes earlier? Five minutes later?
“Those days were the hardest,” Minguela said. “My first day there on the floor, I cried. It doesn’t matter that you’re men, it doesn’t matter your age. There, men cried.”
The men talked among themselves, most worrying about their wives and children. They shared where they’d been taken from. Minguela estimated that around 80% of people he was held with had been detained at car washes and Home Depot. Others had been arrested while leaving court hearings.
Minguela said he’d only been asked once, on his second day, if he wanted to self-deport. He said no. But he watched as several others gave up and signed to leave. Minguela hoped he’d be sent to Adelanto, a nearby detention center. He’d heard it might be harder to get bond in Texas or Arizona.
On the sixth day, around 4 a.m., Minguela and more than 20 others had been pulled out of the room and shackled. He only learned he was going to Arizona after overhearing a conversation between two guards.
It felt, Minguela said, “like the world came crashing down on me.”
The 25 detainees were loaded onto a white bus and spent around 10 hours on the road, before arriving at a detention center near Casa Grande. When Minguela saw it for the first time, in the desert where the temperature was hitting 110 degrees, he felt afraid. It looked like a prison.
“Ay caray, adonde nos trajeron,” he thought. Wow, where did they bring us?
::
There were around 50 people in Minguela’s wing. His cell mate, an African immigrant, had been fighting his asylum case for five months, hoping to get to his family in Seattle.
For the first time since his youth, Minguela had time to read books, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “No One Writes to the Colonel.” He read the Bible, taking comfort in Psalm 91, a prayer of trust and protection. He took online courses on CPR, computer skills and how to process his emotions.
But all the distractions, he said, didn’t change the fact that detainees were imprisoned.
“Lo que mata es el encierro,” Minguela said. “What kills you is the confinement.”
Angel Minguela Palacios spent more than a month in immigration detention.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Almost everyone there, Minguela said, had arrived with the intention of fighting their case. There were detainees who had been there for a year fighting to get asylum, others for eight months. Some had been arrested despite having work permits. Others had been scammed out of thousands of dollars by immigration lawyers who never showed up for their court hearings. Many decided to self-deport.
If he wasn’t granted bond, Minguela told his partner he feared he might do that in a moment of desperation.
Minguela lay in his darkened cell, reflecting on moments when he had arrived home, tired from work and traffic, and scolded his children about minor messes. About times he’d argued with his wife and given her the silent treatment. He made promises to God to be an even better husband and father. He asked that God help his lawyer on his case and to give him a fair judge.
Minguela had his bond hearing Sept 9. He was aided by the fact that he had entered the country lawfully, providing the judge the ability to either grant or deny him bond.
Alex Galvez, Minguela’s lawyer, told the judge about his client’s children. He pointed out that Minguela didn’t have a criminal record and was gainfully employed, the primary breadwinner for his family. Galvez submitted 16 letters of recommendation for his client.
Angel Minguela Palacios beams at his 6-year-old son.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
When the government lawyer referred to Minguela as a flight risk, Galvez said, the judge appeared skeptical, pointing out that he’d been paying tens of thousands of dollars in taxes for the last 10 years.
The judge granted a $1,500 bond. Minguela’s employers at the produce company paid it. When Minguela was pulled out of his cell on the night of Sept. 17, the other detainees applauded.
“Bravo,” they shouted. “Echale ganas.” Give it your all.
::
A crowd of people waited to greet Minguela as soon as he stepped off a Greyhound bus at Union Station in downtown L.A. on Thursday night. His partner and their three children all wore black shirts that read “Welcome Home.”
Minguela’s employer, Martha Franco, her son, Carlos Franco, and her nephew held “Welcome Back” balloons and flowers.
“He’s coming,” the children cried, when the bus groaned to a halt at 9:35 p.m. When Minguela spotted the waiting crowd, he beamed. His youngest son jumped up and down with anticipation as he stepped off the bus.
“Estas contento,” Minguela asked the boy. “Are you happy?”
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He held his esposa tight, kissing her on the cheeks, the forehead and the lips.
Minguela knows his release is just a step in the journey. His lawyer plans to file for cancellation of his removal and hopes to secure him a work permit. Minguela said he wants other immigrants to know that “there’s hope and not to despair.”
“Have faith,” Minguela said.
When Minguela arrived home after 10 p.m., he clasped his face in surprise as he was greeted by more than a hundred red, gold and black balloons. Signs strung up around the living room read “God loves you” and “Welcome home we missed you so much.”
His partner had decorated and bought everything to make ceviche and albondigas to celebrate his return. But she hadn’t had time that day to cook. Instead, she bought him one of his favorites in his adopted home.
MEXICO CITY — It was pouring buckets of rain at the Estadio GNP Seguros on Saturday night, when Oasis played one of two sold-out reunion shows in Mexico City.
Lined at the entrance were tents stuffed with bootleg tour merch and fans seeking respite from the water. You could hear the sloshing of wet socks and Adidas Sambas as they price-checked knockoff memorabilia emblazoned with the Gallagher brothers’ iconically muggy faces.
For 200 pesos, you could get a T-shirt with Noel and Liam Gallagher as fighting cats, or characters from “Peanuts” and “The Simpsons.”
While a downpour isn’t the ideal weather condition for an outdoor concert — my Bohemian FC x Oasis collab football jersey went unseen under a fashionable rain parka — it was certainly fitting for a band thatroutinely, perhapsobsessively, singsaboutrain. Yet for Mexican fans of Oasis who’ve anxiously waited years to finally see the brothers reunite, it was all sunsheeeeIIIIIINE.
Outside the entry gates, father and son Santiago and Omar Zepeda, both sporting bucket hats, had a palpable buzz radiating off them as they eagerly waited to enter the stadium. It was a multigenerationally significant day for them.
“I came for the first time with my dad in ’98 at the Palacio de Deportes to see Oasis, and now I get to bring my son,” said Santiago, who came from Guadalajara with his 14-year-old in tow. “There was a moment that I said we’ll just go without tickets and see what we do. We’ll get in because we’ll get in. I feel incredible to be able to have done what I did with my father 27 years later now with my son.”
In August of last year, the Manchester-bred Gallagher brothers — who had been openly feuding for decades — declared that war was over on the 30th anniversary of their 1994 juggernaut debut, “Definitely Maybe.”
“The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over,” they announced. As reunion tour dates opened, and two Mexico City stops were announced, Mexican fans expressed pure elation and flooded Ticketmaster once the sale went live. As you can imagine, it was online bedlam.
Waiting in the Ticketmaster queue filled Esteban Ricardo Sainz Coronado, 24, and Sara Pedraza, 25, with dread. The young couple came in from Monterrey, Nuevo León, but it was uncertain whether they’d make it to what Coronado called “a collective reunion that’s cultural and transcends more than music history.”
Pedraza waited three hours in Ticketmaster’s virtual line, almost missing school and her chance to secure seats as she kept getting bumped off the site. “I stubbornly kept trying and after I don’t know how many attempts, it worked,” Pedraza said. “It was such a huge relief.”
Like Coronado and Sainz, the reunion tour is millions of fans’ first opportunity to see Oasis play live, as they would have been far too young or not even born yet during their heyday. For longtime Oasis heads, it was a chance to once again be in community with their favorite band.
British bands have long had a foothold in Mexico’s alternative scenes, with fans of all ages still packing bars and venues to hear Primal Scream, Blur, Pulp and, of course, Morrissey and the Smiths. These groups have had an enduring, impassioned following that has been explored in books, articles and films, with Mexicans often feeling a spiritual and cultural connection to the U.K.’s music scene stemming back to the Beatles. Oasis could have sold out shows across Mexico 10 times over.
After acrimoniously (and unsurprisingly) breaking up in 2009, the hope to ever see the Gallaghers fill a stadium with the staple of acoustic jam sessions worldwide, “Wonderwall,” dimmed. The brothers’ endless swipes at each other in the media post-breakup didn’t give fans hope they’d get back to “living forever.” Mexican fans even prayed to La Virgen de Guadalupe that the infamously combative brothers wouldn’t break up again even hours before showtime.
“As long as they don’t fight!” said Hector Garduño, who came to the show with his partner, Sofia Carrera, from Querétaro. “That’s what we want, for them not to fight.”
Gracias a la virgencita, the tour has seemingly been all love. The skies eventually cleared up on Saturday, and the stadium indeed filled with Oasis’ soaring, anthemic bangers for 2 ½ hours. For days leading up to the Mexico City date, fans in my orbit and social feeds debated how the show would compare with the crowd at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl, where Oasis played the previous weekend.
“[Mexican audiences are] on another level,” said Garduño. “I think these dudes are going to be taken by surprise. I expect jumping, screaming, crying; the emotion of hearing those songs that really move you.”
Mauri Barranco, who came to the show with her best friend, said “I feel like we give a lot of ourselves. That’s why so many artists like coming to Mexico.”
Meanwhile, Alberto Folch, from Mexico City, saw his own audience participation as a challenge. “With all the vibes, with all the emotion, we’re ready to jump, to show them what Mexico is made of,” he said. “Tonight we’re rock ‘n’ roll stars.”
The 65,000 fans in attendance undoubtedly showed up sobbing and screeching with unbridled elation. Liam Gallagher played to the locals, donning a sombrero de charro during “Wonderwall” and the show closer “Champagne Supernova.” The band sounded as if no time had passed since its salad days, with the members’ vocals and musicianship arguably tighter than ever — perhaps a positive side effect of pulling back from the rock star lifestyle now that they’re in their 50s. The sound reverberated clean across the stadium as well (shoutout to L-Acoustics, who provided the sound for the reunion tour), and was praised nonstop by fans I spoke to throughout the weekend. I heard a lot of emphatic cries of “el sonido, güey!”
I pogo’d along with my fellow “madferits” as we turned away from the stage and linked arms to do the Poznań: a signature move at every show, borrowed from Manchester City F.C. fans. During “Cigarettes & Alcohol,” we shouted every lyric and were sprayed by flying beers thrown in raucous excitement.
I’ve never felt more giddy to get splashed with spit-riddled beer — and seemingly neither did anyone around me, who shouted joyful obscenities in Spanish. Three men behind me even sobbed into each other’s chests during “Don’t Look Back in Anger” and the stadium filled with cellphone lights as Noel Gallagher crooned “Talk Tonight.”
The rain didn’t fall again, but even if it had, it would have still felt like the sun.
SEATTLE — Cal Raleigh tied Mickey Mantle’s season record for most home runs by a switch hitter with his 54th, and the Seattle Mariners extended their winning streak to nine by routing the Angels 11-2 Sunday to take sole possession of the AL West lead for the first time since June.
With the loss, the Angels will finish the year without a winning record for the 10th consecutive season.
George Kirby matched his career high with 14 strikeouts as the Mariners completed a four-game sweep and won for the 20th time in their last 23 home games.
Jorge Polanco had three doubles and has doubles in seven straight games, tying the Mariners’ record.
Seattle (82-68) moved one game ahead of Houston (81-69) at the top of the division, winning nine in a row for the first time since a 14-game streak from July 2-17, 2022, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. The Mariners had not been alone in first place since before play on June 3.
Kirby (9-7) gave up two runs and three hits in 6 1/3 innings, walking none and leaving after 101 pitches. He also struck out 14 Angels on June 8.
Batting left-handed in the first inning, Raleigh had a first-pitch homer to left-center off Kyle Hendricks for a 2-0 lead. Mantle hit his 54 homers for the 1961 New York Yankees. Raleigh’s homer was his record-setting 43rd homer this season as a catcher, one more than Atlanta’s Javy López in 2003.
Hendricks (7-10) gave up nine runs and 10 hits in 3 1/3 innings.
Angels third baseman Yoán Moncada left in the middle of the fifth inning because of a sore left ankle.
Christian Moore and Oswald Peraza hit solo homers for the Angels. Denzer Guzmán got his first two big league hits.
New York — It was a quiet, while not quite silent, morning for the“Table of Silence Project” Thursday, on the plaza of Lincoln Center and in front of David Geffen Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic. Commemorating the 24th anniversary of 9/11, white-robed members of the Buglisi Dance Theatre circled the plaza, a few with megaphones for chants, an occasional violin joining in, mellowing even the sounds of background traffic roaring down busy Broadway.
On this solemn but beautiful New York day and after more than two years in waiting, Gustavo Dudamel took charge, at least in practice, of the New York Philharmonic. Six decades ago, during the Leonard Bernstein era, America’s oldest and most celebrated orchestra had the city’s (and much of the nation’s) full attention in a way it hasn’t since. Could that happen again?
When Dudamelannounced in early February 2023 that he would leave the Los Angeles Philharmonic to become music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic in the fall of 2026, he became instant celebrity news here. A New York Philharmonic player gives Dudamel a cheesecake, and the New York Times writes a story.
This season Dudamel gains his first official title: music and artistic director designate. But the orchestra is basically his baby now. His photo is plastered on the orchestra’s posters and publicity. And on Thursday night, Dudamel, for the first time, opened the New York Philharmonic’s new season. After two weeks this month, he will have a sizable presence later winter and in spring, while also closing out his last L.A. Phil season with major programs.
Dudamel arrived in New York on Tuesday, having spent two weeks conducting the Simon Bolivar Orchestra of Venezuela, his homeland orchestra, to open Coldplay’s concerts at Glastonbury in England, just as the newly named U.S. Department of War immediately began to live up to its name by sending warships to Dudamel’s native Venezuela and threatening regime change.
But here in New York, Dudamel paid tribute to a new city in his life with Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and Charles Ives’ Symphony No. 2. In 1945, Bartók, having fled Nazi-invaded Hungary, wrote his final piano concerto in a New York apartment on 57th Street, a block west of Carnegie Hall. Bernstein led the New York Philharmonic premiere of Ives’ Second — the first great American symphony — at Carnegie, then the New York Philharmonic’s home, six years later.
Still, the first orchestral sounds that emanated from the Dudamel designated directorship turned out to be barely heard, while not silent, percussion stirrings. Following a season-opening tradition he began when he became music director of the L.A. Phil, Dudamel began the program with a world premiere.
For this, he directed New Yorkers’ attention westward. In “of light and stone,” Leilehua Lanzilotti sets the sonic stage for an evocation of Hawaii, where she resides, before statehood. She makes references to King Kalakaua, Queen Lili’uokalani and other Hawaiian nobility few in a mainland audience are likely to know. There are fragments of Hawaiian song, a dance of the wind.
Nothing settles in this four-part, 15-minute song of a land, a score that falls somewhere between history lesson and color-field sonic landscape. A whisp of a canorous clarinet or a rumbling rattle is all it takes for a kind of instant transport to a far-off time and place. New York Philharmonic audiences can be cool, but they’ve demonstratively taken to Dudamel at Geffen, and an ethereal performance appeared to open ears.
The young Korean pianist, Yunchan Lim, who became instantly hot after winning the Van Cliburn competition three years ago, was soloist in Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto. Lim will be a soloist with Dudamel and the L.A. Phil this season as well as give a solo recital in Walt Disney Concert Hall. He is an exceptional pianist. He too opens ears and can transport a listener to a distant land. And Lim’s case is far more distant or far less knowable than Hawaii.
Lim’s Bartók exists in a world of the pianist’s own. Every phrase is for him an oddity, as if he had found some weird object in an imaginary world and was figuring out what he might do with it. His tools were rhythm, accents and dynamics, each a quirky new toy. The New York Philharmonic produced beauty and excitement, but Lim went his own way that wasn’t quite imaginative enough to improve on Bartók. Here we go again with an exceptional young soloist being pushed into the limelight too soon.
The New York Philharmonic owns Ives’ Second. Written in the first decade of the 20th century, the symphony offered a whole new way of thinking about American and European music and it sat dormant for some four decades before Bernstein premiered it. But that 1951 performance had a huge effect on how to transform folk music, popular music, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and what-not, twisted, transformed and tacked together. Bernstein later recorded it twice with the New York Philharmonic. The first time full of beans that revived it for good. The second time in 1987 as a glorious spiritual exercise. Hearing that performance live left me in a state of rapture.
Dudamel has made a specialty of the symphony himself, conducting it with the Vienna Philharmonic, recording it with the L.A. Phil and now going to the source. His performance Thursday night did not try to follow in Bernstein’s footsteps or necessarily Dudamel’s own. The performance flowed with exquisite lyricism and mustered a thrilling finale.
In Vienna, Dudamel was more robust. At Disney, Dudamel found exceptional expression in every little detail. That was the Dudamel that we last saw at the Hollywood Bowl this summer when he conducted Mahler’s First more vividly than ever.
That is not, quite yet, the Dudamel for New York. Here his Ives seemed to be laying the groundwork, letting his new orchestra show him what it can do before he begins, as he surely will, digging deeper.
It took a once controversial effort for Bernstein to transform an uptight virtuosic New York Philharmonic into a tight but electric one. Now it’s Dudamel’s turn for transmogrification, and he’s made a promising beginning.
At some point, the Dodgers hope, they will be able to field a fully healthy lineup.
A late scratch on Wednesday to catcher Will Smith, however, meant it would have to wait at least a couple more days.
Despite activating Tommy Edman from the injured list pregame, and proceeding to sweep the Colorado Rockies with a 9-0 win that stretched their National League West lead to three games, the Dodgers were left dealing with another injury headache Wednesday, removing Smith from the starting lineup just 15 minutes before first pitch after swelling developed around the bone bruise he has been dealing with in his right hand.
“Not overly concerned,” manager Dave Roberts said of Smith’s status, “but we’ve got to get that swelling under wraps.”
Smith’s absence hardly hampered the Dodgers in their fourth straight win.
Their lineup exploded for four runs in the second inning and five in the eighth behind a huge night from Mookie Betts, who continued his recent tear with a four-for-five, five-RBI performance that included a run-scoring double early and a grand slam to put things away late. Betts is now on a 16-game on-base streak, has multiple RBIs in five-straight contests, and is batting .352 with seven home runs and 26 RBIs over his last 32 games.
Behind the plate, Ben Rortvedt filled in to catch Blake Snell’s scoreless six-inning, 11-strikeout start, which continued a dominant run from a Dodgers’ rotation that now has a 1.18 ERA over the last six games.
And thanks to a loss earlier in the day by the San Diego Padres, the team grew its lead atop the division for a second day in a row, effectively taking a 3-½ game NL West lead (when accounting for its head-to-head tiebreaker over San Diego) with 16 games to play.
“That was a big home series sweep, to get us going … get us moving in the right direction,” Snell said. “All of us have been looking forward to getting it going. This was a really good step.”
Yet, after activating Max Muncy off the injured list Monday, and welcoming Edman back into the fold Wednesday afternoon, the Dodgers were finally on the verge of having a full-strength squad for the first time since early July.
Instead, they were reminded of the tenuous reality of their oft-injured roster — and the difficulty of trying to manage Smith’s hand in particular.
It had only been a week since Smith first got hurt, when a foul ball in Pittsburgh ricocheted off his dangling throwing hand behind the plate and left him with a bone bruise that sidelined him until Tuesday — though didn’t require an injured list stint. Smith had looked OK in his return to action that night, lining a double in his first at-bat while helping Emmet Sheehan carry a no-hitter into the sixth. He was back in the original lineup the Dodgers posted Wednesday, as they sought a series sweep over the 106-loss Rockies.
The issue, it appeared, might be behind him.
But then, when the Dodgers emerged from the dugout Wednesday night, it was Rortvedt who went to squat behind home plate.
“Literally 15 minutes before the game, as he’s getting ready, his hand started to swell up,” Roberts said. “After [his pregame] hitting, getting dressed, getting ready for the game, that’s when it started to show itself. He tried to get out there and throw. It just didn’t respond well.”
After Smith first got hurt, Roberts cautioned his injury could linger for the rest of the season. After Wednesday, he said the team would monitor Smith on Thursday’s off day –– and potentially send him for an MRI –– then decide on Friday whether he’ll play in this weekend’s series-opener in San Francisco.
“We’ve got to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Roberts said.
Miguel Rojas slides home to score a run in the second inning.
(Eric Thayer/Eric Thayer For The Los Angeles)
Smith’s hand won’t be the only injury the Dodgers (82-64) will have to manage down the stretch.
While Edman returned from an ankle injury that had plagued him all year, and sidelined him since its own flare-up on Aug. 3, Roberts said pregame he was still curious to see how the utilityman looked.
Edman slotted in center field on Wednesday — where he tracked down a fly ball on the game’s first pitch — and will likely see most of his playing time there for at least the foreseeable future. Roberts noted that, unlike earlier this year when Edman was mainly limited to infield duties, the quick reactions required at second base might be tougher on his ankle now.
“Getting off the ball is something I’m going to be really mindful of watching,” Roberts said of Edman. “Once he gets to full speed, it’s a lot easier [to decide what he can handle].”
With Edman in center, the Dodgers also ran out a new outfield alignment, with Andy Pages moving to left field and Michael Conforto dropping to the bench.
Roberts said Conforto will still see playing time against right-handed pitchers (the Rockies started left-hander Kyle Freeland on Wednesday). He also didn’t close the door on eventually flipping Pages (who had three hits Wednesday, including an RBI double in the second to open the scoring) and Teoscar Hernández (who went deep in the eighth for his third home run in the last two nights) in the corners, though noted he is keeping Hernández in right for now thanks to his improved defensive play in recent weeks.
“Teo played the season last year in left field, so we’ve shown that we can win a championship with him in left field,” Roberts said. “Not quite there yet, but thinking about it.”
Despite the moving pieces, it all brought the Dodgers closer to the lineup they envisioned having at the start of this season, the one they’ve floundered with offensively (entering the night ranked just 26th in the majors in scoring since July 4) while playing without.
“I think that we’ve all been waiting for our guys to come back to health and see what we look like,” Roberts said.
Still, they won’t be at full strength again until Smith is. Wednesday was a reminder that his health remains in doubt.
Roberts said that could include finding the rookie right-hander, who finally rediscovered his 100-mph fastball Tuesday after lacking velocity and battling a shoulder injury previously this year, an opportunity to start a big-league game for the first time since April. Or, potentially pitching out of the bullpen, which is how the 23-year-old would likely be used if he were to be included on the postseason roster.
Before that latter scenario could become reality, of course, the Dodgers will need to see Sasaki have some sort of success back in the majors, where he had a 4.72 ERA in eight starts at the beginning of the season before going on the IL.
Nonetheless, Roberts described Sasaki’s rehab outing on Tuesday as “great for the Dodgers, great for Roki’s confidence, great for the organization.
“Mostly it was great for Roki,” Roberts added. “Just to really let it eat, let it fly, have some success and know that he can be the guy that he’s known to be.”
My dad’s passport is among his most valuable possessions, a document that not only establishes that he’s a U.S. citizen but holds the story of his life.
It states that he was born in Mexico in 1951 and is decorated with stamps from the regular trips he takes to his home state of Zacatecas. Its cover is worn but still strong, like its owner, a 74-year-old retired truck driver. It gives Lorenzo Arellano the ability to move across borders, a privilege he didn’t have when he entered the United States for the first time in the trunk of a Chevy as an 18-year-old.
The photo is classic Papi. Stern like old school Mexicans always look in portraits but with joyful eyes that reveal his happy-go-lucky attitude to life. He used to keep the passport in his underwear drawer to make sure he never misplaced it in the clutter of our home.
At the beginning of Trump’s second term, I told Papi to keep the passport on him at all times. Just because you’re a citizen doesn’t mean you’re safe, I told my dad, who favors places — car washes, hardware stores, street vendors, parks, parties — where immigrants congregate and no one cares who has legal status and who doesn’t.
“Exagera,” my dad replied — Trump exaggerates. As a citizen, my dad reasoned he now had rights. He didn’t have to worry like in the old days, when one shout of “¡La migra!” would send him running for the nearest exit of the carpet factory in Santa Ana where he worked back in the 1970s.
Masked migra swept across Southern California under the pretense of rounding up criminals. In reality, they grabbed anyone they thought looked suspicious, which in Southern California meant brown-skinned Latinos like my father. The feds even nabbed U.S. citizens or detained them for hours before releasing them with no apology. People who had the right to remain in this country were sent to out-of-state detention camps, where government officials made it as difficult as possible for frantic loved ones to find out where they were, let alone retrieve them.
This campaign of terror is why the ACLU and others filed a lawsuit in July arguing that la migra was practicing racial profiling in violation of the 4th Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches. A federal judge agreed, issuing a temporary restraining order. The Trump administration appealed, arguing to the Supreme Court that it needed to racially profile to find people to kick out of the country, otherwise “the prospect of contempt” would hang “over every investigative stop.”
In a 6-3 vote, the justices lifted the temporary restraining order as the ACLU lawsuit proceeds. L.A.’s long, hot deportation summer will spill over to the fall and probably last as long as Trump wants it to. The decision effectively states that those of us with undocumented family and friends — a huge swath of Southern California and beyond — should watch over our shoulders, even if we’re in this country legally.
And even if you don’t know anyone without papers, watch out if you’re dark-skinned, speak English with an accent or wear guayaberas or huaraches. Might as well walk around in a T-shirt that says, “DEPORT ME, POR FAVOR.”
The ruling didn’t surprise me — the Supreme Court nowadays is a Trump-crafted rubber stamp for his authoritarian project. But what was especially galling was how out of touch Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion was with reality.
Kavanaugh describes what la migra has wrought on Southern California as “brief investigative stops,” which is like describing a totaled car as a “scratched-up vehicle.” A citizen or permanent resident stopped on suspicion of being in this country illegally “will be free to go after the brief encounter,” he wrote.
The justice uses the words “brief” or “briefly” eight times to describe what la migra does. Not once does he mention plaintiff Brian Gavidia, the U.S. citizen who on June 9 was at a Montebello tow yard when masked immigration agents shoved him against the fence and twisted his arm.
Gavidia’s offense? He stated he was an American three times but couldn’t remember the name of the East L.A. hospital where he was born. A friend recorded the encounter and posted it to social media. It quickly went viral and showed the world that citizenship won’t save you from Trump’s migra hammer.
Would Kavanaugh describe this as a “brief encounter” if it happened to him? To a non-Latino? After more cases like this inevitably happen, and more people are gobbled up by Trump’s anti-immigrant Leviathan?
Brian Gavidia stands in a parking lot next to East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park. A video of him having his arm twisted and held by an immigration officer against a wall despite being a U.S. citizen went viral. He’s currently a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit alleging the Trump administration is violating the 4th Amendment with indiscriminate immigration raids.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Anyone who applauds this decision is sanctioning state-sponsored racism out of apartheid-era South Africa. They’re all right with Latinos who “look” a certain way or live in communities with large undocumented populations becoming second-class citizens, whether they just migrated here or can trace their heritage to before the Pilgrims.
I worry for U.S.-born family members who work construction and will undoubtedly face citizenship check-ins. For friends in the restaurant industry who might also become targets. For children in barrios who can now expect ICE and Border Patrol trucks to cruise past their schools searching for adults and even teens to detain — it’s already happened.
Life will irrevocably change for millions of Latinos in Southern California and beyond because of what the Supreme Court just ruled. Shame on Kavanaugh and the five other justices who sided with him for uncorking a deportation demon that will be hard to stop.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor recounts Gavidia’s travails in her dissent, adding that the Real ID he was able to show the agents after they roughed him that established his citizenship “was never returned” and mocking Kavanaugh’s repeated use of “brief.”
“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,” she wrote. “Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”
I will also dissent, but now I’m going to be more careful than ever. I’m going to carry my passport at all times, just in case I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even that is no guarantee la migra will leave me alone. It’s not a matter of if but when: I live in a majority Latino city, near a Latino supermarket on a street where the lingua franca is Spanish.
And I’m one of the lucky ones. I will be able to remain, no matter what may happen, because I’m a citizen. Imagine having to live in fear like this for the foreseeable future for those who aren’t?
