George

San Diegan Charles W. Hostler modestly said that it was his way of “doing what I could” to help elect George Bush and other Republican candidates. Ralph E. Bodine described it as “my little way . . . of getting involved” with last year’s elections.

Few others, however, would use the word “little” to describe Hostler’s and Bodine’s roles in Election ‘88, for they, like four other people who either live in San Diego or have strong ties here, contributed at least $100,000 to the Republican National Committee last year.

Besides Bodine and Hostler, San Diego Chargers owner Alex Spanos and businessmen J. Neal Blue, Michael Dingman and George Gillett Jr. were among 249 top GOP donors listed on the so-called “Team 100” roster released this week by Republican leaders.

The “Team 100” program–targeted at political high-rollers who donated at least $100,000 to the Republican Party at the state or national level–was directed by Texas businessman and Commerce Secretary-designate Robert Mosbacher, who was finance chairman of President Bush’s campaign last fall.

No Direct Contributions, Just ‘Soft Money’

Under federal election laws, those donations could not be spent directly by Bush’s campaign. However, the funds–known as “soft money,” in political jargon–helped to bankroll indirect local and national party efforts to aid Bush and other Republican candidates.

Hostler, a private investor and international business consultant, said he made his $100,000 donation to the party “because I felt it was important that George Bush and Republican candidates receive adequate support.”

“I’ve been a consistent donor of varying amounts over the years, but this is the biggest amount,” said Hostler, a retired Air Force colonel who has lived nearly half his life abroad and is fluent in four languages.

From 1974-76, Hostler worked under James Baker, Bush’s campaign chairman and secretary of state designate, in the Commerce Department as director of the Bureau of International Commerce.

Although Hostler said he has no strong yearning to return to Washington, he added: “I have the highest respect for both George Bush and Jim Baker. If Jim Baker consults me, or, if there would be an offer, I’d be happy to consider it. I guess I’ll take it as it comes.”

In contrast, Bodine, chairman of the board of Sunkist Growers, said he has “absolutely no designs on any job” in the Bush Administration.

‘I Have Enough Jobs Already,’ Says Bodine

“I have enough jobs already,” said Bodine, a 46-year-old Point Loma resident. “I just felt it was imperative to support Republican candidates in order for there to be a continuation of what we’ve seen over the last eight years. This was my little way–or big way–of getting involved.”

The other four $100,000 donors with San Diego links could not be reached for comment. In addition to Chargers owner Spanos, who lives in Stockton, they are:

– J. Neal Blue, chairman and chief executive officer of General Atomics, a La Jolla-based high-technology company. Blue also is chairman of Cordillera Corp., a Denver-based holding company involved in the gas and oil business.

– George Gillett Jr., owner of Gillett Communications, the company that owns KNSD-TV (Channel 39).

– Michael Dingman, the managing director, chairman and chief executive officer of Henley Group, a La Jolla-based multi-industry conglomerate. Dingman, who formerly lived in La Jolla, now lives in Exeter, N.H.

As a young man, he stood next to Martin Luther King Jr. as he delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech. As a college basketball coach, he blazed a trail for Black coaches and players. As an executive, he was instrumental in signing Michael Jordan to his groundbreaking endorsement deal with Nike.

George Raveling had an impact that stretched far beyond basketball, the sport which he last coached three decades ago at USC. He became a revered figure in the game, not for the number of wins he accumulated over his career, but for his role as a mentor to many.

Raveling, 88, died Monday after a battle with cancer, his family announced.

“There are no words to fully capture what George meant to his family, friends, colleagues, former players, and assistants — and to the world,” the family said in a statement. “He will be profoundly missed, yet his aura, energy, divine presence, and timeless wisdom live on in all those he touched and transformed.”

Raveling coached at USC from 1986 to 1994, the first Black coach to take the helm of the Trojans basketball program. Over his first four seasons at the school, Raveling didn’t experience much success, winning just 38 of USC’s 116 games over that stretch.

Raveling found his stride in the second half of his tenure, taking the Trojans to two straight NCAA tournaments and two NITs after that. But his overall record at USC never broke .500 (115-118). In September 1994, Raveling was in a serious car accident that eventually led him to retire. He suffered nine broken ribs and a collapsed lung and fractured his pelvis and collarbone.

After his coaching career, Raveling joined Nike as the director of grassroots basketball, later rising to the role of director of international basketball.

But his biggest contribution at Nike came out of his relationship with Jordan, whom Raveling had coached as an assistant with the U.S. national team at the 1984 Olympics. Jordan, whose deal with Nike sent the brand into a new stratosphere, credited Raveling for making it happen. In the foreword for Raveling’s book, Jordan called him “a mentor”.

“If not for George, there would be no Air Jordan,” Jordan wrote.

Across the basketball world, similar plaudits came pouring in Tuesday in light of Raveling’s death.

Eric Musselman, USC’s current basketball coach, said Raveling was “not only a Hall of Fame basketball mind but a tremendous person who paved the way on and off the court.”

Former Villanova coach Jay Wright wrote on social media that Raveling was “the finest human being, inspiring mentor, most loyal alum and a thoughtful loving friend.”

Raveling grew up in Washington D.C., during a time of segregation and hardship. His family lived in a two-room apartment above a grocery store, where they shared a bathroom with four other families on the same floor. His father died suddenly when he was 9. His mother suffered a mental health crisis a few years later and spent most of her remaining years in a psychiatric hospital. Raveling left home at 14 to attend a boarding school.

It was at St. Michaels, a mostly white boarding school in Pennsylvania, that Raveling first started playing basketball. He earned a scholarship at Villanova, where he became a captain and later an assistant coach.

But the college experience, he later said, had an even more profound impact on Raveling.

“I’ve always felt like a sprinter who’d slipped at the starting box and was 20 yards behind everybody — I’ve been in a mad dash to catch up with everybody ever since,” Raveling told The Times in 1994. “My mom worked two jobs when I was a kid. There were no books in our house. Nobody envisioned that I’d graduate from college. No one even encouraged me to go to college.”

He’d spend the rest of his life, it seems, trying to make up for lost time.

Raveling was standing just a few feet away from King on the National Mall in Washington D.C. in 1963 as he delivered his famed “I Have A Dream” speech. King actually handed Raveling his copy of the historic speech immediately after he finished.

For decades, Raveling kept it tucked inside of a book, before recounting the story to a journalist. According to Sports Illustrated, a collector later offered Raveling $3 million for his copy of the speech. But he declined and donated it instead to Villanova.

George Raveling was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in 2015.

(Charles Krupa / Associated Press)

Raveling pioneered a path that few Black coaches ever had through his career. He was the first Black coach in the history of the Atlantic Coast Conference when he started as an assistant in 1969. Three years later, at Washington State, he became the first Black coach to lead a Pac-8 (now Pac-12) Conference basketball team.

He coached at Iowa from 1983-86 before being hired at USC. At the time, the Trojans had a roster that included Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble, who were coming off their freshman season. Raveling gave the players a firm deadline to tell him if they planned to remain on the team and when they didn’t he revoked their scholarships. Both went on to star at Loyola Marymount.

Raveling was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015. But as a “contributor”, not as a coach. Even while he was coaching, Raveling seemed to understand that his role meant more than that.

“Winning basketball games just helps you keep your job,” he told The Times in 1994. “But keeping your job helps you work with these kids about the real challenges of life, which all happen away from the court. I know there’s an enormous demand around here to win. But I don’t want someone to ask me what I accomplished in my life and for me to say that I won this amount of games or took a team to some tournament.

“If all I can say is that I taught a kid how to shoot a jump shot, well, that’s not good enough. These kids come out of underprivileged, inner-city areas, and I’m just wasting my time if I haven’t put something of substance into their lives.”

Southern Brave beat Welsh Fire after Katie George drops Georgia Adams on the penultimate ball, allowing the visitors to run two and snatch victory with a ball to spare, denying the hosts their first win of this year’s Hundred.

MATCH REPORT: Fire eliminated as Brave edge low-scoring thriller

Available to UK users only.

Aug. 12 (UPI) — The U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday that George Washington University was in violation of federal civil rights laws and described it as “deliberately indifferent” to anti-Semitism on campus.

The DOJ published a letter to GWU President Ellen M. Granberg saying that the department had finished its probe of the allegations against the university and found that GWU’s response to incidents of anti-Semitic discrimination and harassment of Jewish and Israeli students that “despite actual notice of the abuses occurring on its campus, GWU was deliberately indifferent to the complaints it received, the misconduct that occurred, and the harms that were suffered by its students and faculty, in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

The letter from Assistant Attorney General Civil Rights Division Harmeet K. Dhillon offered “the opportunity to resolve this matter through a voluntary resolution agreement.”

The allegations stem from campus protests in April and May 2024. The protests were about the Israeli attacks on Gaza, but some Jewish students experienced alleged anti-Semitism on several university campuses.

The letter alleged that students and faculty at GWU experienced a hostile educational environment “that was objectively offensive, severe, and pervasive. The anti-Semitic, hate-based misconduct by GWU students directed at Jewish GWU students, faculty, and employees was, in a word, shocking. The behavior was demonstrably abhorrent, immoral, and, most importantly, illegal.”

GWU hasn’t yet responded publicly.

The allegations stem from an encampment that students created in GWU’s University Yard, in the middle of campus.

“The purpose of the agitators’ efforts was to frighten, intimidate, and deny Jewish, Israeli, and American-Israeli students free and unfettered access to GWU’s educational environment. This is the definition of hostility and a ‘hostile environment.’ [DOJ’s] investigation found numerous incidents of Jewish students being harassed, abused, intimidated and assaulted by protesters. To be clear, Jewish students were afraid to attend class, to be observed, or, worse, to be ‘caught’ and perhaps physically beaten on GWU’s campus.”

The letter cites a few examples of students being harassed and having their movements restricted. It says the students were told by faculty and security personnel to leave for their own safety, and no other measures were taken.

“Jewish students, parents and alumni contacted GWU numerous times to express their alarm and concern about the actions of protesters and to express their legitimate and reasonable fears for their safety,” the letter said.

GWU is one of dozens of American universities that have been targeted by the Trump administration with civil rights and constitutional investigations in connection to protests over Israel’s war in Gaza.

Since returning to the White House in January, President Donald Trump has been cracking down on institutions of higher learning, especially elite schools, over a slew of allegations, from not protecting Jewish students to illegally enforcing diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

On Aug. 1, the University of California, Los Angeles, announced it had lost research funding from the federal government over the accusations of anti-Semitism on campus. UCLA paid $6.13 million to three Jewish students and one professor who said their civil rights were violated.

On July 30, Brown University agreed to pay $50 million over 10 years to workforce development organizations in Rhode Island, its home state. It also agreed to:

• Separate men’s and women’s sports facilities on the basis of sex.
• Stope the health system from prescribing puberty blockers or conducting gender reassignment surgeries on minors.
• Ban programs that contain “unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes” and instead utilizing “merit-based” admission policies.
• Provide data and information to the federal government showing compliance with the deal.

She shops for groceries at a neighborhood supermarket in suburban Sacramento, usually in the company of a plainclothes state policewoman who could pass for her sister, and for months she went unrecognized. Only lately have people begun to take note of who she is.

As First Lady of California, Gloria Deukmejian might have passed her shopping list on to someone else, but she said no thanks , she preferred doing the family marketing herself–as the woman who is listed on the Deukmejian joint tax return as “housewife” has always done.

When their 18-year-old son, George, the second of their three children, went to UC Berkeley last September, Gloria Deukmejian, like any mother might, visited the dormitory room he had arranged to share with two friends, and encountered other students who rather excitedly wondered whether she had heard the governor’s son was going to be staying on their floor. Why no, she hadn’t, she said at first, straight-faced.

Parents’ Night And when it came time for Parents’ Night at Rio Americano High School, where their youngest, Andrea, who’ll be 16 next month, is a sophomore, the state’s First Couple stood in line–like everyone else. So unassuming were the Deukmejians that another mother, who had been in a rush, didn’t realize she had accidentally bumped into them until the principal announced he was “honored to have Gov. and Mrs. George Deukmejian” in the audience–and they stood up.

Such is the low-key, low-profile life style of Gloria May Deukmejian, who pursues privacy with the same driven intensity that her husband has courted votes for two decades.

Now, after California’s eight mate-less years under former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., she has become successor–an Administration once removed–to the peripatetic Nancy Reagan, who even then was forever at her husband’s side and in the public eye.

Yet despite George Deukmejian’s 22 years in public office–four in the Assembly, 12 in the state Senate, four more as state attorney general, and with his current four-year term half over– she is still Gov. Deukmejian’s wife who?

Meet Gloria Deukmejian–at 52, she has been married to George (whom she had met at a big family wedding) nearly 28 years–and the most striking thing, indeed the surprise, is her sense of humor. It is quick, spontaneous–and rather irreverent.

She’s somewhat taller than you might expect, a solid-looking 5-feet-6 or so. Photographs, however, do not do her justice. They fail to reflect her vivid coloring: merry black-brown eyes, apple cheeks and flawless olive skin. She has the kind of looks a slash of bright red lipstick only enhances.

B.T. Collins, Brown’s last chief of staff, a Republican, now executive vice president for Kidder-Peabody in Sacramento, experienced her humor more than a year ago. They had corresponded, mentioning a lunch, and at one point she hand-wrote: “I would like to meet you but George won’t let me. He thinks you’ll corrupt me–but then I don’t always listen to George!” And they lunched.

‘Surprise Roaster’ She also floored them at a roast of her husband in Sacramento–a benefit dinner for the Coro Foundation, a national public affairs training program, and the California Journal, a magazine about governmental affairs. The “surprise roaster,” the presumably staid Republican’s wife, more than held her own against the likes of State Treasurer Jesse Unruh and State Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp.

Donning a Groucho Marx mask–a jab at the dark, mustachioed lineup of her husband’s top aides–Gloria Saatjian Deukmejian, first-generation Armenian-American like her husband, told how George was a man who “never forgets birthdays or anniversaries.” One year she got a screwdriver, another a wrench set. “As a result I have a complete tool set.”

The governor was surprised. So, perhaps from another point of view, was the audience. “She stood up there against her image,” recalled 31-year-old Robin Kramer, Coro’s director and a former aide of the Southern California Democratic Party. “I didn’t know her at all, other than she was this quiet, churchly lady who lived in Long Beach. She was not timid, and she was not square.”

Nor did she appear intimidated Dec. 5 on “Look Who’s Talking,” a morning television show, part listener call-in, part interview, on KCRW, the Sacramento NBC affiliate. In her first, and, thus far, only solo television appearance, she defied image by talking about an issue–speaking out, as her husband had in a press conference the day before, on behalf of the death penalty–while sidestepping questions on government cutbacks.

‘Just Moved In’ And she candidly discussed her husband’s future. A second term? “Of course,” she smiled. “I just moved in.” Beyond the governorship? “We’ve really given many many years to political office. I think not . . . one more term and I think it’s our turn (to relax).”

Yes she had heard, “they do have a house in Washington, a little different than ours,” and smiled. And she’s not interested? “No, not at all.”

The next day in the anteroom of the governor’s office in San Francisco, Gloria Deukmejian was back to her image–the self-described “traditional wife.” Her voice is mellow, soothing. At times her answers sound almost memorized.

“I just believe in everything he does, and I just believe that anything I can do to further the cause I will do.”

Do they ever disagree on issues? “Oh occasionally–but I’ll never tell .”

Traditional Role Has she ever tried to sway him? “Have you ever tried to sway an attorney over to your side? . . . “

Elaborating on the traditional-wife theme, Gloria Deukmejian, an art school graduate, who came of age before Gloria Steinem had a cause and women’s liberation a name, said she simply feels “more comfortable” with the traditional. “Like family, three teen-agers (actually Leslie, the oldest, a junior at the University of Colorado in Boulder, turned 20 last September), dogs (three beagles), neighbors, organizations, some relating to the family, some relating to volunteer work . . . like the Bluebirds, Campfires, oh yes PTA, I put my time in all those things.”

No Interviews at Home As comfortable as she is at home, she does not allow interviews at home, whether in Sacramento or her native Long Beach. Home is for privacy, for family. As the governor’s wife she’s been interviewed in his Sacramento office, in the sunny glass-encased coffee shop at the Long Beach Hyatt Regency or in Long Beach’s St. Mary’s Community Hospital gift shop, still dressed in her pink volunteer’s smock. And she just about never allows more than 45 minutes.

She is easiest talking about family. “Our oldest is majoring in communications and she is interested in the public relations aspect. Our youngest daughter, at 15, I don’t think too many of them know what they want to do, other than meet Rick Springfield, Matt Dillon and all those people. She can be very dramatic at times. And our son, he doesn’t know what. . . . They are sort of very independent thinkers.

“We’ve been fortunate, we’ve never really had any great problems with them,” she said in response to a question.

She said she does not know what she has done right. “I have heard of people doing the same thing as I. It hasn’t happened that way for them.” But she added with a laugh that she knows how to say no. “They say I know how to say no too often but you can’t be afraid to. . . . Later they respect you for it. I’ve had comments come back.”

Like Betty Ford, Gloria Deukmejian has had the burden of raising her children much of the time on her own. Only the governor’s wife never viewed that–or their commuter marriage–a burden.

Baby Comes Early For about a decade, from the time Leslie was of school age until George Deukmejian got elected attorney general and used the Los Angeles office as his base of operation, she raised the children from Monday morning through Thursday nights, and sometimes Friday during the legislative session. When it came time to give birth to Andrea, her next-door neighbors drove her. The baby was earlier than expected, and George, a state senator then, was in Sacramento.

It is like a litany among family and close friends, that most protective network that surrounds Gloria Deukmejian, and you hear it constantly: Gloria never gets angry or upset. Gloria never complains–be it about parental burdens or her husband’s rather paltry (by comparison to other states) $49,100-a-year gubernatorial salary, or vacations spent in their Long Beach backyard. “She doesn’t bitch,” said Darlene Thornton-May, the former next-door neighbor and one of her closest friends. Anna Ashjian, Deukmejian’s sister, said the last real vacation they had was in Hawaii where he had a speaking engagement “and they took the kids.”

Alice Deukmejian, who will be 87 on Valentine’s Day, said it best: Gloria, she said upon her son’s election two years ago, has “the patience of Job.”

As the parent at hand, as her own mother was to a degree when she was growing up, Gloria Deukmejian became, of necessity, the stricter one–while carrying out the general’s orders. “And also George, he’s very softhearted, especially with the girls. . . . It’s funny,” she said with a smile. “I can raise my voice. I would have to do it several times. When George raises his voice, he has that very deep voice. Only once ! Just like with the dogs. Same way. They listen to him.”

The middle child and only daughter of the late Krikor and Mary Saatjian (pronounced Say-chen), Gloria Saatjian was born Nov. 1, 1932, in Long Beach and, though raised in a traditional way, hardly came from an average immigrant family.

Her father Krikor, a carpenter’s son who grew up in Aintab, Turkey, graduated with honors from Yale, Class of 1914, became a civil engineer, worked on the Panama Canal, and for most of his career was a middle-management executive in the purchasing department at Texaco in downtown Los Angeles–and an active member of the Petroleum Club in Long Beach.

Today, Gloria Deukmejian’s elder brother Clarence Saatjian, 56, is chief of thermal power engineering for Southern California Edison, and her younger brother, the Rev. Lloyd Saatjian, 50, is Santa Ana district superintendent of the United Methodist Church, responsible for 57 congregations in the Orange County area. (As minister of a Palm Springs congregation for 17 years, he was in the Coachella Valley in 1968 at the time of the table-grape boycott in the dispute between the growers and Cesar Chavez and his migrant farm workers. In the critical years between 1970 and 1973, Saatjian served as mediator. He still is the arbitrator on certain contracts.)

Graduates of USC Both Saatjian brothers are graduates of USC.

Gloria had an interest in art that included years of piano lessons and classical recitals–Lloyd has said she might have become a concert pianist. After graduation in 1950 from Long Beach Poly High School, she went to the old Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and completed the three-year course in interior design. “Then I got out and never did pursue it. I guess I just didn’t have that real interest. . . . Someday, maybe, I’ll get back to it.”

Instead, having already taken some typing and shorthand in high school, she took a job as a secretary for Howard Zink Seat Covers, a large car-seat upholstering company in Long Beach. She worked there for several years until just about the time she met George.

Diane Hansen Roslee, a Chouinard classmate who was maid-of-honor at Gloria and George’s wedding, noted that it wasn’t easy getting a job in the art world in the ‘50s. “So she went to work for the seat-cover king. Closest to home was the easier thing to do. They (the family) didn’t want her to live in an apartment or something, because the family was so close. And she was perfectly happy. . . . Gloria was more domesticated.”

Occasionally while at Chouinard, said Roslee, who owns a dress boutique south of Tucson, Gloria would “spend the weekend with me at my apartment. But they (the family) were very protective of her. They made sure she was a good girl. . . . “

Five Languages Krikor Saatjian, who came to America in 1911 as a scholarship student, spoke five languages–Armenian, Turkish, French, English and German, his English learned from a Christian missionary–and helped pay his way by working in the school cafeteria.

During that early period, he also served with the Army Corps of Engineers at the Panama Canal. Meanwhile in 1915, back in his hometown, his family was being dispersed, and worse, during the Armenian massacre. He volunteered for service in France during World War I, rose to the rank of sergeant, and while in the Army found his mentor in Clarence Olmstead (for whom his eldest would be named). Olmstead brought him to Texaco.

The war over, Saatjian, the eldest of four brothers, set about bringing his family to America. The immediate family had escaped the massacre, but as Eddie Saatjian, the youngest brother, recalled: “After the war was over we returned home. . . . The rest of the family were either gone or dead, or we didn’t know where they were.”

On Gloria’s mother’s side today are uncles, aunts and first cousins living in Beirut.

In 1921, Krikor brought his brother Charles; in 1923, his mother, Sadie; the last two brothers, Jack and Eddie, and in the party his future wife, Mary, a distant cousin 13 years his junior, whom he married a year later– after she started learning English.

After settling briefly in Lockport, Ill., where Olmstead ran a small Texaco refinery, Texaco bought California Petroleum, “and within less than a year,” Eddie recalled, “we were here, the whole gang of us.”

Throughout the Depression, none of the brothers was without a job, and there was always a decent car in the garage. By 1941, the car was a Cadillac. Until they married, Krikor Saatjian’s brothers lived in his house, a large Victorian-style 2 1/2-story frame house on a corner in central Long Beach.

Until her marriage, Gloria Deukmejian shared a bedroom with her grandmother Sadie. In 1941, when Eddie and Alice Saatjian married, there was a portent for her own future. Before coming to California to meet Eddie, Alice Saatjian lived across the street from the Deukmejian family in Menands, N.Y., outside Albany, the state capital. She remembered George, “a beautiful, handsome boy. He had rosy cheeks.” In this intertwining of family-tree branches, Alice also was a second cousin of Isabelle Melkasian. It was at Isabelle’s wedding in San Marino on May 27, 1956 that Gloria and George met. Isabelle’s mother knew the Deukmejians too. (George and Gloria were married Feb. 16, 1957. His sister’s husband, Noubar Ashjian, is Gloria’s second cousin once removed.)

Mary Saatjian–the person Gloria Deukmejian had been closest to, the woman she confided in and is said to emulate–provided the warmth. “An Armenian mother who cared for her children . . . a saint,” said Lloyd. “An amazing cook. She didn’t have the education my dad did, but her relationship to her children and anyone who came into our home was one of love, caring and generosity.”

With her husband at work from 6 in the morning until 6 at night, she was “the one we told the bad things to,” said Clarence, “she was our confidante.”

One gets fleeting, cozy images of Gloria’s girlhood. Isabelle remembers taking the Red Car down to Long Beach with her twin, Annabelle, for weekends at the beach, and Gloria at 10, a junior bridesmaid at her Aunt Alice’s wedding in their home, getting out the carpet-sweeper to clean up a batch of the inevitable pistachio nuts. And whenever the Saatjians would visit her house they would pile out of the Cadillac bearing a box of See’s candy.

Lloyd remembers her getting up early in the morning, before anyone else in the house, practicing piano, and accompanying him at recitals while he played the violin.

And Diane, for whom Gloria would name her third child, Andrea Diane, remembers weekends at Gloria’s house:

“Every time I would come, her mother would tell us our fortunes. She always made something special–meat rolled up in grape leaves and a dessert, baklava, and after dinner, over Turkish coffee, she would tell us our fortunes. Later I realized she knew everything that was going on in our lives, and what we wanted to hear something about a tall, dark, handsome stranger that was coming into our lives.”

Diane also remembered how Gloria would have a new dress before big family weddings, because invariably there was someone they wanted her to meet. The girls never talked politics.

“I happen to come from a Middle Eastern heritage and ancestry. In my background and culture . . . ladies were always sort of kept in the background,” Gov. Deukmejian was saying lightly at a reception honoring his women appointees. “The husbands would go out in front and the ladies would follow behind; they would take care of the things at home. . . . It was always a very peaceful relationship.”

Deukmejian was explaining why Gloria was not in attendance. The joke was that ever since his wife had seen Queen Elizabeth walking ahead of Prince Philip on the royal visit to California, and had spoken about it, he wasn’t taking her “to any more of these.”

The joke notwithstanding, the Deukmejians always had that peaceful relationship.

In the first two years of their marriage, he worked as a deputy county counsel before setting up his own practice. They lived in a small apartment near the Crenshaw district for about a year, and she took a job as a secretary in the public relations department of the California Bank.

Moved to Apartment Later, they moved to an apartment in Long Beach, and she “commuted from Long Beach to Los Angeles. After a while there was the traffic and all, it was very tiring . . . “ and she quit. In 1959, Deukmejian opened a law office in Belmont Shore. The Ashjians remember that Gloria’s father bought Deukmejian his desk. Meanwhile, he plunged into community life, becoming active in the Lions. And she joined the Lady Lions.

In 1960, they bought the rather modest house they still live in Belmont Shore–today driving past one sees a mustard-colored house, second from the corner, with a large picture window and lamp in front.

Her husband’s entry into politics came as a surprise to Gloria Deukmejian. “There wasn’t any mention of politics at the beginning.” But she went along. As she said on the Sacramento television show: “I just said, ‘Whatever you would like to do.’ It’s better to have a husband happy at the job that he’s doing, doing something that he enjoys.”

She’s very much in tune with his career. Ask in the private interview what about it has given her the most satisfaction, and after saying she doesn’t “know where to begin there ,” she talks about his “transformation” of state finances from deficit to surplus. And the biggest disappointment?

A Lost Race “Losing the one attorney general’s race years ago. Remember that one? It was a four-man (GOP primary) race, and that was the last (loss).”

Gloria Deukmejian is down-to-earth, unpretentious, the same person she has always been. “I don’t think you will hear one negative”–it is all a constant refrain. She doesn’t drink–”if you see a glass in her hand it’s tonic or diet soda,” said Aunt Alice. She doesn’t swear. And she is content.

“I don’t think Gloria feels she’s given up anything,” said Joan Lucas, wife of Judge Malcolm M. Lucas, Deukmejian’s first, and, thus far, only appointment to the California Supreme Court. “She’s a very happy, secure person. I’m sure she has a lot of problems that she doesn’t discuss; but I can’t think of her having any big problems.”

Joan Lucas has known Gloria casually since high school and better since their husbands formed Lucas, Lucas & Deukmejian in 1963. “She doesn’t discuss other political people or wives, or anything like that, ever. Gloria is a very refined person, very classy–and closemouthed. “

She is an excellent listener. “She’s always a lady,” said Willie Tauscher, a fellow hospital volunteer who’s known her 20 years.

“I’ve had a great deal of trauma over the years,” said Darlene Thornton-May, “and there is no more stauncher friend. When I get down, she’d say, ‘You do what you have to do.’ ”

There is a genuine niceness. When decorators Dennis Murphy and June Given first went up to see the Sacramento residence–purchased with surplus funds from the governor’s inaugural and which will be given to the next governor and successors, or sold with the proceeds going to charity–she met them at the airplane gate. Moreover, said Murphy, though she wanted to move in during the last week in August to prepare Andrea for school, “she never once applied pressure about getting it done unlike a lot of clients.”

When she hosted the luncheons for the Western governors’ wives in Palm Springs she went out of her way to invite others along who had helped her make the social events a success. And when her mother was dying in December, 1983, she stayed at the governor’s side to host the annual Christmas party before rushing to the Long Beach hospital. It was the same kind of “devotion to duty” her own mother had practiced in preparing the elaborate funeral feast after Krikor Saatjian had died 1 1/2 years earlier at 92.

As much as anything else, Gloria Deukmejian is a private person. After her mother’s illness, Aunt Alice took over the role as chief confidante. “If there were things to complain about,” allowed Alice Saatjian in connection with the search for the gubernatorial home, “we used to talk. It didn’t go out from my house; it didn’t go out from her house.”

California’s First Lady is by all accounts an excellent cook. She likes to golf, needlepoint, garden. She reads Erma Bombeck, and watches “Hill Street Blues” and “60 Minutes.” She hates the soaps. She plays the piano, Mozart still her favorite. But Gloria Deukmejian plays only for herself. “When I was growing up and took piano for over 10 years, I had a recital every month and had to memorize so I played for enough people I think.”

Time with the governor’s wife is nearly up. She grows fruit, vegetables? “No flowers . . . just whatever you think.”

Toward the end she had been asked to define Gloria Deukmejian. “Being myself. My door is open for coffee to friends who want to stop by. Just because I’m First Lady doesn’t mean the door is locked. And just doing the things I’ve always done. Shopping. . . . It’s just life as usual; it’s just that my husband has a different job. . . . We’ve always kept a low profile.”

May we come by for coffee?

“Leave your pad behind,” she said.

WASHINGTON — As the Mother of All Dirty Campaigns gathers its facts and innuendo for November, probable Democratic nominee Bill Clinton is already so smeared and so ready to return fire that George Bush, in his clean white shirt of upright Republicanism and family values, can look forward to a savaging of his own. How much of this dirt sticks could be critically important.

Political logic, press reports and recent Democratic mutterings all suggest the main fire will be directed against three targets. First, the business ethics of the Bush family, three presidential sons and three presidential brothers, some with eyes for a marginally tainted deal. Second, Bush’s personal relationships–about which there have been snide hints, but no proof. And third, far more important in its national implications, the argument that, under this Administration, U.S. foreign policy–ostensibly the laurel wreath on Bush’s imperial brow–has become a gravy train for Bush family members and policy advisers, and for GOP campaign functionaries, who openly double as registered foreign agents.

Significantly, this last point is bipartisan. Vivid indictments have been made by GOP nomination rival Patrick J. Buchanan. Moreover, potential third-party candidate H. Ross Perot, a nominal Republican, is given to making harsh charges about Bush’s Persian Gulf connections. But on the first two subjects, the messengers will be Democratic and the motivation as political as Election Day itself.

The length and intensity of the trail of vaguely sleazy deals, apparent influence-peddling and periodic legal wrist-slappings left by Bush family members while their relative is in the White House is only the second-biggest surprise. The biggest is that George Herbert Walker Bush, Mr. Patrician Probity, let it happen.

Other Presidents have had the problem with several sons ( Franklin D. Roosevelt) or one brother (Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon and Jimmy Carter), and should have served as cautionary examples for Bush–which makes his paternal and fraternal permissiveness so hard to understand.

The most recent sweeping indictment came in a March 27 column on the New York Times Op-Ed page portraying: 1) son Neil’s grubby conflict-of-interest involvement with the failed Silverado savings and loan (he was fined a relative pittance of $50,000); 2) son Jeb’s “unwitting” acceptance of improper political contributions; 3) brother Prescott’s highly paid role as adviser to a Tokyo investment firm identified by Japanese police as a mob front, and 4) son George Jr.’s 1990 dumping of $848,000 of Harken Energy Co. stock in possible violation of SEC insider-trading regulations. The only consolation for the President must have come in the apparent space limitation: There was no room for brother Jonathan’s 1991 violation of securities laws in Massachusetts and Connecticut, for which he was fined more than $30,000 and (in Massachusetts) barred from trading with the public for one year.

Based on previous Administrations, one or perhaps two family transgressions could be taken as typical. Bush’s problem is that Democratic campaign commercials will make the multiplicity of it come alive–perhaps portraying the Bushes as the First Family of Financial Flimflam–and throwing dirt as well on the motivations in the President’s relentless advocacy of capital-gains tax cuts.

Meanwhile, Democratic National Chairman Ronald H. Brown and others have been tee-heeing that, if the press discusses allegations about Clinton’s girlfriends, it should deal with kindred speculation about Bush. Well, maybe, but not necessarily. Comedian Mark Russell has joked on TV about Republican girlfriends named Jennifer being classier–they spell their names with a “J.” But back in 1988, similar rumors that major media were about to pursue an old Bush relationship never came true. But, for 1992, Clinton’s Gennifer Flowers problem could mean that, at some point, Democrats have little to lose from recklessness or even irresponsibility.

Paradoxically, however, the less titillating charges may be most serious–that, under Bush, the conduct of U.S. foreign affairs is starting to resemble the “bank” at the House of Representatives: a cash club for the favored and faithful. Alas, it is hard to overstate the ethical and historical transformation of U.S. foreign policy since the days of Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower or even Carter. No one had to examine Lend-Lease, the Marshall Plan or U.S.-Soviet detente for private economic deals involving the President’s family or the fingerprints of presidential campaign spokesmen who doubled as lobbyists for foreign interests and governments.

Compared with Bush, however, no previous President has had so many immediate family members involved in what can politely be called international consulting and deal-making. Until 1990, brother Prescott S. Bush Jr. was an adviser to New York-based Asset Management International, partly owned by West Tsusho, a Japanese investment company. In February, NBC News reported Prescott had stood to make $1 million by arranging U.S. deals for Tsusho, which Japanese police say is a front for the Inagawakai crime syndicate. Son George, meanwhile, is a significant shareholder–along with Saudi and South African investors–in a Texas company, Harken Energy. Just before the Gulf War, Harken won a major oil-drilling contract–one it had no obvious qualification for–from Bahrain.

Brother William (Bucky) Bush is an international consultant who has been advising Samsung, the Korean conglomerate, on U.S. investments. Son John E. (Jeb), running his father’s reelection campaign in Florida, is an international real-estate investor, who has received multimillion-dollar backing from Japan’s Mitsui Trust. Lawyers in a suit filed against the shadowy Bank of Commerce and Credit International have just identified Jeb as a potential witness because his company invested in real estate with a company controlled by a major BCCI borrower.

Several of the President’s closest foreign-policy advisers have been mired in financial conflict-of-interest situations. In 1988, Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III, approved policies that permitted U.S. banks to avoid having to write off a portion of their hefty loans to Brazil. Baker himself was a prime beneficiary of this policy, because stock in New York’s Chemical Bank, where he had a large chunk, quickly rose 40%.

Conflict-of-interest issues have even been raised about the Gulf War. In October, 1990, the President denied, no doubt justly, that son George’s Bahrain oil connection had any influence on his commitment of troops to rescue Kuwait. However, the President himself had a commercial connection with Kuwait. Many years earlier, as he told White House dinner guests, his company had built Kuwait’s first offshore oil well.

In a more speculative vein, there is the possible Washington pro-war leverage of several Gulf owners of BCCI, the shadowy international bank that helped finance Iran-Contra. Press accounts suggest that Sheik Kamal Adham, former head of Saudi intelligence, and Sheik Zayed ibn Sultan al Nuhayan of Abu Dhabi, the bank’s dominant shareholder, were both able to use BCCI as their piggy bank, which presumably gave them enormous influence in Washington. Zayed, meanwhile, has been treated with kid gloves at every point of the U.S. government’s continuing BCCI investigation.

Quite extraordinarily, Zayed’s chief Washington strategist happens to be James A. Lake, deputy manager of the Bush reelection campaign, who also butters his bread as U.S. public-relations adviser to the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one vehicle by which Zayed holds majority control of BCCI. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who has been chairing the Senate BCCI investigation, recently demanded Lake’s resignation: “I have to question the propriety of the President of the United States’ campaign being managed by someone who is simultaneously being paid over $200,000 every three months to represent BCCI’s biggest shareholder.”

Democratic researchers have thick folders to amplify these and other reported incidents. White House strategists may be making a mistake in assuming that voters now judging Clinton harshly won’t do the same for Bush.

Part of the explanation for the collapse of any serious conflict-of-interest yardstick to restrain the mingling of party politics, personal business and the for-profit modification of U.S. foreign policy is simple. Back in the mid-1980s, the line between private industry, private financial bankrollers and foreign policy was dissolved in the Iran-Contra blueprint to aid the Nicaraguan rebels. Since then, Persian Gulf bankers and Washington consultants have become de facto assistant secretaries of state and assistant U.S. trade representatives. In 1987, leading members of Congress involved in the Iran-Contra investigation voiced fears about the dangers of the privatization of foreign policy. They were prophetic.

Further proof of the privatization pudding has since emerged in the central role that registered agents or lobbyists for foreign interests have played in the 1992 GOP presidential campaign. But not everyone was pleased. Buchanan ran TV commercials and made speeches criticizing Lake’s status as a lobbyist for various Japanese interests, while the firm of Charles Black, another senior Bush adviser, also has foreign clients. Buchanan’s campaign manager said, “Bush has Japanese foreign agents running his campaign, (and) a Panamanian agent running the Republican Party.”

No other major nation was so permissive, but old barriers had dissolved, and with them, old proprieties. In late February, another presidential candidate, Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey attacked the financial dealings of Bush and his family, noting that brother Prescott was “building a golf course” in China for the “butcher of Tien An Men Square,” and charging that Bush policy “is pretty closely tied to his own family interests.” In March, Perot, revealing his plans for a possible third-party presidential bid, spiced his anti-Washington rhetoric by proposing “a law making it a criminal offense for foreign companies or individuals to influence U.S. laws or policies with money.” Legislation like that would strike at the heart of both privatized foreign policy and Washington’s international influence bazaar. But Perot–the derring-do businessman who arranged for a commando raid into Iran to free two of his employees a decade ago–understands what Iran-Contra unleashed.

In a year of profound public disillusionment, the politics could be incendiary. Just as the House of Representatives’ check-bouncing scandal essentially represents Democratic institutional corruption–though 25%-30% of congressmen involved are Republicans–the executive branch’s moral breakdown on foreign-policy corruption and self-dealing is institutionally Republican–though a fair minority of Washington’s foreign agents and international consultants are Democrats.

If his eventual presidential rivals pick up the criticisms now beginning to swirl, Bush could find the 1992 foreign-policy debate turning ugly.

When is AI not artificial intelligence? When it refers to ammonia inhalants, aka smelling salts.

When are these AIs in the news? When it was reported that the NFL banned their use, San Francisco 49ers star George Kittle protested, and the NFL walked back the ban a day later. The league’s players association clarified that players can still use AIs as long as teams don’t provide them.

Got it?

The NFLPA sent a memo to players on Wednesday saying that the ban only prohibits team employees from distributing AIs during games.

That must have pleased Kittle, who when under the impression that AIs were banned completely, grabbed a microphone on an NFL Network broadcast to say, “I honestly just came up here to air a grievance. Our team got a memo today that smelling salts and ammonia packets were made illegal in the NFL, and I’ve been distraught all day.”

The five-time All-Pro tight end said he used the substances for an energy boost before every offensive drive and joked that upon learning of the ban he “considered retirement.”

Except that it isn’t a ban. Kittle will just have to bring his own AI stash to ballgames.

“To clarify, this policy does not prohibit player use of these substances, but rather it restricts clubs from providing or supplying them in any form,” the NFLPA memo said. “The NFL has confirmed this to us.”

The use of AIs by NFL players has been under the radar despite apparently being a common practice. Their primary use is to prevent and treat fainting, with the Federal Aviation Administration requiring U.S. airlines to carry them in the event a pilot feels faint.

The ammonia gas irritates the nasal membranes, causing a reflex that increases breathing and heart rate. That can keep a person from fainting, and apparently can also help a person block and tackle.

In short, an AI — which has been described as smelling like cat urine — is a performance-enhancing substance.

The NFL, however, cited a warning from the FDA that AIs can mask symptoms of a concussion and have not been proven to be safe or effective simply to increase energy.

“In 2024, the FDA issued a warning to companies that produce commercially available ammonia inhalants (AIs), as well as to consumers about the purchase and use of AIs, regarding the lack of evidence supporting the safety or efficacy of AIs marketed for improving mental alertness or boosting energy,” the NFL memo to teams stated. “The FDA noted potential negative effects from AI use.

“AIs also have the potential to mask certain neurological signs and symptoms, including some potential signs of concussion. As a result, the NFL Head, Neck, and Spine Committee recommended prohibiting the use of AIs for any purpose during play in the NFL.”

Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield — who says he uses AIs — said the logic behind the NFL no longer supplying them is convoluted.

“I think the reasoning was that it masked concussion symptoms,” Mayfield said on “Up and Adams.” “But if you get knocked out, which is the whole purpose of smelling salts — to wake you up — you’re not allowed back in the game.

“I think it was a quick trigger to ban them, just to kind of CYA [cover your ass].”

Maybe NFL officials figure that by no longer supplying AIs and forcing players to bring their own batch to games, their liability in case of concussions or other medical complications is reduced.

“You just got to bring your own juice to the party, got to wake up ready to go,” Mayfield said.

Hunter Biden finally made news outside the MAGA mediasphere for something that’s usually the work of Fox News and other deep state disseminators: He verbally bashed the Democratic Party, CNN’s Jake Tapper, former Obama aides and even Hollywood’s devastatingly handsome ambassador George Clooney.

President Biden’s son, whose very name inspires a Pavlovian response among right-wing conspiracy theorists, appears to have pulled a page from the opposition’s playbook when during two recent interviews he leaned into grievance politics, repeatedly hurled expletives and condemned those who “did not remain loyal” to his father.

Hunter Biden’s first round of interviews since the 2024 election started out tame enough when last week on a new podcast hosted by Jaime Harrison, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, he said that Democrats lost to Donald Trump because they abandoned his father. There was no “grand conspiracy” to hide his father’s health issues, he said. “We lost the last election because we did not remain loyal to the leader of the party. That’s my position. We had the advantage of incumbency, we had the advantage of an incredibly successful administration, and the Democratic Party literally melted down.”

Fair enough. Then it was on to Clooney, one of the first high-profile figures on the left to call for Biden to step aside from his reelection campaign after a disastrous debate performance. Hunter Biden disparagingly referred to the actor as “a brand” and told Harrison, “Do you think in Middle America, that voter in Green Bay, Wis., gives a s— what George Clooney thinks about who she should vote for?”

Then came the knockout punch. In a separate, three-hour-plus interview released Monday with YouTuber Andrew Callaghan, he said of the star: “George Clooney is not a f— actor. He is a f—, I don’t know what he is. He’s a brand. … F— him and everybody around him.”

George Clooney was among Kennedy Center honorees welcomed by President Biden at the White House on Dec. 4, 2022.

(Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)

Hunter Biden also had some words for senior Biden aide Anita Dunn. “The Anita Dunns of the world, who’s made $40 [million], $50 million off the Democratic Party, they’re all going to insert their judgment over a man who has figured out, unlike anybody else, how to get elected to the United States Senate over seven times, how to pass more legislation than any president in history, how to have a better midterm election than anyone in history and how to garner more votes than any president that has ever run.” Former Obama aide and political analyst David Axelrod was also on the list. He said Axelrod “had one success in his political life, and that was Barack Obama, and that was because of Barack Obama.”

And if the above sentiments were attributed to the current president’s sons, who’ve characterized the Democratic Party as Nazis and referred to those who were protesting immigration sweeps by the patently offensive term “mongoloids”? Meh, it’s just another Monday. But Hunter Biden, like most public-facing Democrats, is held to a different standard. When they go low, we go high. Remember that sage advice that worked for Democrats back in the late aughts and early 2010s but now sounds like advice pulled from a 1950s guide to etiquette? The younger Biden not only deviated from that lefty code but also mirrored his tormentors, then unleashed his ire onto his own party.

Hunter Biden‘s own reckless actions over the years made him grist for all manner of right-wing helmed investigations. Then there are the stupid conspiracies, whether it’s the missing laptop or that mysterious bag of cocaine found in the White House. Hard to keep track, but the younger Biden went there during his recent interview. “I have been clean and sober since June of 2019. I have not touched a drop of alcohol or a drug, and I’m incredibly proud of that,” he told Callaghan. “And why would I bring cocaine into the White House and stick it into a cubby outside of the Situation Room in the West Wing?”

But he also attributed at least one recent alleged conspiracy to those outside the right-wing cabal or, more specifically, to Jake Tapper. The CNN anchor co-wrote “Original Sin,” a provocative book that claimed President Biden’s confidants worked to conceal his declining health from the public.

Hunter Biden argued that it was nonsense and that the “ability to keep a secret in Washington is zero.”
“What sells, Jaime?” he asked Harrison. “What sells is the idea of a conspiracy.” And the public spectacle of flaming your enemy’s enemy.

July 21 (UPI) — The Justice Department on Monday announced it has launched an investigation into George Mason University’s admissions process, marking the fourth federal probe the Trump administration has targeted the school with this month.

George Mason University was informed of the civil rights investigation in a letter stating that federal prosecutors will look into whether the school has denied equal treatment to students based on race or national origin, a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

No specific instances of violations or complaints were provided in the letter, but it suggests alleged racial segregation regarding access to programs and facilities, as well as preferential treatment based on race in its admissions process and in awarding student benefits and scholarships.

“Public educational institutions are contractually obligated to follow our nation’s federal civil rights laws when receiving federal funds,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement.

“No one should be denied access to opportunity or resources because of their race, color or national origin, and the United States is committed to keeping our universities free of such invidious bias.”

It is the fourth federal investigation launched into the Fairfax, Va., university this month and the second in under a week amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion policies in both the private and public sectors.

Diversity, equity and inclusion, known as DEI, is a conceptual framework that promotes fair treatment and full participation of all people. It has been a target of conservatives who claim it focuses on race and gender at the expense of merit.

President Donald Trump has sought to remove DEI from the federal government through executive orders and has threatened to revoke federal funding from several universities, including Harvard, over their alleged DEI programs.

Last week, the Justice Department launched an investigation into the school over alleged illegal hiring practices, which followed the Department of Education opening a civil rights investigation into the university on July 10 and another probe over allegations it failed to respond effectively to a “pervasively hostile environment for Jewish students and faculty” earlier this month.

George Mason University President Gregory Washington has yet to respond to the announcement of the latest Justice Department investigation but has repeatedly denied the accusations leveled at the school by the previous three.

“It is inaccurate to conclude that we created new university policies or procedures that discriminate against or exclude anyone,” he said last week in a statement.

“To the contrary, our systems were enhanced to improve on our ability to consistently include everyone for consideration of every employment opportunity. That is our ethos and it is core to our identity as a national leader in inclusive excellence in higher education.”

In a separate statement earlier this month that does not directly accuse the Justice Department of misusing Title VI, Washington said he has seen a “profound shift” in how it is now being applied to attack longstanding efforts to address inequality.

“Broad terms like ‘illegal DEI’ are now used without definition, allowing virtually any initiative that touches on identity or inclusion to be painted as discriminatory,” he said.

“This shift represents a stark departure from the spirit in which civil rights law was written: not to erase difference, but to protect individuals from exclusion and to enable equal opportunity for all.”

George Mason University has retained Torridon Law to engage with the federal government regarding the investigations.

Pop star Charli XCX has confirmed her marriage to George Daniel, drummer of band The 1975, after a video snapped by a passer-by sparked online speculation of a wedding.

The pair were spotted posing on the steps of Hackney Town Hall on Saturday afternoon – Daniel in suit and tie and the ‘brat’ idol in white.

A TikTok post from the singer several hours later confirmed the nuptials, racking up 3.9m views and thousands of congratulatory comments for “Mr and Mrs XCX”.

Charli XCX’s album, Brat, became a global cultural phenomenon on its release last year. Filling social media feeds with viral videos and receiving critical acclaim, its success saw her perform a headline slot at Glastonbury in June.

The singer confirmed the news while dressed in an off-the-shoulder white dress and her signature dark wraparound sunglasses.

She stomped away from the camera – pretending to be annoyed – on a video beneath text that read, “When George isn’t crying when he sees me walking down the aisle.”

But “Luckily he did xx” was the accompanying caption.

A later post, which included shots of Daniel wearing Charli’s veil, gave “bridal party energy”, according to XCX.

The footage from outside Hackney Town Hall suggests the couple had an intimate ceremony.

The two have been public about their relationship for several years and shared engagement photos in 2023.

They have also worked together multiple times, first collaborating on Charli’s song Spinning and then on Brat, with Daniel named as co-producer and co-writer of two songs.

He also took part in the viral “Apple dance” at one of Charli’s London shows, appearing on the concert’s screens in front of thousands of fans.

His band The 1975 is fronted by singer Matty Healy and are well known for their song Chocolate. Daniel has released several tracks as a solo artist in recent years.

July 18 (UPI) — The Justice Department has launched a new investigation into George Mason University, over alleged illegal hiring practices, making it the third federal probe the Trump administration has opened into the school this month.

Federal prosecutors informed George Mason of the civil rights investigation in a letter dated Thursday, stating the probe stems from diversity goal policies that make race and sex factors in faculty hiring.

The letter states the Department of Justice is in possession of emails from 2020 in which the school’s president, Gregory Washington, states he intends to develop a renewal, promotion and tenure process to benefit faculty of color and professional women.

It also mentions a November 2020 recorded discussion in which Washington states he will advance an anti-racism agenda while perceiving anti-racism as a verb, meaning “conscious efforts and actions to provide equitable opportunities.”

It also points to a June 2022 post on Twitter, now called X, in which Washington celebrated a university employee who “helped incorporate” diversity, equity, and inclusion in their curriculum and hiring process.

“It is unlawful and un-American to deny equal access to employment opportunities on the basis of race and sex,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement.

“When employers screen out qualified candidates from the hiring process, they not only erode trust in our public institutions — they violate the law, and the Justice Department will investigate accordingly.”

Diversity, equity and inclusion, known as DEI, is a conceptual framework that promotes fair treatment and full participation of all people, and it has been a target of conservatives over the last few years who claim it is racist against White individuals.

The Trump administration has sought to remove DEI from the federal government through executive orders and has threatened to revoke federal funding from several universities, including Harvard, over their alleged DEI programs.

The investigation announced Thursday is the third launched this month into George Mason University.

On July 10, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into the school for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color and national origin in programs and activities that receive federal funding.

It said the investigation stems from a complaint filed with the civil rights office of the Justice Department by “multiple professors” at the school who allege it uses race and other characteristics in policies, including hiring and promotion.

It similarly pointed to the same examples cited by the Justice Department.

“This kind of pernicious and widespread discrimination — packaged as ‘anti-racism’ — was allowed to flourish under the Biden administration, but it will not be tolerated by this one,” Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in a statement.

George Mason refutes the accusations.

“No academic units mandate outcomes based on race, color national origin, sex or any other characteristic protected by law,” Washington said in a statement.

“There are no mechanisms in Mason’s promotion and tenure policies that give preferential treatment based on race, color, national origin, sex or any other characteristic protected by law.”

He said Title VI was enacted to dismantle explicit and systemic racial discrimination that denied access to education, employment, housing and public services.

However, he said they are now seeing “a profound shift” in how it is being applied.

“Broad terms like ‘illegal DEI’ are now used without definition, allowing virtually any initiative that touches on identity or inclusion to be painted as discriminatory,” he said.

“This shift represents a stark departure from the spirit in which civil rights law was written: not to erase difference, but to protect individuals from exclusion and to enable equal opportunity for all.”

Earlier this month, the Department of Education launched an investigation into George Mason University over allegations it failed to respond effectively to a “pervasively hostile environment for Jewish students and faculty” during pro-Palestine protests that erupted in schools against Israel’s war in Gaza.

In his BBC Sport column, England captain George Williams spreads the word about the autumn Ashes series and gives insight into the recent squad get-together.

Just 100 days are left until this England side gets the chance to taste an Ashes series again and we face Australia for the first time since 2017.

Me and Jack Welsby went down to London on Wednesday, driving round the city on a red bus and visiting some tourist sites for photos and filming.

We’re trying to grow the buzz, to get people talking about the series down there and get involved.

As players, you want to be involved in the biggest of games, and I don’t see many bigger – if any.

Even though there is still a lot of rugby to be played in Super League, to play against Australia at the end of the year is the pinnacle.

I actually don’t mind doing the press and promotion. I try to do it with a smile on my face and enjoy it, because it doesn’t last forever and I’ll soon be retired.

So I’ve got to enjoy being in the media, growing the game and being England captain, which is something I’m really proud of.

SACRAMENTO — If there were more people like George Steffes in politics, the public wouldn’t hold the institution in such low esteem.

There’d be a lot less bull and much more thoughtful debate.

Paralytic polarization would give way to problem solving.

Steffes was the kind of person who people profess to want in the halls of government power.

If more Republicans like him were in Washington, there’d be no rationalization for tyrannical ICE raids at schools and workplaces because Congress and the president would have long ago compromised on immigration reform.

The Republican Party would still be modeled after Steffes’ early mentor — pragmatic conservative Ronald Reagan — and not be the misused tool of demagogue Donald Trump.

Steffes, 90, died peacefully in his sleep in a Sacramento hospital July 6. He was admitted two weeks earlier after a painful bathroom fall. The precise cause of death was unknown at this writing, according to his wife, Jamie Khan.

He was the last remaining top advisor of Gov. Reagan who remained in Sacramento after the future president moved on — the last person around the state Capitol with firsthand, close-up knowledge of the GOP icon’s governorship. He was Reagan’s lead legislative lobbyist.

Ordinarily, Steffes would be best known around the Capitol for being a past Reagan honcho. But he’s better known for being a classy guy.

No one in Sacramento for the last 60 years — at least — has been more liked, respected and successful as a lobbyist than Steffes. He’d easily rank in the top 10. No, make that top 5.

If there were more lobbyists like Steffes, the profession wouldn’t be such a pejorative.

He didn’t try to BS governors, legislators, clients or journalists. He was a straight shooter. People trusted him.

He always had a smile, but wasn’t a backslapper.

People instantly liked him — as I did when we first met in a Santa Cruz hotel bar one night in 1966 after a day of traipsing after Reagan running for governor. Steffes was a campaign aide. I was a reporter who found him highly interesting, thoughtful and candid.

But don’t take just my word about the guy.

“He was never part of the nonsense that is characteristic of those of us in politics,” former Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown told me. “I could rely on his word about good public policy. He was knowledgeable. He knew what he was doing.”

Brown, who was elected San Francisco mayor after leaving the Legislature, recalled that Steffes helped him pass a landmark bill “eliminating a law punishing people for being gay. I had to get Republican votes. George talked to them about how it wasn’t a bad vote to cast.”

The 1975 bill, signed by new Gov. Jerry Brown, repealed a century-old law prohibiting “crimes against nature.” The measure eliminated criminal penalties for oral sex and sodomy between consenting adults.

“The biggest thing that stands out to me about Steffes is how different he was from the mean-spirited slashing politics of today,” says Kip Lipper, a chief environmental consultant for several Democratic state Senate leaders. “He was unfailingly considerate, always in good spirits. He didn’t wear his politics on his sleeve like a lot of others.”

Retired journalist Lou Cannon, who has written several Reagan biographies, recalls that after the new Republican governor took office in 1967, he continued to bash Pat Brown, the Democratic incumbent he had trounced the previous year.

“George told him, ‘Governor, that ‘s not worthy of you.’ So Reagan stopped. And he actually became quite fond of Pat Brown. George was never afraid to say to Reagan that he was wrong about something. And Reagan appreciated that.”

If only we had some White House aides with that courage and wisdom today.

Cannon adds: “One of the reasons I liked George is he didn’t bulls— you. If he couldn’t tell you something, he’d tell you he couldn’t tell ya. He was straight. Some people you interview them and you think, ‘Why did I waste my time?’”

Public relations veteran Donna Lucas says, “He set the standard for good lobbying in the Capitol.”

One Steffes rule: “He would never ask a legislator to do anything that wasn’t in their interest as well,” says Jud Clark, a former legislative staffer for Democrats and a close friend and business associate of Steffes.

Before he retired a few years ago, Steffes had a very long A-list of clients, such as American Express, Bechtel, IBM, Exxon and Union Pacific.

He also represented less lucrative clients such as newspapers, including The Times. And he advocated for some interests pro bono, mostly golf associations.

His passion was golf. And he became a golf instructor after retiring from lobbying.

“George was such a cerebral teacher,” says a pupil, Capitol Weekly editor Rich Ehisen. “He didn’t spend a lot of time correcting your elbow bend. He focused on the mental part of the game.”

Steffes once told an interviewer: “Golf offered good lessons for life. If I had a bad stroke, I can’t fix it now. It’s in the past. … Sitting and stewing [about it] saps our mental energy. Focus on what you can do to move forward, win the issue.”

But Steffes did stew about the declining state of politics.

“Politics became too polarized — Republican conservatives, Democratic liberals. The middle ground where he used to operate was disappearing,” his wife, Jamie, told me last week.

Reagan’s GOP that formed Steffes’ philosophy of political pragmatism had already disappeared. In the last election, he voted for Democrat Kamala Harris over Republican nominee Trump.

Steffes was honest even with himself — a human quality possessed by too few in politics.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Glimpse of Newsom’s presidential appeal, challenges seen during South Carolina tour
The TK: New poll finds most Californians believe American democracy is in peril
The L.A. Times Special: Six months after L.A. fires, Newsom calls for federal aid while criticizing the Trump administration

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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Helen George swaps the world of showbiz for literal shark-infested waters in ITV’s new reality show, while Channel 4’s The Couple Next Door returns with a steamy new story

Call the Midwife star Helen George is just one of the celebs who’ll be coming face-to-face with one of the sea’s deadliest beasts in ITV’s new reality show Shark! Celebrty Infested Waters tonight.

Proving just how far celebrities will go to stay on the telly, this new reality format sends seven famous faces into shark-filled waters near the Bahamas. 50 years after Jaws became a phenomenon at the cinema, the likes of actor Lenny Henry, comedian Ross Noble and McFly’s Dougie Poynter have signed up for a stomach-churning sequence of dives, where they will encounter various species of shark, getting more perilous each time.

Although Countdown’s Rachel Riley is excited for the challenge, most of the celebs look like they want to fire their agents, with Call the Midwife star Helen George declaring she’s terrified of the sea, and Motherland actor Lucy Punch hilariously dismissing the apex predators as ‘savage tubes of teeth.’

There’s a sobering start to the experience, as they meet their guides, including Paul, a former Aussie serviceman who lost his hand and leg to a ten-foot bull shark in a training exercise, but now campaigns for shark conservation.

Acutely aware of the dangers they face, they prepare for their first dive, but with Helen and Lenny both struggling with traumatic childhood memories of swimming pools, just getting underwater is a challenge. Soon, they’re stepping into a cage suspended in the ocean, surrounded by bull sharks, whose every move makes them shake. And it’s only going to get scarier from here. The experts hope the celebs will go home with a new respect – and even affection – for the villains of the sea, but that feels rather optimistic at this point…

Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters begins tonight at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX.

The Best of the Rest

Michael Mosley: Secrets Of The Superagers, Channel 4, 8pm

If throwing yourself out of a plane is the secret to a better memory, some of us would prefer to just be forgetful… In this eye-opening series, the late Dr Michael Mosley meets inspiring people, who are bucking the trends of ageing. 70-year old Dane is a keen skydiver, whose mind is impressively sharp.

Indeed, the science shows that his time at high altitude has helped promote blood flow to his brain, giving him higher cognitive function. You don’t have to be a daredevil to age well though, as Michael explores the theory that learning new things can ward off dementia. Small children’s brains expand as they pick up new skills, so a group of volunteers test the theory that mastering new hobbies simultaneously can stop your brain shrinking.

After a year of learning Spanish and taking art classes, the stunning results of this experiment will have you googling evening classes in your area.

The Couple Next Door, Channel 4, 9pm

This steamy relationship drama returns to the same posh cul de sac, but with a new couple at the heart of the story. Surgeon Charlotte (The Split’s Anabel Scholey) and anaesthetist Jacob (Nashville’s Sam Palladio) work at the same hospital, and their marriage is a happy one. That is until enigmatic new nurse Mia turns up for her first shift.

Immediately overstepping the mark with her colleagues, she makes quite the impression. Later, Charlotte is stunned when Mia moves into the house next door, and she can’t stop thinking about her. How can she afford a huge family home on her own, on a nurse’s salary, and why is she so keen to make friends with resident creep, Alan (Hugh Dennis)?

Meanwhile, Charlotte’s ex, Leo, is back on the scene, as family circumstances force him to return to the hospital. Jacob is unsettled by his return, and turns down a tantalising prospect of promotion to avoid him.

EastEnders, BBC1, 7.30pm

Lauren is surprised to see Oscar again. After shock revelations, she learns where he has been all this time, and begrudgingly agrees to let him stay with her. It’s a decision she may soon regret…

Lexi asks Nigel about his wedding day. Jay is saddened that Nigel is no longer in touch with Julie, and starts looking for her online. Phil warns Jay not to interfere, but he won’t listen.

Linda tells Kat that it’s time for her to sell The Vic?

Emmerdale, ITV, 7.30pm

Kim is blissfully unaware that Dr Crowley is planning to take her to the cleaners. But Joe knows exactly what he’s up to, and arranges to confront him.

Charity desperately wants to help Sarah and tries to persuade Vic to offer to be her surrogate. Vic seems uncomfortable, despite Charity’s pleas. Charity and Cain are on the same page as they keep all options open.

It’s a big day for Lewis as he launches his new menu at the café.

Coronation Street, ITV, 8pm

Mick is growing restless in his cell, worrying about his kids. As he forms a plan, Brody looks for Joanie and Shanice, but Joanie is at Weatherfield High for a taster day. Mick breaks out of prison and heads straight to the school, not knowing that Sally has picked Joanie up early. He follows them back to the Street, with Kit in pursuit.

Meanwhile, Kevin plays for time, telling Tyrone he’ll come clean to Abi about his health after their weekend away.

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