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Oct. 17 (UPI) — New York Republican Party leaders on Friday voted unanimously to disband the state’s Young Republicans chapter after a group chat involving some of their members included racist and antisemitic comments.

The 2,900 pages of messages posted on Telegram also involved Republicans in Arizona, Kansas and Vermont, according to a Politico report. The messages from January to August included calling for gas chambers, expressing love for Adolf Hitler and endorsing rape.

On Tuesday, the chairman of the Kansas Republican Party deactivated the Kansas organization.

New York’s executive committee suspended the authorization of men and women 18 to 40 to operate in the state, Politico website and The Hill reported.

“The Young Republicans was already grossly mismanaged, and vile language of the sort made in the group chat has no place in our party or its subsidiary organizations,” New York GOP chair Ed Cox said in a statement.

Cox sent a formal notice to the National Federation of Young Republicans.

“Unlike the Democrat Party that embraces anti-Semitic rhetoric and refuses to condemn leaders who call for political violence, Republicans deliver accountability by immediately removing those who use this sort of rhetoric from the positions they hold,” he said. “This incident was immediately condemned by our most senior New York Republican elected leaders.”

The New York group’s Facebook page is not longer available.

Five people linked to New York participated in the chat, including Peter Giunta, a former leader of the state group and Bobby Walker, the vice chair.

Giunta is no longer chief of staff to state Assemblymember Mike Reilly and Walker’s offer to manage state Sen. Peter Oberacker’s congressional bid was pulled. They both apologized for their remarks but questioned whether the chat was altered.

“I love Hitler” is one of the messages associated with Giunta.

“I’m ready to watch people burn now,” Annie Kaykaty, a member of the Young Republicans’ national committee, who is also from New York, wrote.

A photo obtained by HuffPost shows Giunta and Kaykaty posing with President Donald Trump at a campaign event in 2024.

Vermont state Sen. Samuel Douglass was revealed as a chat participant.

Elise Stefanik and Mike Lawler, who are House members serving New York districts, condemned the chat.

Democrats denounced their association with the Young Republicans.

“Disgraceful New York Republicans Mike Lawler and Elise Stefanik have been palling around with these racist, antisemitic and bigoted ‘Young Republicans’ for years,” Jeffries wrote Tuesday on X. “Their silence exposes what’s always been true – the phony outrage was nothing more than performance.” Alex Degrasse, a senior adviser to Stefanik, said she “calls for any New York Young Republicans responsible for these horrific comments in this chat to step down immediately,” in a statement to ABC News.

Stefanik fired back at violent rhetoric from Democrats, calling Zohran Mmadani, the party’s New York City candidate a “raging antisemite” on X.

Vice President JD Vance said those messages should not face career-ending punishments.

“The reality is that kids do stupid things,” Vance said in an interview on The Charlie Kirk Show on Wednesday. “Especially young boys, they tell edgy, offensive jokes. Like, that’s what kids do. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke — telling a very offensive, stupid joke — is cause to ruin their lives.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday called for a congressional investigation of antisemitic and racist comments.

In 1935, the Young Republican division officially became the Young Republican National Federation.

UK court to hear challenge to the pro-Palestine group’s ban under ‘anti-terrorism’ laws after government loses appeal.

The United Kingdom government cannot block the cofounder of pro-Palestinian campaign group Palestine Action from bringing a legal challenge over the banning of the group under “anti-terrorism” laws, a court has said.

Huda Ammori, who helped found Palestine Action in 2020, was on Friday given permission to challenge the group’s proscription on the grounds that the ban is a disproportionate interference with free speech rights, with her case due to be heard next month.

Britain’s Home Office, the interior ministry, then asked the Court of Appeal to overturn that decision and rule that any challenge to the ban should be heard by a specialist tribunal.

Judge Sue Carr rejected the Home Office’s appeal, saying challenging the proscription in the High Court was quicker, particularly where people have been charged and are facing trial for expressing support for Palestine Action.

The court also ruled that Ammori could challenge the ban in the High Court on additional grounds, which Ammori said was a significant victory.

BREAKING: The government LOST their appeal and failed to stop the legal challenge of the Palestine Action ban.

That means the Judicial Review will go ahead on November 25-27th.

Not only that, but we won TWO MORE grounds to argue the illegality of the ban.

Huge victory.

— Huda Ammori (@HudaAmmori) October 17, 2025

“It’s time for the government to listen to the overwhelming and mounting backlash … and lift this widely condemned, utterly Orwellian ban,” she said in a statement.

“The Judicial Review will go ahead on November 25-27th,” Ammori said in a post on X later on Friday.

She hailed the group’s win to challenge “two more grounds to argue the illegality of the ban”.

“Huge victory,” she added.

Disrupting the ‘arms industry’

Palestine Action was proscribed as a “terrorist” organisation by the government in July, making membership a crime which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.

More than 2,000 people have since been arrested for holding signs in support of the group, with at least 100 charged.

Before the ban, Palestine Action had increasingly targeted Israel-linked companies in Britain, sometimes spraying red paint, blocking entrances or damaging equipment.

It accused the UK government of complicity in Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Israel has repeatedly denied committing war crimes in its two-year genocidal campaign, which has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians. Rights groups have accused Israel of repeatedly committing abuses in its war in Gaza, which began on October 7, 2023.

Israel and Hamas agreed on a ceasefire last week.

Palestine Action particularly focused on Israeli defence firm Elbit Systems, and Britain’s government cited a raid by activists at an Elbit site last year when it decided to outlaw the group.

The group was banned a month after some of its members broke into the RAF Brize Norton air base and damaged two planes, for which four members have been charged.

Palestine Action describes itself as “a pro-Palestinian organisation which disrupts the arms industry in the United Kingdom with direct action”. It says it is “committed to ending global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime”.

Critics of the ban – including United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk and civil liberties groups – argue that damaging property does not amount to terrorism.

However, Britain’s former interior minister Yvette Cooper, who is now foreign minister, previously said violence and criminal damage have no place in legitimate protest.

The details: In 1946, when jackrabbits and homesteading World War II veterans dominated the dry, remote open spaces of the Morongo Basin, the Mesquite Motel went up along the main highway in Twentynine Palms. By 1962, it was called La Hacienda and had a tall, yellow, utterly utilitarian sign (and a little, rectangular pool). Later it became the Motel 29 Palms, the Sunset Motel and the Mojave Trails Inn. In 2019, owner Ashton Ramsey said, he bought it for $350,000 and dubbed it Ramsey 29.

The old yellow sign hangs out front. But Ramsey turned L.A.-based Kristen Schultz and her firm K/L DESIGN loose to take these 10 rooms in a desert-eclectic direction.

Furniture is hand-built, brick walls are whitewashed and coat hangers carry their own clever slogans. Headboards are upcycled from Italian military stretchers, canvas armchairs bear the words “soiled clothes large” and the new tiles on the bathroom floor say “29,” as do custom blankets and other items. The floors are concrete. Room 9, closest to the highway, now has triple-paned windows. Six rooms opened in 2020, the remaining four in 2024. Guests check themselves in digitally.

Ramsey plans changes around the pool next, including more palm trees. But he’s not shying away from the word “motel.”

“I’ve leaned into that,” Ramsey said. “You’ve got to be proud of what you are.” In fact, he said, “We didn’t just renovate a motel. We’re trying to renovate a town. If we don’t brag on 29, nobody else will.”

Spring rates typically start at $185 a night on weekends (plus taxes), $95 on weekdays. Free parking. Pets OK for a fee. (The hotel website routes bookings through Airbnb.)

Ace Frehley, who played lead guitar as a founding member of the face-painted, blood-spitting, fire-breathing hard-rock band Kiss, died Thursday in Morristown, N.J. He was 74.

His death was announced by his family, which said he’d recently suffered a fall. “In his last moments, we were fortunate enough to have been able to surround him with loving, caring, peaceful words, thoughts, prayers and intentions as he left this earth,” the family said in a statement.

In his alter ego as the Spaceman, Frehley played with the original incarnation of Kiss for less than a decade, from 1973 — when he formed the group in New York with Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons and Peter Criss — until 1982, when he quit not long after Criss left. Yet he was instrumental to the creation of the band’s stomping and glittery sound as heard in songs like “Detroit Rock City,” “Rock and Roll All Nite,” “Strutter” and “I Was Made for Lovin’ You.” In the late ’70s, those hits — along with Kiss’ over-the-top live show — made the group an inescapable pop-cultural presence seen in comic books and on lunch boxes; today the group is widely viewed as an early pioneer of rock ’n’ roll merchandising.

A member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Frehley rejoined Kiss in 1996 for a highly successful reunion, then left again in 2002 to return to the solo career he’d started in the early ’80s. In 2023, Kiss completed what Simmons and Stanley called a farewell tour with a hometown show at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

This obituary will be updated.

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Thursday warned Hamas “we will have no choice but to go in and kill them” if internal bloodshed persists in Gaza.

The grim warning from Trump came after he previously downplayed the internal violence in the territory since a ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas went into effect last week.

Trump said Tuesday that Hamas had taken out “a couple of gangs that were very bad” and had killed a number of gang members. “That didn’t bother me much, to be honest with you,” he said.

The president did not say how he would follow through on his threat posted on his Truth Social platform, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment seeking clarity.

But Trump also made clear he had limited patience for the killings that Hamas was carrying out against rival factions inside the devastated territory.

“They will disarm, and if they don’t do so, we will disarm them, and it’ll happen quickly and perhaps violently,” Trump said.

The Hamas-run police maintained a high degree of public security after the militants seized power in Gaza 18 years ago while also cracking down on dissent. They largely melted away in recent months as Israeli forces seized large areas of Gaza and targeted Hamas security forces with airstrikes.

Powerful local families and armed gangs, including some anti-Hamas factions backed by Israel, stepped into the void. Many are accused of hijacking humanitarian aid and selling it for profit, contributing to Gaza’s starvation crisis.

The ceasefire plan introduced by Trump had called for all hostages — living and dead — to be handed over by a deadline that expired Monday. But under the deal, if that didn’t happen, Hamas was to share information about deceased hostages and try to hand them over as soon as possible.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel “will not compromise” and demanded that Hamas fulfill the requirements laid out in the ceasefire deal about the return of hostages’ bodies.

Hamas’ armed wing said in a statement Wednesday that the group honored the ceasefire’s terms and handed over the remains of the hostages it had access to.

The United States announced last week that it is sending about 200 troops to Israel to help support and monitor the ceasefire deal in Gaza as part of a team that includes partner nations and nongovernmental organizations. But U.S. officials have stressed that U.S. forces would not set foot in Gaza.

Israeli officials have also been angered by the pace of the return of the remains of dead hostages the militant group had been holding in captivity. Hamas had agreed to return 28 bodies as part of the ceasefire deal in addition to 20 living hostages, who were released earlier this week.

Hamas has assured the U.S. through intermediaries that it is working to return dead hostages, according to two senior U.S. advisors. The advisors, who were not authorized to comment publicly and briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, said they do not believe Hamas has violated the deal.

Madhani writes for the Associated Press.

On October 15, 2025, Davenport & Co LLC disclosed a purchase of 155,551 shares of UnitedHealth Group (UNH) for the period ended Q3 2025, an estimated $47.04 million trade.

What happened

An SEC filing dated October 15, 2025 shows Davenport increased its position in UnitedHealth Group (UNH 0.38%) by 155,551 shares during Q3 2025.

The estimated transaction value, based on the average closing price during the quarter, was approximately $47.04 million.

The post-trade position reached 739,525 shares, with a market value of $255.34 million.

What else to know

Following this buy, UnitedHealth Group accounts for 1.36% of Davenport $18.76 billion in 13F reportable assets

The firm’s top holdings after the filing:

1. Brookfield Corp: $583.81 million (3.13% of AUM)
2. Microsoft: $478.54 million (2.56% of AUM) as of 2025-09-30
3. Amazon: $451.10 million (2.42% of AUM) as of 2025-09-30
4. Markel: $391.43 million (2.1% of AUM) as of 2025-09-30
5. Nvidia: $375.98 million (2.01% of AUM) as of 2025-09-30

As of October 14, 2025, shares of UnitedHealth Group were priced at $359.93, down 40.6% over the prior year and underperforming the S&P 500 by 53 percentage points over the same period.

Company Overview

Company Snapshot

UnitedHealth Group:

• Offers health benefit plans, pharmacy care services, healthcare management, and data analytics solutions through segments including UnitedHealthcare and Optum.
• Generates revenue primarily from insurance premiums, healthcare services, and pharmacy benefit management, leveraging scale and integrated platforms.
• Serves national and public sector employers, government programs (Medicare, Medicaid), individuals, and healthcare providers across the United States.

UnitedHealth Group is a leading diversified healthcare company with a broad national footprint and an integrated business model spanning insurance, pharmacy benefits, and healthcare services. The company maintains a competitive edge through its extensive provider networks, data-driven solutions, and ability to serve a wide range of customer segments.

Foolish take

Davenport & Company continued to add to their UnitedHealth position, which now accounts for 1.4% of the firm’s portfolio and is its 9th-largest position.

What makes Davenport’s purchases over the last two quarters noteworthy is that they are essentially doubling down on the company right after its stock sold off heavily.

Hampered by ballooning medical costs, changes in leadership, reduced guidance, and mounting regulatory pressure, UnitedHealth’s stock dropped 39% from its highs in just the last six months.

While UnitedHealth has become a battleground stock of sorts lately, it received a major lift after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway disclosed it took a $1.6 billion stake in the stock in the second quarter of 2025.

That is great company for Davenport to join, as it also adds to its stake in UnitedHealth.

Regardless of the headwinds facing UnitedHealth, the company remains one of the most dominant health insurers in the United States.

Currently trading at just 16 times earnings and 13 times free cash flow, the risk-reward ratio on UnitedHealth Group is very appealing.

Glossary

13F reportable AUM: Assets under management that must be disclosed in quarterly SEC Form 13F filings by institutional investment managers.
Quarterly average price: The average price of a security over a specific quarter, used for estimating transaction values.
Post-trade holdings: The total number of shares or value held in a security after a trade is completed.
Top holdings: The largest investments in a fund or portfolio, ranked by market value.
Pharmacy benefit management: Services that manage prescription drug programs for health plans, employers, and government programs.
Integrated platforms: Systems that combine multiple services or business functions into a unified offering.
Provider networks: Groups of healthcare professionals and facilities contracted to deliver services to insurance plan members.
Medicare: A U.S. federal health insurance program for people aged 65 and older, and certain younger individuals with disabilities.
Medicaid: A joint federal and state program in the U.S. providing health coverage to eligible low-income individuals.
TTM: The 12-month period ending with the most recent quarterly report.

A group of Democratic state governors has launched a new alliance aimed at coordinating their public health efforts.

They’re framing it as a way to share data, messages about threats, emergency preparedness and public health policy — and as a rebuke to President Trump’s administration, which they say isn’t doing its job in public health.

“At a time when the federal government is telling the states, ‘you’re on your own,’ governors are banding together,” Maryland Governor Wes Moore said in a statement.

The formation of the group touches off a new chapter in a partisan battle over public health measures that has been heightened by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s advisers declining to recommend COVID-19 vaccinations, instead leaving the choice to the individual.

Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in an email that Democratic governors who imposed school closures and mask mandates, including for toddlers, at the height of the pandemic, are the ones who “destroyed public trust in public health.”

“The Trump Administration and Secretary Kennedy are rebuilding that trust by grounding every policy in rigorous evidence and Gold Standard Science – not the failed politics of the pandemic,” Nixon said.

The initial members are all Democrats

The Governors Public Health Alliance bills itself as a “nonpartisan coordinating hub,” but the initial members are all Democrats — the governors of 14 states plus Guam.

Among them are governors of the most populous blue states, California and New York, and several governors who are considered possible 2028 presidential candidates, including California’s Gavin Newsom, Illinois’ JB Pritzker and Maryland’s Moore.

The idea of banding together for public health isn’t new for Democratic governors. They formed regional groups to address the pandemic during Trump’s first term and launched new ones in recent months amid uncertainty on federal vaccine policy. States have also taken steps to preserve access to COVID-19 vaccines.

The new alliance isn’t intended to supplant those efforts, or the coordination already done by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, its organizers say.

A former CDC director is among the advisers

Dr. Mandy Cohen, who was CDC director under former President Biden and before that the head of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, is part of a bipartisan group of advisers to the alliance.

“The CDC did provide an important backstop for expertise and support,” she said. “And I think now with some of that gone, it’s important for states to make sure that they are sharing best practices, and that they are coordinating, because the problems have not gone away. The health threats have not gone away.”

Other efforts have also sprung up to try to fill roles that the CDC performed before the ouster of a director, along with other restructuring and downsizing.

The Governors Public Health Alliance has support from GovAct, a nonprofit, nonpartisan donor-funded initiative that also has projects aimed at protecting democracy and another partisan hot-button issue, reproductive freedom.

Mulvihill and Stobbe write for the Associated Press.

Oct. 14 (UPI) — Britain and the United States announced Tuesday that they have together sanctioned a transnational scam organization operating out of Cambodia.

The U.S. Department of Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control announced it has imposed sweeping sanctions on 146 targets within the Prince Group transnational criminal organization, a Cambodia-based network led by Cambodian national Chen Zhi that operates a global criminal empire through online investment scams.

It also announced that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has finalized a rule under the USA Patriot Act to sever the Cambodia-based financial services conglomerate Huione Group from the U.S. financial system. “For years, Huione Group has laundered proceeds of virtual currency scams and heists on behalf of malicious cyber actors,” the press release said.

Covered financial institutions are now banned from opening or maintaining accounts for Huione Group, the Treasury Department said.

“The rapid rise of transnational fraud has cost American citizens billions of dollars, with life savings wiped out in minutes,” said Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent in a statement. “Treasury is taking action to protect Americans by cracking down on foreign scammers. Working in close coordination with federal law enforcement and international partners like the United Kingdom, Treasury will continue to lead efforts to safeguard Americans from predatory criminals.”

In the U.K., a $16 million mansion owned by the Prince Group has been frozen by the government. Chen Zhi and his network have invested in the London property market, including the mansion, a $133 million office building and 17 apartments in the city. The freeze blocks them from profiting from these buildings.

The organization’s scam centers in Cambodia, Myanmar and other parts of Southeast Asia use fake job ads to lure foreign nationals to compounds or abandoned casinos where they are forced to carry out online fraud or face torture, the British press release said.

The scams often involve building online relationships to convince targets to invest increasingly large sums of money into fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes.

“These sanctions prove our determination to stop those who profit from this activity, hold offenders accountable, and keep dirty money out of the U.K.,” said Fraud Minister David Hanson in a statement. “Through our new, expanded fraud strategy and the upcoming Global Fraud Summit, we will go even further to disrupt corrupt networks and protect the public from shameless criminals.”

South Korea has faced a surge of kidnappings of its citizens in Cambodia. As of August, at least 330 cases were reported, according to data submitted to the National Assembly.

In June, Amnesty International said the Cambodian government has been “deliberately ignoring” human rights abuses including slavery, human trafficking, child labor and torture by gangs. It estimated that there were at least 53 scamming compounds in Cambodia.

In September, the Treasury Department sanctioned scam centers across Southeast Asia that the agency said stole $10 billion in 2024 from Americans via forced labor and violence.

If Loyola football coach Drew Casani could give out game balls after his team’s 13-10 Mission League win over Gardena Serra at SoFi Stadium on Thursday night, he’d need to go to a sporting goods store to find enough to hand out. There were so many contributors.

There was kicker/punter Jacob Kreinbring making field goals from 44 and 35 yards despite narrower NFL goal posts. He also had a punt downed at the one-yard line.

There was linebacker Kane Casani, who blocked a field goal that led to a long touchdown return by sophomore Malique Pollard.

There was linebacker Holden Smyser and defensive linemen Max Meier and Will Mack, all of whom helped the defense stop Serra three out of four times on fourth downs in the fourth quarter.

Remember that Loyola (4-3, 1-1) lost a group of players who abandoned the program in the offseason, leaving behind players who drew skepticism whether they would be competitive against top teams.

It’s that Loyola tradition of playing as a group that allowed the Cubs to beat a Serra team that continues to struggle on offense. Serra (3-4, 0-2) fell behind 10-0, then tied the game on a DeVohn Moutra Jr. safety, followed by a touchdown run and two-point conversion from sophomore quarterback Malik Tunai.

“Man, this feels great,” said Kane Casani, who’s the son of the head coach. “A lot of people doubted us. We came together as a brotherhood.”

Loyola broke the tie with 4:14 left in the third quarter on Kreinbring’s 35-yard field goal.

Oct. 9 (UPI) — On this date in history:

In 1888, 40 years after construction began, the Washington Monument opens to the public. Work on the obelisk was halted from 1854 to 1877 due to a lack of funds, internal squabbling within the Washington National Monument Society, and the American Civil War.

In 1919, the Cincinnati Reds won the World Series defeating the Chicago White Sox. Eight members of the White Sox would be accused of intentionally losing games in exchange for money from gamblers in what would become known as the Black Sox Scandal. The players were later found not guilty, though all were banned from the sport for life.

In 1931, gangster Al Capone’s Florida spending told at tax evasion trial. The government’s contention was that if Mr. Capone was “rich enough to be a moviesque Florida Play-boy, then he certainly must have an income worthy of taxation.”

File Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI

In 1931, the Japanese government endorsed military action against Manchuria. The invasion was one of a series of battles and skirmishes which took place in the run-up to the Second Sino-Japanese War.

In 1934, King Alexander of Yugoslavia was assassinated by a Croatian terrorist during a state visit to France.

In 1967, one day after being captured in the jungles of Bolivia where he was waging a guerrilla war, Marxist revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, a leading figure in the 1959 Cuban revolution, is executed by the Bolivian military.

In 1975, Andrei Sakharov, father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, became the first Soviet citizen to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1983, James Watt, facing U.S. Senate condemnation for a racially insensitive remark, resigned as U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s interior secretary.

In 1992, NASA announced that the unmanned Pioneer spacecraft was apparently lost after orbiting Venus for 14 years.

File Image courtesy of NASA

In 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

In 2012, Malala Yousafzai, an advocate for girls’ education in Pakistan and future Nobel Peace Prize winner, survived being shot three times as she attempted to board a bus to school.

In 2015, the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet won the Nobel Peace Prize for its role in building up democracy in Tunisia after the Jasmine Revolution of 2011.

In 2020, the United Nations’ World Food Program won the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to fight hunger and bring peace to parts of the world affected by violence.

In 2024, Hurricane Milton made landfall near Sarasota, Fla., knocking out power for nearly 3 million people. The storm led to dozens of deaths and caused nearly $35 million in damage.

File Photo by Joe Marino/UPI

About 200 people gathered on Paramount’s Melrose Avenue lot for a screening of “Red Alert,” a four-part scripted drama portraying the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel from the perspective of six victims.

The host of the Sept. 30 event was Paramount Chairman and Chief Executive David Ellison, who shared how he had chatted with Academy Award-nominated producer Lawrence Bender a few weeks earlier at a memorial service for legendary Hollywood power broker Skip Brittenham. That’s where Ellison learned that Bender’s Israeli-backed series, “Red Alert,” needed a home in the U.S.

Ellison quickly volunteered. “It was a fast ‘yes,’ ” he told the group.

On Tuesday, “Red Alert” debuted on the company’s streaming service, Paramount+, marking the second anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The initial Hamas assault left about 1,200 Israelis dead and more than 250 kidnapped.

The high-profile project comes two months after Ellison assumed control of Paramount in an $8-billion buyout by his family, led by billionaire and Oracle founder Larry Ellison, and private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners.

Since the deal closed Aug. 7, David Ellison has moved to position the company slightly right of the political center, while also taking on polarizing issues. The scion has been unafraid to challenge those in Hollywood who’ve called for a boycott of Israel.

More than two years after the Oct. 7 attack, a deep divide remains in Hollywood over the subsequent Israel-Hamas war.

Last month, Paramount condemned an open letter in support of Palestinians, which has gained steam in Hollywood. More than 5,000 people have signed the Film Workers for Palestine letter, including such prominent filmmakers as Adam McKay, Ava DuVernay, Alex Gibney and Hannah Einbinder.

The effort called for a boycott of Israeli film festivals, institutions and projects to help spur an end to the war in Gaza. The campaign was designed in the vein of South African boycotts decades ago, which proved to be instrumental in ending apartheid, that country’s racial segregation.

No other major studio followed Paramount.

In its Sept. 12 statement, Paramount said it disagreed with the Film Workers call to avoid film screenings or to work with Israeli film institutions.

“At Paramount, we believe in the power of storytelling to connect and inspire people, promote mutual understanding, and preserve the moments, ideas, and events that shape the world we share,” the company said. “Silencing individual creative artists based on their nationality does not promote better understanding or advance the cause of peace.”

The Film Workers group accused Paramount of misrepresenting the intent of its pledge, saying it did not target individual filmmakers.

But critics counter that filmmakers who engage with Israeli cultural institutions would likely fall under the ban.

More than 1,200 industry players including actors Mayim Bialik and Liev Schreiber and Paramount board member Sherry Lansing signed an opposing open letter released by the nonprofit organization Creative Community For Peace that accuses the Film Workers for Palestine of advocating “arbitrary censorship and the erasure of art.”

The Palestinian supporters dismissed the characterization. “The Film Workers Pledge to End Complicity is an explicitly anti-racist and non-violent campaign that is grounded in international law and the moral clarity of a global majority opposed to genocide,” the group said in a statement this week. “It is the first major refusal of the international film industry at large that targets complicit Israeli film institutions and companies.”

“Red Alert” was co-produced by a prominent Israeli production company, Keshet Media Group, and received funding from the Jewish National Fund-USA and the Israel Entertainment Fund. The series premiered last weekend on Israel’s popular television channel Keshet 12. Keshet produced the Hebrew-language series “Prisoners of War” that Showtime later adapted into the award-winning American drama “Homeland.”

During the late September screening at Paramount, Ellison spoke of the need for such projects as “Red Alert” to remember the atrocities as well as stories of survival and heroism.

“We at Paramount, we are here to tell stories that last forever,” Ellison said. “We are not here to debate politics or platforms or to argue about east or west. And ‘Red Alert’ is the very embodiment of that mission, and I couldn’t be prouder to support this series.”

Critics note that Ellison’s father, Larry, the co-founder of Oracle, is a prominent supporter of Israel, contributing millions to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.

Others in Hollywood have found fault with Israel’s government and its conduct in the Gaza war, which has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians or combatants.

The United Nations, rights groups, experts and many Western governments accuse Israel of committing genocide. Israel denies the charge.

During a May 2024 Simon Wiesenthal Center gala in his honor, WME Group Executive Chairman Ari Emanuel sharply denounced Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and called for his ouster. Emanuel’s remarks were met with cheers and jeers and some attendees walked out.

In his Oscar acceptance speech last year, Jonathan Glazer, director of the Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest,” asked “Whether the victims of October 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization — how do we resist?”

Weeks later, Steven Spielberg called out the rise of antisemitism as well as the ongoing war.

“We can rage against the heinous acts committed by the terrorists of October 7th and also decry the killing of innocent women and children in Gaza,” Spielberg said during an event celebrating the anniversary of the USC Shoah Foundation.

Paramount’s opposition to the Film Workers’ pledge and other recent moves, including buying the Free Press news site for $150 million and installing its founder, journalist Bari Weiss, as the editor in chief at CBS News, has rattled a small group of Paramount employees.

David Ellison recruited Weiss, who has been public about her support for Israel, for the prominent role.

The division was roiled by Paramount’s efforts to settle President Trump’s lawsuit over edits to a “60 Minutes” interview a year ago with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Paramount this summer agreed to pay $16 million to end Trump’s suit, which 1st Amendment experts viewed as a spurious shakedown.

Weeks later, Trump appointees on the Federal Communications Commission approved the Ellison family’s takeover of Paramount.

The employee group, which calls itself Paramount Employees of Conscience, said they have sent two letters to Paramount leaders in the last month to voice their concerns but have not received a reply. In a statement, the group noted that while Paramount+ was distributing “Red Alert,” the company had not offered “equivalent programming about Palestinian experiences of the genocide in Gaza.”

“How can a company with this supposed creative mission actively ignore, suppress, and silence internal calls for years to champion stories that shed a light on the reality that marginalized and excluded communities, particularly Palestinians, face every day?” the group asked in a Sept. 17 letter addressed to Paramount’s leadership.

Paramount declined to comment.

The group includes about 30 employees, according to one member who asked not to be identified out of fear of retribution.

Paramount employees separately are bracing for a steep round of layoffs, which is expected next month. Ellison’s firm Skydance Media and RedBird promised Wall Street that they would find more than $2 billion in cost cuts at Paramount.

“We know the Ellisons are formidable, powerful and have a lot of resources,” said the Paramount employee. “But we are here to interrupt a culture of silence…. Silence within the industry becomes complicity.”

Former Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine received the endorsement of a prominent Democratic women’s group on Monday that backs candidates who support abortion rights. The organization could provide significant funding and grass-roots support to boost Porter’s 2026 gubernatorial campaign.

“Katie Porter has spent her career holding the powerful accountable, fighting to lower costs and taking on Wall Street and Trump administration officials to deliver results for California’s working families,” said Jessica Mackler, president of EMILY’s List. “At a time when President Trump and his allies are attacking Californians’ health care and making their lives more expensive, Katie is the proven leader California needs.”

The organization’s name stands for Early Money Is Like Yeast, a reference to the importance of early fundraising for female candidates. It was founded four decades ago to promote Democratic women who support legal abortion. The group has raised nearly $950 million to help elect such candidates across the country, including backing Porter’s successful congressional campaign to flip a GOP district in Orange County.

“There’s nothing that Donald Trump hates more than facing down a strong, powerful woman,” Porter said. “For decades, EMILY’s List has backed winner after winner, helping elect pro-choice Democratic women to public office. They were instrumental in helping me flip a Republican stronghold blue in 2018, and together I’m confident we will make history again.”

It’s unclear, however, how much the organization will spend on Porter’s bid to be California’s first female governor. There are multiple critical congressional races next year that will determine control of the House that the group will likely throw its weight behind.

The 2026 gubernatorial race to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom is wide open after former Vice President Kamala Harris decided not to run and as Sen. Alex Padilla and businessman Rick Caruso mull whether to make a run.

At the moment, Porter, a UC Irvine law professor who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate last year, has a small edge in the polls among the multitude of Democrats running for the seat. The primary is in June.

EMILY’s List, which often avoids making a nod when there are multiple female candidates in a race, made its decision after former state Senate leader Toni Atkins announced in late September that she was dropping out of the race. Former state Controller Betty Yee remains a gubernatorial candidate.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has become the target of a sustained right-wing backlash after the US-based Jewish advocacy group included an organisation founded by slain right-wing figure Charlie Kirk in its online database on extremism.

The blowback escalated sharply on Wednesday after FBI Director Kash Patel announced that the bureau would sever ties with the ADL, accusing the prominent advocacy group of spying on Americans.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s post calling the ADL a “hate group” set off a firestorm of criticism online, forcing the group to scrap the “Glossary of Extremism and Hate”, which contained more than a thousand entries on groups and movements with connections to hateful ideologies.

But that has not subdued the backlash from conservatives – the base of the governing Republican Party.

So, what’s ADL’s online database, and why has it triggered MAGA (Make America Great Again) rage? And how has the nonprofit, which backed the crackdown on pro-Palestine campus protests by the administration of US President Donald Trump, ended up ruffling feathers across the political spectrum?

What is ADL?

The ADL is one of the oldest and most influential Jewish advocacy groups in the United States. It was founded in 1913 by members of the B’nai B’rith – Hebrew for “Sons of the Covenant”, a Jewish fraternal organisation – to counter anti-Semitism and prejudice against Jews.

The group, which calls itself “a global leader in combating antisemitism”, started with its original mission, “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all”.

Over time, the ADL grew into a national force with branches spread across the country. It works closely with law enforcement agencies to train officers on identifying bias-motivated violence. It also develops programmes and resources on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, partnering with schools, universities and communities.

Its monitoring of right-wing racist and anti-LGBTQ+ extremism also allowed it space within the US’s liberal Jewish community.

Since its inception, the ADL has argued that anti-Zionism could lead to anti-Semitism. But in the past couple of decades, the nonprofit has been pushing to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which conflates some criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. The ADL has also backed a controversial resolution passed by the US Congress that defined anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism.

The ADL is a well-resourced civil society group, with around $163m in revenue last year alone.

What caused the backlash against ADL?

The recent backlash was triggered after several influential right-wing social media accounts began posting screenshots of the ADL’s entry on Kirk’s organisation, Turning Point USA, in its “Glossary of Extremism”.

Kirk, who is credited with galvanising young voters for Trump, was assassinated last month.

Though Turning Point USA was not listed as an “extremist organization”, the nonprofit had documented incidents where its leadership and affiliated members had made “racist or bigoted comments”.

ADL’s entry on “Christian Identity” – which the nonprofit identified as an extremist theology that promotes white supremacy – also drew widespread criticism from right-wing influencers.

The ADL has long positioned itself as a nonpartisan watchdog. But conservatives have increasingly argued that it has become politically aligned with progressive causes, including the group’s partnerships with social media companies in moderating hate-speech policies.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO, has been accused of “weaponising anti-Semitism” to attack critics of liberal policies and of conflating right-wing populism with hate speech in the past.

In the weeks following Kirk’s assassination, the US has seen a wave of right-wing backlash against public figures who criticised him, with several commentators and journalists facing professional repercussions – including the brief suspension of a television show by comedian Jimmy Kimmel and the firing of Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah.

What was in ADL’s online database?

The ADL “Glossary of Extremism and Hate” was an online, searchable database launched in March 2022 by the organisation’s Center on Extremism. After the backlash from right-wing influencers, mostly from the MAGA camp, the ADL quietly moved to retire its database from the public.

The database contained more than 1,000 entries providing overviews and definitions of terms, symbols, slogans, tactics, publications, groups, and individuals associated with various extremist ideologies, hate movements, and related activities.

The resource covered a broad spectrum, including white supremacism, anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim bigotry, and extremism on the far right and far left. The glossary reportedly included groups like the Proud Boys, the Nation of Islam, the Oath Keepers, and others.

The ADL, in its statement, argued that “an increasing number of entries in the Glossary were outdated”, and “a number of entries [were] intentionally misrepresented and misused”.

The organisation further said that it wanted to focus on exploring “new strategies and creative approaches to deliver our data and present our research more effectively”.

The list is no longer publicly available on ADL’s site, and the original URL now redirects to the organisation’s home page.

How did Musk get into this?

The online smear campaign gained traction on Sunday night after billionaire Elon Musk started interacting with posts targeting the ADL.

Musk, who has more than 227 million followers on X, said, “The ADL hates Christians, therefore it is is [sic] a hate group.”

The ADL’s operations encourage murder, Musk said in another reply to a post on X, formerly Twitter, which he bought in 2022 after paying $44bn.

Musk’s attacks on the ADL still came as a shock to some. ADL’s Greenblatt has, in fact, praised Musk several times, including in 2023 for saying that X would block use of the pro-Palestinian slogan “from the river to the sea”.

That applause reportedly led to the resignation of a top ADL executive, Yael Eisenstat, who headed the nonprofit’s Center for Technology and Society, and the group lost several donors.

The ADL has also criticised Musk, saying X’s Grok chatbot promoted pro-Nazi ideology. The chatbot has praised Adolf Hitler, and called itself “MechaHitler”.

Former and current ADL employees have told Jewish Currents, a US-based progressive publication, that Greenblatt has repeatedly given a pass to Musk’s white nationalist sympathies if they help the ADL fight anti-Zionism – a pattern that reportedly escalated after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, followed by Israel’s now two-year-long war on Palestine, which has been dubbed genocide by an United Nations inquiry panel.

Then again, earlier this year, Greenblatt came to Musk’s defence after several Jewish lawmakers and civil society groups condemned Musk’s fascist-style salutes on stage during a speech after Trump’s re-election.

The ADL had posted: “It seems that Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute.”

Why did the FBI snap ties with ADL?

The FBI’s decision to cut ties with the ADL also marks a sharp rupture in a partnership that had lasted for decades, at least since the 1940s, rooted in joint efforts to train law enforcement officers and monitor extremist threats across the US.

The move was announced by FBI chief Patel just 24 hours after Musk joined the online campaign, accusing the ADL of having “become a political front masquerading as a watchdog”.

Patel also targeted James Comey, an American lawyer who served as the director of the FBI from 2013 to 2017, during the era of US President Barack Obama.

“James Comey wrote ‘love letters’ to the ADL and embedded FBI agents with them – a group that ran disgraceful ops spying on Americans,” Kash said in a post on X, without offering any more clarity on this.

“That era is OVER. This FBI won’t partner with political fronts masquerading as watchdogs,” he concluded.

Why is ADL accused of pro-Israel bias and of suppressing pro-Palestinian activism?

The ADL has also faced criticism from left-wing activists for exhibiting a pro-Israel bias and suppressing pro-Palestinian activism, particularly in the wake of widespread protests across US campuses over the Gaza war that has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians and turned the Palestinian enclave into ruins.

The advocacy group has dubbed grassroots protests against Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza as “pro-Hamas activism”, while its CEO Greenblatt has described the Jewish groups calling for a ceasefire as “the ugly core of anti-Zionism”.

The ADL also publicly campaigned against campus protests last year, describing some demonstrations as “antisemitic hate rallies”. The group urged university administrators and government officials to take action against protest organisers, and pressured institutions to censor or discipline dissenting voices.

ADL’s Greenblatt praised Trump for withholding $400m in grants to Columbia University after campus protests and complimented the arrest of Columbia pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil.

“We appreciate the Trump Administration’s broad, bold set of efforts to counter campus antisemitism – and this action further illustrates that resolve by holding alleged perpetrators responsible for their actions,” the ADL posted above a tweet about Khalil’s arrest.

The ADL’s collaboration with the US administration has dented its credibility, and several staff have resigned, citing the organisation’s overt emphasis on pro-Israel advocacy.

“The ADL has a pro-Israel bias and an agenda to suppress pro-Palestinian activism,” an ADL employee told The Guardian newspaper last year.

Standing under four palm trees in the quad area of Calabasas High, Los Alamitos football players have their eyes trained on coach Ray Fenton’s face for more than five uninterrupted minutes.

Looking to see if anyone loses focus when a mother walks by and starts yelling at her daughter, the answer is incredibly no. The players keep listening and keep their eyes directed on Fenton.

It’s tough enough to make teenagers listen for 30 seconds to adults these days, but to see an entire football team not letting anyone or anything disturb their focus while their coach is speaking provides a hint why Los Alamitos is 7-0 and the surprise high school football team in Southern California this season.

“Everyone has their eye on coach,” offensive lineman Braiden McKenna said. “It’s all the little things that keep you disciplined. Wearing your mouthpiece, keeping your eyes on him.”

It’s not true that Los Alamitos doesn’t have any stars. They might not have been mentioned much in preseason hype lists, but players have performed at a high level so far.

Tight end Beckham Hofland, 6 foot 5 and 230 pounds, is a load to cover and also serves as a kicker. Running backs Kamden Tillis and Lenny Ibarra are versatile and reliable. Quarterback Colin Creason, who sat out last season while transferring from Long Beach Poly, keeps improving. The offensive line, led by the veteran McKenna, who plays center, is very good. Ibarra leads the defense with 66 tackles.

Coach Ray Fenton and his 7-0 Los Alamitos football team.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s so much easier to want to win with someone you care about and they care about you,” McKenna said of the team chemistry.

Los Alamitos has had more talented teams in recent years aided by transfer students. This one is mostly home grown, and Fenton couldn’t be happier.

“They’re friends,” Fenton said. “They’ve grown up together. You play harder with guys you’re friends with. You don’t want to let them down. They’re Los Al kids. They take pride in the community.”

They won in Hawaii 34-31 on tying and game-winning field goals by Ibarra, who practiced kicking the ball between two palm trees at a park. They knocked off Gardena Serra 42-21. They beat a good Granite Hills team 49-42. Seven straight wins came over seven weeks, so now they are on a two-week break to prepare for the daunting task of facing three good Alpha League opponents — Edison at SoFi Stadium on Oct. 16, at San Clemente on Oct. 24 and a finale against Mission Viejo on Oct. 30 at Artesia.

They are serious contenders for a Southern Section Division 1 playoff berth even though some people still can’t figure out how they keep winning.

The answer is simple: they’re hungry. Never underestimate a team where one teammate after another supports each other no matter the challenges, no matter the obstacles, no matter the skepticism of others.

“This is throwback,” Fenton said. “It’s old school. Play for your local school, play for your community, play for your friends. The kids you played Pop Warner with are the kids you’re playing high school football with. It’s the way it was supposed to be.”

AN EX-girlfriend of the Manchester synagogue attacker was forced to watch Isis terror videos, she has claimed.

Jihad Al-Shamie, 35, unleashed terror outside Manchester’s Heaton Park synagogue on Thursday, leaving two dead and three more in hospital.

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The seven-minute knife rampage took place on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar – Yom Kippur – with the killer then shot dead by cops.

A former partner has now claimed she was groomed by Al-Shamie and forced into a “controlling relationship”.

The pair, who met on a Muslim dating app, were in a relationship for four months before she left him over his extremist views, and moved from the UK.

She claimed Al-Shamie told her he wanted to join Isis and also pressured her to become “dedicated to the cause”.

She said: “He used to sit there and make me watch videos – like extreme videos – that I had no interest in.

“I am Muslim and of course I love to learn more. But this stuff was things that I have been raised to not agree with.

“He used to always say I was taught the wrong way and I wasn’t taught right. He was basically just trying to groom me into what he thought.”

Meanwhile, as reported by The Mail on Sunday, it has been revealed one of the women arrested by cops over the synagogue attack was an NHS Mental health peer support worker.

The 46-year-old is a white British woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, and neighbours claimed she had recently converted to Islam.

“I was doing such a course, and she told me she was a peer support worker herself,” said one local.

“She said she travelled to Manchester for her shifts at a hospital.”

Al-Shamie is also believed to have been married to a British Pakistani woman in Manchester.

It is understood they share a two-year-old child, but are no longer in a relationship.

A former friend of Al-Shamie also revealed he was teenage drop-out who smoked weed and was obsessed with violent video game Street Fighter.

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The friend told The Sun on Sunday that killer Al-Shamie would smoke around 2g of strong skunk a day when he was a teen and frequently felt the wrath of his parents.

And he said he spent hours in his bedroom playing the computer game using the name “Jiji”.

His obsession led to Al-Shamie dropping out of Liverpool John Moores University a year into his English, media and cultural studies degree course in 2011.

The former pal said: “He was a bit of a rebellious wild child. He got into a lot of trouble with his parents. He used to smoke cannabis from an early age.

“He would spend a lot of time practising Street Fighter, like obsessively practising this computer game. He was very good at it, to the point where he competed a couple of times in competitions.”

The source added: “It was probably why he dropped out of uni.

“He was spending too much time smoking weed, working out and playing video games.”

He added: “His personality type, he would latch on to one thing and get buried deep into it. The only thing I can think of is that he’s done that but with radical religion.”

Al-Shamie, whose name is said to translate as “struggle of the Syrian” became “reclusive” after dropping out of education and started to practice Islam around 2018.

Neighbours said he would spend his time lifting weights in his garage or wander around in his pyjamas and flip flops.

The pal, who lost touch with him, said: “I heard he became a bit reclusive and appeared to be very into his faith, which surprised me as he was never that kind of guy.

“There were some concerns about his mental health. I don’t know if he ever got professional help.”

He said he was worried Al-Shamie would go down a “rabbit hole”, adding: “He had an addictive personality. My suspicion is that he ended up self-radicalising.”

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Al-Shamie moved to the UK from Syria with his family when he was a young child and was granted British citizenship in 2006.

His father Faraj is a trauma doctor who later divorced his mother Formoz and moved to France.

This comes as four people arrested in connection with the synagogue terror attack will remain in custody for extra questioning.

Adrian Daulby, 53, and Melvin Cravitz, 66, were killed in the rampage before Al-Shamie was shot dead by armed cops.

Six people have now been arrested on terror charges following the chaos.

Cops confirmed they have been granted custody extensions to hold four people detained in connection with the attack on the Crumpsall synagogue for a longer amount of time.

Two men, aged 30 and 32, as well as a 61-year-old woman arrested in Farnworth will remain in custody for “up to a further five days”.

The force added how an 18-year-old woman and a 43-year-old man, also arrested in Farnworth, remain in custody for questioning.

Greater Manchester Police said: “We have been granted warrants of further detention for four individuals currently in custody.

“This means they can remain in custody for up to a further five days.

“Everyone in custody has been arrested on suspicion of commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism.”

Everyone in custody has been arrested on suspicion of commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism.

Al-Shamie first drove into worshippers at the Heaton Park synagogue at 9.30am on Thursday morning.

He also stabbed terrified members of the public while wearing a fake “bomb vest” – killing Melvin Cravitz, 66, and Adrian Daulby, 53.

Four others were injured in the horror.

Counter-terrorism officers have since revealed the attacker was likely influenced by “extreme Islamist ideology”.

A statement from Greater Manchester Police read: “We believe Al-Shamie may have been influenced by extreme Islamist ideology.

“Establishing the full circumstances of the attack is likely to take some time.  

“We have now arrested three further people, one man and two women, aged between 18 and mid-40s.

“This brings the number of people in custody arrested on suspicion of commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism to six.”

Al-Shamie was not known counter-terrorism agencies but had previous convictions.

It is not known when the alleged rape took place but the attacker was under investigation by Greater Manchester Police at the time.

GMP confirmed to The Sun Online al-Shamie was arrested but had been released pending investigation.

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It has been a rollercoaster year for Lucid Group (LCID 2.68%), with shares of the electric vehicle (EV) maker gyrating between $16 and $35. But one Wall Street analyst remains unfazed. He has a price target of $70 for Lucid stock. If you’re tracking electric car stocks, you’ll want to understand his thinking.

3 Reasons this Wall Street analyst loves Lucid Group stock

Mickey Legg is an analyst at Benchmark Company who has covered the EV space for several years. One of his top picks right now is Lucid Group. His $70 price target implies nearly 200% in potential upside. There are three factors right now that get him excited.

First, he believes electric vehicle sales in the U.S. will accelerate in 2025 and 2026. There are a few problems with this prediction. EV sales growth decelerated heavily from 2023 to 2024. In 2023, 1.2 million EVs were sold nationwide, a 46% increase versus the year before. But last year, just 1.3 million EVs were sold, a growth rate of only 7%. Additionally, the elimination of EV tax credits may hamper demand in the back half of 2025 through 2026 and beyond. Predicting an acceleration in EV sales, therefore, is a very bullish take.

But Legg’s thesis rests on more than just higher industrywide sales. He notes Lucid’s “advanced technology” as well as its “highly integrated manufacturing capabilities.” For years, Lucid has been pushing back against its positioning as a car manufacturer, instead pitching its capabilities as a technology provider. “I’d love it to be 20-80. Twenty percent doing cars, 80% licensing,” Lucid’s former CEO said earlier this year.

Lucid’s deal with Uber Technologies to supply it with 20,000 vehicles that will power its robotaxi division lends credence to this vision. Uber required high-tech vehicles to enable autonomous driving, and out of all the global manufacturers, it chose Lucid, investing $300 million directly into the company as well. So, while I don’t agree with Legg’s bullishness on EV sales, there is something to say about Lucid’s differentiated technology moving forward.

Another factor that Legg is excited about is Saudi Arabia’s huge stake in Lucid. The country’s sovereign wealth fund has repeatedly provided financing to keep Lucid afloat. The country also intends to take delivery of 100,000 Lucid vehicles from 2022 to 2032. This is a double-edged sword, however. As a majority investor, Saudi Arabia’s influence on Lucid is huge, and the country’s goals may not always align with what investors wish to see.

So, while the country has been a valuable partner thus far, there is structural risk in investing alongside an influential entity that may not have your priorities in mind.

Image source: Getty Images.

Don’t invest in Lucid Group before understanding this challenge

There is one final challenge Lucid Group faces that every investor should understand. And that is a lack of clarity when it comes to the introduction of affordable electric models.

Nearly 70% of U.S. buyers are looking to spend less than $50,000 on their next vehicle purchase. With zero models priced under $50,000, Lucid is missing out on tens of millions of potential buyers. The company believes it can get an affordable model to market by the end of 2026, but numerous questions remain about its ability to finance and scale the required infrastructure to do so. Competitors like Rivian Automotive and Tesla, meanwhile, will both have several affordable models on the market by the end of next year.

This is the challenge with Lucid right now. Even if EV sales accelerate like Legg predicts, the company simply doesn’t have the right models to take advantage of such growth. While its technology is exciting, it won’t see mass adoption until costs come down. So while some analysts remain bullish on Lucid stock, I’m remaining on the sidelines for now.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has ruled for a second time that the Trump administration may cancel the “temporary protected status” given to about 600,000 Venezuelans under the Biden administration.

The move, advocates for the Venezuelans said, means thousands of lawfully present individuals could lose their jobs, be detained in immigration facilities and deported to a country that the U.S. government considers unsafe to visit.

The high court granted an emergency appeal from Trump’s lawyers and set aside decisions of U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Although the posture of the case has changed, the parties’ legal arguments and relative harms generally have not. The same result that we reached in May is appropriate here,” the court said in an unsigned order Friday.

Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have denied the appeal.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. “I view today’s decision as yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket,” she wrote. “Because, respectfully, I cannot abide our repeated, gratuitous, and harmful interference with cases pending in the lower courts while lives hang in the balance, I dissent.”

Last month, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had overstepped her legal authority by canceling the legal protection.

Her decision “threw the future of these Venezuelan citizens into disarray and exposed them to substantial risk of wrongful removal, separation from their families and loss of employment,” the panel wrote.

But Trump’s lawyers said the law bars judges from reviewing these decisions by U.S. immigration officials.

Homeland Security applauded the Supreme Court’s action. “Temporary Protected Status was always supposed to be just that: Temporary,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Yet, previous administrations abused, exploited, and mangled TPS into a de facto amnesty program.”

Congress authorized this protected status for people who are already in the United States but cannot return home because their native countries are not safe.

The Biden administration offered the protections to Venezuelans because of the political and economic collapse brought about by the authoritarian regime of Nicolás Maduro.

Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security secretary under Biden, granted the protected status to groups of Venezuelans in 2021 and 2023, totaling about 607,000 people.

Mayorkas extended it again in January, three days before Trump was sworn in. That same month, Noem decided to reverse the extension, which was set to expire for both groups of Venezuelans in October 2026.

Shortly afterward, Noem announced the termination of protections for the 2023 group by April.

In March, Chen issued an order temporarily pausing Noem’s repeal, which the Supreme Court set aside in May with only Jackson in dissent.

The San Francisco judge then held a hearing on the issue and concluded Noem’s repeal violated the Administrative Procedure Act because it was arbitrary and and not justified.

He said his earlier order imposing a temporary pause did not prevent him from ruling on the legality of the repeal, and the 9th Circuit agreed.

The approximately 350,000 Venezuelans who had TPS through the 2023 designation saw their legal status restored. Many reapplied for work authorization, said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, and a counsel for the plaintiffs.

In the meantime, Noem announced the cancellation of the 2021 designation, effective Nov. 7.

Trump’s solicitor general, D. John Sauer, went back to the Supreme Court in September and urged the justices to set aside the second order from Chen.

“This case is familiar to the Court and involves the increasingly familiar and untenable phenomenon of lower courts disregarding this Court’s orders on the emergency docket,” he said.

The Supreme Court’s decision once again reverses the legal status of the 2023 group and cements the end of legal protections for the 2021 group next month.

In a further complication, the Supreme Court’s previous decision said that anyone who had already received documents verifying their TPS status or employment authorization through next year is entitled to keep it.

That, Arulanantham said, “creates another totally bizarre situation, where there are some people who will have TPS through October 2026 as they’re supposed to because the Supreme Court says if you already got a document it can’t be canceled. Which to me just underscores how arbitrary and irrational the whole situation is.”

Advocates for the Venezuelans said the Trump administration has failed to show that their presence in the U.S. is an emergency requiring immediate court relief.

In a brief filed Monday, attorneys for the National TPS Alliance argued the Supreme Court should deny the Trump administration’s request because Homeland Security officials acted outside the scope of their authority by revoking the TPS protections early.

“Stripping the lawful immigration status of 600,000 people on 60 days’ notice is unprecedented,” Jessica Bansal, an attorney representing the Los Angeles-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network, wrote in a statement. “Doing it after promising an additional 18 months protection is illegal.”

Since the close of trading last week, shares of the artificial intelligence (AI) cloud company Nebius Group (NBIS 3.67%) had risen 16%, as of 10:18 a.m. ET today. The company has purchased new land that could signal expansion, and one of its competitors also just signed a major deal earlier this week.

Still plenty of fuel behind AI infrastructure

There’s a lot of debate among investors regarding what inning of AI infrastructure buildout we are in. While no one knows for sure, there still appears to be a strong appetite for AI data centers. Earlier this week, CoreWeave, a competitor of Nebius, signed a new multiyear, $14 billion deal to provide capacity to Meta Platforms.

Image source: Getty Images.

While Nebius and CoreWeave compete, many of the hyperscalers use more than one AI data center, provider and if demand for AI infrastructure is still strong, it’s good for everyone in the space. Kimberly Forrest, the chief investment officer for Bokeh Capital Partners, said the deal shows that demand for high-quality AI chips is “limitless.”

Additionally, this week Nebius purchased 79 acres of land in Birmingham, Alabama, for $90 million that appears to be tied to a previous announcement from the company about U.S. expansion. M.V. Cunha, who runs a substack and a popular account on X and who has nailed bullish calls on Nebius, believes the company could use the newly purchased land to build new data centers with hundreds of megawatts of capacity.

It’s not too late

Nebius has been a monster this year, with its stock up about 310%. That said, I think investors can still buy the stock, especially with the huge deal with Microsoft it announced recently. While I do have concerns about an AI slowdown at some point, Nebius still has a strong balance sheet, is likely to reach other big deals with hyperscalers, and also has other businesses like autonomous driving that could be valuable down the line.

The expression “stay woke” started out as an affirmation for African Americans.

In the last decade it has been used by some Republicans — and some Democrats — as a pejorative for people thought to be too “politically correct,” another term that took on negative connotations as it gained wider use.

“Woke” has come up in cultural and political firestorms. Eight months into his second term, President Trump pledged to review content at the Smithsonian Institution for being “WOKE” and where “everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was.” At the beginning of this year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared in his State of the State address that government would keep “woke agendas” out of universities and K-12 schools, including “woke gender ideologies.”

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he was ending the “woke” culture in the military, saying the service has been hamstrung by political correctness. He referenced diversity efforts, transgender troops, environmental policies and other disciplinary rules.

“America is no longer woke under President Trump’s leadership. The word ‘woke’ represents radical ideologies that are used [to] divide the American people and harm our country,” Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement.

Here’s where “woke” came from, and how its meaning has evolved:

The history of ‘woke’

“Wokeness” originated decades ago as African American cultural slang for having awareness and enlightenment around racism, injustice, privilege or threats of white supremacist violence.

Several historians trace the idea to a 1923 compilation of speeches and articles by Jamaican-born Black nationalist Marcus Garvey. In one essay, Garvey writes “Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!” Another reference appears in 1938 in the song “Scottsboro Boys,” by blues artist Lead Belly, whose real name was Huddie Ledbetter. The tune follows the true story of four Black youths unjustly convicted by an all-white jury of the rape of two white women (they were later freed). The lyrics warn Black listeners to be careful and “stay woke. Keep your eyes open.”

Gerald McWorter, a professor emeritus of African American studies and of information sciences at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, says “woke” was about having a voice after hundreds of years of Black suffering going back to the African slave trade.

The phrase also popped up in a 1962 essay by novelist William Melvin Kelley for the New York Times. The headline — “If You’re Woke, You Dig It.” Kelley’s widow and daughter believe he heard the term while walking around their Harlem neighborhood, said Elijah Watson, a pop culture writer and editor who has written about Kelley, who died in 2017.

‘Woke’ reawakening

In the 21st century, singer-songwriter Erykah Badu is often credited with reviving the term “woke.” Her song “Master Teacher” on her 2008 album, “New Amerykah: Part One,” includes the refrain “I stay woke.” Badu picked up the phrase from co-writer and producer Georgia Anne Muldrow, who heard it from a saxophone player she collaborated with — Lakecia Benjamin.

The 2014 fatal shooting by a white police officer of 18-year-old Michael Brown — who was Black and unarmed — in Ferguson, Mo., made “woke” and “stay woke” galvanizing pledges in the growing Black Lives Matter movement.

The movement drew support from other racial groups. “Woke” also became popularized by white liberals who wanted to show they were allies.

The war on woke

The backlash against “woke” and “wokeness” bubbled up in the 2010s, amid discussions about including more Black history in American history lessons. Many people said that bringing “critical race theory” to schools was meant to program children to feel guilty for being white.

This argument became front and center in 2022 when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act” into law. It banned teaching or business practices on race and gender. (The law is now on hold after a federal judge deemed it unconstitutional).

For George Pearson, a former chair of the Illinois Black Republican Coalition, “woke” is a hollow word.

Democratic politicians who purport to be “champions” of wokeness and DEI have done little for Black people, he said. So, “woke” has no sway as a rallying cry. He also thinks it’s unfair that those who do not support “woke-ism” are told “’you’re racist. You’re a homophobe. You’re a bigot.”

Even among liberal Black Americans, there is a debate whether the intention of “woke” does more harm than good.

Who says woke now?

In Watson’s experience, “woke” is no longer part of Black vernacular. If he hears it from anyone in his social circles, it’s almost always said “in jest.”

Some progressives are trying to take the word back. Academy Award-winning actor and activist Jane Fonda brought up being “woke” while receiving the Screen Actors Guild lifetime achievement award in front of an A-list audience.

“Make no mistake, empathy is not weak or woke. By the way, woke just means you give a damn about other people,” Fonda said.

Seena Hodges started her own business as a DEI strategist for individuals and groups in 2018 and called it the Woke Coach. She and her team consult on everything from workplace interactions to best recruiting practices. She touches on inclusion for groups from people of color to breastfeeding mothers.

The “bastardization” of “woke” and DEI as words akin to slurs doesn’t bother her, she said. To her, at its core being “woke” is about awareness.

“What it really boils down to is helping people develop a more acute level of emotional intelligence,” she said.

Tang writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Christopher Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.