hopefuls

FRANK LAMPARD has told England’s players that silence is golden if they want to earn a World Cup spot.

The former Three Lions great is advising Thomas Tuchel’s latest squad that mum’s the word when it comes to the German’s team selection.

4

4

The Three Lions’ chief has an array of attacking talent at his disposal and Lampard, who spent the majority of his 106-cap international career being shoehorned into a midfield with Steven Gerrard and Paul Scholes, knows all about compromise.

And he suggested that keeping schtum worked for him — as he went on to score 29 international goals and played in three World Cups and one European Championship as part of the ‘golden generation’.

He said: “I just got on with it. You’re a professional, you get on with it — you are playing different ways, you respect the manager and you crack on. You can have your own opinions — but I tended to keep mine to myself and think about what could I do best if I was asked to play.

“The truth is, I never really played for England much like I played for Chelsea.

“There were times, like in 2004, when Sven-Goran Eriksson was there when I played at the top of a diamond — that wasn’t my ideal, either — but if you are representing your country and the manager’s got an idea, you just go with it.

“That was my story and it’s been documented and people talk about it many years later with a different view to how it felt at the time,

“They just sort of say, ‘It did work or it didn’t work’. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t. But I’m not interested in that conversation.

“Personally, I got on with it, as did Stevie and Scholesy.”

BEST ONLINE CASINOS – TOP SITES IN THE UK

Lampard is in a unique position to comment now he has crossed over to frontline management.

His Coventry side are sitting top of the Championship this season, having scored an impressive 27 goals this season as he attempts to orchestrate a return to the Premier League.

He believes that times may have changed and that Tuchel might  operate a more relaxed policy.

The German has plenty of options up front — all of whom will make a claim to start alongside skipper Harry Kane.

Bukayo Saka, Anthony Gordon, Eberechi Eze, Jarrod Bowen, Marcus Rashford and Ollie Watkins were all in the squad for the double header against Wales and Latvia.

But the likes of Jude Bellingham, Cole Palmer, Phil Foden and Jack Grealish will all be wanting to board the plane to North America for the World Cup next summer.

There are only so many places in Tuchel’s starting XI — and Lampard added: “Now I’m a manager, I understand selection difficulties.

“I’ve had big squads at Chelsea. When I was first there, I went back and they had the 29 players — of which some were disgruntled — that’s another story.

“But in terms of trying to fit players in, you have to make tough decisions as a manager — you have  ideas, you have to work with the squad you’ve got and think, ‘What is the best?’ So that’s why I never really comment on what decisions other managers take because I don’t know the context, what they’re thinking and who and how they want to play.

4

4

“However, I do think it’s more common in the modern day for a conversation to be more open between player and manager.

“It goes manager by manager – some don’t want to talk and say, “This is the team, I’m the boss, you get on with it.’

“There are those who will have individual conversations, and then other people will open up to the group. That all depends on who’s in charge. And players react differently.

“I think there’s a balance to it. I think the players have to feel your authority and believe in what you’re doing.

“It’s not always an open conversation. Our job is to get that bit right. And our job is to be like that.

“But as a manager also, you want to have constant communication in that players feel that they can speak to you because you might find something that you didn’t know.

‘A DIFFERENT ANIMAL’

“England’s a bit of a different animal because you only turn up every now and again.

“At Chelsea, sometimes you’re playing at the weekend and through the week, and you’re training every day and the conversations are there throughout the year much more.” One chat with a great former Chelsea manager sticks in Lampard’s mind.

He added: “I remember once having a conversation with  Carlo Ancelotti about my position at Chelsea when he played a diamond formation.

“It didn’t feel really fluid, not just for me, but for the team.

“That was one of the beauties of Carlo, he would be very open with that chat and I’m not saying he changed his mind, but he was taking on information and then adapting around it.

“That’s why he’s one of the greatest managers, that’s his style — I think those things should be authentic.

“If you want to do your thing and you stick to your guns, you may  succeed or you may fail, that’s what you do. That’s one person’s approach.

“I am more open with my players to try to speak to them, because I want to get better. So every conversation I have with a player may help me, whether I agree with it or not.”

“In the end, the decision is mine — and then hopefully it works.”

We now have an estimated price tag for California’s special election and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s presidential rollout: $282.6 million.

The Nov. 4 vote involves Proposition 50, which would gerrymander the state to boost Democratic chances of winning as many as five added House seats in the 2026 midterm election. The intent is to partially compensate for Republican gerrymanders in Texas and other states.

The ballot measure has already done wonders to boost Newsom’s early standing in the 2028 presidential contest — emphasis on the word early. After alienating many in his party by playing footsie with the likes of Steve Bannon and the late Charlie Kirk, Newsom has set hearts aflutter among those yearning for Democrats to “fight back against Trump,” to cite what has become the party’s chief animating principle and cri de cœur.

One could ask whether the not-insignificant cost of the special election is the best use of taxpayer dollars, or if the sum would be better spent, as veteran GOP strategist Ken Khachigian suggested in a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece, “on firefighters, police officers, schoolteachers and road repairs.”

Newsom, in full barricade-manning mode, has said protecting our precious democracy is “priceless.”

The chairman of California’s Democratic Party, Rusty Hicks, placed a more concrete price tag on the virtues of Proposition 50, suggesting to the Bay Area News Group that money spent on the special election would be offset — and then some — by the billions California would otherwise lose under President Trump’s hostile regime.

There is, however, an added, if intangible, cost to Proposition 50: Effectively disenfranchising millions of conservative and Republican-leaning Californians, who already feel as though they’re ignored and politically impotent.

Under the Democratic gerrymander, the already-meager Republican House contingent — nine of 52 California House members — could be cut practically in half. Starting in January 2027, the state’s entire Republican delegation could fit in a Jeep Wagoneer, with plenty of room to spare.

This in a state where Trump received over 6 million votes in 2024.

The cost of California’s special election is estimated at $282.6 million. The campaign is effectively a roll out for a Newsom presidential bid.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

The would-be autocrat issuing diktats from the Oval Office may be odious to many. But making people feel as though their vote is irrelevant, their voice is muzzled and they have no stake in our political system because elections are essentially meaningless — at least as far as which party prevails — is not a recipe for a contented and engaged citizenry, or a healthy democracy.

We already have a chief executive who has repeatedly demonstrated that he sees himself as the president of red America, of those who support him unequivocally, with everyone else regarded as evil or subversive. We’ve seen how well that’s worked out.

Is the solution electing a governor for blue California, who — if not openly scorning the state’s millions of Republicans — is willing to render them politically powerless?

Proponents of Proposition 50 say the measure is needed to offset Republican gerrymanders in Texas and other states.

(Hon Wing Chiu/For The Times)

All seven of the major Democrats running to succeed Newsom support Proposition 50. (The two leading Republican — and underdog — candidates, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton, are opposed, which is no surprise.)

Your friendly columnist put the question to those seven Democrats. What do they say to Republican voters who already feel disregarded and politically unrepresented? As governor, is there a place for them in your vision of California?

Most, as you’d expect, vowed to be a governor for all: Red, blue, independent, libertarian, vegetarian.

Former Rep. Katie Porter noted she served a purple Orange County district and won support from voters of all stripes “because they knew I wouldn’t hesitate to stand up for anyone — no matter to what party they belong — who makes life harder for California families.” She said in a text message she’d bring “that same tenacity, grit and courage” to Sacramento.

Toni Atkins, a former Assembly speaker and state Senate leader, texted that she’s “made it a priority to listen to every Californian — Democrat, Republican, and Independent.” Assailing Republicans in Congress, she described Proposition 50 as “a way to fight back now” while eventually reverting to the independent redistricting commission that drew up the current congressional lines.

Xavier Becerra, the state’s former attorney general and a member of Joe Biden’s cabinet, said he would work to see that all Californians, regardless of party, benefit from his leadership on healthcare, housing and making the state more affordable. Doing that, he texted, requires fighting Trump and “Republican extremists” seeking to rig the midterm elections.

Betty Yee, the former state controller, just finished a campaign swing through rural California, where, she said, voters asked similar questions along the lines of what about us? Those vast reaches beyond the state’s blue coastal enclaves have long been a hotbed of resentment toward California’s ruling Democratic establishment.

Yee said she urged voters there to “look at your representation now.” The Republican-run Congress, she noted, has approved budget cuts that threaten to shut down rural hospitals and gut badly needed social safety-net programs. “How is that representing your interest?” she asked.

Tony Thurmond, the state schools superintendent, said much the same.

“One of the reasons that I support this measure is because California Republicans in Congress who voted for the ‘big, beautiful bill’ voted for a bill that they knew was going to throw millions of people off of health insurance,” Thurmond said. “And that’s troubling, and I actually think that this is a way to counter that action and to make changes in Congress.”

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and businessman Stephen Cloobeck ignored the question about Republican sentiments and assailed Trump.

Villaraigosa called Proposition 50 “a temporary … direct response to MAGA’s election rigging efforts in Texas.” Cloobeck texted, “This is not the way it should be, but democracy and California are under attack, and there is no way in hell I’m not going to FIGHT.”

There’s a certain presumption and paternalism to the notion that California Democrats know what’s best for California Republicans.

But as Thurmond noted, “They have a right to vote it down. We’re putting it in front of the voters and giving them a chance to exercise their viewpoints, democratically.”

Every Californian who casts a ballot can decide what best suits them.

As they should.

In recent years, film festivals haven’t felt all that festive. Audiences have dwindled, streaming has upended viewing habits and the pandemic and Hollywood strikes have rattled the industry, leaving even the most glamorous events to fight for their place on the cultural calendar.

Then there’s Telluride. For more than a half-century, the tiny mountain gathering has thrived as a kind of anti-festival: no red carpets, no prizes, no tuxedos, just movies. Perched 8,750 feet up in a box canyon in the Colorado Rockies, it’s reachable only by twisting roads or a white-knuckle drop into one of the nation’s highest airports. Festival passes are pricey and limited in number, which makes Telluride feel at once intimate and exclusive. With its mix of industry insiders and devoted film lovers, that isolation and tight-knit atmosphere have become part of Telluride’s mystique, and the promise of early Oscar buzz keeps filmmakers, stars and cinephiles making the pilgrimage. Since 2009, only five best picture winners have skipped Telluride on their way to the top prize.

“It’s so hard to get to Telluride — you don’t end up here by accident,” festival director Julie Huntsinger says by phone. “We’ve always felt it’s incumbent on us to show either brand-new things or extraordinary things that make your time worth it. You know how cats will bring you a mouse? I always feel like I’m bringing you a mouse or a bird, and I just hope you’ll like it.”

Rolling out over Labor Day weekend, the 52nd Telluride Film Festival will supply a slate of fresh offerings, including a handful of world premieres. Scott Cooper’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” drops Jeremy Allen White into the boots of the Boss, tracing the creation of his stark 1982 album, “Nebraska.” Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet” unites Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in a haunting portrait of grief. Edward Berger’s “Ballad of a Small Player” finds Colin Farrell wandering Macau as a gambler chasing luck and redemption. And Daniel Roher’s “Tuner” gives Dustin Hoffman a rare return to the screen in a crime thriller about a piano tuner who discovers his ear is just as effective on safes as on Steinways.

Also in the mix are a number of films coming from Cannes and Venice: Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind” and Richard Linklater with a double bill, “Blue Moon” and “Nouvelle Vague,” proof that Telluride remains a haven for auteurs.

At last year’s Telluride, politics dominated the conversation on- and off-screen. Hot-button issues, from abortion access to climate change to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ran through the program, while guests such as Hillary Clinton, James Carville and special prosecutor Jack Smith joined the usual roster of actors and filmmakers. Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice,” a searing portrait of Donald Trump’s early years, was one of the buzziest titles.

This year the lineup is broader, though politics still runs through it. Ivy Meeropol’s “Ask E. Jean” follows writer E. Jean Carroll through her legal battles with Trump, while Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent” uses a 1970s-set thriller to revisit Brazil’s military dictatorship, with Wagner Moura (“Narcos”) as a professor on the run. “This year is pretty political too,” Huntsinger insists. “There are a couple of films that, if you’re paying attention, have important things to say. I just hope everybody feels a little braver after a lot of the things we show.”

German-born director Edward Berger, who brought his papal thriller “Conclave” to last year’s edition, returns with a strikingly different film in “Ballad of a Small Player.”

“I would defy anyone to stack up his films and say they’re by the same filmmaker,” Huntsinger says. “This is a beautiful, very dreamlike, nonlinear exercise in spirituality and introspection. ‘Conclave’ felt disciplined — not that this film is undisciplined but it exists on a totally different plane.”

Zhao, who won the directing Oscar for 2020’s “Nomadland,” has adapted “Hamnet” from Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed novel about the death of Shakespeare’s only son in what Huntsinger describes as one of the festival’s most emotionally powerful selections.

“Chloé is a person of immense depth,” Huntsinger says. “She has such a deep feel for human beings. This is a sad, mournful but beautiful meditation on loss. People should be prepared to cathartically cry. There isn’t a false note in it.”

Another festival favorite, Lanthimos makes his third trip to Telluride with “Bugonia,” a darkly comic sci-fi satire that reunites him with Emma Stone following their earlier collaborations on “The Favourite” and “Poor Things.” A remake of the 2003 Korean cult film “Save the Green Planet!,” it follows a conspiracy-minded beekeeper (Jesse Plemons) who kidnaps a powerful pharma executive (Stone) he believes is an alien bent on destroying Earth.

“Be prepared to get your a— kicked,” Huntsinger says. “Emma is outstanding, and we should never take her for granted, but Jesse Plemons steals the show. He next-levels it in this one.”

Baumbach also marks his return to Telluride with the dramedy “Jay Kelly,” which centers on an actor (George Clooney) and his longtime manager (Adam Sandler) as they journey across Europe, looking back on the choices and relationships that have shaped their lives. Huntsinger likens the film to a cinematic negroni: “It’s substantial but also fun, with an almost summery feel. It’s about where you’re headed after a certain stage in life, told without heavy-handedness.”

The filmmaker and screenwriter, who previously brought “Margot at the Wedding,” “Frances Ha” and “Marriage Story” to the festival, will be honored this year with a Silver Medallion. He shares the award with Iranian director Jafar Panahi, whose drama “It Was Just an Accident” won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and Ethan Hawke, represented in the lineup with Linklater’s “Blue Moon” and his own documentary about country singer Merle Haggard, “Highway 99: A Double Album.”

Few films in the lineup will be more closely watched than Cooper’s Springsteen biopic, with Emmy-winning “The Bear” star White channeling the Boss during the making of one of his most uncompromising albums. “Jeremy delivers in the same way that Timothée Chalamet did in [the Bob Dylan biopic] ‘A Complete Unknown,’ where you just think, Jesus, what can’t this kid do?” Huntsinger says. “Scott’s a great filmmaker, and the movie delivers on its promise.”

The music thread continues with Morgan Neville’s documentary “Man on the Run,” drawn from never-before-seen home movies Paul McCartney shot in the early 1970s, not long after the Beatles’ split. The footage shows McCartney retreating to Scotland with his family and offers what Huntsinger describes as a revelatory glimpse at a less-mythologized moment. “You also understand there wasn’t a villain in the Beatles breakup,” Huntsinger says. “It’s an expansion on history that’s really needed.”

Elsewhere in the documentary lineup, Oscar-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras returns with “Cover-Up” (co-directed by Mark Obenhaus), an exploration of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s career that builds on her politically charged films like “Citizenfour” and “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.”

For all its flannel-and-jeans ethos, Telluride isn’t immune to the economics of 2025. Lodging and travel costs have soared, amplifying concerns that the showcase has become a festival largely for the well-off. Huntsinger concedes the expense but points out pass prices haven’t budged in more than 15 years as she works to keep it accessible.

“I was concerned for a while because our audience was aging, but we’ve really worked on making sure that younger people and people on fixed incomes can come,” she says. “I can see the difference — it’s not just people of means. And I promise you, I’ll keep fighting for that. I hope the lodging people will realize they got a little out of hand and start lowering prices too.”

For all the turbulence and doomsaying that has rattled Hollywood in recent years, Telluride has managed to hold fast to its identity.

“The devotion people have to this weekend makes me think there’s hope,” Huntsinger says. “They’re not coming here for anything but film-loving. To hear people say, ‘I would not miss this for the world’ makes me really proud and hopeful. After everything we’ve all been through, I think we still have reason to keep doing this crazy little picnic.”

Reporting from Sacramento — The job of state treasurer today involves managing billions of dollars, overseeing complex borrowing and investment decisions and working to restore California’s reputation on Wall Street.

It follows that candidates face particular scrutiny over their own finances, and the two leading candidates have each provided plenty of fodder for the opposition.

Incumbent Treasurer Bill Lockyer, a Democrat, has spent campaign funds on a variety of items related loosely if at all to his reelection bid. His expenditures include $1.2 million to help his wife win election as a county supervisor in the Bay Area, $16,000 in babysitting bills and a weekend trip with his family to the resort at Disneyland.

His GOP challenger, state Sen. Mimi Walters of Laguna Niguel, has voted on numerous bills that could affect her husband’s business interests. David Walters is the president and largest shareholder of a medical services firm whose subsidiary was paid more than $34 million in the last four fiscal years by the state’s prison system.

The subsidiary, Drug Consultants Inc., provides nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare workers for California’s overcrowded prisons. Federal courts seized control of prison healthcare several years ago because judges said unwarranted inmate deaths were civil rights violations. Outside firms such as Walters’ have been hired to provide medical staff until the corrections department can ramp up its own operations.

Mimi Walters declined to speak with The Times but said in a radio appearance this month that “whenever there has been any sort of slightest conflict, I’ve always recused myself.” Her campaign strategist, Dave Gilliard, said Walters has consulted with legislative lawyers about what bills she should abstain from voting on and has followed their advice.

Gilliard could not identify any bills on which Walters abstained because of a conflict.

This year, she voted against an $811-million cut in the prison healthcare budget, the largest cutback in a package of spending reductions that lawmakers approved through AB2 x8. Gilliard said Walters’ vote reflected her concern that reducing prison spending would result in a court-ordered early release of criminals.

As an assemblywoman and then as a state senator, Walters has also voted against legislation requiring more disclosure of state contracts (AB 2603 in 2008 and AB 983 in 2007) and against giving contract bid preferences to small businesses and those that hire California workers (SB 1108 and SB 967 in 2010). None of the bills became law.

“She’s a pro-business, conservative Republican,” Gilliard said, adding that the legislation would have imposed more costly regulations on state businesses. “You’re going to see very consistently: Anything that increases the cost of doing business in the state, she votes against.”

The chairman of the Senate Public Safety Committee, Democrat Mark Leno of San Francisco, said that even if legislative attorneys said Walters did not violate state ethics laws, “it’s just hypocritical for someone who is so outspokenly opposed to government to have her family at the public trough.”

Her tough-on-crime stances, he said, “would only benefit her husband’s business: more prisoners, more potential contracts.”

If elected treasurer, Walters, who chairs the Senate Ethics Committee, would face other financial entanglements. Her husband also owns a boutique investment bank, Monarch Bay Associates, and financial disclosure forms show that her holdings include between $100,000 and $1 million in Goldman Sachs, the powerful and controversial Wall Street firm that has business with the state treasurer’s office.

Gilliard said Walters would consult with attorneys in the treasurer’s office to avoid conflicts.

The treasurer is California’s chief banker, serving on the board of the state’s two giant pension funds and managing billions in taxpayer assets. The treasurer also oversees the state’s debt and finances public works projects.

Lockyer cites among his accomplishments a campaign to get Wall Street rating agencies to abandon practices that cost state taxpayers millions in extra interest payments, opening California’s bond market to small investors and maximizing public works spending to create jobs.

He has shown little fear that Walters or any other candidate will muster enough support to overcome Democrats’ double-digit voter registration advantage in California. As of mid-October, Walters’ campaign treasury was more than $14,000 in debt; Lockyer was sitting atop nearly $5 million.

That cushion has allowed him to spend on other things, such as the effort to elect his wife, Nadia Lockyer, to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. “I think Nadia Lockyer is particularly qualified to be a county supervisor and will do an excellent job,” he said.

With both parents on the campaign trail, Lockyer has also used his campaign funds to pay for at least $16,000 in babysitting services, according to the campaign’s filings with the state. Although campaign funds can be used only for governmental or political purposes, the state’s ethics watchdog agency has advised candidates in the past that babysitting can qualify under limited circumstances.

In 2009, Lockyer spent the weekend after Thanksgiving at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim with his wife and son. He billed the campaign $884.28, citing a meeting with Frank Barbaro, the chairman of the Orange County Democratic Party.

Lockyer said he wanted to stay in a hotel “in the heart of Orange County” and did not recall if he and his family went to Disneyland that weekend. The campaign was billed only for the hotel stay, he said. The following winter, Lockyer used campaign money to buy wedding and holiday gifts for his staff and spent more than $17,000 on two holiday parties.

Lockyer defended the spending: “I am not personally benefiting from my campaign expenditures.”

Gillard, the Walters strategist, said such spending “shows an attitude of entitlement” common among veteran politicians. “It only gets worse the longer they are there,” he said.

Walters has vowed to bring a limited-government approach to the job if elected: pulling back on borrowing she says the state cannot afford, curbing government spending and using the position to argue for lower taxes.

Walters’ lone TV ad pillories Lockyer’s decades-long tenure in office; he is a former state attorney general, assemblyman and leader of the state Senate. “After 37 years in Sacramento … Bill Lockyer is the problem,” the ad says.

Lockyer accused Walters of masking her own role as a legislator in the state’s recent fiscal meltdown. On the June primary ballot, she identified herself as a “businesswoman/senator.” This fall, she has dropped “senator” from her ballot designation.

Lockyer called it “hypocrisy” that she “hides that she’s an elected official.”

Also running for the post are Charles Crittenden of the Green Party, Robert Lauten of the American Independent Party, Debra Reiger of the Peace and Freedom Party and Edward Teyssier of the Libertarian Party.

[email protected]

WASHINGTON — Democrats may not agree on a solution to the country’s broken immigration system — but President Trump’s crackdown in Los Angeles has finally given them a line of attack.

‘Better terrain’

A flicker of hope has emerged from a brutal polling environment for the party suggesting the public is torn over Trump’s blunt tactics in the immigration raids. The recent set of numbers have been an outlier on an issue that has otherwise been Trump’s strongest since taking office.

“Absolutely, sentiment is shifting,” said G. Cristina Mora, a sociology professor at UC Berkeley. “You’re seeing more dissatisfaction and less agreeance with the president’s strategy on immigration enforcement.”

Polls released over the course of the last month found that, while a plurality of Americans still support Trump’s overall approach to immigration, a majority believe that ICE has gone too far in its deportation efforts. And a new survey from Gallup found record public support for immigration, with public concern over crossings and support for mass deportations down significantly from a year ago.

Top Democratic operatives are testing new talking points, hoping to press their potential advantage.

“The only place in the world that Donald Trump has put boots on the ground and deployed troops is in America,” Rahm Emanuel, a veteran party insider who served under President Obama before becoming mayor of Chicago, said this week. “In L.A., they get troops on the ground. That’s the Trump Doctrine. The only place he’s actually put boots on the ground is in an American city.”

In Washington, efforts to corral Democratic lawmakers behind a unified message on immigration have been futile ever since the party split over the Laken Riley Act, one of the first bills passed this term. The law allows ICE to detain undocumented immigrants that have faced charges, been arrested or convicted of nonviolent crimes such as burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.

But last month, when the shock of Trump’s military deployment to Los Angeles was still fresh, every single Democrat in the Senate joined in a call on the White House to withdraw the troops. The letter had no power or influence, and was paid little attention as the nascent crisis unfolded. But it was a small victory for a party that saw a rare glimpse of political unity amid the chaos.

Now, Democrats are hoping in part that Trump becomes a victim of his own success, with focus pulled from a quiet border that has seen record-low crossings since he resumed office.

In the House, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands) is leading an immigration working group, sources said, hoping to foster consensus in the party on how to proceed.

“The issue has gotten a little less hot, because the border is calmed down,” said one senior Democratic congressional aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Now the focus is raids, which is better terrain for us.”

A party split

In May, Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who won a statewide race for his Senate seat in Arizona the same year that Trump handily won the state’s presidential contest, released a vision for immigration policy. His proposal, titled “Securing the Border and Ensuring Economic Prosperity,” received little fanfare. But the plan called for significant border security enhancements as well as an increase in visa and green card opportunities and a pathway to citizenship.

It was a shot at the middle from an ambitious politician scheduled to visit Iowa, a crucial state in the presidential nominating contest, early next month.

Yet it is unclear whether efforts by Gallego, a border state senator, to moderate the party’s messaging on immigration will resonate with its base. Gallego was one of only 12 Democratic senators who voted for the Laken Riley Act.

On the other side of the party, leaders like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, as well as Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, have focused their criticism on Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, with Mamdani calling the agency “fascist” in its tactics.

“Democrats built the deportation machine that Trump has now turbocharged,” said Elliott Young, a history professor at Lewis & Clark College. “The Democrats have an opportunity to stake out a humane and economically sensible position of encouraging immigration and welcoming our future citizens from around the world. The Republicans will always be better at cruelty and xenophobia, so better to leave that to them.”

In her research at UC Berkeley, Mora still sees “very strong support” across party lines for a pathway to citizenship, as well as for the constitutional preservation of birthright citizenship. But she is skeptical of an emerging strategy from a segment of Democrats, like Gallego, to adopt a prevailing Republican narrative of rampant criminal activity among immigrants while still promoting legal protections for the rest.

Having it both ways will be difficult, she said. The Trump administration says that anyone who crossed the border without authorization is a criminal, regardless of their record once they got here.

“The Democratic Party is in this sort of place where, if you look at the Ruben Gallegos and that element, they’re sort of ceding the narrative as they talk about getting rid of the criminals,” Mora said. “Narratives of immigrants and criminality, despite all the data showing otherwise, are so tightly connected.”

“It’s a tricky dance to make,” she added.

An L.A. opportunity

Before Gallego’s visit to Iowa, California Gov. Gavin Newsom visited South Carolina earlier this month, a transparent political stop in another crucial early primary state by a Democratic presidential contender.

For Newsom, the politics of the raids in his home state have been unavoidable from the start. But the governor’s speech in Bennettsville teased a political line of attack that appears to reflect shifting public opinion against ICE tactics.

Linking the raids with Trump’s response to the Los Angeles fires, Newsom noted the president was silent on the six-month anniversary of the devastating event, while that day ordering hundreds of federal troops into MacArthur Park in the heart of the city.

“Kids were taken away and hidden into the buildings, as they paraded around with American flags on horseback in military garb and machine guns — all masked,” Newsom said. “Not one arrest was made.”

“He wanted to make a point,” Newsom added. “Cruelty is the point.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Newsom threatens Texas over power grab. He’s blowing smoke
The deep dive: Trump cuts to California National Weather Service leave ‘critical’ holes: ‘It’s unheard of’
The L.A. Times Special: These California tech hubs are set to dominate the AI economy
More to come,
Michael Wilner
—
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

Love Island 2025 kicks off tonight, with Megan Forte Clarke and Dejon Noel Williams already tipped to win – but a bombshell arrival has already thrown a spanner in the works

Love Island 2025 is set to kick off tonight, and anticipation for this year’s villa hopefuls is already at fever pitch, with Megan Forte Clarke and Dejon Noel Williams tipped as early favourites to secure the much-coveted top spots.

The latest odds from betting gurus at OLBG suggest that Megan and Dejon are leading the pack as favourites for Top Female and Top Male of the season.

But with unexpected arrivals and last-minute line-up alterations, the villa is already brimming with surprises.

Megan Forte Clarke currently leads the board at 7/2, boasting a 22.2% chance of emerging as this year’s queen bee. However, her reign could be brief.

A significant twist has already hit before the first coupling, with 24 year old American Toni Laites unveiled as the season’s first bombshell. Her entrance could potentially shake up the market, reports the Express.

READ MORE: Love Island’s Megan Clarke takes inspiration from Michelle Keegan with nameplate necklaceREAD MORE: Love Island Sophie forced to ‘rebuild’ life after horrific burns affected dating men

Love Island 2025: Top Female Odds

Dejon Noel Williams and Harry Cooksley are now neck and neck for the top male spot, both standing at 4/1 odds. Meanwhile, rugby player Conor Phillips has unexpectedly joined the competition following a dramatic reshuffle.

Love Island 2025: Top Male Odds

Just hours ahead of the season’s launch, ITV confirmed that original contestant Kyle Ashman had been dropped after revelations surfaced about his previous arrest on suspicion of a machete attack.

He has now been replaced by Phillips, whose late entry could upset the balance.

Jake Ashton, Entertainment Betting Editor at OLBG, remarked:

“Every year we see bombshells disrupt the odds, and Toni could do just that. Once she’s in the villa and viewers see her impact, expect her price to shorten quickly.”

The Love Island villa is gearing up for excitement with bombshells already making waves – the betting odds are alive and kicking off.

There’s a wonderfully simple emotional appeal embedded in the opening of “I Don’t Understand You,” a comedy from co-writer-directors Brian Crano and David Joseph Craig. Well-meaning, well-off gay couple Dom and Cole (Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells, respectively) are eager to adopt a baby. In watching them record an appeal video — selling themselves as fit parents to an unknown mother — you want the best for them. It’s a heartrending, nervous-laughter scene: Are they sincere without being desperate? Charming yet not edgy? In between the stops and restarts, they both wittily let off steam about the absurdity of the process.

How hard does it have to be for willing adults in a loving relationship to start a family? That’s where “I Don’t Understand You” devotes its more darkly humorous energies when it sends Dom and Cole to sunny, pastoral Italy for an anniversary trip, dropping them into a series of lethally unfortunate situations that probably only Patricia Highsmith would consider a proper vacation.

Soon after landing in Rome, they’re buoyed by news that a receptive pregnant mother named Candace (Amanda Seyfried via video chat) is touched by their story, their vibe being everything she wants for her baby. It’s a cautious optimism, though, competing with the anxiety Dom and Cole generally feel as gay men on the alert for everyday microaggressions, also as tourists who don’t know the language and urbanites not exactly comfortable navigating another country’s backwaters at night.

That last concern is what kicks off their nightmare, when the couple’s rental car gets stuck on a private road that leads to a remote farmhouse where they have a reservation for an anniversary dinner. A mild panic bubbles up. The gruff, irritable and armed local who shows up only fuels their notion that death is surely around the corner. And it is, just not the way they or we may have imagined when they eventually reach the rustic home of retired restaurateur Francesca (a nonna-authentic Eleonora Romandini) and find a voluble soul who can’t wait to serve her only guests a celebratory candlelit meal.

Subtitles helpfully let us know what the skittish, suspicious Dom and Cole never quite understand about their friendly host. When Francesca’s hulking, inquisitive son Massimo (Morgan Spector) appears, suggestively brandishing a knife, a blunt fiasco of an evening suddenly tips over into a bloody farce of fear-driven misjudgment. Despite the game commitment of everyone on-screen (starting with Kroll and Rannells’ believable portrayal of loving, vulnerable gay marrieds), “I Don’t Understand You” is only sporadically funny.

The writer-directors are themselves a real-life couple who adopted a child, so ostensibly we’re getting an exaggeratedly autobiographical peek into what self-preservation on the cusp of dadhood looks like at its off-the-charts hairiest. And it’s encouraging that the filmmakers opted to turn their experience and its attendant emotions into a silly horror comedy instead of one more earnest social-issue drama. (Amanda Knox is a listed co-producer too, and when the Italian arm of justice gets involved, you’ll understand why.)

Just as its opening triggers hope for its wannabe family men, you want “I Don’t Understand You” to really nail its downward spiral, and yet it’s something of a misfire, albeit a likable one. The tone swerve into body-count humor and the nuts and bolts of violence eventually prove too much for Crano and Craig to effectively mold into a comedy of perception and privilege.