idea

Global affairs journalist Tara Kangarlou notes a growing shift, as some Iranians who initially believed that the US and its allies could bring stability are now rejecting that idea after over a month of attacks.

The recently revised food pyramid may put fruit as a medium priority, but there is nothing the Trump administration likes more than the apple of discord.

Every news cycle, the president seems intent on introducing something new for Americans to argue about: the wisdom (and legality) of war in Iraq; the term “affordability”; the efficacy of mail-in ballots (which the president recently used); the meaning of birthright; the legitimacy of a vice president who has been publicly admonished by two popes for writing a book about his conversion to Catholicism — heck, we’re still arguing about that new food pyramid.

But there is one recent development upon which we really should all agree — erecting a gold statue of President Trump in the middle of his proposed presidential library is a No Good, Very Bad Idea.

On Tuesday, the president’s son Eric posted a first-look video for said library, which will reside on the waterfront in Miami. While questions were raised about the inclusion of the Boeing 747-8 the president controversially accepted as a gift from Qatar and the apparent lack of space in the sky-scraping library for, you know, books, it was the enormous gold statue of Trump towering over the stage in a proposed auditorium that drew the most immediate attention.

That Trump chose to reveal this little (well, actually quite big) beauty mere days after millions of Americans across the country participated in a coordinated No Kings march can be taken as either breathtaking irony or, more probably, a rage-baiting metaphoric middle finger.

As he has been recently wont to do, California Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly responded on his press office X account with photos of gold statuary depicting former chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Mao Zedong, North Korea’s Kim Il-Sung and Turkmenistan’s Saparmurat Niyazov and the observation that “The gold statue in Trump’s new library (of himself) looks awfully familiar to a few others from around the world.”

Trump’s obsession with gold will no doubt obsess future generations of historians, artists, psychoanalysts and Wikipedia editors — the guerrilla art group Secret Handshake on Monday put up a gold toilet statue on the National Mall mocking the president’s plans to renovate the Lincoln bathroom during a time of war and strife, as tribute, according to the statue’s plaque, “to an unwavering visionary who looked down, saw a problem and painted it gold.”

But even allowing for personal taste, a big golden statue of Trump is a terrible idea. For him.

In times of trouble and/or leadership changes, statues are often the first to go — as Trump knows well, since he’s working to replace the Confederate generals displaced after the Black Lives Matter movement and recently erected, near the White House, a replica of the Christopher Columbus statue thrown into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor during 2020 protests.

After hearing the Declaration of Independence read publicly for the first time, members of the Sons of Liberty tore down a statue of King George III from Bowling Green; during the French Revolution, the kings all across Paris came down; ditto Napoleon when he fell out of favor. In Russia, tsarist monuments were replaced by statues of Communist leaders, which in turn were torn down — statues of Stalin also fell in Hungary, Georgia and Albania. More recently, a statue of Saddam Hussein famously met the same fate.

As Robert Frost might have put it: Something there is that doesn’t love a statue of a divisive leader. Especially if it’s gold.

OK, I added that last bit.

There are plenty of famous and popular gold statues — Thailand’s Golden Buddha; the Golden Madonna of Essen in Germany; Jeanne d’Arc in Paris; Prometheus at Rockefeller Center in New York; even Tutankhamun’s death mask and solid gold coffin, which travel the world. But, as perhaps you have noticed, they trend toward the religious, mythic or historic, i.e. dead.

In the lavish memorial erected by his grieving widow, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert is golden, but few world leaders are permanently gilded, and certainly not before their deaths. (London’s golden statue of King Charles II was erected during his lifetime but originally in bronze — the gold was added later. It also depicts Charles in Roman garb, so I suppose the Trump statue could be worse — at least we don’t see his naked knees.)

In the United States, golden statuary is rare and usually metaphoric — the Oregon Pioneer, the Golden Driller, the Spirit of Communication. Gold remains captivating, an aspirational symbol of success (“gold standard”) and wealth (“golden touch”), but it can also bring with it an air of mockery (“golden boy”) and warning. The original golden touch belonged to King Midas, who loved it until he accidentally killed his daughter by turning her into a gold statue.

Displays of it, particularly in architecture or public art, are often perceived as tacky, kitschy or, heaven forbid, nouveau riche. Trump is fine being perceived as all of these things; he has long embraced the gleaming excesses of Versailles — the golden elevator will also be featured in the new proposed library.

His personal taste is his right and is shared by many.

In terms of statuary, however, “golden” is most typically associated with “idol,” figures that are erected specifically to be worshiped — the Golden Calf that made God and Moses so angry comes to mind — and Americans, historically, have not been big fans of idolatry.

Hence the separation of church and state, a three-branch government and a president with a limited term. The early colonists were very much anti-idol worshippers and even modern Catholics, as Vice President Vance surely knows, have long been criticized by their Protestant counterparts for a love of statuary, reliquaries and other iconography that some have argued fall into idolatry.

Trump clearly has no problem with idolatry, as long as he is the idol in question — he has long characterized his supporters as people who will love him no matter what he does. So no one should be surprised that his son would anchor the Trump presidential library with an enormous golden statue of his father — Trump is not a man to be satisfied with bronze or, heaven forbid, a marble bust.

No doubt, any criticism of that statue will be met with derision from Trump supporters. In its many guises, idolatry has survived, despite regular and often cataclysmic proof of its dangers, for centuries and many people will consider a much-larger-than-life golden statue of a president to be perfectly splendid.

But someone might want to mention to the president that flashing a big gold statue of himself while cities are still doing cleanup from enormous No Kings marches might seem funny to some. But to others … well, Versailles was once a dazzling royal residence.

Until it wasn’t.

Lindsey Vonn is less than two months removed from a skiing accident at the Milan-Cortina Olympics that almost resulted in the amputation of her left leg.

She has stopped taking painkillers but is still exhausted.

She is back home in Park City, Utah, but spends nearly all of her time in rehab.

She is 41 and has won four overall World Cup championships, with 84 World Cup wins and three Olympic medals, including gold in the downhill at the 2010 Vancouver Games.

Yet, Vonn would not definitively say that her competitive skiing career is over, during a recent interview with Vanity Fair’s Elise Taylor.

“I don’t like to close the door on anything, because you just never know what’s going to happen,” said Vonn, who appears on the magazine’s cover in a long, black dress with a split that shows her left leg — bandages and all.

“I have no idea what my life will be like in two years or three years or four years. I could have two kids by then. I could have no kids and want to race again. I could live in Europe. I could be doing anything.”

She added: “It’s hard to tell with this injury. It’s so [messed] up.”

Vonn, who returned to racing in late 2024 after nearly six years away from the sport, had two victories and three other podium finishes in her five World Cup races during the most recent season. In December, Vonn announced she would be competing in her “5th and final Olympics!”

“I wanted to win the Olympics, and I wanted to win the downhill title, and I was on track to do both of those things,” Vonn told Vanity Fair.

On Jan. 30, Vonn suffered a complete rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee, with meniscus and bone damage, when she crashed during a downhill race in Crans-Montana, Switzerland.

She decided to compete at the Olympics anyway and had a couple of successful training runs leading up to the Feb. 8 downhill competition.

“I was in the exact mental state that I wanted to be in,” Vonn said. “I was ready to go.”

Unfortunately, her race didn’t last long. Vonn lost control on the first jump, spun sideways in the air, slammed to the ground and needed to be airlifted from the course. Vonn and other skiing experts have said that the ruptured ACL likely had nothing to do with her crash at the Olympics.

Vonn suffered a complex tibia fracture and other major damage. It contributed to a condition called compartment syndrome, which involves excessive pressure building up inside a muscle and possibly can lead to permanent injury or amputation.

Five surgeries later, Vonn is on the road to recovery. She has posted several photos and videos on Instagram as she amps up her fitness routine again. In a March 15 post on X, Vonn wrote that she’s not ready to discuss her skiing future.

“My focus has been on recovering from my injury and getting back to normal life,” she wrote, adding, “I’ll let you know when I decide.”

Vonn did tell Vanity Fair that she’s not crazy about the idea of the catastrophe at the Winter Games being the public’s last impression of her as a skier.

“I don’t want people to hang on this crash and be remembered for that. What I did before the Olympics has never been done before. I was number one in the standings. No one remembers that I was winning.”

Call them the Geek Squad, the Surfer Dudes or the Genius Squad from Redondo Union High.

In an unprecedented achievement, three starters for the Sea Hawks’ 13-2 volleyball team — Tommy Spalding, Vaughan Flaherty and Carter Mirabal — are headed to MIT this fall.

Their final assignment in Advanced Placement Physics 2 should be figuring out the astronomical odds of how three best friends from the same volleyball team could be admitted to one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

“There’s no way,” was the reaction of Mirabal’s father when he heard the news.

“It’s crazy,” coach Kevin Norman said.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple hanging out in a garage. Who knows what inventions, ideas or technological feats will be imagined in gyms or on surfboards as these three Southern California teenagers unleash their brain power and love for having fun on the East Coast.

“Probably twice a week, I’ll call him, ‘Yo, I have this idea,’” Spalding said of his conversations with Mirabal. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, we usually don’t do anything about it. But it’s throwing ideas out there and hopefully one is going to stick.”

One Spalding idea: “When I was driving home from Joshua Tree, I was stuck in traffic. I was like, ‘Dude, what if we made a Google Maps type of app that utilized AI and had a camera in your car that analyzed the road, tells you what lane to be in to go the fastest and also be able to look at the traffic lights and tell you if this left arrow is red, then go straight, turn left at the next street.”

Elon Musk, beware.

MIT-bound Redondo Union volleyball players Tommy Spalding, left, Vaughan Flaherty and Carter Mirabal.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

They’ve formed a band, “Ratiohead,” a parody of the English rock band Radiohead, with lyrics from math. They’re preparing for the battle of the bands. Spalding is the vocalist, Maribal is on keyboard and Flaherty, the 6-foot-5 redhead, plays guitar.

“We’re looking for a drummer,” Spalding said.

Spalding has a 4.65 GPA and 1490 SAT score. Flaherty is at 4.4 and 1560. Mirabal is at 4.4 and 1510. Spalding said his hardest class was AP European history. Mirabal chose honors chemistry. Each received one B in four years of high school. Flaherty has received multiple Bs and said, “I think it goes to show you that you don’t have to be perfect to get into these schools if you have the potential and you’re willing to work hard and be a good fit.”

Flaherty is so witty he might be able to do a comedy routine, with Spalding serving as his wing man.

“Someone might have messed up, but I’m not going to tell them,” Flaherty said of the threesome earning a spot in the MIT class of 2030.

“Maybe it was chemistry,” Spalding quipped.

If they can make a movie, “The Social Network,” about the invention of Facebook. and a TV series, “Big Bang Theory,” about smart geeks, just wait until someone figures out the entertainment value following around this threesome.

Spalding has all the attributes of a future entrepreneur and loves tinkering with cars. He sent a two-minute video to MIT as part of his application process that showed himself and his father, Michael, turning a 2002 yellow school bus into an RV.

Mirabal has his own YouTube channel, “Carter’s Stuff Review.” He wants to be a mechanical engineer and explore the business side. Flaherty would be happy sending rockets and satellites into space while living near the beach.

All three hang out at the beach, either playing volleyball or surfing. Spalding brought his grandfather’s ping-pong table to the volleyball room at school for more fun. Cornhole is another game they play.

None set out at the beginning of high school seeking a path that leads to MIT, which accepts only about five students for every 100 applicants. “We weren’t taking the classes because we want to go to MIT,” Spalding said. “We just enjoy the subjects.”

There are smart genes in their families. Spalding’s parents are both educators, one an AP physics teacher at Peninsula High, the other a middle school vice principal. Mirabal’s father is an accountant. Flaherty’s father owns two Handel’s ice cream stores (everyone wants to hang out with Flaherty on a hot day).

Each has a story to tell about how they learned of being accepted to MIT.

Mirabal was playing volleyball in his backyard on Dec. 15 with teammates. He was going to wait until his friends left to check the email for fear of rejection. Instead, with them huddled around, he opened the email and everyone started screaming, “Yo!”

Spalding was with Mirabal and headed home to share the moment with his parents when he received a text from the MIT volleyball coach walking out the door congratulating him. “Welcome to the MIT family,” it read.

Flaherty had to wait until March 14 — Pi Day — to see if he was going to make it three for three.

He was driving home from Joshua Tree national park with his girlfriend and Tommy’s girlfriend in the car. The traffic was so bad it came to a standstill so he checked his cellphone.

“I opened it up. I saw the confetti but didn’t realize what it meant until I got a couple lines down,” he said. “The first reaction was disbelief because I thought there was no chance after these two got in.”

In fact, Flaherty said the person doing the MIT interview admitted later, “I’m not going to lie. I thought that was the killer for your application.”

They’ll be playing NCAA Division III volleyball. Mirabal and Spalding will be roommates. “Vaughan will room with someone else because he said he’d be too comfortable with us and be a bad roommate,” Spalding said.

So are they really OK leaving Southern California?

“I wouldn’t say OK with it,” Spalding said.

“It is a sacrifice,” Mirabal said.

Just know the beach will always draw them back to sunny Southern California as the three sat in the Redondo Union volleyball locker room wearing shorts, sandals and their MIT shirts.

“As much as we study, I feel at the end of the day we want to have fun,” Spalding said.

They’re not expecting to re-create “Animal House” at MIT, but let’s see what happens when three surfer dudes from the same high school in California show up with open minds and lots of ideas to explore.

I’ve seen enough. It’s time to revise our expectations about the midterms.

For more than a year now, conventional wisdom has been that Democrats would take back the House — but not the Senate — in the November midterms.

That’s because this year’s Senate map would require Democrats to win numerous seats in red states.

In fact, if you had asked me a couple of months ago, I would have told you that, yes, Democrats have a shot at the Senate, but in the same way my teenage son has a shot at someday dating Sydney Sweeney. Which is to say, technically possible but cosmically unlikely.

But recent developments (such as President Trump’s plunging approval ratings on the economy) are encouraging me to revise my thinking.

I’m not alone. Independent journalist Chris Cillizza recently observed that for the first time ever, prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi showed Democrats with a narrow edge.

Now, prediction markets are not scientific. Neither, for that matter, is licking your finger and holding it up to the wind — but both have outperformed political polling at various times in the last couple of years.

The difference is that in prediction markets, people are wagering actual money, which tends to sharpen the mind in ways that answering a pollster’s call during dinner does not.

Of course, you probably haven’t heard much about this revised political outlook. That’s because nobody has any incentive to shout it from the rooftops.

Democrats don’t want to inflate expectations and risk turning a solid win into a perceived disappointment. Republicans, meanwhile, are not eager to advertise that their Senate majority is wobbling like a shopping cart with a bad wheel. And we pundits, chastened by having been burned, are reluctant to get too far out over our skis.

Even Cillizza still leans Republican on balance. But if I had to bet today — and I tend to define bet as “regret later” — I’d put my chips on the Democrats. Not because it’s a sure thing, but because almost every political and economic development seems to be trending in their direction.

History helps. The “out” party in the midterms usually does well. Current events help. Policies, including the war in Iran and rising gas prices, tend to sour voters on whoever’s in charge. And candidate quality helps. Voters do occasionally notice who’s actually on the ballot, and Democrats are serving up a semi-respectable offering.

Let’s pause to appreciate what’s at stake. Control of the Senate isn’t just about who gets the nicer office furniture. It determines judicial confirmations, including the possibility that Trump could fill a fourth Supreme Court vacancy (if one opens up in 2027 or 2028).

Now, it would be irresponsible of me to just drop this idea without delving into some logistical details.

For Democrats to flip the Senate, they need to net four seats. That means defending everything they already have while winning four more. The encouraging news (if you’re rooting for the Democrats) is that there are at least eight plausible opportunities for that to happen.

In North Carolina, incumbent Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, is widely expected to win. In Maine, Republican Sen. Susan Collins once again finds herself in a political knife fight — her natural habitat, though perhaps not her preferred one. She will face Maine’s current governor or a flamboyant and controversial oysterman. I’m not sure who’d be the tougher opponent.

Out in Ohio, former Sen. Sherrod Brown benefits from the rare political skill of being a Democrat who still seems at home in Ohio.

The Democrat running in Alaska is a former member of Congress (and the first Alaska Native elected to Congress). And for the open seat in Iowa, Democrats seem likely to nominate a two-time Paralympic gold medalist who represents the reddest state house seat held by a Democrat.

Then there’s Texas, the perennial Democratic mirage — always shimmering on the horizon. But this year, it might come into clear view. James Talarico has emerged for Democrats, while Republicans are stuck choosing between scandal-plagued Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton and incumbent Sen. John Cornyn — a process that currently resembles a family feud conducted with vicious attack ads.

Meanwhile, in Nebraska and Montana, Democrats aren’t even pretending to compete. Instead, they’re relying on independents who — like Sens. Bernie Sanders and Angus King — would likely caucus with them.

In Nebraska, independent Dan Osborn already proved he can make it close: He lost in 2024 — a bad year to run against a Republican. And in Montana, the sudden announced retirement of Sen. Steve Daines has created an opening that didn’t exist five minutes ago (in political time).

Let’s not get carried away. The idea that Democrats could sweep all these races is still the kind of thing you say after your third drink. But winning half of them? That’s no longer fantasy. That’s … plausible. Maybe even more likely than not.

This isn’t a safe bet. It’s not even a comfortable one. But for the first time, it’s starting to look like smart money isn’t laughing at the idea anymore — it’s quietly sliding chips across the table.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

SACRAMENTO — One unique perk California kids enjoyed for generations was tuition-free college. Now, a candidate for governor promises to bring that back. And bravo for her.

The candidate, former congresswoman Katie Porter of Orange County, even suggests a way to pay for her bold pledge. That’s unusual for a politician. It’s normal to promise the moon without specifying how to get there.

She‘d raise the corporate income tax a notch.

OK, it’s very unlikely to ever happen.

The powerful business lobby would scream, even though California companies would benefit from a more educated workforce.

And California’s public universities would probably cry about their revenue streams having to rely on unpredictable corporate profits rather than the pocketbooks of students’ parents.

But at least there’s a potential governor who’s advocating tuition-free higher education and proclaiming it to be a priority.

Why is this Democrat, a UC Irvine law professor, pushing the issue? Tuition cost doesn’t show up anywhere on voter lists of important concerns. But California’s high cost of living is a gigantic gripe. And “affordability” these days is one of the most overused words in any politician’s vocabulary.

“When we talk about affordability, there’s lots of talk about the problem, but people want to hear what [candidates] would do about it,” Porter told me over coffee last week. One thing she’d do is eliminate much of the tuition at public universities.

Another reason for making college tuition-free again, she said, is that “it was a promise made to the people” by the California Master Plan for Higher Education.

But that was 66 years and nine governors ago. A lot has changed.

Actually, tuition-free public higher education was a California birthright long before Gov. Pat Brown’s master plan.

Policymakers regarded tuition-free college as a sound economic investment. It was in the state’s self-interest to produce highly educated innovators and skilled professionals to grow the economy. The middle class expanded, with people landing good-paying jobs that resulted in higher tax revenue for state coffers.

That didn’t mean college was free — and it wouldn’t be under Porter’s plan. There’s still housing, meals, books and annoying fees.

But Sacramento switched priorities in the 1970s, spending tax money on other things: enhanced welfare, healthcare and specifically K-12 schooling.

Free tuition existed before the creation of Medi-Cal healthcare, which now eats up 20% of the state general fund. It also was prior to Proposition 13 in 1978 that dramatically cut property tax revenue for K-12 schools. The state felt obliged to make up the difference.

Naysayers contend California can’t possibly afford to educate students today without their paying tuition. Nonsense. The state could happily afford it long before we expanded into the world’s fourth largest economy. It’s about priorities.

And today, free tuition could be the PR tonic California needs to brighten its faded image across America. It could attract middle-class families to California and keep those already here from fleeing.

Porter promised a return to yesteryear in a speech that was a far cry from old-time political rhetoric. Addressing more than 2,000 delegates at a recent Democratic state convention in San Francisco, she held up a whiteboard with two words in large letters: “F— Trump.”

And she led the delegates in shouting “F— Trump.”

That was a bit of a turnoff for this old traditionalist, who thinks politics has gotten too coarse and foul-mouthed.

I asked Porter what prompted the profanity and whether she had any regrets.

No, she answered. Candidates were allotted only four minutes to speak and “I was economical with my time.

“I wanted to be very clear in the first 15 seconds that I would fight Trump. I wanted the other three minutes and 45 seconds to be about all other stuff.

“Some people just want to talk about Trump because they don’t want to talk about our own problems.”

Plowing into her speech, she quickly promised to “deliver single-payer healthcare, less-expensive housing, free childcare for all, zero tuition at our UCs and CSUs, and [elimination of] income tax for those earning less than $100,000.

“Those are real affordability solutions.”

Right. But no specifics. How does a state wading in red ink afford all that?

I pressed her when we met later. She didn’t have time for details at the convention, she said. But this is her plan on tuition:

Free tuition only for California residents who are undergrads. And only in their third and fourth years at the University of California and California State University. If they desired free tuition in their first two years, they could attend community college.

Many community colleges already waive course fees for full-time, first-time students. Kids are better educated in their first two years at community college anyway, the UC professor said.

Many liberals complain that free tuition would waste tax money on rich kids who don’t need it.

“I’m a believer in universal programs” that don’t base eligibility on income, Porter said. “Something I learned in Congress. You know what never gets cut? Universal programs such as Social Security and Medicare.”

Anyway, she added, “Kids from really wealthy families go to Harvard or USC or other options.”

Public school tuitions are bargains in California compared to other states and private universities.

At UC, annual tuition is roughly $14,900 and at CSU it’s around $6,500. Without tuition, UC would lose roughly $5.9 billion and CSU $3.7 billion, state budget officials say.

But under Porter’s plan, the universities would lose much less. They’d still collect tuition from freshmen and sophomores and hefty levies from non-Californians. Also student aid could be cut back if kids weren’t saddled with tuition.

Hiking the corporation tax from 8.84% to 9.5% “would generate way more than I need for tuition-free,” Porter said. “I would use any extra money for free childcare.”

Political promises often aren’t worth a nickel. But tenacious and feisty Porter’s free tuition pledge might be worth at least a few bucks. And, maybe some votes.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Veteran Rep. Darrell Issa decides not to seek reelection in new Democratic-leaning district.
Internal combustion: Anxiety grows among California Democrats as gubernatorial candidates rebuff calls to drop out.
The L.A. Times Special: Yes, Republicans have a chance in California governor’s race. Here’s our expert analysis.

Until next week,
George Skelton

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