ISNT

When USC and Oregon meet Saturday at the Coliseum, the stakes couldn’t be higher for Trojans coach Lincoln Riley. A win could catapult USC into serious contention for the College Football Playoff. A loss could send its season into a sudden spiral. And looming over it all are questions about the coach’s future — questions that could be answered, at least in part, by the Trojans’ performance this week.

“It’s definitely an important game,” Riley said Tuesday. “There’s no question about it.”

But ask his star quarterback if there’s any extra motivation this week to beat Oregon, and you won’t exactly get the same sentiment.

“Eh, not really,” Jayden Maiava said. “We’re just kind of attacking it the same every single week.”

Or what about the Trojans starting left tackle?

“It’s the exact same [this week],” senior Elijah Paige said. “We treat every opponent the exact same.”

At the start of arguably the most consequential week of their season, the Trojans certainly gave their best efforts not to make a big deal out of the big game with Oregon. Cliches were wielded like shields Tuesday, protecting against the imminent threat of social clips construed as bulletin board material.

But there’s no hiding from the significance of Saturday’s meeting for USC. Not when the messaging all off-season, like the billboards all around town, suggest that “the time is now.”

That’s definitely true right now for the Trojans, who face a gauntlet of a schedule in the coming weeks after Oregon. Three of their next five opponents after Oregon are ranked in the top 13, with two of those games on the road.

“This game should have a lot riding on it,” Riley said. “You kind of look forward and look ahead, it feels like a game that’s going to be relevant for a long time. I think it’s good for college football. It’s good for the West Coast.”

The rivalry between the two teams has grown especially heated in recent years. But on the football field, it hasn’t really been much of a matchup over the past two decades. USC has beat Oregon just twice in their last 10 meetings. And while USC has yet to play in the College Football Playoff, Oregon has already made three appearances and finished once as runner-up.

Oregon coach Dan Lanning has bested Riley in both of their head-to-head meetings, too. But the Ducks have not been at their best so far this season. After barely squeaking by Boise State in the season opener, they were upset on the road by Oklahoma State, which had previously lost 12 in a row.

Plus, they haven’t played at the Coliseum since the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, when they beat USC in L.A. for the Pac-12 title.

“It’s certainly not just another game,” Lanning said of the matchup with USC. “It’s as intense as it gets, when you talk about two teams that are competitive, that want to be really good, that have great talent. It means a ton to the fanbase. It means a lot to our team.”

The same is true at USC, even if no Trojan players are willing to admit it at the moment.

Though Paige did seem to let some enthusiasm slip Tuesday, when asked what it would be like to beat Oregon in his final opportunity to do so.

“It’d be awesome,” Paige said, before snapping back to attention.

“It’s an awesome game,” he continued. “We play a lot of awesome games.”

Injured DL Jahkeem Stewart still ‘touch and go’

Standout sophomore defensive lineman Jahkeem Stewart was dressed and looking ready to return at the start of USC’s Week 2 win over Louisiana. But after being a late scratch in that game, Stewart was ruled out early of USC’s Big Ten opener against Rutgers.

So what exactly changed in between?

Riley assured Tuesday that there was “no setback” with Stewart’s foot injury, which has held him out since the start of the season, but that USC “made the decision to pull him back a little bit” after seeing him warm up during Week 2.

Stewart is “hopefully not too far away,” Riley said. But his status for this Saturday certainly doesn’t sound optimistic.

“He’s continuing to rest, continuing to get healthier,” Riley said. “We do feel like we’re going to have him here at some point. But it’s a little bit kind of touch-and-go as that goes on, trying to manage … the time to rest without being too conservative with it. And so we’re definitely making progress. He’s definitely getting better and better each week.”

Sean McVay and the Rams thought the situation was under control, or at least manageable.

Star edge rusher Myles Garrett first experienced knee discomfort and swelling during training camp, a condition that caused him to sit out the majority of team workouts throughout the weeks leading up to the season opener.

But Garrett failed to record a tackle, and was clearly not himself, in an embarrassing defeat by the San Francisco 49ers on Friday in Australia.

On Monday, Garrett was scheduled to have surgery, and he will sit out at least the next four games on injured reserve.

“Our job is to put our players and our team in positions to have successful outcomes,” McVay said Monday during a videoconference with reporters. “Thought we would take an approach where he’d be feeling good enough to go, contribute positive change and be the player that he’s capable of.

“But that wasn’t the case, and so the next right thing for us is to be able to get this thing fixed.”

Garrett, 30, will miss next Monday’s home game against the New York Giants, road games at Denver and Philadelphia and home game against the Buffalo Bills before he is eligible to return.

McVay did not have a timeline for his return.

“It’s all contingent on how do things go [Monday],” McVay said. “But I think it would be unfair to him, without having the totality of all the information, to put any sort of timeline on it.”

Garrett, a two-time NFL defensive player of the year, played only 40 of 65 snaps against the 49ers. McVay said the decision to pursue surgery was made after consulting with Garrett immediately after the game.

“We thought we were doing the right thing,” McVay said of the Rams’ attempt to manage the situation. “In hindsight, you’ll always be able to learn from it. I’ll never hang onto whether you want to say it was a mistake or just different things to be able to kind of change course.”

With Garrett out, the Rams could use a spark for a defense that gave up three touchdown passes and 174 rushing yards against the 49ers.

Will lineman Aaron Donald, who has returned from a two-year retirement, make his season debut against the Giants?

Aaron Donald practices for the Rams in August.

(Greg Beacham / Associated Press)

“We haven’t decided that yet,” McVay said. “He’s going to continue to work his process and we’ll see what that looks like.”

McVay said Donald’s situation is “totally separate” and “totally independent” of Garrett’s.

“It’s more about Aaron and how he can contribute to the collective,” McVay said. “What does that feel like with how he’s feeling to be able to resume 11-on-11 and being able to play and do the things that he’s capable of.”

In the meantime, the Rams will look to fill the void of Garrett’s absence with Josaiah Stewart, Desjuan Johnson and rookie Wesley Bailey.

• Share via Close extra sharing options

The Rams lose to the San Francisco 49ers 27-7 in the 2026 season opener at Melbourne Cricket Ground in Australia on Friday.

Stewart, a second-year pro from Michigan, made six tackles and had one of the Rams’ two hits on 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy.

“He’ll be asked to step up,” McVay said, “as will everybody in that group.”

McVay speaks often about how adversity during a season is bound to come.

But for the Super Bowl-favorite Rams, it came early.

“I don’t have a crystal ball,” McVay said of anticipating when adversity will come. “I just know this: that these are the opportunities to really separate yourself with how you handle ‘em.”

The 49ers, the Seattle Seahawks and the Arizona Cardinals all won their openers, putting the Rams in last place in the NFC West.

It’s still early, of course, but the road to a spot in Super Bowl LXI at SoFi Stadium suddenly appears more challenging.

“That is over with,” McVay said of the loss to the 49ers. “That’s in our rearview mirror. We’re all eyes moving forward.”

Etc.

Linebacker Omar Speights suffered a hip pointer against the 49ers, McVay said. “We’ll kind of manage him throughout the week, but he’s feeling better than we anticipated,” McVay said. Linebacker Nate Landman sustained shoulder and thumb injuries, but McVay said he is expected to play against the Giants.

WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance rejected the use of the word “war” to describe the U.S. fighting with Iran as he steered clear of predicting that the six-month-old conflict would be over by November’s midterm elections, in which Republicans are trying to hang on to their narrow majorities in Congress.

“I wouldn’t call it a war,” Vance said Thursday after being asked during a White House press briefing about whether the fighting could end before voters cast their ballots in the Nov. 3 congressional elections. “Right now, there is no active shooting.”

Vance’s assertion came even as Iran fired at U.S. Gulf ally Kuwait on Thursday as it continued to retaliate for rounds of U.S. strikes on Iran earlier in the week.

The vice president said the U.S. had a “responsibility” to carry out this week’s strikes because Iran continued to target commercial vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Vance’s attempt to minimize the intensity of the fighting illuminates the difficult task at hand for Trump and his administration as he tries to persuade American voters to keep Republicans in control of Congress, even as the unpopular conflict — one the White House said at its outset would last a matter of weeks — has driven up gas prices and left consumers grappling with higher inflation.

Vance said he didn’t want to set “artificial timelines.”

“But when you ask, ‘When will this end?’ You’re asking me a question like, ‘When will the Iranians stop shooting at ships?’” Vance said. “I think the reality is, I don’t know the answer to that question. You would have to ask the Iranians.”

The administration in July faced scrutiny after it reclassified four fallen soldiers as well as dozens of wounded troops in its Defense Casualty Analysis System, which Pentagon officials have repeatedly pointed to as the definitive source on the numbers of dead and wounded from the conflict. Those killed or wounded in fighting after a brief ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran fell apart were classified in a new category called “Overseas Operations” after initially being tallied in the totals from the war.

White House insists more oil is getting out of Gulf, but prices remain high

Brent crude prices hovered above $95 per barrel Thursday. The international benchmark was around $72 per barrel the day before the conflict began.

Still, Trump and his aides have sought to push that the U.S. Navy is in control of the Strait of Hormuz, where about 20% of the world’s traded oil passed before the war. They insist a near prewar level of Gulf oil is now making its way out of the critical waterway.

Vance at Thursday’s press briefing said the U.S. escorted about 15 million barrels of oil on Wednesday. This was after Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC on Wednesday that 17 million barrels were carried through the strait on Monday with assistance from the U.S. Navy. About 20 million barrels of Gulf oil flowed through the strait prior to the start of the war.

But ship traffic through the strait remains well below prewar levels, according to independent firms that track marine traffic.

There were 102 transits last week and 126 the week before, according to shipping data company Lloyd’s List Intelligence, compared with 130 or more per day before the war.

Over the past 28 days, 5 million barrels a day have exited the strait on average, according to TankerTrackers.com. Other recent estimates have varied from 2 million barrels per day to 6 million barrels per day.

Trump has tried to soothe volatile markets

Over the course of the war, Trump has repeatedly reported progress in negotiations or called off threats of military action at the last moment when global markets have become jittery. And markets have reacted swiftly to his public signals of peace or hints of progress.

“The administration is still jawboning oil markets,” said Rosemary Kelanic, Middle East director at Defense Priorities, of the administration’s claims of dramatically increased flows of oil. “And they appear to be doing it again to keep prices from going too high, so that they can extend the timeline before there’s a worse price spike.”

With Iran’s refusal to back down in the face of the U.S. military campaign, Trump has settled on a dual-prong approach that combines economic pressure with threats of an escalation in force, if necessary.

Trump has consistently emphasized that the campaign launched by the U.S. and Israel has been devastating for Iran’s navy and air force. Iranian officials have said the country has suffered $270 billion in direct and indirect damage. Israeli military strikes in the first weeks of the war wiped out much of the theocratic government’s leadership structure, including its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Still, Iran has found leverage through its own strikes on the strait and Gulf allies of the United States. But the administration has sought to make the case that the waterway will become less important by the day, even as it asserts that more oil is getting through.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a Fox Business interview this week that the Strait of Hormuz will become a “worthless piece of water” within two years as new land pipelines planned for the region bypass the energy chokepoint. Trump himself took to social media on Thursday to highlight a news report about Syria’s effort to transform the port of Baniyas on the Mediterranean coast into a westward route to international markets for Gulf exporters.

Meanwhile, Iran and Oman have recently discussed a phased approach to jointly managing ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump settles into holding pattern before midterms, analysts say

The administration maintains it’s making progress economically choking off Iranian hard-liners, including the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. At the moment, it would be a leap for Trump to agree to any plan that puts Iran in position to claim control of the strait, analysts say.

“I find it hard to believe the president would agree to anything that hands back any modicum of IRGC control over the strait that has been wrested away,” said Richard Goldberg, who served as a senior adviser on Iran policy in Trump’s first administration.

Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Iran does not appear ready to “let Trump out of the box” despite the massive pain being inflicted on its economy.

At the same time, Miller said, Trump seems to have settled into a holding pattern ahead of the midterms — one in which he avoids both a return to the full-throttle bombardment of Iran and making any accommodations to Tehran on the Strait of Hormuz.

“The White House doesn’t want a massive war, and they don’t want to be seen as offering massive concessions,” Miller said. “The tack they are taking avoids both of those things.”

Madhani writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Jonathan J. Cooper and Josh Boak in Washington and David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, contributed to this report.

BOSTON — Climate change has been the backdrop to Charles Hughes’ entire life, from kindergarten lessons about disappearing habitats to wildfire smoke billowing through the air he breathed while growing up in Colorado. But now that he’s a college student in Massachusetts, he said global warming is rarely a top issue.

“Honestly, it doesn’t come up as much,” said Hughes, who chairs the state’s chapter of the College Democrats.

What a difference six years makes.

During President Trump’s first term and especially during the Democratic primaries to determine who would run against him in 2020, Democrats spoke constantly about climate change. They used it to rally young voters such as Hughes, fueling protests and sweeping demands to remake the economy with proposals like the Green New Deal.

But there has been a national shift in the conversation that is sharp enough for some researchers to coin the term “climate hushing” to describe it. The Searchlight Institute, a Democratic think tank, urged the party to stop mentioning climate change because it is not a priority for voters. The Sunrise Movement, a left-wing group that pushed global warming as a top issue for young people, switched its mission last fall to a broader mandate of fighting the Republican president.

The shift was encapsulated by the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts on Tuesday as the incumbent, Ed Markey, 80, fended off a challenge from U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, 47. Markey still talked about sponsoring the Green New Deal, but focused more on other issues to burnish his left-wing bona fides and prove to voters that he is not too old for the job.

It was the latest example of how climate change has been eclipsed by issues such as affordability, U.S. support for Israel and, above all, how to confront Trump.

“Six years ago, Green New Deal was every phrase out of Ed Markey’s mouth every chance he got,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a veteran Democratic strategist in Massachusetts. That wasn’t the case this cycle. “It’s about who’s best to fight. Period, full stop. Everything falls under that.”

‘People are increasingly freaked out about other issues’

Even if the political discussion on climate change has quieted, the planet has not. Scientists say there is an increasing chance that by the end of the year, 2026 could be the hottest year on record, or at least come close. A strengthening El Nino is forecast to be off the charts, spiking global temperatures.

Some advocates expect the issue to return to center stage if Democrats retake the U.S. House in November and climate-sparked disasters dominate the winter.

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, a prominent Democratic voice on climate change, said in an interview that ignoring the issue is a major strategic “blunder.”

“Climate change has moved from the science department into the economics department,” he said. “It’s now battering people’s home insurance, property values, pocketbook concerns. So I think it’s a very powerful argument.”

Trump has falsely claimed climate change is “a hoax,” and his administration has undone policies one by one that would make it less damaging in the future.

The Sunrise Movement, founded in 2017 to mobilize young voters over climate issues, announced in October that it was shifting to a broader fight against “fascism.” The group’s executive director, Aru Shiney-Ajay, said that was a prescient move because of reports that federal agents infiltrated protest meetings during Trump’s immigration raids in Minneapolis.

“We just live in a significantly more authoritarian country. Because of that, a lot of the Democratic primaries are about more existential questions,” Shiney-Ajay, whose network generally backs left-wing Democrats, said in an interview. “It has felt less like people care less about climate and more like people are increasingly freaked out about other issues.”

About 6 in 10 Democrats say climate change is “a very big problem” for the country, according to a Pew Research Center poll from April. That is roughly the same as in 2016. Still, climate has often taken a back seat to other issues in Democratic voters’ priorities, such as inflation, healthcare affordability and the role of money in politics.

Affordability concerns have dominated the political debate this year.

McKenzie Wilson of Blue Rose Research, a Democratic data firm, said voters have called for sweeping changes in response to economic discontent, demonstrating a level of anger not seen in years.

“In that kind of environment it’s hard to think about long-term, existential problems,” Wilson said. “If we don’t talk and focus our attention on the number one thing the electorate wants to talk about, as we saw in 2024, we’re not going to be connecting with the electorate.”

‘Don’t say climate change’

That view was summed up by the Searchlight Institute, a Democratic think tank that last year released a provocative suggestion: “The First Rule About Solving Climate Change: Don’t Say Climate Change.”

It contended that voters saw it as such an intimidating, complex issue that Democrats were more likely to win by focusing on other subjects — thus enabling them to regain power and tackle the crisis that they were not talking about.

Leah Stokes, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara and author of “The Carbon Wave,” a book about Democratic President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda, said it was “galling” when politicians made the issue less of a priority.

“The climate crisis is accelerating and we can’t really not talk about it for like a decade, because the planet will be even more on fire if we do that,” she said.

Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, agreed with those concerns.

“What happens over the course of the next decade will profoundly shape the habitability of the planet for literally thousands of years to come,” he said.

Some are making climate an affordability issue

Climate has come up as part of the national backlash to data centers, but it is only one part of the conversation about the projects’ impact. Many climate advocates are adjusting how they talk about the issue, stressing how green energy can lower prices and ease insurance costs.

“What we’re seeing right now is, whether you’re advocating for healthcare reform or climate action or some niche tech issue, everything is filtered through some cost frame,” said Jared Leopold, a veteran Democratic strategist who has long focused on climate change.

That is how the Green New Deal came up at a recent debate between Markey and Moulton, when a voter asked how each candidate would reduce energy prices. Notably, the questioner asked about increasing nuclear or gas generation, not clean energy, to deal with cost. Markey turned the opportunity into a slam against the president.

“There was a plan in place in order to have a strong, clean affordable energy future for our commonwealth,” Markey said, “and Trump attacked it.”

Tatishe Nteta, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said that is how Markey has used climate change this election — to signal his willingness to fight Trump as well as his alliance with the left flank of the Democratic Party, which has run up a series of primary wins this year. But other issues have become even more useful in doing that.

“The definition in where you’re at in terms of a progressive candidate and a progressive elected official is your viewpoint on Israel,” Nteta said. “You’re not hearing this in most races, that I’m the candidate who’s going to protect and save our planet.”

Massachusetts’ summer has been the hottest that Eileen Cefail can recall in the 30 years she has worked in the Roofers Local 33 office. “The roofers are tough as nails, and they work so hard, and their work is so grueling,” she said. “This heat has been horrendous for them.”

Cefail is backing Markey in the primary, but climate, she said, was not the main reason.

“He’s always been a union guy,” Cefail said. “He’s just for the labor.”

Riccardi, McDermott and Willingham write for the Associated Press. Riccardi reported from Denver and McDermott from Providence, R.I. Associated Press writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.

If you want proof of the widening chasm between the Trump administration and Latinos, look no further than California state Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares and White House spokesperson Lauren Bis’ reaction to the same anti-Latino image.

Posted on the White House’s social media accounts this week, it’s a take on the logo for the beloved 1990s PBS cartoon “The Magic School Bus.” Same cheery font, same yellow bus blasting through the cosmos, same depiction of wacky teacher Ms. Frizzle and her cute chameleon sidekick Liz. But instead of a bunch of happy kids off to another adventure, the passengers are five handcuffed, brown-skinned, mustachioed men looking downward and dejected, all identical save for the colors of their T-shirts.

Bracketing this soulless scene are the words “The Magic Deportation Bus” — get it? Har har! The White House released the illustration to accompany an Aug. 24 Fox News headline gushing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had arrested a “jaw-dropping number” of undocumented immigrants in the D.C. area over the last two weeks.

The post was the latest in a flood of racist, anti-immigrant images that the Trump administration has shared. But this one was so bad that it even offended Martinez Valladares, a Republican whose district stretches from the Grapevine to Victorville.

“Enforcing immigration law and securing the border isn’t anti-Latino. But this image wasn’t necessary or helpful,” she told me. “We can strongly support border security while expecting our government to communicate those policies without reducing a community to a stereotype. Being tough on illegal immigration doesn’t require turning Latinos into a caricature.”

Suzette Martinez Valladares, then a Republican assembly member and now a state senator, is pictured in 2022.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Martinez Valladares isn’t any random Trump supporter. She’s co-chair of the California Hispanic Caucus, which represents the state’s GOP Latino legislators and was founded after a record number of them — nine — were elected in 2024. The group’s creation reflected the tsunami of Latino support for Trump that helped sweep him into the Oval Office for a second round and upended political thinking about America’s largest minority.

Such a critique from a politician of Martinez Valladares’ stature should set off fire alarms in the Oval Office as the midterms loom and the GOP needs Trump’s Latino supporters to hold the party line, right?

Nope!

When I asked the White House whether the “Magic Deportation Bus” was anti-Latino, spokesperson Bis whined in a statement that my query was “more race baiting by the media who are just mad the White House’s social media content is driving conversations with the American people about deporting illegal aliens. Is the L.A. Times really suggesting there has never been a deportation flight of just Guatemalans?”

Who’s doing the race baiting?

Nothing in the gross graphic suggests that Guatemala is the final destination for Migra Ms. Frizzle and her detainees. The men’s appearance is the only indication that they’re Latino — just the type of racial profiling that Trump’s immigration goons swear they don’t engage in, despite ample video and audio evidence to the contrary. While Latinos have long made up the majority of deportees, to portray the bus passengers as interchangeable clones who “look” Latino is as dehumanizing as you can get — but that’s par for MAGA.

Not only that, but the Fox News story that went with the icky illo said that ICE’s D.C. operation nabbed Jamaicans, Hondurans and Salvadorans, in addition to Guatemalans.

Trump and his minions famously never apologize, doubling down on their pendejadas when confronted with facts. Well, if Republicans wants any chance of holding on to Congress in the midterms and winning other key races, they need to beg Latinos for forgiveness, now that Trump has upended the lives of brown-skinned people, immigrants and U.S.-born alike.

A 1949 photo of undocumented immigrants boarding a bus for deportation to Mexico.

(Los Angeles Times)

Nearly half of Latinos voted for Trump two years ago, the best result ever for a Republican presidential candidate. Poll after poll released this year, each more dire for Trump than the last, show that those days are as distant a memory as affordable groceries. His approval ratings — and GOP hopes for the midterms — will continue to wither until he spends more time fixing the stagnant economy, ending the quagmire in Iran and stopping the deportation deluge.

To maintain his grip on power, Trump needs to inspire Latinos to stand by him, vote for his agenda and urge others to follow along. Instead, he faces frustrated supporters like David Hernandez, founder and chair of the Los Angeles County Hispanic Republican Club and host of the club’s weekly talk radio show.

Hernandez said he’s seen the perils of “unchecked” immigration at overcrowded hospitals and clinics. He also feels that in the race for California governor, Republican Steve Hilton’s attacks on Democrat Xavier Becerra’s alleged mishandling of migrant children while Health and Human Services secretary for the Biden administration will stay on the “front burner.”

The “Magic Deportation Bus” does nothing to highlight these issues, Hernandez said, describing it as “an immature cartoon failing to make any valid point.” Worse, the Navy veteran argues, it suggests that immigration agents plan to snatch children from schools.

“There is nothing funny about the issue,” Hernandez added, “that warrants this type of frivolous portrayal.”

I ran Hernandez’s and Martinez Valladares’ thoughts by Bis, noting their GOP bona fides without identifying them by name.

“Take a ride on The Magic School Bus to your home country!” the White House spokesperson began. Only her heart knows whether the line was a callback to the offending social media post or a not-nice suggestion that I self-deport to wherever the hell she thinks I was born (I’m a native Anaheimer, by the way).

Bis went on to repeat her previous line that the Trump administration is just seeking to “innovate” conversations with Americans and that “our efforts to deport criminal illegal aliens are no exception to this.”

Way to listen to the concerns of the front-line soldiers your boss so desperately needs this November, Lauren!

Spending more time crafting weak-salsa anti-Latino jokes than improving the lives of Latinos — that’s the racist swamp the president and his team happily fester in.

But there’s one thing their putrid parody of “The Magic School Bus” got right.

Ms. Frizzle often shrank her steel steed and its occupants to microscopic sizes so they could explore places they’d never seen. That sure sounds like the historic collapse that Trump is experiencing with Latinos, no?

To use Ms. Frizzle’s catchphrase: Bus, do your stuff.