BOYS CITY SECTION Chatsworth 57, Marquez 37 Fairfax 77, Carson 40 Foshay 76, Northridge Academy 72 Franklin 64, SOCES 41 Granada Hills Kennedy 70, Castaic 59 LA Jordan 53, Granada Hills 46 LA University 60, Wilmington Banning 43 Narbonne 65, Dorsey 48 North Hollywood 66, King/Drew 63 Rise Kohyang 51, Valor Academy 48 San Pedro 67, LA Hamilton 37 South Gate 48, Orthopaedic 47 Torres 65, Santee 58 Venice 63, Los Angeles 31
SOUTHERN SECTION Aliso Niguel 65, Mission Viejo 56 Apple Valley 78, Serrano 64 Arcadia 87, Burbank Burroughs 51 Azusa 65, Nogales 47 Banning 75, Desert Hot Springs 57 Beckman 66, Trabuco Hills 53 Beverly Hills 79, Hawthorne 26 Big Bear 50, Silver Valley 48 Bishop Amat 77, Bosco Tech 37 Bishop Montgomery 73, Verbum Dei 52 Blair 91, Monrovia 62 Bonita 66, Claremont 50 Burbank 84, Hoover 69 California 105, Saddleback 77 Cathedral City 68, Desert Mirage 49 Charter Oak 50, West Covina 39 Citrus Hill 63, Lakeside 44 Crespi 85, Alemany 46 CSDR 66, Anza Hamilton 27 Desert Chapel 60, Public Safety Academy 36 Downey 60, Norwalk 36 Duarte 64, Garey 30 Eastvale Roosevelt 72, Riverside King 60 Edgewood 66, Ganesha 20 Foothill Tech 50, Highland 40 Fountain Valley 51, Newport Harbor 49 Glendora 65, Diamond Bar 60 Harvard-Westlake 84, Chaminade 51 HMSA 67, Ambassador 58 Holy Martyrs Armenian 59, Le Lycée 55 Inglewood 130, Compton Centennial 45 Keppel 57, Montebello 22 La Canada 45, Temple City 44 La Puente 57, Bassett 36 La Salle 58, Salesian 41 La Serna 76, El Rancho 37 Leuzinger 73, Lawndale 51 Loma Linda Academy 61, Mesa Grande Academy 31 Los Alamitos 57, Huntington Beach 47 Mayfair 63, Gahr 50 Millikan 89, Lakewood 31 Mountain View 64, Pasadena Marshall 58 Newport Beach Pacifica Christian 71, Santa Monica Pacifica Christian 41 Norte Vista 102, Patriot 56 Orange Vista 50, Riverside Poly 48 Oxnard Pacifica 76, Buena 69 Paloma Valley 70, Heritage 48 Paramount 71, Firebaugh 69 Perris 80, Arlington 77 Ramona 92, La Sierra 36 Rancho Verde 81, Liberty 45 Rio Mesa 63, Ventura 57 Rosemead 49, El Monte 28 Rowland 41, Northview 28 Royal 60, Grace 47 Rubidoux 56, Jurupa Valley 42 Samueli Academy 58, Avalon 36 San Bernardino 60, Indian Springs 57 San Marino 67, South Pasadena 55 Santa Barbara 77, Oxnard 52 Santa Monica 68, Culver City 46 Schurr 57, San Gabriel 45 Segerstrom 43, Orange 21 Sierra Canyon 50, St. Francis 47 Sierra Vista 72, Baldwin Park 42 St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy 78, St. Paul 61 Temecula Valley 81, Capistrano Valley Christian 65 Tesoro 78, Capistrano Valley 39 Valley View 59, Riverside North 52 Walnut 66, Ayala 58 Warren 89, Lynwood 59 Workman 62, Pomona 26
GIRLS CITY SECTION Bernstein 41, Huntington Park 16 Chatsworth 70, Marquez 24 Northridge Academy 46, Bell 38 RFK Community 39, LA Marshall 28 San Fernando 46, Sun Valley Magnet 15 Van Nuys 41, Vaughn 17
SOUTHERN SECTION Apple Valley 40, Serrano 35 Baldwin Park 40, Sierra Vista 39 Buena Park 75, Segerstrom 50 Burbank 65, Hoover 9 Burbank Burroughs 62, Arcadia 45 Carpinteria 51, Channel Islands 34 Claremont 53, Bonita 47 Costa Mesa 41, Garden Grove 38 Crescenta Valley 74, Muir 19 CSDR 65, Anza Hamilton 29 Desert Chapel 40, Public Safety Academy 4 Desert Hot Springs 42, Banning 35 Duarte 56, Garey 24 Edgewood 60, Ganesha 23 Excelsior Charter 50, AAE 46 Fairmont Prep 47, Corona Centennial 45 Flintridge Prep 70, Chadwick 12 Fullerton 44, La Palma Kennedy 41 Gabrielino 57, South El Monte 27 Geffen Academy 33, Lennox Academy 6 Glendale 58, Pasadena 31 Glendora 56, Diamond Bar 26 Godinez 67, Santa Ana Calvary Chapel 29 Hacienda Heights Wilson 75, Covina 32 Heritage 60, Valley View 29 Hesperia 47, Ridegcrest Burroughs 36 Hillcrest 54, Perris 16 Holy Martyrs Armenian 56, Buckley 16 Inglewood 69, Compton Centennial 42 Jurupa Valley 57, Rubidoux 12 Keppel 79, Montebello 30 La Canada 66, Temple City 30 La Puente 30, Bassett 20 La Quinta 47, Palm Springs 26 La Serna 60, El Rancho 39 Leuzinger 65, Lawndale 50 Liberty 55, Riverside North 46 Loma Linda Academy 49, Arrowhead Christian 31 Long Beach Wilson 37, Long Beach Poly 27 Mayfair 76, Firebaugh 9 Miller 50, Highland Entrepreneur 0 Monrovia 43, Blair 27 Moreno Valley 81, Hemet 32 Nogales 49, Azusa 9 Norwalk 45, Dominguez 36 Oak Hills 81, Sultana 11 Pasadena Marshall 54, Mountain View 16 Patriot 59, Norte Vista 20 Rancho Christian 112, Canyon Springs 24 Rancho Verde 53, Paloma Valley 48 Ramona 61, La Sierra 21 Riverside Poly 60, Orange Vista 23 River Springs Magnolia Academy 38, Temecula River Springs 25 Rowland 45, Northview 38 San Bernardino 47, Indian Springs 33 Santa Fe 46, Whittier 35 Santa Monica 42, Culver City 37 Santa Monica Pacifica Christian 44, Burbank Providende 35 Santa Paula 64, Fillmore 19 Schurr 46, San Gabriel 21 Shalhevet 68, Oakwood 64 Silver Valley 60, Big Bear 13 South Pasadena 55, San Marino 32 St. Monica Academy 60, Palmdale Aerospace Academy 29 Twentynine Palms 51, Indio 24 Vista del Lago 23, Arlington 21 Walnut 58, Ayala 23 Warren 56, Bellflower 17 West Covina 41, Charter Oak 19 Yucca Valley 56, Coachella Valley 51
INTERSECTIONAL Castaic 49, Lakeview Charter 18 Simi Valley 47, SOCES 36 Vistamar 48, WISH Academy 21
Not to offend Larry David by saying it as late as Jan. 7, but: Happy New Year!
The turning of the calendar also signals that Phase I of awards season is coming to a close. With the Golden Globes and a big weekend of parties on the horizon, I’m proud to share our last issue — and my last letter from the editor — until after the Oscar nominations.
I’ll be back in February to unveil our three issues in Phase II. And be sure to keep an eye out Friday for Glenn Whipp’s newsletter, which will have more on our Jan. 8 cover subject, George Clooney.
Digital cover story: ‘Bugonia’
(JSquared Photography / For The Times)
Fans of Yorgos Lanthimos’ misanthropic comedies will forgive the Michael Haneke pun in my coverline for Michael Ordoña’s story on “Bugonia,” starring Emma Stone as a healthcare CEO and Jesse Plemons as the conspiracy theorist who believes she’s an alien invader. And not simply because Haneke’s own brand of bleak absurdism seems to have rubbed off on Lanthimos. Funny games — well, ‘silly games’ — are at the core of Lanthimos’ distinct creative process.
“It makes it light,” the filmmaker explained. “You don’t take yourself too seriously. You don’t take the material seriously. You’re gargling and doing lines, whatever. It’s a way of the actors getting the dialogue in them in an unconscious way, not fixed with a kind of intellectual baggage, so it’s freer and it has more possibilities. And they feel comfortable with each other.”
Small roles, big performances
(Los Angeles Times photo illustration; photos by Dania Maxwell / For The Times; Warner Bros. Pictures; Tatum Mangus)
Envelope copy chief Blake Hennon sent up a cheer when Lisa Rosen’s recurring spotlight on the brilliant-but-unheralded turns that we love in movies came across his desk, and rightly so. In a flash, a film can make an indelible impression, and it’s often thanks to those who fall outside the usual pundit predictions.
This year’s participants include real-life siblings Jacobi and Noah Jupe (“Hamnet”), Paul Thomas Anderson stalwart April Grace (“One Battle After Another”) and one-scene wonder Hadley Robinson (“The History of Sound”).
The shot of the season
Thanks to contributor Daron James, the back page of every Envelope features an unforgettable frame from a film or TV series, accompanied by an explanation from the artists behind it. And while all are striking, I’m glad to say we’re ending Phase I on my favorite.
Perhaps it’s that “Breathless” was one of the first movies that made me fall in love with movies. Perhaps it’s Richard Linklater’s courageous decision to have his protagonist wear dark sunglasses throughout the movie. Perhaps it’s the charm of actors Guillaume Marbeck and Zoey Deutch. It’s probably all of the above. But whatever the reason, the final shot of “Nouvelle Vague” is, for my money, the best single shot I saw in 2025.
WASHINGTON — Five years ago outside the White House, outgoing President Trump told a crowd of supporters to head to the Capitol — “and I’ll be there with you” — in protest as Congress was affirming the 2020 election victory for Democrat Joe Biden.
A short time later, the world watched as the seat of U.S. power descended into chaos, and democracy hung in the balance.
On the fifth anniversary of Jan. 6, 2021, there is no official event to memorialize what happened that day, when the mob made its way down Pennsylvania Avenue, battled police at the Capitol barricades and stormed inside, as lawmakers fled. The political parties refuse to agree to a shared history of the events, which were broadcast around the globe. And the official plaque honoring the police who defended the Capitol has never been hung.
Instead, the day displayed the divisions that still define Washington, and the country, and the White House itself issued a glossy new report with its revised history of what happened
Trump, during a lengthy morning speech to House Republicans convening away from the Capitol at the rebranded Kennedy Center now carrying his own name, shifted blame for Jan. 6 onto the rioters themselves.
The president said he had intended only for his supporters to go “peacefully and patriotically” to confront Congress as it certified Biden’s win. He blamed the media for focusing on other parts of his speech that day.
At the same time, Democrats held their own morning meeting at the Capitol, reconvening members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack for a panel discussion. Recalling the history of the day is important, they said, in order to prevent what Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., warned was the GOP’s “Orwellian project of forgetting.”
And the former leader of the militant Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, summoned people for a midday march and they began retracing the rioters’ steps from the White House to the Capitol, this time to honor Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt and others who died in the Jan. 6 siege and its aftermath. About 100 people gathered, including Babbitt’s mother.
Tarrio is among those putting pressure on the Trump administration to seek retribution against those who prosecuted the Jan. 6 rioters, and the White House in its new report highlighted the work the president has done to free those charged and turned the blame on Democrats for certifying Biden’s election victory.
“They should be fired and prosecuted,” Tarrio told the rally crowd Tuesday.
He was sentenced to 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy for orchestrating the Jan. 6 attack, and he is among more than 1,500 defendants who saw their charges dropped when Trump issued a sweeping pardon on his return to the White House last year.
Echoes of 5 years ago
This milestone anniversary carried echoes of the differences that erupted that day.
But it unfolds while attention is focused elsewhere, particularly after the U.S. military’s stunning capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and Trump’s plans to take over the country and prop up its vast oil industry, a striking new era of American expansionism.
“These people in the administration, they want to lecture the world about democracy when they’re undermining the rule of law at home, as we all will be powerfully reminded,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said on the eve of the anniversary.
House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, responding to requests for comment about the delay in hanging the plaque honoring the police at the Capitol, as required by law, said in a statement that the statute “is not implementable,” and proposed alternatives “also do not comply with the statute.”
Democrats revive an old committee, Republicans lead a new one
At the morning hearing at the Capitol, lawmakers heard from a number of witnesses and others — including former U.S. Capitol Police officer Winston Pingeon, who said he thought he was going to die that day and if it hadn’t been for Jan. 6, he would still be on the force, as well as a Pamela Hemphill, a rioter who refused Trump’s pardon, and silenced the room as she blamed the president for the violence and apologized to the officer, stifling tears.
“I can’t allow them not be recognized, to be lied about,” Hemphill said about law enforcement.
“Until I can see that plaque up there,” she won’t be done, Hemphill said.
Pingeon implored the country not to forget what happened, and said, “I believe the vast majority of Americans have so much more in common than what separates us.”
Among those testifying were former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who along with former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming were the two Republicans on the panel that investigated Trump’s efforts to overturn Biden’s win. Cheney, who lost her own reelection bid to a Trump-backed challenger, did not appear. Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi urged the country to turn away from the culture of violent threats on lawmakers and the police.
Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, who has been tapped by Johnson to lead a new committee to probe other theories about what happened on Jan. 6, rejected Tuesday’s session as a “partisan exercise” designed to hurt Trump and his allies.
Many Republicans reject the narrative that Trump sparked the Jan. 6 attack, and Johnson, before he became the House speaker, had led challenges to the 2020 election. He was among some 130 GOP lawmakers voting that day to reject the presidential results from some states.
Instead, they have focused on security lapses at the Capitol — including the time it took for the National Guard to arrive and the failure of the police canine units to discover the pipe bombs found that day outside Republican and Democratic party headquarters. The FBI arrested a Virginia man suspected of placing the pipe bombs, and he told investigators last month he believed someone needed to speak up for those who believed the 2020 election was stolen, authorities say.
“The Capitol Complex is no more secure today than it was on January 6,” Loudermilk said in a social media post. “My Select Subcommittee remains committed to transparency and accountability and ensuring the security failures that occurred on January 6 and the partisan investigation that followed never happens again.”
The aftermath of Jan. 6
Five people died in the Capitol siege and its aftermath, including Babbitt, who was shot and killed by police while trying to climb through the window of a door near the House chamber, and Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died later after battling the mob. Several law enforcement personnel died later, some by suicide.
The Justice Department indicted Trump on four counts in a conspiracy to defraud voters with his claims of a rigged election in the run-up to the Jan. 6 attack.
Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers last month that the riot at the Capitol “does not happen” without Trump. He ended up abandoning the case once Trump was reelected president, adhering to department guidelines against prosecuting a sitting president.
Trump, who never made it to the Capitol that day as he hunkered down at the White House, was impeached by the House on the sole charge of having incited the insurrection. The Senate acquitted him after top GOP senators said they believed the matter was best left to the courts.
WASHINGTON — Approaching the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the official plaque honoring the police who defended democracy that day is nowhere to be found.
It’s not on display at the Capitol, as is required by law. Its whereabouts aren’t publicly known, though it’s believed to be in storage.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has yet to formally unveil the plaque. And the Trump administration’s Department of Justice is seeking to dismiss a police officers’ lawsuit asking that it be displayed as intended. The Architect of the Capitol, which was responsible for obtaining and displaying the plaque, said in light of the federal litigation, it cannot comment.
Determined to preserve the nation’s history, some 100 members of Congress, mostly Democrats, have taken it upon themselves to memorialize the moment. For months, they’ve mounted poster board-style replicas of the Jan. 6 plaque outside their office doors, resulting in a Capitol complex awash with makeshift remembrances.
“On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on Jan. 6, 2021,” reads the faux bronze stand-in for the real thing. “Their heroism will never be forgotten.”
Jan. 6 void in the Capitol
In Washington, a capital city lined with monuments to the nation’s history, the plaque was intended to become a simple but permanent marker, situated near the Capitol’s west front, where some of the most violent fighting took place as rioters breached the building.
But in its absence, the missing plaque makes way for something else entirely — a culture of forgetting.
Visitors can pass through the Capitol without any formal reminder of what happened that day, when a mob of President Trump’s supporters stormed the building trying to overturn the Republican’s 2020 reelection defeat to Democrat Joe Biden. With memory left unchecked, it allows new narratives to swirl and revised histories to take hold.
Five years ago, the jarring scene watched the world over was declared an “insurrection” by the then-GOP leader of the Senate, while the House GOP leader at the time called it his “saddest day” in Congress. But those condemnations have faded.
Trump calls it a “day of love.” And Johnson, who was among those lawmakers challenging the 2020 election results, is now the House speaker.
“The question of January 6 remains – democracy was on the guillotine — how important is that event in the overall sweep of 21st century U.S. history,” said Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University and noted scholar.
“Will January 6 be seen as the seminal moment when democracy was in peril?” he asked. Or will it be remembered as “kind of a weird one-off?”
“There’s not as much consensus on that as one would have thought on the fifth anniversary,” he said.
Memories shift, but violent legacy lingers
At least five people died in the riot and its aftermath, including Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot by police while trying to climb through a window toward the House chamber. More than 140 law enforcement officers were wounded, some gravely, and several died later, some by suicide.
All told, some 1,500 people were charged in the Capitol attack, among the largest federal prosecutions in the nation’s history. When Trump returned to power in January 2025, he pardoned all of them within hours of taking office.
Unlike the twin light beams that commemorated the Sept. 11, 2001, attack or the stand-alone chairs at the Oklahoma City bombing site memorial, the failure to recognize Jan. 6 has left a gap not only in memory but in helping to stitch the country back together.
“That’s why you put up a plaque,” said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa. “You respect the memory and the service of the people involved.”
Police sue over Jan. 6 plaque, DOJ seeks to dismiss
The speaker’s office over the years has suggested it was working on installing the plaque, but it declined to respond to a request for further comment.
Lawmakers approved the plaque in March 2022 as part of a broader government funding package. The resolution said the U.S. “owes its deepest gratitude to those officers,” and it set out instructions for an honorific plaque listing the names of officers “who responded to the violence that occurred.” It gave a one-year deadline for installation at the Capitol.
This summer, two officers who fought the mob that day sued over the delay.
“By refusing to follow the law and honor officers as it is required to do, Congress encourages this rewriting of history,” said the claim by officers Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges. “It suggests that the officers are not worthy of being recognized, because Congress refuses to recognize them.”
The Justice Department is seeking to have the case dismissed. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and others argued Congress “already has publicly recognized the service of law enforcement personnel” by approving the plaque and displaying it wouldn’t alleviate the problems they claim to face from their work.
“It is implausible,” the Justice Department attorneys wrote, to suggest installation of the plaque “would stop the alleged death threats they claim to have been receiving.”
The department also said the plaque is required to include the names of “all law enforcement officers” involved in the response that day — some 3,600 people.
Makeshift memorials emerge
Lawmakers who’ve installed replicas of the plaque outside their offices said it’s important for the public to know what happened.
“There are new generations of people who are just growing up now who don’t understand how close we came to losing our democracy on Jan 6, 2021,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the Jan. 6 committee, which was opposed by GOP leadership but nevertheless issued a nearly 1,000-page report investigating the run-up to the attack and the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Raskin envisions the Capitol one day holding tours around what happened. “People need to study that as an essential part of American history,” he said.
“Think about the dates in American history that we know only by the dates: There’s the 4th of July. There’s December 7th. There’s 9/11. And there’s January 6th,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-calif., who also served on the committee and has a plaque outside her office.
“They really saved my life, and they saved the democracy and they deserve to be thanked for it,” she said.
But as time passes, there are no longer bipartisan memorial services for Jan. 6. On Tuesday, the Democrats will reconvene members from the Jan. 6 committee for a hearing to “examine ongoing threats to free and fair elections,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York announced. It’s unlikely Republicans will participate.
The Republicans under Johnson have tapped Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia to stand up their own special committee to uncover what the speaker calls the “full truth” of what happened. They’re planning a hearing this month.
“We should stop this silliness of trying to whitewash history — it’s not going to happen,” said Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., who helped lead the effort to display the replica plaques.
“I was here that day so I’ll never forget,” he said. “I think that Americans will not forget what happened.”
The number of makeshift plaques that fill the halls is a testimony to that remembrance, he said.
Instead of one plaque, he said, they’ve “now got 100.”
In 1788, Georgia ratified the Constitution, the fourth of the original 13 colonies to do so, and was admitted to the Union.
In 1811, Timothy Pickering, a Federalist from Massachusetts, became the first U.S. senator to be censured after being accused of publicly revealing secret presidential documents.
In 1942, Japanese forces occupied Manila, forcing U.S. and Philippine forces under U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur to withdraw to the Bataan Peninsula.
In 1959, the Soviet Union launched Luna 1, the first unmanned spacecraft to travel to the moon.
In 1967, Ronald Reagan was sworn in as 33rd governor of California.
In 1974, U.S. President Richard Nixon signed a bill requiring states to limit highway speeds to 55 mph or lose federal highway funds.
In 1981, police in Britain arrested the so-called “Yorkshire Ripper,” after five years on the run. Peter Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder seven more.
In 1990, Britain’s most-wanted terrorism suspect, Irish Republican Army gunman Patrick Sheehy, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the Republic of Ireland.
In 2006, 12 men were killed in a methane gas explosion in a coal mine in West Virginia’s Upshur County. One man was found alive after 41 hours trapped underground.
File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI
In 2011, Prince Harry, grandson of England’s Queen Elizabeth II, was sent home from military service in Afghanistan after a magazine revealed his presence in the war zone. He later returned to continue training as a gunship pilot.
In 2019, two Indian women entered the Hindu Sabarimala temple, the first to do so since the courts ended a longtime ban on women in 2018.
In 2024, Lee Jae-myung, the leader of South Korea’s main opposition party, was stabbed in the neck during an appearance in Busan. Lee survived and a real estate worker was arrested and confessed to attempting to assassinate the politician.
The most potent attack ad of Donald Trump’s comeback campaign seemingly ran on a loop during the final weeks before the 2024 election. Assailing rights for transgender people, its punch line indeed delivered a punch: “Kamala Harris is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
2025: Promise broken. Back in office, the president has shown that the only pronouns he really recognizes are the first-person kind: me, myself and I.
A year into Trump 2.0, those self-regarding pronouns are now firmly affixed as the bywords of his presidency, on matters major and mundane. They might as well be mounted in gold in the Oval Office, in fonts so large as to not get lost amid all the bling he’s installed there. Asked in October just who was to be honored by Trump’s planned Arc de Triomph-like monument near Arlington Cemetery, the president was quick: “Me.”
To an extent that’s shocked even critics long convinced of his sociopathic narcissism, Trump has fashioned a government that’s of Trump, by Trump and for Trump. “I run the country and the world,” he boasted in April. Trump thinks “there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing,” his White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told Vanity Fair, as reported in twoarticles last month that signaled her own unease with Trump’s ongoing vengeance against his political enemies; his clemency for even the most violent rioters of Jan. 6, 2021; the pain of his erratic tariffs, too-cruel migrant roundups and tragic shutdown of USAID’s humanitarian aid; his stonewalling of the Jeffrey Epstein files that candidate Trump promised to release; and the foibles of his slavish Cabinet.
If Trump strutted as the center of the universe in 2025 — unchecked by advisors like Wiles or by a cowed Republican-controlled Congress, the Supreme Court and corporate chieftains — buckle up for 2026. It marks the 250th birthday of America’s independence, and our self-appointed master of ceremonies is focused on the festivities that he’ll star in not only on July 4th but all year long. One of his first acts as president was to create a White House task force with himself as chair, of course, to plan semiquincentennial events, ignoring an eight-year-old commission created by Congress for that purpose. Coming soon: A (possibly illegal) commemorative $1 coin with Trump’s image from the U.S. Mint.
Never mind that 2026 starts with a big spike in health insurance costs for tens of millions of Americans, including many Trump voters. The president who campaigned on bringing down the costs of living has stood in the way of a legislative remedy to the Dec. 31 expiration of healthcare premium subsidies, repeatedly mouthing his years-old promise that he’ll propose a cheaper alternative within weeks.
But here’s how 2026 will end: with midterm elections in November that loom as a referendum on whether the Trump Republican Party should keep control of Congress. The early betting is that no, it won’t. Especially after another year of Trump grandstanding, and his party’s genuflecting.
In good times, Trump’s garish self-regard might be tolerable to voters, even comical. But these aren’t good times, hardly the “golden age” Trump announced in his inaugural address last January — except for him and the wealthy hangers-on at his seemingly endless round of parties in the White House and at Mar-a-Lago. The Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Trump’s Florida resort was especially rich, pun intended, coming as it did hours before federal food aid for 42 million Americans expired amid a government shutdown he’d done nothing to avert.
Days later, voters gave a shellacking to Republicans in various states’ 2025 off-year elections, which is a good omen for the same result nationwide in 2026. There are other signs. On Tuesday, a new Gallup poll showed three out of four Americans were dissatisfied with “the way things are going in the United States.” Trump’s approval rating was just 36% in Gallup’s poll in early December, his lowest reading of the past year, and nearly equal to his all-time low after the Jan. 6 insurrection. Averages of various polls show Trump with negative ratings on his handling of immigration, the economy, trade and tariffs, and inflation — all issues that helped get him reelected.
But go ahead, Mr. President. Keep talking about how great you are. You’re a legend in your own time and mind.
Trump’s tone-deafness has become the great mystery of U.S. politics, for both parties, especially considering that he slammed President Biden for bragging about the economy’s post-pandemic recovery when Americans weren’t feeling it.
As Americans struggle to buy a home or to afford its upkeep, Trump has gilded the People’s House (see the New York Times’ recent 3-D recreation of the Oval Office for full, nauseating effect) and transformed the bathroom adjoining the Lincoln Bedroom in marble and gold. Having demolished the East Wing to make way for a gargantuan ballroom where Marie Antoinette would be at home, financed by favor-seeking billionaires and corporations, Trump told reporters on Tuesday that it would have to be bigger than he’d first planned because “we’re gonna do the inauguration” there.
What? The man who’s supposed to be leaving office on Jan. 20, 2029, is picking the new location for the next presidential inauguration? Hmmm.
Even before he’s been in office a year, Trump has put his brand on two Washington buildings, including the nation’s 60-year-old cultural center named by law as a memorial to an assassinated president. The Kennedy Center (no, I will not call it by Trump’s name) will have marble armrests; Trump took to social media on the day after Christmas to show off samples. Meanwhile, he’s refurbishing a royal jet from Qatar, a “palace in the sky.”
Trading on his power in unprecedented ways, Trump was a “crypto billionaire” by May, the Wall Street Journal reported, and in August the New Yorker estimated that he’d profited in office by at least $3.4 billion through crypto and licensing deals.
Pacific Palisades had been burning for less than two hours when word raced through the ranks of the Los Angeles Fire Department that the agency’s leaders had failed to pre-deploy any extra engines and crews to the area, despite warnings of life-threatening winds.
In the days after the fire broke out, and as thousands of homes and business continued to go up in flames, then-Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said little about the lack of pre-deployment, which was first disclosed by The Times, instead blaming those high winds, along with a shortage of working engines and money, for her agency’s failure to quickly knock down the blaze.
Crowley’s comments did not stand up to scrutiny. To several former LAFD chief officers as well as to people who lost everything in the disaster, her focus on equipment and City Hall finances marked the beginning of an ongoing campaign of secrecy and deflection by the department — all designed to avoid taking full responsibility for what went wrong in the preparations for and response to the Jan. 7 fire, which killed 12 people and leveled much of the Palisades and surrounding areas.
“I don’t think they’ve acknowledged that they’ve made mistakes yet, and that’s really a problem,” said Sue Pascoe, editor of the local publication Circling the News, who lost her home of 30 years. “They’re still trying to cover up … It’s not the regular firefighters. It’s coming from higher up.”
With the first anniversary of the fire a week away, questions about missteps in the firefight remained largely unanswered by the LAFD and Mayor Karen Bass. Among them: Why were crews ordered to leave the still-smoldering scar of an earlier blaze that would reignite into the Palisades inferno? Why did the LAFD alter its after-action report on the fire in a way that appeared intended to shield it from criticism?
The city also has yet to release the mayor’s communications about the after-action report. The Times requested the communications last month, and the report — which was meant to pinpoint failures and enumerate lessons learned, to avoid repeating mistakes — was issued in early October. Nor has the city fulfilled a records request from The Times about the whereabouts of fire engines in the Palisades when the first 911 call came in. It took the first crews about 20 minutes to reach the scene, by which time the fierce winds were driving the flames toward homes.
A Bass spokesperson has said that the mayor did not demand changes to the after-action report, noting that she pushed for its creation and that it was written and edited by the LAFD.
“This administration is only interested in the full truth about what happened before, during, and after the fire,” the spokesperson, Clara Karger, said earlier this month.
The LAFD has stopped granting interviews or answering questions from The Times about the matter, vaguely citing federal court proceedings. David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, said that the federal prosecution of a man accused of starting the earlier blaze does not preclude the department from discussing its actions surrounding both fires.
In a December television interview, Fire Chief Jaime Moore acknowledged that some residents don’t trust his agency and said his mandate from Bass was to “help guide and rebuild the Los Angeles Fire Department to the credibility that we’ve always had.”
The Lachman fire
Shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day, a man watched flames spread in the distant hills and called 911.
“Very top of Lachman, is where we are,” he told the dispatcher. “It’s pretty small but it’s still at the very top and it’s growing.”
“Help is on the way,” the dispatcher said.
A few hours later, at 4:46 a.m., the LAFD announced that the blaze, which later became known as the Lachman fire, was fully contained at eight acres.
Top fire commanders soon made plans to finish mopping up the scene and to leave with their equipment, according to text messages obtained by The Times through a state Public Records Act request.
“I imagine it might take all day to get that hose off the hill,” LAFD Chief Deputy Phillip Fligiel said in a group chat. “Make sure that plan is coordinated.”
Firefighters who returned the next day complained to Battalion Chief Mario Garcia that the ground was still smoldering and rocks still felt hot to the touch, according to private text messages from three firefighters to a third party that were reviewed by The Times. But Garcia ordered them to roll up their hoses and leave.
At 1:35 p.m., Garcia texted Fligiel and Chief Deputy Joseph Everett: “All hose and equipment has been picked up.”
Five days after that, on the morning of Jan. 7, an LAFD captain called Fire Station 23 with an urgent message: The Lachman fire had started up again.
LAFD officials were emphatic early on that the Lachman fire was fully extinguished. But both inside and outside the department, many were certain it had rekindled.
“We won’t leave a fire that has any hot spots,” Crowley said at a community meeting in mid-January.
“That fire was dead out,” Everett said at the same meeting, adding that he was out of town but communicating with the incident commander. “If it is determined that was the cause, it would be a phenomenon.”
The department kept under wraps the complaints of the firefighters who were ordered to leave the burn site. The Times disclosed them in a story in late October. In June, LAFD Battalion Chief Nick Ferrari had told a high-ranking fire official who works for a different agency in the L.A. region that LAFD officials knew about the firefighters’ complaints, The Times also reported.
Bass has directed Moore, an LAFD veteran who took charge of the department in November, to commission an “independent” investigation of the Lachman fire mop-up. The after-action report contained only a brief mention of the earlier fire.
No pre-deployment
The afternoon before hazardous weather is expected, LAFD officials are typically briefed by the National Weather Service, using that information to decide where to position firefighters and engines the following morning.
The weather service had been sounding the alarm about critical fire weather for days. “HEADS UP!!!” NWS Los Angeles posted on X the morning of Jan. 6. “A LIFE-THREATENING, DESTRUCTIVE” windstorm was coming.
It hadn’t rained much in months, and wind gusts were expected to reach 80 mph. The so-called burning index — a measure of the wildfire threat — was off the charts. Anything beyond 162 is considered “extreme,” and the figure for that Tuesday was 268.
In the past, the LAFD readied for powerful windstorms by pre-deploying large numbers of engines and crews to the areas most at risk for wildfires and, in some cases, requiring a previous shift of hundreds of firefighters to stay for a second shift — incurring large overtime costs — to ensure there were enough personnel positioned to attack a major blaze.
None of that happened in the Palisades, with its hilly terrain covered in bone-dry brush, even though the weather service had flagged it as one of the regions at “extreme risk.”
Without pre-deployment, just 18 firefighters are typically on duty in the Palisades.
LAFD commanders decided to staff only five of the more than 40 engines available to supplement the regular firefighting force citywide. Because they didn’t hold over the outgoing shift, they staffed the extra engines with firefighters who volunteered for the job — only enough to operate three of the five engines.
On Jan. 6, officials decided to pre-deploy just nine engines to high-risk areas, adding eight more the following morning. None of them were sent to the Palisades.
The Times learned from sources of the decision to forgo a pre-deployment operation in the Palisades. LAFD officials were mum about the inadequate staffing until after The Times obtained internal records from a source in January that described the department’s pre-deployment roll-out.
The officials then defended their actions in interviews. Bass cited the LAFD’s failure to hold over the previous shift of firefighters as a reason she removed Crowley as chief less than two months after the fire.
The after-action report
In March, a working group was formed inside the LAFD to prepare the Palisades fire after-action report. A fire captain who was recommended for the group sought to make sure its members would have the freedom to follow the facts wherever they led, according to internal emails the city released in response to a records request by an unidentified party.
“I am concerned about interference from outside entities that may attempt to influence the direction our report takes,” Capt. Harold Kim wrote to Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, who was leading the review. “I would like to ensure that the report that we painstakingly generate be published as is, to as reasonable an extent as possible.”
He worried about revisions, saying that once LAFD labor unions and others “are done with many publications, they become unrecognizable to the authors.”
Cook, who had been involved with review teams for more than a decade and written numerous reports, replied: “I can assure you that I have never allowed for any of our documents to be altered in any way by the organization.”
Other emails suggest that Kim ultimately remained in the group.
As the report got closer to completion, LAFD officials, worried about how it would be received, privately formed a second group for “crisis management” — a decision that surfaced through internal emails released through another records request by an unidentified party.
“The primary goal of this workgroup is to collaboratively manage communications for any critical public relations issue that may arise. The immediate and most pressing crisis is the Palisades After Action Report,” LAFD Asst. Chief Kairi Brown wrote in an email to eight others, including interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva.
“With significant interest from media, politicians, and the community, it is crucial that we present a unified response to anticipated questions and concerns,” Brown wrote. “By doing so, we can ensure our messaging is clear and consistent, allowing us to create our own narrative rather than reactive responses.”
Cook emailed a PDF of his report to Villanueva in early August, asking the chief to select a couple of people to provide edits so he could make the changes in his Word document.
The following week, Cook emailed the chief his final draft.
“Thank you for all your hard work,” Villanueva responded. “I’ll let you know how we’re going to move forward.”
Over the next two months, the report went through a series of edits — behind closed doors and without Cook’s involvement. The revised report was released publicly on Oct. 8.
That same day, Cook emailed Villanueva, declining to endorse the public version because of changes that altered his findings and made the report “highly unprofessional and inconsistent with our established standards.”
“Having reviewed the revised version submitted by your office, I must respectfully decline to endorse it in its current form,” Cook wrote in the email obtained by The Times. “The document has undergone substantial modifications and contains significant deletions of information that, in some instances, alter the conclusions originally presented.”
Cook’s version highlighted the failure to recall the outgoing shift and fully pre-deploy as a major mistake, noting that it was an attempt to be “fiscally responsible” that went against the department’s policy and procedures.
The department’s final report stated that the pre-deployment measures for the Palisades and other fire-prone locations went “above and beyond” the LAFD’s standard practice. The Times analyzed seven drafts of the report obtained through a records request and disclosed the significant deletions and revisions.
Cook’s email withdrawing his endorsement of the report was not included in the city’s response to one of the records requests filed by an unknown party in October. Nearly 180 of Cook’s emails were posted on the city’s records portal on Dec. 9, but the one that expressed his concerns about the report was missing. That email was posted on the portal, which allows the public to view documents provided in response to records requests, after The Times asked about it.
The LAFD did not respond to a query about why the email was not released with Cook’s other emails. Karger, the Bass spokesperson, said the link to the document was broken and the city fixed it after learning the email wasn’t posted correctly. The Times has inquired about how and why the link didn’t work.
Former LAFD Asst. Chief Patrick Butler, who worked for the agency for 32 years and now heads the Redondo Beach Fire Department, said the city’s silence on such inquiries is tantamount to deceiving the public.
“When deception is normalized within a public agency,” he said, “it also normalizes operational failure and puts people at risk.”
People ride the subway past a euro adoption poster in Sofia, Bulgaria, Monday. Bulgaria is set to become the 21st member of the eurozone on Jan. 1, transitioning from the national lev to the euro amid public concerns that the move could trigger immediate price hikes and a higher cost of living. Photo by Borislav Troshev/EPA
Dec. 31 (UPI) — Bulgaria will begin using the euro as its currency on Thursday, and the country hopes it will bring an economic boost, despite concerns.
Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007, but it’s only now adopting the currency after strong debate and political turbulence.
It’s the 21st country to join the eurozone, and lawmakers in Brussels and Sofia hope it will boost the economy of the EU’s poorest nation.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the move one of the EU’s greatest achievements.
“This milestone reflects years of hard work and commitment, overcoming challenges,” she said in a statement. “The euro will bring benefits for the Bulgarian people making payments and travel easier. It will bring new opportunities for Bulgarian businesses, allowing them to seize better the advantages of our common single market. It will further strengthen Bulgaria’s voice in Europe. This step is good for Bulgaria, and it strengthens Europe as a whole. It makes our economy more resilient and competitive globally. Congratulations, Bulgaria! You can be proud of what you achieved.”
The country has had dual displays of prices — in the euro and the Bulgarian lev — since August, and that will continue until August 2026. Consumers can use both currencies beginning Jan. 1 through Jan. 31. On Feb. 1, they must only use the euro. The price displays are a way for consumers to monitor prices and a stopgap to prevent retailers from price gouging.
Bulgarians can exchange their currency at banks and post offices for free until July. After that, they can charge for exchanges.
The country is still divided on whether switching to the euro is a good move.
A recent survey by the Bulgarian ministry of finance showed that 51% of citizens wanted to adopt the euro, and 45% were against it, The Guardian reported.
In June, a fight broke out in the parliament when the measure was adopted by the European Commission. Parliament members from the Revival Party blocked the podium. They also organized protests against euro adoption. Revival is a far-right, pro-Russian political party.
Petar Ganev, senior research fellow at the Institute for Market Economics in Sofia, told The Guardian that the division on the euro highlights the country’s broader political tension.
“This is not surprising. The country is divided on almost everything that you can imagine,” Ganev said. “And after the political instability, we ended up in a very hostile political environment.”
Bulgaria has endured a four-year political crisis with seven parliamentary elections and widespread corruption, which has caused a lack of trust in the government.
Valdis Dombrovskis, European Commission economy minister, said in a November speech in Sofia that the adoption of the euro was especially important during Russia’s war with Ukraine, rising geopolitical tensions and global economic uncertainty.
“Most European countries — including Bulgaria — are far too small to shape today’s world on their own. They only stand to gain necessary weight by fully integrating into the European Union’s larger political and economic structures,” he said.
“The euro area is not just a group of countries sharing a common currency,” Dombrovskis said in his speech. “It is a powerful symbol to the world of European integration, economic stability, and geopolitical strength. It gives Europe a collective economic weight that allows it to shape global trade, investment, and financial markets.”
The latest Eurobarometer, a survey conducted by the EU in Autumn 2025, showed that 74% of Europeans said their country has benefited from being a member of the EU, and 59% are optimistic about the future of the EU.
Many Bulgarians fear that prices will spike during the transition. The average monthly income is about $1,500 in the country, so rising prices could be detrimental to some. But the European Commission has said there is no evidence that inflation will rise.
Victor Papazov, macroeconomist and adviser to the Revival party, claimed Bulgaria was heading for a crisis similar to what Greece endured in 2009.
“Any person in their right mind would oppose adopting the euro,” Papazov said in a written statement to The Guardian. “Joining now will make things worse and faster. In my opinion there is not a single serious positive in adopting the euro.”
Maria Valentinova, 35, a pharmacist from Sofia, told The Guardian that she is glad her young son will grow up in the eurozone. She said the currency “will be good for the economy of the country in the long run.”
Valentinova called the transition period “a bit stressful” but said, “I think it will be a good thing in the end.”
Ganev said Bulgarians will get used to the new currency quickly. “What will happen to our country and if we are going to be a good example in the eurozone or a bad example … depends entirely on us.”
Revelers enjoy the confetti that is tossed in the air as part of the annual New Year’s Eve Confetti Test in Times Square in New York City on December 29, 2025. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
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As the new year begins, novelists send characters to great heights in Tibet and Wyoming, to the great depths of the 19th century Atlantic and back in time, to early 20th century Pakistan. Meanwhile, nonfiction authors contemplate a Spanish shipwreck, a racially motivated murder, the origins of great ideas and how laughter can change our lives. Happy reading!
Guo, whose 2017 memoir “Nine Continents” detailed her difficult road to personal and artistic freedom, pours that experience into Ishmaelle, a young woman from England’s coast who joins the crew of a whaling ship named the Nimrod. Yes, it’s a retelling of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” and yes, it’s well worth your time. By adding in new characters while adhering to the original story, the author creates something new, strange and thrilling.
Set in 1869, when Europeans were forbidden to enter Tibet, this slow-paced yet tense novel follows the perspectives of Balram, an Indian surveyor, and Katharine, a woman of mixed English and Indian heritage, as they both attempt expeditions for different purposes. During their treks both characters meet a man named Chetak, whose eerie folkloric tales underscore the power structures they’ll each have to surmount before reaching their goals.
While most of this stunning book takes place in Pakistan, an important section leads two brothers to college at Dartmouth in the United States, a place about as far in every respect from their Rawalpindi origins as possible. Mueenuddin, whose gift for satire shines whether he’s describing society matrons or gangsters, never loses sight of his theme: How do any of us ever manage to justify our treatment of the underserved?
Crux: A Novel By Gabriel Tallent Riverhead: 416 pp., $30 (Jan. 20)
A “crux” refers to the toughest point in a climb; it also means a decision point, as well as a place where two things cross. For Tallent’s sophomore novel, two characters who are climbers have reached an important moment in their teenage lives. Daniel and Tamma (he’s straight, she’s queer) have been close friends for years, scrabbling all over Joshua Tree peaks, but as their home lives and individual paths diverge, their bond wavers.
Vigil: A Novel By George Saunders Random House: 192 pp., $28 (Jan. 27)
It seems unfair that, after his spectacular “Lincoln in the Bardo,” Saunders returns with not just another novel featuring a ghost, but with a new novel even more spectacular than the last. “Who else could you have been but exactly who you are?” says the newly incarnated Jill “Doll” Blaine, sent to comfort nefarious oil tycoon K. J. Boone in his last hours alive — a statement that in no way diminishes the political urgency of this spare, lovely book.
We’ve all heard that laughter is the best medicine; funny stuff isn’t merely diversion, but essential to our health. Author Duffy, who hosts the TED Talks podcast “How to Be a Better Human,” believes that anyone, from age 10 to age 103 (he gives examples of each), can make you laugh, help you form community and even lead you to make better decisions. One of the latter? Learn to laugh at yourself; it can signal “general intelligence and verbal creativity.”
By Sylvester Allen Jr. and Belle Boggs University of North Carolina Press: 296 pp., $30 (Jan. 27)
The titular Outlaw was the first Black constable of Graham, N.C. In 1870, he was killed by lynching by members of the local Ku Klux Klan, no doubt in part due to his efforts to build coalition between members of different races and social classes. Allen, a native of Graham and a playwright who wrote a drama based on Outlaw’s legacy, and Boggs, a scholar, connect the terrorism and hatred behind this man’s murder to the present day.
By George Newman Simon & Schuster: 304 pp., $30 (Jan. 27)
So many cartoons depict great ideas using light bulbs that we’ve forgotten many of the greatest ideas come about from long deliberation and careful winnowing. Canadian professor Newman uses archaeological terms for the process: surveying, gridding, digging and sifting. Who knew that Jordan Peele rewrote “Get Out” 400 times, or that Paul Simon composed his “Graceland” album by combing through all of his previous work?
In 1708 the San José, a treasure-laden Spanish galleon, sunk off the coast of Colombia. In 2015 a man named Roger Dooley found the galleon’s wreck and brought back artifacts proving it. Unfortunately, with little education, few bona fides and a sketchy reputation, Dooley received no credit for the discovery. Sancton tracked down Dooley — now in his 80s and somewhat reclusive — and thus is able to provide a fascinating conclusion to the tale.
By Jennifer Breheny Wallace Portfolio: 288 pp., $30 (Jan. 27)
Loneliness pervades our society and to heal it, people need to feel that they actually matter to others — something author Wallace saw when she researched and wrote her 2023 bestseller “Never Enough,” which focused on adolescents and burnout. Now Wallace shares her findings from talking with people of all ages and hearing what a difference it makes when connections are made and individuals are recognized for even the smallest contributions.
Patrick is a freelance critic and author of the memoir “Life B.”
Lakers guard Austin Reaves will miss at least a month with a grade 2 strain in his left calf, the team announced Friday, one day after he left the game against the Houston Rockets at halftime.
Reaves, averaging career highs in points (26.6), assists (6.3) and rebounds (5.2), had already missed three games with what the team called a “mild” calf strain. He returned off the bench while playing on a minutes restriction against Phoenix on Dec. 23 and reprised his starting role on Christmas Day in a loss to the Rockets. But after scoring 12 points in 15 minutes in the first half, he was ruled out for the second half with “left calf soreness.”
Calf injuries have been major concerns across the NBA since three stars — Tyrese Haliburton, Damian Lillard and Jayson Tatum — suffered Achilles tears during last year’s playoffs. Haliburton and Lillard have previously dealt with calf injuries.
Lakers star guard Luka Doncic suffered a calf injury on Christmas Day last year while with the Dallas Mavericks and missed two months, during which he was traded to the Lakers.
“I know how it is to go to a calf injury. It’s not fun at all,” Doncic said Thursday after the game. “[I’ll] just be there to support him. Take your time. Calves are dangerous so take your time.”
The Lakers (19-10) are losing their second-leading scorer at a critical time of the season. They have lost three consecutive games, their only losing streak of the season, and their defense in the last 15 games has been among the worst in the league.
After the third consecutive blowout loss, coach JJ Redick questioned how much his players cared. He promised an “uncomfortable” film session and team meeting at practice on Saturday before the Lakers face Sacramento at Crypto.com Arena on Sunday.
After a difficult stretch of the schedule that included eight out of 10 games against teams with winning records, the Lakers have four of their next five against teams in the bottom of the Western Conference standings. Outside of a home game against the Eastern Conference-leading Detroit Pistons on Tuesday, the Lakers play the Sacramento Kings, the Memphis Grizzlies (on Jan. 2 and 4) and at New Orleans on Jan. 6.
Reaves’ absence could extend until the beginning of the Lakers’ Grammy road trip that begins on Jan. 20 against Denver.
People place bets at Santa Anita Park, where purses have declined along with the number of horses racing and lack of money coming from off-site betting.
(Getty Images)
Figuring out the purse for 34 of the 35 graded stakes races at Santa Anita is, for horsemen anyway, maddeningly simple: Just look up the minimum purse required in North America.
For a Grade 1 race, that’s $300,000. It drops to $200,000 for Grade 2 races and $100,000 for Grade 3s.
Even the one local exception, the Santa Anita Derby, pays “only” $500,000 after offering $750,000 from 2021-24. The current amount is half the purse on offer for the top 3-year-old races at Gulfstream Park (Florida Derby) and Fair Grounds (Louisiana Derby), and just one-third what Oaklawn Park pays for the Arkansas Derby.
Last year the Santa Anita Derby attracted only five entries, which reduced the number of Kentucky Derby qualifying points available in the race. That almost kept Baeza, who finished second to Journalism in the Arcadia race, from qualifying for the Derby (he made it in the field only after another horse was scratched and wound up placing third).
It’s the same story for older horses, where Gulfstream offers the $3-million Pegasus World Cup next month plus turf races for $1 million and $500,000. Oaklawn Park has a half-dozen races worth at least $500,000 (two at $1.25 million), and Fair Grounds has three between $250,000 and $500,000. No Grade 3 race at any of those tracks offers less than $150,000.
All of that makes it harder for Santa Anita to attract top horses from those states, which increase purses with money from slot machines or casinos, something not available to California tracks. Santa Anita, however, has hiked its purses this meeting for maiden and allowance races.
For months after the Palisades fire, many who had lost their homes eagerly awaited the Los Angeles Fire Department’s after-action report, which was expected to provide a frank evaluation of the agency’s handling of the disaster.
A first draft was completed by August, possibly earlier.
In one instance, LAFD officials removed language saying that the decision not to fully staff up and pre-deploy all available crews and engines ahead of the extreme wind forecast “did not align” with the department’s policy and procedures during red flag days.
Instead, the final report said that the number of engine companies rolled out ahead of the fire “went above and beyond the standard LAFD pre-deployment matrix.”
Another deleted passage in the report said that some crews waited more than an hour for an assignment the day of the fire. A section on “failures” was renamed “primary challenges,” and an item saying that crews and leaders had violated national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter deaths and injuries was scratched.
Other changes in the report, which was overseen by then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva, seemed similarly intended to soften its impact and burnish the Fire Department’s image. Two drafts contain notes written in the margins, including a suggestion to replace the image on the cover page — which showed palm trees on fire against an orange sky — with a “positive” one, such as “firefighters on the frontline,” the note said. The final report’s cover displays the LAFD seal.
The Times obtained seven drafts of the report through the state Public Records Act. Only three of those drafts are marked with dates: Two versions are dated Aug. 25, and there is a draft from Oct. 6, two days before the LAFD released the final report to the public.
No names are attached to the edits. It is unclear if names were in the original documents and had been removed in the drafts given to The Times.
The deletions and revisions are likely to deepen concerns over the LAFD’s ability to acknowledge its mistakes before and during the blaze — and to avoid repeating them in the future. Already, Palisades fire victims have expressed outrage over unanswered questions and contradictory information about the LAFD’s preparations after the dangerous weather forecast, including how fire officials handled a smaller New Year’s Day blaze, called the Lachman fire, that rekindled into the massive Palisades fire six days later.
Some drafts described an on-duty LAFD captain calling Fire Station 23 in the Palisades on Jan. 7 to report that “the Lachman fire started up again,” indicating the captain’s belief that the Palisades fire was caused by a reignition of the earlier blaze.
The reference was deleted in one draft, then restored in the public version, which otherwise contains only a brief mention of the previous fire. Some have said that the after-action report’s failure to thoroughly examine the Lachman fire reignition was designed to shield LAFD leadership and Mayor Karen Bass’ administration from criticism and accountability.
Weeks after the report’s release, The Times reported that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to roll up their hoses and leave the burn area on Jan. 2, even though they had complained that the ground was still smoldering and rocks remained hot to the touch. Another battalion chief assigned to the LAFD’s risk management section knew about the complaints for months, but the department kept that information out of the after-action report.
“A full understanding of the Lachman fire response is essential to an accurate accounting of what occurred during the January wildfires,” Bass wrote.
Fire Chief Jaime Moore, who started in the job last month, has been tasked with commissioning the independent investigation that Bass requested.
The LAFD did not answer detailed questions from The Times about the altered drafts, including queries about why the material about the reignition was removed, then brought back. Villanueva did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for Bass said her office did not demand changes to the drafts and only asked the LAFD to confirm the accuracy of items such as how the weather and the department’s budget factored into the disaster.
“The report was written and edited by the Fire Department,” the spokesperson, Clara Karger, said in an email. “We did not red-line, review every page or review every draft of the report. We did not discuss the Lachman Fire because it was not part of the report.”
Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, told The Times that she reviewed a paper copy of a “working document” about a week before the final report was made public. She said she raised concerns with Villanueva and the city attorney’s office over the possibility that “material findings” were or would be changed. She also said she consulted a private attorney about her “obligations” as a commissioner overseeing the LAFD’s operations, though that conversation “had nothing to do with the after-action” report.
Hudley Hayes said she noticed only small differences between the final report and the draft she reviewed. For example, she said, “mistakes” had been changed to “challenges,” and names of firefighters had been removed.
“I was completely OK with it,” she said. “All the things I read in the final report did not in any way obfuscate anything, as far as I’m concerned.”
She reiterated her position that an examination of missteps during the Lachman fire did not belong in the after-action report, a view not shared by former LAFD chief officers interviewed by The Times.
“The after-action report should have gone back all the way to Dec. 31,” said former LAFD Battalion Chief Rick Crawford, who retired from the agency last year and is now emergency and crisis management coordinator for the U.S. Capitol. “There are major gaps in this after-action report.”
Former LAFD Asst. Chief Patrick Butler, who is now chief of the Redondo Beach Fire Department, agreed that the Lachman fire should have been addressed in the report and said the deletions were “a deliberate effort to hide the truth and cover up the facts.”
He said the removal of the reference to the LAFD’s violations of the national Standard Firefighting Orders and Watchouts was a “serious issue” because they were “written in the blood” of firefighters killed in the line of duty. Without citing the national guidelines, the final report said that the Palisades fire’s extraordinary nature “occasionally caused officers and firefighters to think and operate beyond standard safety protocols.”
The final after-action report does not mention that a person called authorities to report seeing smoke in the area on Jan. 3. The LAFD has since provided conflicting information about how it responded to that call.
Villanueva told The Times in October that firefighters returned to the burn area and “cold-trailed” an additional time, meaning they used their hands to feel for heat and dug out hot spots. But records showed they cleared the call within 34 minutes.
Fire officials did not answer questions from The Times about the discrepancy. In an emailed statement this week, the LAFD said crews had used remote cameras, walked around the burn site and used a 20-foot extension ladder to access a fenced-off area but did not see any smoke or fire.
“After an extensive investigation, the incident was determined to be a false alarm,” the statement said.
The most significant changes in the various iterations of the after-action report involved the LAFD’s deployment decisions before the fire, as the wind warnings became increasingly dire.
In a series of reports earlier this year, The Times found that top LAFD officials decided not to staff dozens of available engines that could have been pre-deployed to the Palisades and other areas flagged as high risk, as it had done in the past.
One draft contained a passage in the “failures” section on what the LAFD could have done: “If the Department had adequately augmented all available resources as done in years past in preparation for the weather event, the Department would have been required to recall members for all available positions unfilled by voluntary overtime, which would have allowed for all remaining resources to be staffed and available for augmentation, pre-deployment, and pre-positioning.” The draft said the decision was an attempt to be “fiscally responsible” that went against the department’s policy and procedures.
That language was absent in the final report, which said that the LAFD “balanced fiscal responsibility with proper preparation for predicted weather and fire behavior by following the LAFD predeployment matrix.”
Even with the deletions, the published report delivered a harsh critique of the LAFD’s performance during the Palisades fire, pointing to a disorganized response, failures in communication and chiefs who didn’t understand their roles. The report found that top commanders lacked a fundamental knowledge of wildland firefighting tactics, including “basic suppression techniques.”
A paperwork error resulted in the use of only a third of the state-funded resources that were available for pre-positioning in high-risk areas, the report said. And when the fire broke out on the morning of Jan. 7, the initial dispatch called for only seven engine companies, when the weather conditions required 27.
There was confusion among firefighters over which radio channel to use. The report said that three L.A. County engines showed up within the first hour, requesting an assignment and receiving no reply. Four other LAFD engines waited 20 minutes without an assignment.
In the early afternoon, the staging area — where engines were checking in — was overrun by fire.
The report made 42 recommendations, ranging from establishing better communication channels to more training. In a television interview this month, Moore said the LAFD has adopted about three-quarters of them.
WASHINGTON — Attorneys for President Trump urged a federal judge on Friday to rule that Trump is entitled to presidential immunity from civil claims that he instigated a mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 election.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta didn’t rule from the bench after hearing arguments from Trump attorneys and lawyers for Democratic members of Congress who sued the Republican president and allies over the Jan. 6. 2021, attack.
Trump spoke to a crowd of his supporters at the “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House before the mob’s attack disrupted the joint session of Congress for certifying Democratic President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
Trump’s attorneys argue that his conduct leading up to Jan. 6 and on the day of the riot is protected by presidential immunity because he was acting in his official capacity.
“The entire point of immunity is to give the president clarity to speak in the moment as the commander-in-chief,” Trump attorney Joshua Halpern told the judge.
The lawmakers’ lawyers argue Trump can’t prove he was acting entirely in his official capacity rather than as an office-seeking private individual. And the U.S. Supreme Court has held that office-seeking conduct falls outside the scope of presidential immunity, they contend.
“President Trump has the burden of proof here,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Joseph Sellers. “We submit that he hasn’t come anywhere close to satisfying that burden.”
At the end of Friday’s hearing, Mehta said the arguments gave him “a lot to think about” and he would rule “as soon as we can.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who chaired the House Homeland Security Committee, sued Trump, his personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani and members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers extremist groups over the Jan. 6 riot. Other Democratic members of Congress later joined the litigation.
The civil claims survived Trump’s sweeping act of clemency on the first day of his second term, when he pardoned, commuted prison sentences and ordered the dismissal of all 1,500-plus criminal cases stemming from the Capitol siege. Over 100 police officers were injured while defending the Capitol from rioters.
Halpern said immunity enables the president to act “boldly and fearlessly.”
“Immunity exists to protect the president’s prerogatives,” he said.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers argue that the context and circumstances of the president’s remarks on Jan. 6 — not just the content of his words — are key to establishing whether he is immune from liability.
“You have to look at what happened leading up to January 6th,” Sellers said.
WASHINGTON — FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said Wednesday that he will resign from the bureau next month, ending a brief and tumultuous tenure in which he clashed with the Justice Department over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and was forced to reconcile the realities of his law enforcement job with provocative claims he made in his prior role as a popular podcast host.
The departure, which had been expected, would be among the highest-profile resignations of the Trump administration. It comes as FBI leadership has been buffeted by criticism over Director Kash Patel’s use of a government plane for personal purposes and social media posts about active investigations.
Bongino announced his planned departure in a post on X in which he said he was grateful for the “opportunity to serve with purpose.” He did not say precisely when in January he would leave or detail his future plans.
President Trump said earlier Wednesday, in response to a question about Bongino’s fate: “Dan did a great job. I think he wants to go back to his show.”
Bongino was always an unconventional pick for the No. 2 job at the FBI, a position that historically has entailed oversight of the bureau’s day-to-day operations and typically has been held by a career agent. Though he had previously worked as a New York City police officer and Secret Service agent, neither he nor Patel had any experience at the FBI before being picked for their jobs.
Nonetheless, Bongino was installed in the role in March by Trump after years as a conservative podcast host, where he used his platform to repeatedly rail against FBI leadership and to encourage conspiracy theories related to the Epstein sex-trafficking case and pipe bombs discovered in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.
Once in the position, Bongino struggled to placate elements of Trump’s base who expected him to quickly deliver the reform he had claimed was needed at the FBI and to uncover the truths he had said had been hidden by the federal government.
On the Epstein case, for instance, he had previously challenged the official ruling that the wealthy financier had taken his own life in a New York jail soon after his 2019 arrest. But once in the FBI, he said in a Fox News interview: “I’ve seen the whole file. He killed himself.”
Bongino had separately speculated as recently as last year that the pipe bombs placed on the eve of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot were an “inside job” and part of a “massive cover-up.” But after the FBI earlier this month arrested a 30-year-old Virginia man with no evident connection to the federal government, Bongino was pressed about his prior comments.
“I was paid in the past for my opinions,” Bongino said in a Fox News interview. “One day I will be back in that space, but that’s not what I’m paid for now. I’m paid to be your deputy director, and we base investigations on facts.”
Southern California Edison did not spend hundreds of millions of dollars on maintenance of its aging transmission lines that it told regulators was necessary and began billing to customers in the four years before the Jan. 7 wildfires, according to a Times review of regulatory filings.
Edison told state regulators in its 2023 wildfire prevention plan that it believed its giant, high-voltage transmission lines, which carry bulk power across its territory, “generally have a lower risk of ignition” than its smaller distribution wires, which deliver power to neighborhoods.
After two of the most destructive fires in the state’s history, The Times takes a critical look at the past year and the steps taken — or not taken — to prevent this from happening again in all future fires.
While it spent heavily in recent years to reduce the risk that its smaller lines would ignite fires, Edison fell behind on work and inspections it told regulators it planned on its transmission system, where some structures were a century old, according to documents.
Edison’s transmission lines are now suspected of igniting two wildfires in Los Angeles County on the night of Jan. 7, including the devastating Eaton fire, which killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,000 homes and other structures in Altadena.
Twenty miles away, in the San Fernando Valley, terrified Sylmar residents watched a fire that night burning under the same transmission tower where the deadly Saddleridge fire ignited six years before. Firefighters put out that Jan. 7 blaze, known as the Hurst fire, before it destroyed homes.
Roberto Delgado said the 2019 Saddleridge fire started at this powerline in the hillside behind his Sylmar house. He said the January 7 Hurst began with sparks at this and another nearby powerline. Photographed in Sylmar, CA on Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
After the fires, Edison changed course, and began spending more on its transmission lines, according to executives’ recent comments and state regulatory documents.
The utility began installing more grounding devices on its old transmission lines no longer in service, like the one suspected of igniting the Eaton fire. The company says it believes the idle line, last used 50 years ago, may have momentarily reenergized from a surge in electricity on the live lines running parallel to it, sparking the blaze. The official investigation hasn’t been released.
Transmission work Edison failed to perform
Here are examples of work that Edison told regulators was needed and that it was authorized to charge to customers but did not perform. The amounts are for the four years before the Jan. 7 wildfires.
Transmission maintenance $38.5 million Transmission capital maintenance $155 million Fixing illegally sagging lines $270 million Substation transformer replacement $136 million Pole loading replacement $88 million* Transmission line patrols $9.2 million Intrusive pole inspections $1.4 million
Source: Edison’s “Risk Spending Accountability Report” filed in April 2025 *Edison said customers weren’t charged
The added devices give unexpected power on the old lines more places to dissipate into the earth.
A helicopter transports workers during the process of removing Southern California Edison’s tower 208, which is suspected of causing the Eaton Fire, on Monday, May 5, 2025, in Pasadena, Calif.
(William Liang/For The Times)
Edison also began replacing some aging equipment. Sylmar residents said they saw workers in trucks and helicopters replacing hardware on the transmission line where they had watched early flames of both the Hurst fire and the 2019 Saddleridge blaze.
“Not until this year did we see repairs,” said Roberto Delgado, a Sylmar resident who can see Edison’s transmission towers from his home. “Obviously the maintenance in the past was inadequate.”
Jill Anderson, the utility’s chief operating officer, told regulators at an August meeting that the company replaced components prone to failure on a certain transmission line after Jan. 7. Edison later confirmed she was referring to equipment on the line running through Sylmar.
In interviews, Edison executives disputed that maintenance on the company’s transmission lines suffered before Jan. 7.
A helicopter transports workers during the process of removing Southern California Edison’s tower 208, which is suspected of causing the Eaton Fire, on Monday, May 5, 2025, in Pasadena, Calif.
(William Liang/For The Times)
“I do not think that our inspections and maintenance in the years leading up to 2025 were at depressed levels,” said Russell Archer, a top Edison regulatory lawyer.
Scott Johnson, an Edison spokesman, said: “The 13,500 people at Southern California Edison show up every day committed to the safety of the communities where we live and work. There is no higher value than safety here.”
Johnson said the utility prioritized safety both before and after the fire. For example, he said, the company increased aerial and ground inspections of transmission lines in areas at high fire risk in 2022 — and kept them at that higher level in subsequent years.
Among the company’s increased spending this year was an expensive upgrade to a transmission line that the state’s grid operator said was required to more safely shut down five critical transmission lines in L.A. County including those running through Sylmar and Eaton Canyon. That work was expected to be finished by 2023 but was still in progress on Jan. 7.
Edison didn’t preventively shut down the lines in Eaton Canyon or Sylmar on Jan. 7, but said the delayed upgrade had nothing to do with that decision. The company said the wind that night combined with other factors didn’t meet its protocol at the time for the lines to be turned off.
Some proposed maintenance changes will take years.
Work crew dismantles a section of Southern California Edison’s tower 208 which will be removed for further examination on Wednesday, May 7, 2025. The idle transmission tower is suspected of sparking the Eaton fire.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
For example, executives recently told regulators that next year they may begin determining whether some of its 355 miles of idle transmission lines in areas at high-risk of wildfire should be removed for safety reasons. The company said 305 miles of those dormant lines run parallel to energized lines, like the one in Eaton Canyon.
Regulators at the state Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety asked Edison this summer if any of those lines posed a risk of induction, where they become energized from nearby electrified lines. Edison told them it “has not done a line by line analysis.”
Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company, acknowledged in a November interview that the company made changes after the fires, including by replacing a steel part called the y-clevis, which was found to have failed in the minutes before the 2019 Saddleridge fire.
“We saw some concerns with that so we accelerated a program to replace them,” he said.
Pizarro said he continued to back the company’s statements before Jan. 7 that it had decreased the risk that its lines would spark a wildfire by as much as 90% since 2018, including by spending billions of dollars for prevention work on its smaller distribution lines.
He called the Eaton fire “a black swan event” — one of “low probability, but high consequence.”
Aging equipment
About 13,000 miles of transmission lines carry bulk power through Edison’s territory. In comparison, it has nearly 70,000 miles of the smaller distribution lines, delivering power to homes.
Because the high-voltage transmission lines are interconnected, utilities must keep the system balanced, trying to prevent sudden increases or decreases in power. An abrupt jump in electricity flowing on one transmission line can cause surges and problems miles away.
In 2023, Edison said in a filing to the state Public Utilities Commission that the average age of its infrastructure was increasing as it replaced equipment less frequently than in previous times.
More than 90% of its transmission towers are at least 30 years old — the age when the first signs of corrosion appear, it said in a filing. Some transmission lines and pylons are nearing 100 years of service and have never had major overhauls, the company said.
Edison said it began looking for corroded transmission towers in 2020, but found so many that it temporarily stopped those evaluations in 2022 to focus on fixing those found unsafe.
In 2021, the commission’s Public Advocates Office warned that Edison wasn’t completing maintenance and upgrades that the utility said was “critical and necessary” and was authorized to bill to customers.
Edison had been under-spending on that work since 2018, staff at the Public Advocates Office wrote. They urged regulators to investigate, saying that “risks to the public are not addressed” and customers may be owed a refund.
That shortfall in spending continued through 2024.
According to a report Edison filed in April, the company did not spend hundreds of millions of dollars on transmission system work that regulators had authorized from 2021 to 2024.
Among the shortfalls was $270 million to fix thousands of deficiencies found more than a decade ago where its transmission lines hang too close to the ground, the report said. Also unspent was $38.5 million authorized for transmission operating maintenance and an additional $155 million for capital maintenance.
Edison planned to perform 57,440 detailed inspections of its transmission poles in those four years, the report said, but performed only 27,941, citing other priorities.
Edison said its inspection numbers still met state regulatory requirements.
A helicopter flies over the downtown Los Angeles skyline during a cloudy day on Monday, May 5, 2025, in Pasadena, Calif.
(William Liang/For The Times)
The utility also replaced 38% fewer substation transformers than it said it would. And while it was authorized to replace 14,280 transmission poles it restored just 10,031, the report stated.
Archer said some uncompleted work was for an inspection program using drones in areas at lower risk of fire. Instead the company focused those aerial inspections in high-risk areas, he said.
He said some shortfalls were for upgrade projects that were delayed for reasons beyond the company’s control.
Utilities are allowed to pass on the costs of approved maintenance projects to customers in the monthly rates they charge. State regulators also give them some flexibility to decide whether to spend the money on approved projects, or something else.
Archer said that most of the unspent money involved capital expenses like purchases of new transmission towers and upgrade projects. Once regulators authorize a capital project, he said, customers begin paying a small portion of the cost annually over the assets’ expected life, which is often decades. If the project is not completed, those annual payments stop, he said, adding that state regulations don’t allow Edison to issue refunds for most unspent funds.
Transmission lines known to spark deadly fires
Before Jan. 7, Edison told regulators in its wildfire mitigation plan that it had focused its prevention efforts on its smaller distribution system. It said transmission lines posed a lower threat because they were taller and had wires more widely spaced.
Yet the deadliest wildfire in state history was caused when equipment on a century-old Pacific Gas & Electric transmission tower failed. The 2018 Camp fire killed 85 people and destroyed most of the town of Paradise.
A year later, the Kincade fire in Sonoma County ignited when a steel part on a PG&E transmission line broke. Like Edison’s line in Eaton Canyon, that transmission cable was no longer serving customers.
Edison is now facing hundreds of lawsuits claiming it was negligent in maintaining its transmission lines in Eaton Canyon and for leaving the old unused line in place — allegations the company denies.
At 6:11 pm on Jan. 7, Edison recorded a fault — a sudden change in electricity flow — on a transmission line running from La Cañada Flintridge to Eagle Rock, according to its report to regulators.
Faults can be caused by lines slapping together, a piece of equipment breaking or other reasons. Edison said it did not know the cause.
The fault caused a momentary surge in current on the four live lines running through Eaton Canyon, the company said, which may have energized the idle line.
Investigators view the Edison electrical lines, transmission towers and surrounding area, which is a location that is being investigated as the possible origin of the Eaton fire in Eaton Canyon in Altadena Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
State regulations require utilities to remove old lines no longer in service. Edison says that even though it hasn’t used the line in decades it sees a need for it in the future.
Edison’s transmission manual dated December 20, 2024 states that it inspects idle lines every three years, while active ones are inspected annually.
Executives said they went beyond the manual’s requirements, inspecting the idle line in Eaton Canyon annually in the years before the fire.
Edison declined to provide records of those inspections.
Sylmar line suspected of two wildfires
Edison says it believes its transmission line running through the foothills above Sylmar was involved in the ignition of the Jan. 7 Hurst fire. But it denies the line ignited the 2019 Saddleridge fire.
The 2019 fire killed at least one and destroyed or damaged more than 100 homes and other structures.
This year, lawyers for victims of the 2019 fire argued in court the two fires started in the same way: steel equipment holding up the transmission lines broke, causing a sudden, massive surge in energy that triggered sparks and flames at two or more towers located miles away.
The lawyers say the line, constructed in 1970, is not properly grounded so that sudden increases in energy don’t disperse into the soil — a problem they say the company failed to fix.
Edison denies the claims, calling their description of the fire’s start an “exotic ignition theory…contrary to accepted scientific principles.”
A judge recently denied Edison’s request to dismiss the case.
WASHINGTON — President Trump filed a lawsuit Monday seeking $10 billion in damages from the BBC, accusing the British broadcaster of defamation as well as deceptive and unfair trade practices.
The 33-page lawsuit accuses the BBC of broadcasting a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump,” calling it “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
It accused the BBC of “splicing together two entirely separate parts of President Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021” in order to “intentionally misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said.”
The lawsuit, filed in a Florida court, seeks $5 billion in damages for defamation and $5 billion for unfair trade practices.
The BBC said it would defend the case.
“We are not going to make further comment on ongoing legal proceedings,” it said in a statement.
The broadcaster apologized last month to Trump over the edit of the Jan. 6 speech. But the publicly funded BBC rejected claims it had defamed him, after Trump threatened legal action.
BBC chairman Samir Shah had called it an “error of judgment,” which triggered the resignations of the BBC’s top executive and its head of news.
The speech took place before some of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress was poised to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election that Trump falsely alleged was stolen from him.
The BBC had broadcast the hourlong documentary — titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” — days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
Trump said earlier Monday that he was suing the BBC “for putting words in my mouth.”
“They actually put terrible words in my mouth having to do with Jan. 6 that I didn’t say, and they’re beautiful words, that I said, right?” the president said unprompted during an appearance in the Oval Office. “They’re beautiful words, talking about patriotism and all of the good things that I said. They didn’t say that, but they put terrible words.”
The president’s lawsuit was filed in Florida. Deadlines to bring the case in British courts expired more than a year ago.
Legal experts have brought up potential challenges to a case in the U.S. given that the documentary was not shown in the country.
The lawsuit alleges that people in the U.S. can watch the BBC’s original content, including the “Panorama” series, which included the documentary, by using the subscription streaming platform BritBox or a virtual private network service.
The 103-year-old BBC is a national institution funded through an annual license fee of 174.50 pounds ($230) paid by every household that watches live TV or BBC content. Bound by the terms of its charter to be impartial, it typically faces especially intense scrutiny and criticism from both conservatives and liberals.
Dec. 16 (UPI) — President Donald Trump is suing the BBC for $10 billion, alleging it intentionally misrepresented a speech he gave before the Jan. 6 storming of Capitol Hill in order to influence the result of the 2024 presidential election.
The lawsuit was filed in a Florida court on Monday, more than a month after Trump threatened to bring litigation against Britain’s public broadcaster over the editing of a speech he gave to supporters in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, in the documentary Trump: A Second Chance.
Trump’s lawyers described the documentary’s depiction of him as “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory and malicious,” alleging it was aired “in a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment.”
The suit is for $5 billion in damages, plus interest, costs, punitive damages, attorneys’ fees and other relief the court finds appropriate.
The BBC declined to comment Tuesday but vowed it would fight the case.
“As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case. We are not going to make further comment on ongoing legal proceedings,” said a spokesman.
The Panorama documentary aired in Britain on Oct. 28, 2024, just days ahead of the Nov. 5 election. The BBC stresses it was not broadcast in the United States and that it did not make it available to view there.
In the documentary, video of Trump’s speech was edited to piece together two comments the president made about 50 minutes apart, while omitting other parts of his speech.
“[T]he BBC “intentionally and maliciously sought to fully mislead its viewers around the world by splicing together two entirely separate parts of Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021,” his lawyers state in the lawsuit.
“The Panorama Documentary deliberately omitted another critical part of the Speech in such a manner as to intentionally misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said.”
The claim refers to the splicing together of excerpts lifted from the video that made it sound as if Trump was inciting his supporters to march on the Capitol and fight:
“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell,” was what viewers of the program saw, when Trump’s actual words were, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
It wasn’t until 50 minutes later in the speech that Trump made the comments about fighting.
The infraction went unnoticed until early November when The Telegraph published an exclusive on a leaked internal BBC memo in which a former external ethics adviser allegedly suggested that the documentary edited Trump’s speech to make it appear he directed the Jan. 6 attack on Congress.
Following the report, the BBC’s director-general, Tim Davie, and head of news, Deborah Turness, resigned.
BBC chairman Samir Shah immediately apologized for what he called an unintentional “error of judgment.”
After Trump wrote the BBC demanding a correction, compensation and threatening a $1 billion lawsuit, the corporation formally apologized and issued a retraction that was the lead story across all of its news platforms on television, radio and online — but said it strongly disagreed “there is a basis for a defamation claim.”
To win the case, Trump’s legal team would need to convince the court the program had caused Trump “overwhelming financial and reputational harm.”
The BBC has said that since the program was not broadcast in the United States or available to view there, Trump was not harmed by it and the choices voters made in the election were not affected as he was re-elected days after.
However, Trump’s legal team alleges the BBC had a deal with a third-party media company that had rights to air the documentary outside of the United Kingdom.
The blunder has reignited a furious national debate about the BBC’s editorial impartiality and the institution itself, which is funded by a $229 annual license that households with a TV must pay.
It also comes as the future of the BBC is under review, with the renewal date of its royal charter approaching on the centenary of its founding in 2027.
Trump has won out-of-court settlements in a series of disputes with U.S. broadcasters, although largely at significantly reduced sums than those sought in the original lawsuit.
In July, CBS settled a $20 billion claim out of court for $16 million over an interview with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris that aired four weeks before the election on Nov. 5.
ABC News paid Trump $15 million and apologized to settle a defamation suit over comments by presenter George Stephanopoulos that incorrectly stated Trump was “liable for rape.”
In 2022, CNN fought and successfully defended a $475 million suit alleging it had defamed Trump by dubbing his claim the 2020 election was stolen from him as the “Big Lie.” The judge ruled it did not meet the legal standard of defamation.
He has live cases pending cases against the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump attend the Congressional Ball in the Grand Foyer of the White House on Thursday. Photo by Shawn Thew/UPI | License Photo
